The Nagas and the Elements (Part 1)

Today was a naga day—a day in which those snakelike “unseen beings associated with water and fluid energy” are said to be especially active and receptive to offerings—so I rose with the sun to make the short drive to my local spring to make an offering to the naga who may live there. The springs are busy all day long in the summer, especially on weekends once the local schools are no longer in session, and I’ve come to value whatever privacy I can get on those rare days—usually only a couple of times a month—when the calendar says the naga might accept my offering. So it’s best for me to go very early in the day, even though I’m not normally an early riser.

It was the Buddhist teacher Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin who first hinted there might be a naga at my neighborhood spring. Khenpo was staying at our house on his first visit to our area, and at dinner one night at a Thai restaurant, one of the folks visiting for Khenpo’s teaching mentioned to me that Khenpo “worked with the nagas.” I was immediately fascinated; the ideas of unseen worlds, magical and mysterious beings, psychic phenomena, and occult goings-on have always strongly magnetized me. So I asked Khenpo about the nagas, but I either asked at a bad time or we were hampered by his beginner’s skills in English and my total lack of skill in Tibetan.

But driving Khenpo into town for Sunday’s teaching on that weekend several years ago, I made a spontaneous decision to show him our local spring. Poor Khenpo! I imagine he must have felt as if he were being kidnapped, but luckily the spring isn’t that far off the main road and I calculated that we had just enough time to visit it without being late to the teaching.

We got out of the car and walked the short length of sidewalk along the river up to the spring, which wasn’t visible until we got right next to it. It was early on a spring morning, and we were lucky. There were a couple of people taking pictures, walking around the horseshoe-shaped limestone shelf that embraced the spring, but there was no one in the water so the spring boil was clearly visible as it bubbled up from the turquoise depths.

Khenpo and I stood in silence and watched the sparkling water until I realized our time was up. “We’d better go,” I said, and we turned back toward the car.

“This is a really unusual place,” Khenpo said after we had turned away from the spring. “Thank you for bringing me to see it.”

“Do you think there might be a naga here?” I asked him.

A tiny proto-smile formed at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I think maybe so,” was all he said.

Some miles down the road, after we’d left the spring far behind, Khenpo looked at me and again said, “That was a very unusual place. Thank you for taking me to see it.”

I had an interview with Khenpo later that day, in the afternoon. “Khenpo,” I began, “this morning I took you to see the spring near where I live. Our springs are threatened now by so many things—they’re being polluted, and people want to pump water out of our rivers and put it in bottles and take it away to be sold. Would you please pray that our springs and rivers will be protected?”

Khenpo thought for a minute. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that other people may have need of that water?”

Then it was my turn to think for a minute, and of course I remembered how we all needed bottled water, even here where water was plentiful, when the tropical storms came through and knocked out our power so the pumps on our wells wouldn’t work.

“Yes,” I answered, “I understand that. But I also know that if all our water gets taken away, there will be nothing left to support the people and animals and fish who depend on the water we have now.”

“I will pray, then,” Khenpo said, “for an auspicious balance.” I understood his answer to mean that yes, there would come a time when we would have to surrender some of our water for a greater good—the benefit of other sentient beings. With global warming now melting the glaciers and ice caps in Khenpo’s Himalayan homeland, that time may not be far off. Himalayan ice is the source of many of Asia’s great rivers, and when the ice is gone, there will be millions of people left in a region with practically no fresh water.

Khenpo’s visit inspired me to do some reading about nagas, which are really fascinating creatures. Often depicted in Asian art as part snake, part human, they are sometimes the guardians of the treasure texts hidden by the 8th-century Tibetan sages Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) and his consort and principal disciple, Yeshe Tsogyal, for discovery in later eras when those texts will be especially beneficial. And nagas are strongly associated with bodies of water, especially springs, as well as great and magical trees.

It turns out that Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists all share the idea of nagas. As my friend Khandro relates on her web site, “In the language of Kashmir, the word for ‘a spring’ is naga…A large number of temples were built near springs and were dedicated to the worship of nagas…Most probably, treating springs and rivers with great reverence wittingly or unwittingly resulted in the ecological balance necessary for a healthy and natural interaction between the environment and man."

I love this idea of temples being built near springs, and treating springs and rivers with great reverence. I’d love it if every spring in Florida had its own temple, even a small one, because the temple would reinforce the sacredness of those spots where pure, cleansing water rises, unbidden, from the unseen depths. Our springs are magical, numinous places, and little temples might make people stop and think before they vandalize the areas around the springs, dump things like tires and railroad ties into the water, or forget to pack out their trash when they leave after a day of swimming.

I wonder how much our whole world would change if we treated all of our great natural features with reverence—and if we wouldn’t be better off for doing so.

(to be continued)

The picture above was taken at Ichetucknee Springs. Can you see the face of the naga? J

An Offering to a Naga

In Machik's Complete Explanation, the Tibetan saint Machik Labdron explains to her followers that there are many unseen beings and spirits that co-inhabit our world.

