Tricycle | Awake in the World

In February 1975 I was a young man of eighteen on pilgrimage in India when I came to Kalimpong in the Darjeeling district. I had never heard of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, but somehow I was granted an audience with him at a small temple where he was staying on the evening before Tibetan New Year [Losar]. He received me very kindly and, through a translator, asked me about my travels. I saw him on the following day, New Year’s Day, and then met him again a week later at the cremation of another great Tibetan master, Kangyur Rinpoche (1897–1975). Kyabje Khyentse Rinpoche was no doubt the most extraordinary human I had ever met, or even imagined. He was physically towering and naturally majestic and graceful, giving meaning to one of his many names, Pema Garwang Ösel Dongale Linpa, “Luminous Lord of Lotus Dance.” As I understood that dharma is learned through apprenticeship with an authentic master, I spent the next sixteen years studying with him and the magical net of great beings connected with him.

In addition to being a sublime learned sage, Khyentse Rinpoche emanated warmth and down-to-earth humorous insight that dissolved all hierarchical or cultural barriers. When I was around him, I sensed a universal warmth that was palpable, and humorous insight permeated the joyful, awake ambiance he created. In his presence, my constructions of my person were only too nakedly evident. But with his empowering wisdom and love—sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce—these constructions became transparent and workable conditions, and I felt inspired by his vast perspective, which saw the greater picture of buddhanature. In his presence no one was a VIP and no one was unworthy; he created a vibrant sense of a sacred world in which insecurities and the need for credentials melted away.

As Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, Chögyam Trungpa, Matthieu Ricard, and others have chronicled, Khyentse Rinpoche was never in a hurry, and he would care tirelessly for anyone who came to see him. He would pass months and years on end visiting temples and scholastic institutions, constantly teaching and receiving individuals, without ever having any privacy. He invited anyone into his spacious kingdom of awakening, welcoming them as possessing the lineage of awakening, and seeking to make them recognize that.

I have not found in any of his close disciples— the innumerable tulkus, rinpoches, lamas, yogis, nuns, monks, and laypeople that sought training at his feet—any rivalry or territorialism. On the contrary, over the years I have identified a kind of irreverent respect shown among these heirs to Kyabje Khyentse Rinpoche, and sense in them this greatness of mind that penetrates the artificial constructions of self and other. These sublime individuals carry within them the rich sunlit space of freedom from delusion that is wisdom, khyen, inseparable from compassion, tse, the tireless caring for others.

Through his powerful buddha activity, and some remaining merit of this world, the images and teachings of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche are still with us. Whether we met him in the flesh or not, the thought of Khyentse Rinpoche invokes greatness and the qualities of awakening, and as such he is present within us. The photographs and the books containing his teachings are not just documentation of a deceased great sage, but can be seen as keys to unlock the innate wealth that is our enlightened heritage or potential. With the following profound instruction from the great Mipham Rinpoche (1846–1912), I think Khyentse Rinpoche would wish us to summon the courage and inspiration to access that innate wealth.

—Jakob Leschly

Commentary on Lama Mipham’s The Wheel of Investigation and Meditation That Thoroughly Purifies Mental Activity by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (c. 1910–1991)

The following teaching is an explanation of the way to examine the mind according to a text written by Lama Mipham, called The Wheel of Investigation and Meditation That Thoroughly Purifies Mental Activity. Why is this teaching called the “wheel of investigation”? Because just as a wheel revolves all the time, we need to constantly investigate the true nature of things. This constant investigation will eliminate deluded thoughts and lead to an understanding of the true nature of the mind.

Namo manjushriye [Homage to Manjushri]

The text begins by paying homage to Manjushri, the ultimate manifestation of wisdom. Many great teachers, including Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Lama Mipham, had visions of Manjushri.

Whatever problems there are in the world
Are created by the afflictions in our own minds.
A mistaken attitude is a cause for the kleshas,
Yet the pattern of our thoughts can be refined.
As we have seen, the very root of samsara is the concept of self and our habit of clinging to our identification with an “ego.”

The most primary basis for clinging to the notion of self is the aggregate of form—that is, the body. When this body undergoes various experiences, we perceive some things as pleasant and desire them. Other things are perceived as unpleasant, and we want to get rid of them. This corresponds to the second aggregate, feeling. The third aggregate is discrimination. We start to discriminate between what is pleasant and what is unpleasant.

The fourth aggregate is impulse. Once we have identified something as being pleasant, desire for it arises. At the same time, we want to get rid of whatever is unpleasant and try to accomplish this in various ways. What actually experiences the ensuing feelings of satisfaction or misery is consciousness, the fifth aggregate. Consciousness itself has five aspects, related to sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Prior to these five aspects and underlying them at all times, there is a basic, undetermined ground consciousness, which corresponds to a vague perception of the outer world and of existence, an awareness that “there is a world out there.”

It is to all these aggregates coming together that we attach the notion of a self. As a result the aggregates become intimately linked with suffering. However, when we try to investigate these different elements, one by one, they cannot withstand analysis. They have no shape, no color, no location. We cannot determine where they come from, where they remain, and where they go. In no way do they constitute autonomous entities.

In truth, the notion of self we attach to the aggregates is a mere mental fabrication, a label put on something that does not exist. People who wear tinted glasses or suffer from a visual impairment would see a white conch as yellow, even though the conch has never been anything but white. In the same way, our deluded minds attribute reality to something that is utterly nonexistent.

This is what we call ignorance: not recognizing the void nature of phenomena and assuming that phenomena possess the attribute of true existence although in fact they are devoid of it. With ignorance comes attachment to all that is pleasant to the ego as well as hatred and repulsion for all that is unpleasant. In that way the three poisons—ignorance, attachment, and hatred—come into being. Under the influence of these three poisons, the mind becomes like a servant running here and there. This is how the suffering of samsara is built up. It all derives from a lack of discernment and a distorted perception of the nature of phenomena.

Because of this distortion, some people perceive samsara as quite a happy place. They don’t realize that it is pervaded with suffering. They imagine that the body is something exceedingly beautiful and desirable. They don’t see that when investigated, it is found to be composed of rather foul substances. In this erroneous ways of seeing things, we take suffering for happiness and perceive the impermanent world as permanent. We thus labor under four main misconceptions: believing that phenomena are pure when they are not; misconstruing suffering for happiness; considering phenomena to be permanent when they are transitory; and imagining that there is a self abiding in the midst of all this, when there is none to be found.

These are the roots of afflictive mental states, the kleshas. To counteract them, we have to establish clearly the empty nature of the eight consciousnesses [the all-ground consciousness, the defiled mental consciousness, the mental cognition, and the five cognitions of sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch], the five aggregates [the physical and mental constituents of a sentient being: form, feeling, discrimination, impulse, and consciousness], the five elements [earth, air, water, fire, and space], and all phenomena, so that we correctly perceive their true nature, which is devoid of intrinsic existence.