Name: Lama Jigmé, aka "Lama Jinpa"
Email:
Web Site: http://www.tibetancho.com/
Bio: Born in Toronto, founded the Canadian Naturopathic College in 1978. A seminal event was taking refuge with the 16th Karmapa in 1980. A trip to visit Kalu Rinpoche followed shortly, and six years of study later, Jinpa entered the traditional 3-year retreat. Chod was always his first love, and in 2007, after 14 years of letting his meditation experiences ripen, he founded the school of Tibetan Healing Chod.
Posts by Lama Jinpa:
Distance Learning Program
August 21st, 2011
There are 3 important reasons why a Chö distant learning approach is so vital at this time.
1. Over the years we have received requests to have our trainings in England, Scandinavia, South America, New Zealand and even South Africa. The difficulty in traveling to all these places is obvious. Moreover, many people have wanted to attend our trainings in America, but time and the expense of travel and lodging can be a real obstacles. Now, through our Distance Learning Program, any suitable student anywhere in the world can access these extraordinary teachings and trainings.
2. Cramming what is essentially weeks of material into a 2 or 3 day seminar has been challenging. Now, each student can proceed with all these trainings at your own pace. However, to help structure your studies, there is a suggested 12-week approach to integrate these trainings gradually and thoroughly. In this way, new Chod meditations/rituals can be each be put into practice weekly, without overwhelm!
A daily practice regimen is also suggested, that is brief enough to be integrated into one’s lifestyle and other spiritual commitments.
3. The Distance model also allows ongoing contact with the students. There will be discussions and Q & A sessions, either as webinars (via computer) and/or teleseminars (via phone). Our new Chod youtube channel and Chö internet TV channel will also nurture the ongoing relationship between students and teachers.
Online Empowerment
In Vajrayana, a student must receive the wong, lung and tri, i.e. the empowerment, reading transmission and teaching. The texts that you will receive provide comprehensive explanations.
Live Transmission
Since an empowerment is a live, mind-to-mind transmission, this cannot be received through a book or recording. However, through modern technology, students can now receive this blessing stream in real time, via their computer. This method has already been used form many years by lamas such as Namkai Norbu Rinpoche, with great effect. We will be broadcast the empowerment via Telestream, at a time convenient for the Western Hemisphere, with an additional Eastern Hemisphere broadcast if there is enough demand.
Tsewong Rinpoche will transmit the Opening the Sky Door Empowerment (Namkai Go Je) from the Precious Rosary Collection (Rinchen Tsogley Trengwa) collection, the oldest Chöd empowerment, directly from the oral tradition of MaChik.
Student will receive a word by word translation and explanation through the entire process, and will recite various passages in English (these are part of their Distance Learning texts).
Chöd in Bhutan
January 16th, 2011
Chöd in Bhutan: April 3-17
As an auspicious beginning of the year of the Iron Rabbit, we have the rare opportunity for a Chöd journey to the Land of the Thunder Dragon!
Bhutan is the last Vajrayana country in the world where the pure energies of Guru Rinpoche, Yeshe Tsogyal, Tontang Gyalpo, Pema Lingpa, PeGyal Lingpa and dwell and where the yidams, dakinis, protectors are vibrantly alive.
In this place, where synchronicity is commonplace, the sacred environment has the power to transform. Through the guidance of a unique Dzokchen master and a skilled Western Buddhist teacher, we will discover a renewed energy and dynamic that will inform the rest of our days, and create a seed in all future lives.
Practices
Participants will receive (or re-receive) the Chöd Initiation, and various transmissions (lungs). During our time in Bhutan, aside from the full-day Rinchen Trengwa, we will learn and practice the PeGyal Lingpa Chod, Kusli Tsok Chod, short Chod Tsok, Laughter of the Dakinis, and especially the Chod Ngondro (translated and presented for the VERY FIRST time in the West), as well as various other daily practices, protector practice, and so on!
