Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

24 Timeless Rapture
taken refuge in him a couple of years before and was interested in meditation.
Not a lot of information on Tibetan Buddhism was available in
those days, but I had read Gene Smith’s introduction to a collection of
the life stories of the Shangpa Kagyu masters. 1 He reported that the lineage
originated with two women, Niguma and Sukasiddhi, and that Kalu
Rinpoché was the present-day lineage holder of their teachings. I felt
thrilled at the news, eager to find out more, and wondered if it was possible
to practice that lineage’s meditations.
To my dismay, Rinpoché told me that the lineage no longer existed. It
had died out, disappeared.
Sigh. I remember walking home disappointed, wishing that I could
someday meet anything like the defunct Shangpa lineage, should such a
rare thing exist. But I didn’t dwell on it—what was the point?—and I did
not let what did not exist interfere with the incredible chance to meet a
teacher like Kalu Rinpoché.
That, I believe, was precisely the point. For what Rinpoché told me
that day in our first conversation was a complete fabrication, a lie. Yet, in
telling me that lie, Kalu Rinpoché had chosen a way to help me focus on
the most important among a number of competing truths: what matters
first and foremost is the teacher, not the teaching nor the lineage. Indian
tantric texts state these words, and the Tibetans have repeated them for
centuries:
The spiritual master is the Buddha.
The spiritual master is the Sacred Teaching and the Spiritual
Community.
The spiritual master creates everything.
Spiritual master, to you I bow.
Tibet’s Buddhists have long been warned against considering their relationship
with the teachings to be like that of a hunter toward prey. Specifically,
prospective students are counseled not to think of the teachings as
musk, a rare and profitable commodity, the teacher as a musk deer, and
themselves as a hunter. Had Rinpoché told me that the Shangpa lineage
existed, I might have become such a hunter. Once I had received the teachings
I sought, I could have gone my merry way to practice them to my
heart’s content. What is the matter with that? Outwardly, nothing at all,
of course, but it is not the Buddhist way. Such behavior, no matter how