the electric lotus

Warmest greetings from the Lojong Communications Office! The latest news from Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda is that the main streets of Lancaster are clear and passable, and despite the city’s complaints that this blizzard already put them “over budget”, side streets should be cleared within the next few days. (You can probably imagine already what Khenpo has to say about that, given that this was only the second snow storm of the entire season! So I will leave that to your imagination!)

This past week brought with it the disappointing departures of twenty-three of our monks and all four of our nuns, who issued a joint request to Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda, requesting that they be released from their samaya vows. (Samaya vows are the precepts taken by Vajrayana practitioners, during the Abhiseka ceremony, which binds a monk or nun to his/her guru.) The reason given was “irreconcilable disagreements over the refusal of the abbot/guru to distance himself and the Order from esoteric and non-theistic (Eastern) Catholic mysticism and Benedictine/Franciscan contemplative practices.

Khenpo readily released them, after spending time individually speaking to each one over the past eight days. “Our heritage draws deeply from the wealth of the Tibetan Buddhist, Japanese Zen, Eastern Catholic mysticism, Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, Advaita and Franciscan/Benedictine contemplative paths. It is who we are, and I have vowed my life to those sacred traditions,” Khenpo responded, “I realise that for those who are called to a more orthodox or traditionalist approach, this is unacceptable. For this reason, I have released each of them to the care and guidance of teachers more appropriate to their needs and spiritual development.”

The departure places even greater financial burden on the Servant-Father and leaves even greater uncertainty about how we will proceed to support the work we’ve been doing. But he has asked that we remain undaunted, and points to these last three days of the Tibetan year as “dark days, which will yield to the promise of a New Year”.

We’ll continue to hope that some of our students, friends and benefactors may come up with other ideas to present to the council, since it seems the previous attempts to work with the attorney’s network and provide economic assistance through PeoplesFinancialNetwork.com will no longer sustain us. (Khenpo explains that because of the economy, 98% of the folks who come to PFN to see if they can qualify for a loan modification or credit card arbitration fail to qualify, because their budgets are so over extended already. He suggests that we always remember the financial needs of the poor in our daily meditations and sadhana.

Finally, the Servant-Father has asked that we all join him in daily prayers/pujas for the lives of safety of animals on our planet, who are facing increased suffering. Reports from Haiti, Mongolia and Indonesia as well as the suffering caused by aggressive and inhumane farming/butchering practices severely impacts the welfare of untold numbers of animals. Additionally, puppy mills, and similar operations involving other animals sold as “pets” brings much suffering.

We ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers, remember us in your pujas, and if possible, place us “between the electric and phone bill” each month, and support the work that we do, as well as helping us to keep a roof over our abbot’s head!

Peace and much metta!

Chökyi Senge
Communications Division
Office of the Dharm’acharya Gurudas Sunyatananda
Lojong Ladrang

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Dharma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.