Sublime

then ask everyone to spend about thirty seconds looking directly at the face of the person in front of them, with a sense of compassion for a burden that’s been carried and appreciation for the courage it takes to lay that burden down. The two lines then move in opposite directions and new pairs repeat the process until all twenty to thirty pairs

This koan resists the totalitarian impulse in spiritual paths.

Once when Kalu Rinpoche, an eighty-year-old Tibetan master, visited in Boston, he was taken to the New England Aquarium, which is filled with colorful sea creatures. Kalu Rinpoche enjoyed seeing all these wonderful forms of life, and before he left each tank, he would tap very softly on the glass because he could not read the sign in English that

The retreat was to be under the direction of the Very Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche, a close dharma brother of Trungpa Rinpoche and one of the foremost teachers in the Kagyü lineage.

There were no melodies, no page announcements—just straight, fast davening. And yet there was an amazing rhythm to it. It wasn’t boring; it was otherworldly. The sounds that filled the chapel, the mumbling of those words that I could barely keep up with, were a contrast to the American cultural life I was taking part in (“must-see TV,” sports, and