I just don’t have the words, in some way I feel totally empty, cavernous and echoing, like I have been mixed up in a blender and there’s just nothing left. Perhaps that’s the blessing of being in a great Master’s presence. Perhaps this is a gift, as we often get hung up on trying to quantify and investigate instead of just being present and participating in the real life that’s happening directly in front of us. For this I have a great role model. Simply put Karmapa is a living Buddha in our world, a Bodhisattva In Action, compassion personified, the real thing. Surrounded by thousands, the frenzied devotion, the pushing, the shoving, the crazy breaching of the gates letting in countless numbers spilling into the aisles and onto every useable surface - he is always so completely present. Strikingly so. It mystifies me every time I see it, how such chaos and mayhem can be diverted by his calm and genuine presence. And yet he is profoundly human, outrageously so. In fact, never before have I encountered someone as boldly simple, humble and human as he. Simple in the most profound sense of the word. All things around him become more at one with themselves. I am more me when he is around. My true everything just comes to the surface. Whatever I thought I was, wanted to say, or what I had planned to do evaporates into thin air, pretense gone. This is the gift of a true Master’s presence; forcing complete striking attention, complete molecular disintegration, bliss, great blessings, then followed swiftly by total and unwavering mental exhaustion. I’ll take the gift, what better one could there be? The gift of being truly, undeniably, painfully, wonderfully present. Being yourself and only yourself, even when you don’t want to be. Be the most you you will ever be. Go ahead, try it out. Just be here now.
Kagyu Monlam 2016