Look here for the schedule and email me for more information:
http://www.tibetanchod.com/events/bhutan
Ngakpa
December 30th, 2010The Ngakpa
Knowing that the basis of all phenomena, animate and inanimate, is patterns of vibrational energy, the “mantra speaker” trains in ways to resonate with the sound DNA of different levels of reality. Through inner transformation, he/she can benefit limitless outer beings and open the doors of the infinite inner universe. While our old mothers wander in an endless ocean of karmic insanity, he fulfills the purpose of existence. “Open Sesame!”
The Dakini
November 21st, 2010Dakini — Feminine Wisdom Energy
In Tibetan Buddhism, the unborn, luminous matrix of consciousness is identified as Feminine in nature. And the world of phenomena, objects, beings and activity, is connect to the Masculine.
But even within the formed, world, Feminine Wisdom manifests—as the Dakini. She is at once playful, ferocious, compassionate, terrifying. As event, inner experience or everyday woman, she shatters the stilted, rigid confines of thought and reactive feeling.
She is the portal to both Ultimate Truth and Authentic Being in the world.
The Sound of Emptiness
October 28th, 2010The kangling is a reminder of impermanence. Yet it proclaims the yogi’s fearless Wisdom Mind. Our wind-borne life signature is offered to all karmic debtors, while the Dakini’s wail vibrates and awakens our energy channels.
The Luminosity of Chö
October 20th, 2010Relatively, Chö cuts through obstacles, severs hope and fear, incises habitual tendency, and chops at the root of chronic narcissism.
Ultimately, it cuts fixation on mistaken, false identity, catapulting one into the luminous open space of original unborn Being—so-called Dharmakaya.
Damarus, Skulls & Thighbones
September 8th, 2010
Sacred Implements
In Vajrayana we use sacred implements, instruments, clothing and various ritual material as part of the transformational process. This is a very real sacred technology, a highly developed science which makes objects that “work.” Once skill is attained, these implements help change energies, situations, and have tremendous physical, psychological and spiritual impact. But today, there has been a tremendous deterioration in the availability of authentic materials, with Westerners and even lamas using wholly inappropriate, cheap copies of genuine Vajrayana instruments.
DamaruWorks Damaru
Check the gallery of exquisite Damaru art and science.. We still have a few left, for those who want to practice Chöd as it was designed to be practiced and designated by MaChik and her followers.
www.damaruworks.com
Sacred Bones
We have, for the first time in the West, genuine skull damarus, skullcups, and kangling which are virtually impossible to find anywhere else. Generally, bone available today in Nepal, India or China, is made from robbed graves of Muslims, obtained in Hindu cremation grounds or from Chinese political prisoners or other dubious sources. Our source, however, is from skulls and thighbones of Buddhist practitioners of the Brokpa tribe of far Eastern Bhutan, obtained during the Chöd sky burial ritual!
Skull Damaru
These are fabricated from one male and one female skull, as per tradition. Male and female yidam mantras are hand lettered in gold on red background in the respective male and female skulls. The skins are “trin-pak” goat skins, treated by burying with mineral salts and sacred herbs, according to the ancient terma tradition. They are joined by wood and copper structures, and have a copper band with places for gems of your choosing.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lamajinpa9/DAMARUART#5510978681485597970
Kangling
Made from the same Buddhist bone source, there are a variety of factors and characteristics that make a human thighbone kangling poor, good or excellent. Price is based on these characteristics, as well as the unique nature of our kangling. (see potalagate.com for the prices of regular kangling.)
Skullcups
Every practitioner should have a skullcup. This is used in all kinds of sacred offerings, guru yoga, initiations, (including self-initiation practices) and various other rituals. And can also used as an eating vessel, imparting extraordinary qualities to our food. These are similarly from practicing Buddhists. The quality of skullcups depends on their various signs and characteristics, as well as type of sutures, age of the deceased, size and so on.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lamajinpa9/SKULLS#
http://picasaweb.google.com/lamajinpa9/KANGLINGBuddhist#
Preserving the Tradition
In spite of the tremendous growth in Western Buddhism, the above tantric traditions are in grave danger of extinction. In this age of spiritual degeneration, the wise practitioner will seek out the authentic opportunities, during their brief, fleeing availability.