Even though I've never been one to see such beings, I have absolutely no trouble in believing they exist. I can't see ultraviolet or infrared light either, or electricity, or atoms, yet scientists assure me that these things exist—so why not nagas?

Nagas–spirits who live in or near water or powerful trees–are said to be of three types. Some are "bad guys," mischievous and hurtful. Some are "good guys," and even protect the dharma teachings. Some are mutable, and can be good guys at one time and bad guys at another.

One of my teachers, Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin, has said he thinks a naga may live at our neighborhood spring.

One of my other teachers, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, recently gave me instructions on how to make offerings to our neighborhood naga.

So yesterday afternoon found me rushing to the grocery after work to buy milk and sugar—because nagas like dairy products and sweets—and then rushing home to change into shorts and drive the five minutes to the spring, just as the sun was setting.

I was in luck. The last two spring visitors were leaving on bicycles when I drove up. The only other people there were fishing at some distance from the spring. So I had some privacy, which was good.

I waded into the water and made the offering, following Khenpo's instructions as well as I was able, then stood there for a few minutes to take in the scene. It was lovely, as always. I wondered if I would ever be able to see a naga.

Today, I received two pieces of very welcome news. I am not saying this good fortune is connected with the offering, but given that everything is connected, ultimately, I would not be a bit surprised.

The most surprising thing, though, was how happy I felt that by making the offering, I had done something helpful for an unseen being, and for the Earth that sustains us.

Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche recently stressed to me, when I told him how inspired I am by HH Karmapa's commitment to helping the environment, that there are two reasons why it is important to take care of our surroundings.

First, of course, is because our environment sustains us, so by helping it we are actually helping ourselves.

Second is because of the unseen beings, like nagas, who can be sickened by pollution–and since it's human beings who cause pollution, guess who becomes the target for revenge by the bad guy nagas? We do.

So I am wondering if a lot of us started making appropriate offerings to the unseen beings and spirits in our local areas, could we help turn back the tide of pollution and destruction that seems to lurk everywhere we look?

And could we, for our children and grandchildren, preserve even a bit of the best that Florida has to offer?

Note: Naga offerings, and other such offerings, always come with specific instructions that I am not qualified to give. Ask your teacher what you can do, though, and you might be as surprised as I was.

Remembering Myrtle

She was just a small kitten when I first saw her, somewhere between cute-kitten stage and gangly-teenage-kitten stage. She was wet, and cold, and hungry, and there was something wrong with her tail; it was not a Manx tail, but shorter and stubbier than it should have been, like she had had an accident and lost about 2/3 of it, or someone had cut it off—maybe that was why she was wandering around at Dudley Farm on cane grinding day in early December 1996, wet and cold and hungry and miserable.

Someone came up to the park service information table where I was working. “I heard you rescue cats,” he said.

“No!” I thought I gave an emphatic reply. At home, I was overloaded with cats—or so I thought.

But one glimpse of the tiny, wet, cold, hungry, black and white tuxedo girl cat was enough to soften me up. I took off the purple cotton cap I was wearing (yes, it does get cold enough in Florida that we need winter clothes sometimes) and put the small cat inside the hat, and hugged her to warm her up. She snuggled close, shivering hard, and purred real loud.

Another Dudley Farm supporter wound up taking her to the vet down the road, where I arranged to pick her up after her initial physical exam. The vet called me the next day. “How many people did this cat have contact with at your event?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Because she has mange.”

The kitten got her initial mange treatment at the vet’s. When I went to pick her up, she was brought out to me by a very muscular young man who had a lot of tattoos up and down his arms. He was not the kind of guy I would have pegged to work as a vet’s assistant, but he was very gentle and affectionate with the kitten.

“Are you going to keep her?” he asked. “Because I’ve kind of fallen in love with her. She’s real good, and just sits real still in her mange bath.”

By that time I, too, was attached. I took her home and because she had to be separated from our other cats until her mange treatments were finished, she lived for a while on our small, enclosed back porch. My husband and I would pet her with gloves on, so as not to spread any stray mange mites to the other kitties, and she would stand on top of the water heater and run at our faces—we called it “rushing our faces”—when we went to visit and pet her.

A couple of weeks later—mange treatments complete—she moved inside the house. I started calling her Myrtle, in honor of Miss Myrtle Dudley, who willed her antebellum farm to the State of Florida so it could remain intact as a state historic site.

One day we were sitting at the dining room table and Myrtle was sitting on Forrest’s lap, being petted. There was still some debate about whether we should try to find a home for her. She looked up at him with her tiny face and shot him what can only be described as a love beam.

“Honey,” he said, beaming back at her, “you just won the home lotto.”

Myrtle and all our other animals had the benefit of a wonderful blessing a little over a year ago when our local dharma group hosted Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin on his first visit to our area. “Many cats,” Khenpo-la commented, the first morning he was here. “After breakfast, all animals in one place, and I give blessing,” he offered.

So we gathered everyone on the back porch, where Khenpo-la chanted many different mantras, for a long time, and went around and blew gently into the faces of those animals that would let him get close.

