THE SEARCH FOR MY FIRST SPIRITUAL TEACHER and HOW I MET and BECAME A DISCIPLE OF KALU RINPOCHE
I went on a years long quest to find my destined spiritual teacher which ended in meeting Kalu Rinpoche in a beautiful and miraculous way
THE DAWNING LIGHT, Volume 8, # 766 Sunday, February 11, 2024
SPIRITUAL SOUP KITCHEN Section # 124 Stories by Chinmayan about the challenges and rewards of daily life as your destined dharma path…
Top Image: Padmasambhava, the first great Realized master who brought the Dharma to Tibet in the 8th century
Bottom Image: Kalu Rinpoche, one of the first highly realized Tibetan Buddhist masters to bring the Dharma to the West from 1972 onwards…
MY SEARCH FOR MY FIRST SPIRITUAL TEACHER and HOW I FINALLY MET and BECAME A DISCIPLE OF KALU RINPOCHE
I went on a years long quest to find my spiritual teacher in answer to the calling of my heart to find the great realized master who I intuitively knew was meant to train and guide me on the path
A HIGHLY REALIZED SPIRITUAL MASTER IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM A NORMAL PERSON
From the very beginning of my search for my teacher, I prayed to be brought together with a highly realized master I had a karmic connection with who could teach me the essential principles and practices and guide me on the spiritual path.
Even then, at nineteen, I understood that only an enlightened teacher has the abilities, wisdom and experience to help and guide their students all the way to enlightenment or Self Realization.
An enlightened person or someone who is highly advanced on the spiritual path lives their lives and approaches every aspect of life very differently than a ‘normal” person.
For an enlightened person is no longer at the effect of their own mind, emotions or habits, but are living in a supremely conscious state of freedom and bliss.
I have been privileged to train with and live and travel closely with each of my teachers, who were among the most highly realized spiritual masters of our time.
When I was a young man, when I began to consciously look for my teacher, my prayer was that I asked to be brought together with the highest level teacher available.
Though I had never met an enlightened person in real life yet, I had had several dreams of being with a realized person which were precursors of what was to come.
These dreams made me aware of the special energy and vibrational frequency around someone who is actually enlightened because even in the dreams, I was highly affected by being with them and woke up still feeling it and fully recalling every detail.
A truly enlightened person has no ego…in fact, the masters say that all spiritual paths that lead to enlightenment are those of gradually becoming free of all identification of believing that you are a separate being called “I” with a body, mind and intellect.
They say that this total identification with “I” is the source of all suffering and why we wander from life to life completely immersed in that mistaken identity.
An enlightened person has attained “Self Realization”, which means they have dissolved the ego and awakened to their higher Self, who exists in all of us as who we really are.
The purpose of all the principles and practices of the authentic spiritual paths is to lead us gradually to the point of our own awakening and becoming enlightened.
In that state, you become fully aware of your true nature and shed all the ego’s old beliefs, habits, afflictive emotions and delusions.
As long as we cling to our ego identification, we will get glimpses of enlightenment if we are pursuing our path and practices… in the same way that the morning sky gradually becomes lighter and lighter until the sun suddenly rises and floods the world with light.
This is a very difficult process because we have been under the sway of our egos for countless lifetimes.
That is why it is essential to train with someone who has traveled the path all the way through to attaining enlightenment.
If you long to evolve, then at some point your heart will start looking for your teacher.
“When the student is ready, the guru will appear” is an ancient saying that is absolutely true because the divine is leading and guiding all of us behind the scenes, pushing us this way and that through our life experiences to help us keep moving forward on our path.
Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche and Kalu Rinpoche
MY SEARCH FOR MY TEACHER
As a young man, I was consciously looking for my teacher for a few years.
During my years of searching, I went to see and be with many teachers, including some of the then famous ones with many students, but none of them attracted or felt right to me.
I did not have the recognition and sense of connection my heart was looking for…
A REALIZED PERSON’S ENERGY AND WAY OF BEING is very different.
A highly realized person’s energy and way of being is very different than a normal person.
They have a high vibration field of pure love that is pulsating from them all the time.
Once you meet a truly enlightened person, you will understand what I mean.
During my own spiritual career, there were hundreds of times when I waited at the door to the hall with my dharma brothers and sisters for our teacher, Kalu Rinpoche to arrive to give a teaching or an initiation.
We all were standing outside on the sidewalk in a crowd, with an aisle left open in the middle, quietly chanting our mantra, “Om Mani Paydmeh Hung.”
Finally, we would see his car coming and see Rinpoche’s beaming smile.