Are Demons Real? —PART 2
August 10th, 2010MEET the DEMONS
Visit-Mati Klarwein
Making Sense
If a group of 20 of us looked at a yellow chair, we can be fairly confident that close to 100% will agree that, yes, it is indeed a chair and it really is yellow. So far so good for consensual, shared reality. But already when it comes to the more refined senses of taste or sound, some (like a wine-taster) might be far more sensitive than others. Here we are not talking about likes or dislikes, or opinions, but just the raw sensing of things. Go beyond the myth of those five senses, and ask someone how the room “feels,” or what the “vibe” of a person walking into the room is, and we start to have a problem.
Getting Real
Just like a yellow chair, there are facts about a room, or the person who just walked in. Yes, you could focus on one or another aspect of something, but there really, really is a very specific energy to a room, or a person (albeit a complex one). This is no more a “matter of opinion” than the yellow chair. Here, sensitivity starts to vary enormously, from 0% on up. And for those who can’t directly feel these things, it is hard to accept that others actually can. What happened? While there are a dozen solid reasons why we are “desensitized” to the most obvious things about the world, three main soul-killers seem to stand out.
Over-stimulation
Every year the ads gets louder, more frenetic, more outrageous and more irritating, because advertising humanoids know full well that subtle doesn’t work. A solid blow across the head with a large stick seems to be required. The ongoing trends in music, movies, fashion, marketing, eating habits—all blatantly show how the volume keeps ramping up to break through our progressively hardened senses and shut-down energy bodies.
Over-intellectualiztion
Since the dawn of the “Age of Reason” several centuries ago, we have been pummeled with the dogma of the greatest religion the world has ever known, Scientific Materialism. If you cant sense it, or measure it (with an extension of the senses), it ain’t there. And you are crazy or a superstitious primitive to think it is. Apart from a rationalization for the global colonization of the “heathens” of the non-Western world, this had a tremendous chilling effect in believing our own eyes and ears.
In this way, I would estimate that fully 70% of our human capacity is amputated. The human soul is castrated from its ability to actually feel the sizzling, percolating reality around us, and confined to a stale compendium of things and names.
Over-intoxification
Why humanity likes to poison itself is food for another long discussion. But a world of pervasive neurotoxins, including heavy metals, medical drugs, vaccines, fluorides, several hundred thousand chemical additives, industrial pollutants and self-imbibed poisons such as alcohol, tobacco and artificial sweeteners, take their toll. The cumulative effect is staggering in terms of stupefying and anesthetizing our neurological “wetware.”
Enter the Mystic
This would all be academic, except for one thing. The Vajrayanist, and especially the Chöpa, is a mystic, a practitioner who deals directly with the vital forces of the universe. It is not for the dry intellectual, the emotionally dead, or the sensually challenged. Like Vajrayana as a whole, Chöd is about engaging the world in its most raw, naked form. Chöd starts in reality, not in the stale, shadow world of those who live in the prison of their heads, populated by the sterile thought-forms of others, themselves long departed.
First, Meet the World
Are demons real? For those that encounter them, they are. For those that do not, they can start by walking in nature and feeling the powerful life force that is present there. Refine it down to the stories in a blade of grass or a flower petal. Listen to the wind. Hear the messages spoken to you within the sunbeams, the clouds and the call of the black crow in the morning mist. When life is that real, the spirit beings of the land, the non-human entities and the demonic forces can also be sensed and felt. And if we keep up our Dharma practice, we have the Vajra confidence to meet them on their own ground.
And then let the healing begin!
