Dear friends from around the world,
I was lying down with a migraine and a realisation came to me about myself, my childhood, my view of events in my life that everyone comes across at one stage or another. I had to share my thoughts, I had to share the feeling and its effects with you. I don’t claim any great realisations, but a deeper understanding on the workings of perception and how it can or cannot affect us did arise.
Do watch the video and let me know if you gain any understanding from it or if it affects you in any way.
Thank you and may you be blessed.
Tsem Rinpoche
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TRANSCRIPT
For all of my wonderful blog visitors and readers, I was just laying down just now and I was thinking about some things. Today I’m not very well, I have a fever and a migraine. But I had these thoughts that were bursting in my head and I thought that I’d talk about it before I forget because I often do that.
I have these very strong thoughts that come, and I have to get it on paper, or on film, or record it or else gets forgotten. And I thought that some of the thoughts might benefit a few people out there who may have the same thoughts.
A lot of things that we experience when we’re growing up either make or break us when we are adults; and a lot of things that we don’t experience when we’re growing up as children may also make or break us when we are adults.
The situation we are born into, either we have chosen or by the force of karma, we were put there. Either way, the blame isn’t for the situation that we were born to around us, but the blame or the credit will go back to us.
So, let me explain all of that. I get often asked, 15, 20 years ago when I first was found out to be a reincarnation by various high Lamas, one of them is His Eminence Kensur Jampa Yeshe Rinpoche. And I really, never thought highly of myself or thought strongly that I’m some kind of great incarnation, but that would contradict all the great lamas and the high lamas who said that I am, of which is Kensur Jampa Yeshe.
So, I don’t always outright deny that I’m a reincarnation because I can’t contradict Kensur Rinpoche. But having said that, just because a high lama said you’re a reincarnation, you still must do the actions, or perform, or leave a mark of a high incarnation, whatever that is.
As Kyabje Pabongka Dorje Chang used to say, if you’re a real tulku, you will leave a mark in this world, a mark of benefit to others.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is that when I was first found out to be a reincarnation, many people asked me, and it went on for years within the Tibetan community, outside the community for years, even up to recently.
Well if you are a reincarnated lama and you did so many wonderful things in your previous lives, and practice the dharma, and held your vows, and meditated and had guru devotion, then how come in this life you are born into such a difficult, and tumultuous, and hard to fathom childhood?
I’m going to explain that and it might help other people. What I’m not trying to explain is reincarnation but what I’m trying to explain is about how childhood, experiencing and not experiencing things, can both make or break or enhance a person’s adulthood.
That’s what it’s about but it relates to me because I have this label of a reincarnated lama or tulku, a reincarnated person that is supposed to have practice in my previous lives. So, if I practiced and I have all these merits and I have all this great advancement ‘so-called’, then why is it I’m born in such a difficult situation?
As I said, we either choose the situation or we are born to it due to karmic repercussions of what we have done. Repercussions are not in the punishment’s sake but in the sense of the cause and effect.
And I guess my childhood was horrible in many layperson’s sense of the idealistic childhood and I’m going to explain. And the explanation is not to justify that I have this childhood and therefore, “See, I am at high incarnation” or “I am an incarnation” - none of this justification or to cover, it’s just my thoughts. When my parents conceived me, they were not married.
During their era - not being married, and my father had another family, and my mother was very young and she didn’t know; so, when I was conceived - it was during the era where not being married and having kids out of wedlock or having other families besides only having one family was considered a huge scandal, very bad. So, I understand that.
My mother, being in an era where it’s scandalous to have a child without a husband, gave me up to adopted parents. So, for years when she gave me up and I was growing up in Taiwan, I lived with a set of parents there that I thought were really my parents.
To read the rest of the transcript, click here www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=195905
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