Pure Light in Dark Times

There are so many people in this world who use their lives to harm others. They seem to take up all the oxygen in the room sometimes, as their stories spread via the news and internet gossip.

So today, feeling like the ethers are clogged with stories of villains and criminals, I'm going to dedicate some space to the purest light there is, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche.

I first fell in love with His Holiness through the eyes of my teacher, Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. Her teachings are pure love—always based in compassion, always logical, useful and immediately relevant to my life. She speaks directly to my heart, even using phrases and stories that have particular meaning for me. The true sign of her purity is that, when asked how she learned what she knows, what the source of her blessing is, she never takes personal credit. Instead she points to her own teacher—His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, a living Buddha.

His Holiness has lived every moment of his life with pure compassion. It’s incomprehensible to those of us who have not attained such a state, to understand how every one of his words, actions and impulses has arisen out of the wish to benefit others. He has flooded our world with the sea of his compassion, building monasteries, nunneries, temples, stupas, schools, a hospital, an old age home and retreat centers. Thousands of monks, nuns and laypeople all over the world are the direct recipients of his compassionate activity, including me.

The first time I saw His Holiness Penor Rinpoche two of his attendants were at his sides, bracing him as he walked. He was in excruciating pain, having been in need of double knee replacements for several years. He walked slowly into the temple at his Palyul Retreat Center in upstate New York. I could only imagine the pain he was in, yet there was not the slightest indication of it on his face. His eyes were serene, like a great lake under calm skies.

I had developed early symptoms of Wegener’s a few months before going to the retreat. I could barely sit still, unable to find a tolerable position. My mind was restless as well. But His Holiness sat like a mountain, and each day the relentlessness with which he taught helped me stabilize my mind a bit more.

Later that week, he conducted ordination ceremonies for several of us. I became a nun, connecting to an unbroken, pure lineage of Palyul monks and nuns. It is said that the merit of taking ordination is so great that it purifies an inconceivable amount of negative karma. Without his blessing that week, it’s doubtful I ever would have survived once the Wegener’s hit full force a few months later.

Countless times when I’ve felt overwhelmed by life’s circumstances or discouraged as a practitioner, I have only to think of His Holiness to feel comforted and renewed. No matter how dark the world gets, the great beacon of his love cannot be extinguished.