Stay tuned for Are Demons Real-Part 3
Are Demons Real? — PART 1
July 30th, 2010The Uprising
The Chöd practitioner is a Demon Whisperer. Someone who invites the dark side, in order to resolve, heal, and cut through fixation on hope and fear. With this kind of approach, it is no surprise that even even talking about “Internet Demons” is likely to unleash a hornet’s nest of one’s personal and karmic obstacles. But these are, ultimately, harbingers of great blessing. That is the very nature of Chöd.
Thus, after my last blog, an acquaintance admonished me about my mistaken views and emailed a lengthy article explaining the nature of Shunyata, Emptiness, and the state of Mahamudra, in relation to Chöd. The implication was that, well, after all, demons are not real, are they? They are just manifestations of the mind. We need to cut through belief in these phantasmagoria and see the empty, luminous, unimpeded nature of the natural state. Whether this was the intended meaning of the enclosed article, that was its interpretation by my friend. But in fact, this same explanation of demons has been offered by a number of Western authors and scholars, and is even found in in the introduction to the translation of MaChik’s own tome, the Namshay Chenmo or The Complete Explanation.
Selective Reality
Mahamudra is an intrinsic part of Chöd, and writings such as Karma Chagmé’s 17th century Prayer to MaChik (translated by the author in 2006) express this relationship with infinite poetry, depth and subtlety. But the point is this: We cannot use Mahamudra or Dzokchen as a “selective” tool, like a hammer to nail this or that preferred object. Indeed Mahamudra (Chakgya Chenpo) means The Great Seal, because it stamps everything with its pervasive truth. Everything. That means that demons are not real, in exactly the same way that we are not real. Demons are no more real than any other phenomena, and no less real. To negate the existence of demons, or any concept we fear or dislike, is dharma in service of ego, rather than dharma that eradicates self-clinging.
Self-Illusion, Self-Illumination
Actually, the Chöd practitioner overcomes demons by dematerializing the illusion of his/her own solid self. It is well known that many Chöpa’s of old were utterly immune to contagion. Was it because they decided that “Bacteria do not exist and can’t hurt me.” Unlikely. But if “I” don’t exist, then the phenomena of contagion has nowhere to land. We could take this to its logical conclusion and state “Karma doesn’t exist. It is just an outer phenomena, a projection of my mind. Therefore I am freed of all my karma.” But as long as “I” am there, karma indeed sticks, whether we “Mahamudra-ize” it our not.
Two Different Truths
In the Ultimate state, the underlying reality from which all phenomena arises, indeed there is no becoming, no ending, no coming nor going, no being, no non-being. No karma, no demons and no “I and thou.” In the Relative world, which is co-emergent, co-arising with the Ultimate, there is a whole heck of a lot of arising and disappearing, busy-ness, impermanence, over-arching karma, disease and, yes, demons.
Being Real
Whether demons are just projections of our psychological fears is a different argument altogether, and the subject of the next part of this article. But for now, we can rest assured that demons are no more real than we are. And not an iota less. And throwing concepts of emptiness at them, and not at the perceiver and the rest of the “good stuff” is itself… demonic.
Coming Events
Remote Healing Chöd
Our first group of DNA identity packets will be heading to Eastern Bhutan in mid-August. We are fortunate in having someone to handy carry these directly from San Francisco to Tsewong Rinpoche’s monastery. There, participants will receive over 60 or more remote Chöd and other tantric healing rituals over a 12 month period. http://www.tibetanchod.com/remote-healing/
Tibetan Land Healing
Our first 2-day Tibetan Land Healing training will take place in early October in Toronto, Canada. Participants will learn the Tibetan shamanic practices of Blessing, Energizing, Enriching and Clearing the environment; This in turn has profound ramifications on all aspects of our life, health, relationships and spiritual development.
www.tibetanlandhealing.com
Tibetan Energy Healing
Balancing the 5 Elements is the key to rapid and deep healing of body and mind. In Level 1 of Tibetan Energy Healing, we will disclose the ancient Tibetan esoteric methods for using light and sound to regenerate the structure of Earth, flow of Water, energy of Fire, motility of Air and integration of the Space element.
