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I am not a Buddhist. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Buddhism until a series of coincidences took me to a Buddhist Retreat in 2006.
I am so grateful that they happened. Those 3 days changed my perspective on life.
What I Was Expecting
A long time before the advent of meditation apps (or apps at all), my expectation was all about learning how to meditate.
I had different plans for that Easter holiday: I was expecting the visit of a friend from abroad, but the person canceled just a few days before Easter.
Browsing a women’s magazine I found out that there was a Buddhist temple around 200 km from my city and that they were hosting a meditation retreat during the Easter holiday.
Sounded like a perfect opportunity to rest, recharge and learn something new.
What I Got
The place is beautiful. The temple, named Khadro Ling, is in the mountains. And, at that time, it was quiet and there were not many visitors.
Some Buddhist practitioners live there, in lodges not far from the temple.
We, the retreaters, also stayed in those houses, in collective bedrooms. We were around 30 people.
The routine was rigid: we would wake up before 6 am when the first meditation practice started. Then we would have breakfast and go to another practice.
But it was more than learning how to meditate. In between those sessions, we had a full course about Buddhism, in which I was introduced to what it is and its key beliefs.
Buddhism as a Philosophy
During those 3-days I was introduced to the core of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths.
The first one is “Suffering” (dukkha). Buddhists believe that everyone in life is suffering in some way.
The second one is “The Origin of Suffering” (samudāya). Buddhists believe that all suffering originates from desire. No matter what you desire, you suffer when you lose what you have or do not achieve what you want.
The third one is “The End of Suffering” (nirodha). Buddhists believe that we have an enlightened nature and that it is possible to overcome desire, thus eliminating suffering.
The fourth one is “The Path” (magga). It sets an Eightfold Path to end suffering and achieve enlightenment: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
The teacher gave us an example that I will never forget. She said:
“Imagine a kid and an adult building a sand castle. A wave comes and destroys the castle. The kid cries and despairs. This is the suffering caused by the desire of keeping the castle and the pain of losing it. The adult though, knows that this is just a sand castle, inherently temporary. Thus, the adult doesn’t suffer. He knows there will always be another castle, that will ultimately also be destroyed. Accepting it and letting it go is enlightenment.”
This example changed me forever.
I started to understand how attachment to my achievements and desires was bringing me suffering. I started to accept the impermanence of everything around me.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel those things anymore. But the knowledge has helped me to navigate life more smoothly, identifying attachment and letting it go – or, at least, trying to 🙂
Buddhist Practice
Back home after the retreat, I was feeling well and renovated. I wanted to keep that feeling, so I visited a Buddhist Centre of the same lineage in my hometown.
That felt different. Instead of philosophy, I found Buddhist practice, with a lot of focus on making prostrations and reciting mantras.
This is when I realized that I loved the philosophy (and I still practice its guidelines), but was not willing to follow the religion and its rituals. Which is very ok for me.
Buddhism and the Dalai Lama
After my experience going to these 2 Buddhist centers, I was curious about the Dalai Lama – that used to be the first image to come to my mind when people mention Buddhism.
This is what I found out.
Both centers that I visited, Khadro Ling (where I did the retreat) and Yeshe Ling (in my hometown), are part of Chagdud Gompa, a network of Buddhist Centers that follow the Vajrayana form of Buddhism.
Vajrayana is one of the 3 main groups within Buddhism:
- Vajrayana: common in Tibet and India
- Theravada: common in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia
- Mahayana: common in China, Mongolia, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea
Associating Buddhism with the Dalai Lama is not wrong, but also not very precise.
Buddhism is a religion created by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, in India, 2,500 years ago.
Since then, religion has evolved into the 3 main groups mentioned above, each of them branching into different orders and lineages.
The Dalai Lama is the leader of the dominant order of Tibetan Buddhists, the Yellow Hat order (Dge-lugs-pa). This title, Dalai Lama, exists since the 16th century.
Lama means spiritual leader and is a title given to respected Buddhist teachers (monks). Dalai was a title given to the leader (Lama) of the Yellow Hat order in the 17th century. At that time, the Dalai Lama was also the political leader (head of state) of Tibet, which continued to happen until the mid of the 20th century.
The current Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso, was identified as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama when he was only 5 years old.
He was educated to become the political leader of Tibet when he become 20, but the invasion of Tibet by China soldiers in 1950 made it happen 5 years before. He was only 15.
The 14th Dalai Lama soon went into exile and, for the following decades, he pledged for the rights of Tibet to become an autonomous region, a middle-way option between its complete independence and its complete absorption into China.
In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. During his long exile, the Dalai Lama also wrote dozens of books aiming to disseminate Buddhism to a wider audience and met lots of celebrities, from politicians to movie stars.
And this is how Dalai Lama became, in a certain way, a symbol of Buddhism in Western countries.
