In the Deva Realm with Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche

This week I have the great honor of being neighbors with Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche. We live, oddly enough, on the floor known as the “Deva Realm” of the blue building or library building here at the Burmese Vihar.  It is probably so named not so much for its inhabitants, not the likes of me at least, as its place above the other floors.

Anyhow, time is short as usual, but there has been an amazing shift in ‘energy’ since he arrived yesterday, complete with an entourage of twenty or so students from Nepal. His initial Dharma talk focused on the traditional division of the Dharma into Ground, View, and Realization, further subdividing these and explaining them in order. The rich philosophical precision of his talk, and his contagious bursts of laughter throughout, reminded me of why Tibetan Buddhism was what first drew me head-long into Buddhist scholarship.

There are plenty of great books

• Present Fresh Wakefulness: A Meditation Manual on Nonconceptual Wisdom 
• Uniting Wisdom and Compassion: Illuminating the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva 
• Medicine and Compassion: A Tibetan Lama’s Guidance for Caregivers 
• The Bardo Guidebook 

And plenty of teaching on the web (including a short one below), but as they say, “You have to be there…”

I still shake my head at the fact that I am here, and hope that you too find your way to see this or another of the many amazing teachers out there. It takes work, some diligence and certainly some sacrifice, but, a thousand times over, “it’s worth it.”