A better version of yourself.

You are an individual.  You are a father, a mother, a son or daughter.  You are a partner, a friend, a student and a teacher.  You have a profession, hobbies, passions and curiosities.  You might be young or old, beautiful or well worn, trendy or old-fashioned. 

You are all of those things, and none of those things are you.

You've ridden on the highest of highs, sailed through the lowest of lows.  You have hopes and fears, ideas and aspirations.  You have stories you tell yourself when you are in a slump, and stories you tell yourself when you are basking in the limelight.

You are all of those things, and none of those things are you.

You are a mosaic.

You are millions of pieces of broken bits, shards of glass and shattered pieces gathered over lifetimes of moments, actions and interactions.    

You are an aggregate of stones, some white, some black, amassed over mountaintops and rolling hills, through dense forests and sandy beaches, across good times and bad in cities and villages that have come and gone.  Tiny pieces brought together from your youth, through aging and sickness, pain and suffering, opportunity and loss. 

People will want to take pieces of you, pieces to call their own.  Let them.  Those shards are not your own and scars and imperfections enhance your beauty. 

You will be judged and you will judge yourself.  Judged for your form, for how you come together, criticized for your proportions and the depth of your character.  It's okay to listen to judgement, for it voices what is real to what is the ideal.  Not necessarily your ideal, but an ideal not yet embodied and probably not found. 

You are dynamic, constantly changing.  A continuous process of transformation, gain and loss, old and new, death and birth.

You will likely spend years, maybe even a lifetime, trying to piece together the broken shards into a picture that makes sense.  You'll try as you might to figure it out, to make it more beautiful or more meaningful, all in the search of a better self. 

It is my hope, indeed my greatest aspiration,
that someday before you are lying on your deathbed,
that you will not suffer from grief or regret. 
That you will simply rest.
The continuum of time and space embodied in the present
as a collection of millions of broken bits,
bits that don't make sense and some that do,
all of them coming together in a beautiful moment,
a moment of joy, rapture, tenderness and forgiveness.
A moment of gratitude and appreciation, wonder and awe. 
Where you discover a better version of your self.

Technicians, Artists and Alchemists

Chances are your work falls into one of three categories:

The Technician.
The technician is precise, focused and determined.  They are masters of their trade, know the details and the connections.  Their depth of understanding is profound and inspiring.  Ask a technician a question and he will give you an answer backed with experience and reasoning.  Technicians are very straight forward and matter of fact.

The Artist.
Artists are masters of their craft who are generous by nature.  They use their trade to make an impact in people's lives.  They are visionaries, leaders, ruckus makers.  The artist isn't in it for the status or power, they are in it because they see an opportunity to impact change and they are willing to step into the void.  

The Alchemist.
Alchemists are enigmatic artists.  You find them in strange circles, unfit places, unseemly professions.  Alchemists are masters of change and transformation.  Their art doesn't make sense to us, often times we don't see it or even believe it to be true.  Their art is lived, worked over.  They do the same thing day in and day out, perfectly content to keep plodding along, yet timelessly free and relaxed.  The enigma of the alchemist doesn't lie within them, it lies within us.

Technicians are too focused on the mechanics of their own practice.
Artists are too focused on the result and ensuing benefit.
Alchemists are free of attachment and the eight worldly concerns.  For them, the result is the path. 

The basis of the Ngakpa vow.

There are countless vows that the Ngakpa promises to uphold, but the root of all of them is the samaya they have with their root teacher.

The teacher is the source of all blessings.  We receive those blessings when our minds are transformed.  That transformation can take many forms, such as feeling more compassionate, more open minded.  It can take the form of finding one's purpose or finding meaning in one's life.  Ultimately that transformation is our ordinary samsaric mind transforming into the awakened mind of complete enlightenment, our inherent buddhanature.

Transformation can take many forms, but it is always personal.  It impacts your mind and your life.

The confirmation that we have received the blessings of the teacher is that our mind and life are transformed by their kindness.  We have been impacted, changed. 

That transformation engenders a deep gratitude and respect.  It is something to honor and to uphold.  That heartfelt connection that has been forged is called samaya.  It is the basis for all the other commitments that one makes. 

Blessings, transformation and samaya.  They are all linked between the student and the teacher.  The come together as a seed and they ripen as the path, bearing fruit as complete awakening. 

How does transformation occur?

What is the basis for transformation?  How does it happen?

Is it a miracle?  An act of god?  Is it luck or simply a chance occurrence?

When we talk about transformation we need to look closely at what is being transformed.  Our habitual mode of relating with reality is to ascribe identity and characteristics to things.

This is a car.  It is a blue Ford.  Leather seats, fancy gadgets.  That is what it is.

We don't really question this version of reality.  This is the world and that is just the way it is.
Or is it?

When we break a car apart, we end up with a bunch of parts and pieces.  Are they collectively still 'car'?  I don't think anyone looking at a pile of parts and pieces would call them a car.  So when does 'car' come into being, and when does it cease to exist?  At which point in the dis-assembly do we go from having a car to not having a car?  It is kind of a weird question to think about.

In our life, when we encounter a problem, where is the problem exactly?  If we take apart the problem into pieces, is it still there? When we come down with illness or disease, we get stuck on the permanence of that disease.  Is it really permanent?  Will it ever change?  Is there something we can do to change it or are we simply a choice-less victim?  

Who we are, the quality of our mind, our well being and identity; all these are in a constant state of flux.  It may not be readily apparent, but time and the impermanent nature of all things has already shown this to be true.  We already have this knowledge.  

Reality is not fixed.  It is not permanent.  Our minds are not fixed, they are not permanent.  If we understand that the basis of all things is impermanent, changeable and dynamic, transformation becomes possible.  Actually change and transformation are happening all the time, day and night.  If we are able to use discernment, insight and clarity we can actually impact that change.  Through intention we can transform negative situations into strengths, we can transmute the pain and suffering of our present circumstance into an opportunity to show others how to walk this path. 

Do you think this is impossible?  I'll show you that it's not. That is what we are doing here.  Our life is the example.  We are the example.  How do you transform the ordinary into the extra-ordinary?  How do you transform the mundane aspects of your life into something meaningful?

Don't confuse transformation with being magical.  The real magic lies in its simplicity.  The extraordinary starts out as ordinary.  Transformation isn't about turning iron into gold, it is about turning your life as it is right now, into a life of great purpose.  It is about transforming your mind and your intention.

And it is possible.