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    Freedom In Bondage
    Freedom In Bondage
    Freedom In Bondage
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    Freedom In Bondage

    By Adeu Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche

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    About this ebook

    Adeu Rinpoche’s story is not about the horrors he endured under the Communist takeover of Tibet--he himself notes that many other people underwent much worse hardships, not to mention all those that died--but rather the way in which he told his tale. While describing what happened to him and many others, how he survived and finally his release from prison he spoke in a straightforward, dignified manner without any resentment, anger or sadness. He never added mental anguish on top of an already untenable experience. He viewed what happened to him as a ripening of his own individual karma, he accepted responsibility for the abuse he suffered; in fact, he repeatedly stated that each person suffered according to their own karma, as he said, I felt that whatever befalls you is a ripening of the specific karma that you created in the past.”
    Adeu Rinpoche took the trauma and suffering as an opportunity not only to accept the vicissitudes of life without bitterness but also to transcend the unjust treatment by not harboring ill-will against the perpetrators, instead developing compassion for them. In the end he turned suffering into happiness, for even while imprisoned he was able to meet many great masters, receive teachings from them and even do some serious practice. It is truly inspiring that people exist in our world with such profound realization and accomplishmentthey are examples to us all.
    This tale together with wonderful teachings presents a compassionate and wise face to the hardship Adeu Rinpoche and so many others endured and triumphed over. It is a banquet of realization, pith instructions and dignity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRangjung Yeshe Publications
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9789627341918
    Freedom In Bondage

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      Book preview

      Freedom In Bondage - Adeu Rinpoche

      PART ONE: FREEDOM

      1

      DEVOTION AND RENUNCIATION

      Please form the resolve set upon attaining supreme enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings as numerous as the sky is vast, and continue to read while maintaining such an attitude.

      From the start, every practice requires three steps: learning, reflection, and application. To begin with, we need to receive the teachings in an authentic way. Real learning involves gaining understanding about an instruction. To do this we need to hear it clearly from someone who is part of a living tradition, who has a true transmission for the teaching, and who can pass it on clearly. Having received the teaching, we then need to reflect upon it for ourselves. We need to gain some confidence and conviction about the value and methods of the teaching. Finally, we need to put the teaching to use by familiarizing ourselves with the practice and integrating it into our life. I want to stress this: after understanding a teaching intellectually and establishing it with certainty, it is vital to clear up any misconceptions and doubts you may have about it. Then you must make use of it in a very personal and intimate way, by practicing. This is where any teaching becomes effective—by actually practicing it, not simply knowing about it.

      It does not work to simply know about a teaching and not use it. Mere intellectual knowledge is insufficient. It is the same as trying to cure a disease by simply reading about medicine, or by setting the medicine out on a table and looking at it, but not taking it. No one has ever been cured by merely looking at a bottle of medicine—you must take it. We must apply the treatment. Likewise, teachings are meant to be applied.

      All the masters of both the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages have agreed that for a beginner on the spiritual path, compassion, devotion, and renunciation do not come naturally from one moment to the next. It simply does not happen like this at first. You must begin by forming the attitudes of compassion, devotion, and renunciation, and deliberately training in these. Over time, compassion, devotion, and renunciation will come more and more naturally, and no longer need to be contrived.

      Renunciation, the will to be free, is a quality that every Dharma practitioner needs in order to progress on the path. Without it, you will not move forward. The first part of the general preliminaries helps to nurture this wish to be free. The four mind changings involve facing some unavoidable facts, so that you do not want anything other than freedom, and samsaric aims fall by the wayside very naturally. That is why the preliminaries are so vital to becoming a genuine Dharma practitioner. In Tibet it is said that a person who wants to be a Dharma practitioner but who has no sense of detachment from samsara, is like someone who builds a many-storied house on a frozen lake in the dead of winter. The structure may seem very solid, but when spring comes and the lake thaws, the whole building sinks. Similarly, you may appear to have a bit of steadiness in your practice, but without renunciation your practice crumbles as soon as difficulties or hardships arise. That is why Dharma practitioners should focus from the very beginning on detachment and renunciation, the will to be free.

      In the past in Tibet, instruction manuals were designed in such a way that practitioners who started the preliminaries only received teachings on the first part. The teachings were then stopped until the students completed their practice. Teachings resumed when the students returned for the next instruction. After getting that instruction, students would go off and practice it, and so on, until they had completed both the general and specific preliminaries. Nothing was freely given in advance, and there was no assumption that you could practice at your own whim. If you didn’t practice you didn’t get instructions. The same method was used for the development stage of the yidam deity: you would receive instructions for a particular part of the practice, and then train in it. Having completed that, you would come back for more instructions. At the very least you needed to have completed the preliminaries before receiving instructions on Dzogchen or Mahamudra.

      These days it appears to be a bit different. Many people want to skip everything and go directly to the completion stage. There are also those who, without having done any yidam practice or preliminaries, immediately want to do the yogic practices involving the subtle channels and energies. I, however, have great doubts about the effectiveness of such an approach—whether any actual understanding is developed, and whether this type of method is authentic and correct. Still, many people would like to jump ahead, skipping all the steps in between.

      The Buddhist path is laid out in a progressive order from the very beginning. There is a particular reason for this. Having taken the first step, it is much easier to take the next because you are already a little ways along. Having completed the first step of the practice, you have already reached a certain level of accomplishment. It is then relatively simple to move on to the next level. That is why it was designed in this way. If people do not want to respect this system and try to skip ahead to unfamiliar places, difficulties will most likely

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