The moment the Rinpoche stepped out of the car, waves of transcendental energy would sweep the waiting crowd and through everyone in the hall.
Suddenly, we were all transported to a much higher, clearer state of consciousness.
The pure blissful energy of an enlightened person is unmistakeable.
We are used to being with normal people who are constantly radiating from the ego, which has its own distinctive energy.
After being with a realized person such as Kalu Rinpoche, you get a taste of what the ultimate freedom of enlightenment is like and are inspired to pursue your own spiritual path to develop your own ability to achieve higher consciousness.
When I Was Looking For My Teacher, I Checked Out Many Teachers, Searching In Vain
When I was looking for my teacher, I already knew from my dreams and years of natural meditation practice and the wisdom from my past lives as a spiritual aspirant a sense of what a realized being’s energy would be like.
I found that almost all the teachers I checked out did not have this realized energy.
They may have had vast knowledge of spiritual literature and texts.
They might say they’re realized, act like they are and have super developed minds, but they lacked the heart energy of pure love and ineffable bliss that all realized beings have.
They may be great teachers at the level of words and intellect but lacked the access to supreme knowledge and awareness.
Even the most famous teachers with thousands of devoted followers who hung on their every word and believed them to fully realized, who were charismatic and articulate did not impress me when I went to see them because I had enough discernment to know otherwise.
I knew I would know the real deal when and if I found it, but most of the time, I was disappointed.
THE STORY OF HOW I MET KALU RINPOCHE
Only after I had given up my search and retreated to live on a remote mountain homestead did things change.
In my morning meditations, I was hearing clear inner guidance to immediately pack up our converted school bus house ship and go south. I ignored it for the first two mornings, but on the third the inner message was practically screaming that following it NOW was absolutely urgent.
One of the best decisions I have ever made was to leap out in faith and follow that guidance which led us through a series of “coincidences” that ended up with us sitting in a Tibetan Buddhist Dharma center in the hills above Berkeley one evening in 1972.
I had no idea about what to expect or what was about to happen, but I knew in my heart that I was meant to be there for a very important reason.
I remember sitting among a handful of aspirants when Kalu Rinpoche walked into the room.
My consciousness was immediately and rapidly expanded as I felt profound peace of mind and bliss arising within me.
It was so intense that I knew that he was my destined teacher and my heart swelled with love and appreciation.
I had this experience every time I was with him in person because an enlightened person’s spoken words are the least aspect of their teaching as most of it is done at the level of pure love and direct transmission.
Only a realized being can do this.
Chenrezig, in the painting above, is the primary meditation practice that Kalu Rinpoche taught because he said “Every one needs to develop pure Love, caring and compassion to open their hearts and transcendental awareness in order to attain enlightenment and fulfill the purpose of this precious human life…and this practice is the best way to generate both Compassion and Awareness.”
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A REALIZED MASTER AND STUDENTS IS PURE LOVE
I felt that he knew me completely, far better than I knew myself, and that he was totally dedicated to helping me on my path with the purest unconditional love that was always there.
I felt as if I had come home finally, and that everything I needed to evolve was available to me as long as I really wanted it…and was willing to make the effort to do the arduous inner work that the path requires...
I knew that he could show me the way, and provide essential help, teachings and practices but that the essential ingredient for me to evolve would always be my own self effort.
Just being with Rinpoche inspired and fired me up because he demonstrated what being enlightened is like, showed the path to get there, and would be beside me every step of the way.
I immediately made the best decision of my life and became his disciple and trained closely with him from that night until his passing in 1989.
We had a mutual recognition of my being his disciple in some of my previous lives in Tibet, and this deep profound karmic connection made it possible for me to receive so much from him in mind to mind transmission that transcended words and logic.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to train directly with a master who accepts you as a student, this is considered to be one of the greatest blessings imaginable.
I had to search for years, but at the right time my searching heart was rewarded with being brought together with my destined teacher, who had traveled from faraway India because he also heard the calling off his future American disciples.
He came to America to find us just as we were looking for him…in beautiful fulfillment for both Kalu Rinpoche and us.
Kalu Rinpoche and the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa 1974
Chinmayan meeting with the reincarnation of Kalu Rinpoche in summer 2023
Kalu Rinpoche liberating birds that he bought by the hundreds from the live animal markets in Chinatown to save their lives and give them freedom…
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“Your greatest service to humanity is to attain your own Self Realization!” Ramana Maharshi
“When you change the way you think about things, and the things you think about change”
—Wayne Dyer
“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.” —Ram Das
“When God is the center and focus of my life, everything else falls into it’s rightful place.”
—Chinmayan
Thank you for sharing. This is such a beautiful and inspiring story 💖