THE MIRACULOUS 16th KARMAPA

THE MIRACULOUS 16th KARMAPA 

When he was dying I heard he would go to Chicago. I didn’t really know when to go so I just went, and because of our karmic connection, I landed there five minutes after His Holiness. When I went to see him in hospital he was smiling and joking. I said I would like to go there every day to serve him. There were 16 of his attendants there and he didn’t need me but I went anyway. 

Every day he was very charming, smiling, joking as usual. Sometimes the doctors came to look at him but sometimes there was nobody except me. The doctors were not Buddhist. They would say, “This man is very strange. He has so many problems, heart, tuberculosis, and so on, and he’s always very happy. He must have a lot of pain but he always says, I’m fine, I’m fine.” The doctor told his attendants he would not live long, maybe five days or one week. His Holiness laughed and said I will have another fifteen days. And he lasted for exactly fifteen days.

I returned to India knowing they would bring his body to Rumtek. In Tantric teaching it’s said that if you have great faith and devotion in the guru you will get blessings; if not, you won’t get anything. One bhikshu spent twenty-four years with Buddha and didn’t get any kind of blessing. 

Real faith and devotion is difficult to explain. It’s not strong love, not strong attachment. It’s some special feeling. 

In Guru Yoga practice usually they say your guru should transform into Vajradhara (the primordial buddha), Guru Rinpoche or Buddha Sakyamuni. Then you can say the prayer. For some people, who see the guru as a human being, then maybe it’s better for them to transform him into Vajradhara. 

If I change him into Vajradhara, my guru yoga disappears.

I see him as he is. That’s good. As he is. GET IT?

~  Dorzong Rinpoche

From: «The Miraculous 16th Karmapa» (Parinirvana)