www.tibetanenergyhealing.com
Tibetan Healing Chö
Module 1 of the world’s only comprehensive training in the practice of Chöd will take place in Canada this fall. Apart from the empowerment of the Sky Door, students will learn basic meanings and principles behind Chöd and five important beginning practices. Much of the teaching is from original Tibetan sources, never translated before. Audiovisual presentation includes over 120 slides and a CD of all ritual melodies, teachings and PDFs of all practices.
www.tibetancho.com
www.instituteoftraditionalmedicine.com
The Haunted Internet
July 14th, 2010What’s A Nyensa Anyway?
I was chatting with a dharma practitioner the other day, and she mentioned that she and her friends regularly met on the internet to do Chöd together, via Skype. I immediately said “What does that do to the Nyensa?” She replied: “What’s a Nyensa?” I wanted to say, “A Nyensa is the thing you really need to know about before you do Chöd on the internet!” But I decided to blog about it instead.
A Nyensa by Any Other Name
Because Nyensa is, in all cases, an essential understanding of Chöd. Chöd is the most “location-oriented” of any dharma practice. Actually, it is meant to be done in the wild, outside one’s know territory, one’ comfort zone, one’s normal parameters. In the traditional Tibetan literature of Chöd, whole texts are devoted to the characteristics of the Nyensa. Those kinds of details are fully discussed in the context of the School of Tibetan Healing Chö (www.tibetancho.com), and in my forthcoming book (Tibetan Chö: Cutting Through to Freedom). But here, the core point is that a progressive training is needed.
Stranger in a Strange Land
One goes to a peaceful, non-threatening, safe place—like one’s home, dharma center, or in a group setting. Here one practices only the White Feast, offering to the Higher Guests. Once the student becomes more mature in their practice, with various meditative experiences and small realizations under their belt, they progress towards less comfortable sites. Even then, it is suggested that one go “semi-wrathful,” before taking it to the ultimate level of the wrathful Nyensa.
Enter the Nyensa
This is a haunted area, whose vibe is threatening, spooky, and downright scary. It is unpleasant and malevolent; We have a natural revulsion to even sitting there. Traditionally, this might be an abandoned house, under a solitary tree, near the water’s edge, or anywhere that seems anomalous and distorted. Many urban landscapes come to mind, as well as parks, areas of human excavation and disruption. In fact, it is hard to go a block anywhere, without seeing somewhere that is not a little sketchy. Here real demons, disembodied spirits, and our own deepest fears and rigidity lives. The practitioner engages in the Red Feast, with its vivid and violent meditations. Uprising come about, that must be processed—processed in the crucible of the yogi’s grasp of the fundamental nature of self and other.
Electric Lady Land
So what about the internet? What lives there? Are we safe from “cosmic spam?” Or is this the greatest repository of demonic forces, malicious entities, human madness, emotional toxins, pain and excess, confused ideas, psychospiritual impurities, karmic stains and evil spirits this world has ever seen? It may well be. And so Chöpas everywhere, rejoice! No more going to haunted cemeteries and places of sickness and death. No more trudging through the cold night with the thin sliver of the moon the only light to keep the demons at bay. We can just stay home on the wifi, open up Facebook, Google, Skype and Hotmail, and off we go, kangling in hand.
To Everything a Season
But friends, maybe before one embarks on such a journey, caution is necessary. Before we say “come and eat me, release all karma, you vicious demons, rolling like a red fog up the side of my desktop,” we might want to be prepared for what we call up. As Shenpen Dawa Rinpoche said, “Chöd is not for the faint-hearted.” Well, on further reflection, maybe I will just stick to chatting and making friends over the invisible airwaves, instead of leaving the doors wide open all night, waiting to see who shows up next morning. Until I am ready.
www.machikcholing.com