Khenpo-la looked at Forrest and me afterwards, and moved his hands to indicate “all these animals.”

“Next time, a better birth,” he said. I took this to mean what we in Buddhism refer to as a precious human birth, in which we can meet our dharma teachers and engage in dharma practice.

Myrtle passed away yesterday, right before halftime of the Florida-LSU game. She had breast cancer surgery over a year ago, but the disease came back, metastasized, and claimed her during breast cancer awareness month.

In between that December day in ’96 and yesterday, there were almost 13 years of love, cuddling, and play—often punctuated by kitty calls of “look what I’ve got” as Myrt walked around the house carrying various-colored versions of Kitten Little, her favorite catnip toy. She always seemed to want kittens; I think, now, we should have let her have just one litter because if she could have nursed, maybe she wouldn’t have caught the cancer that killed her. But of course, we’ll never know.

We played the CD of Liberation Through Hearing fairly constantly as Myrtle neared the end. Forrest and I were both with her when she died, and both present at graveside when we buried her this morning.

Rest in peace, Little One. We will meet again, and this particular cycle of suffering has ended, now, for you. May your next birth be a fortunate one, in which you meet your teacher sooner rather than later.

May all beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness. May all beings—even cats!—be freed from the sufferings of samsara.

P.S. Many thanks to the members of Gainesville Karma Thegsum Choling, who dedicated the merit of their practices this morning to Myrtle (among others).

P.P.S. My vet tells me that "...there is not any evidence that nursing a litter protects against breast cancer in cats, and I would hate for people reading that to allow another unwanted litter into this world in order to try to protect the mother from breast cancer. We already euthanize 5,000 kittens every year in this county alone.

Pregnancy in humans does confer SOME protection, although not much. Besides, most people don't get spayed when they're teenagers, so you can't make any valid parallels to cats. Don't doubt yourself for having her spayed.

We know from many, many studies that spaying prior to the first heat is the single most important thing you can do to protect them from breast cancer. Cats and dogs spayed before the first heat have a nearly zero incidence."

KTD 10-Day Teachings/Guru Rinpoche Day

Today is Guru Rinpoche day, according to the Tibetan calendar, and it was an eventful one for several reasons.

There was a beautiful ceremony tonight called “Shower of Blessings” that honored Guru Rinpoche (Sanskrit: Padmasambhava), who was responsible for solidifying the practice of Buddhism in Tibet and who is responsible for ensuring the spread of Buddhism to any borderland—like the USA.

There were, of course, the magnificent teachings about Machik Labdron—no, I have not forgotten about her—being given by KTD’s abbot, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche.

There was my own interview with Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche this morning, an auspicious day for that since I have always felt drawn to Guru Rinpoche.

But the loveliest part of the day was an impromptu talk given by Khenpo at the end of the afternoon’s question-and-answer session, which he cut short by saying, “Now I am going to tell you a little bit of truth.”

Rinpoche talked (in Tibetan) for a long time. He wept; he laughed; he wept and laughed again. At the end of his talk, his translator—the gifted Lama Yeshe Gyamtso—asked Rinpoche for clarification for parts of the translation. This back-and-forth went on for a while; Lama Yeshe apologized to us, saying he wasn’t sure that his translation could capture the emotion that Khenpo had conveyed.

Khenpo began by giving some history of the founding of KTD. In 1959-60, His Holiness the 16^th Karmapa (hereinafter referred to as HHK 16) fled Tibet and settled in Sikkim. Since he was a refugee, he did not have means of survival; he had a hard time. Many of the Sikkimese people had faith, however, and one family in particular has served both HHK 16 and HHK 17 well.

This family “did the best service” by taking in HHK 16 and other lamas, giving them a place to live and making sure the lamas got better food than the family did. This is the family of Kunzang-la, newly appointed to KTD’s Board of Directors; her brother was responsible for the successful restoration of Rumtek, Karmapa’s monastery in Sikkim, after it had fallen into disrepair. This family “remained steady, and their samaya is pure,” according to Rinpoche.

Rinpoche then announced that HHK 17 had recently made some announcements with regard to the administration of KTD. Tenzin Chonyi, who has been president of the organization for many years, will remain president for five years. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche will remain on the board, and Kunzang-la is a new trustee.

“I have no qualities to remain on the board,” Rinpoche said, but added that he had agreed to stay on at Karmapa’s request. No qualities. Hmmmm. I would debate that.

Khenpo also announced that he had chosen Lama Kathy Wesley and Lama David Bole to be new board members. He said that he trusts Lama Kathy “as much as I trust my own heart,” and mentioned Lama David’s administrative abilities and even-tempered disposition while in retreat.

Khenpo then gave some background on Bardor Tulku Rinpoche (hereinafter referred to as BTR), who has for many years been the primary teacher who travels to teach at KTD’s affiliated centers. When BTR was only 12 years old, he was on his own in India after escaping from Tibet. Because he prayed one-pointedly, he was able to reach Rumtek, where he was adopted by HHK 16 as “the son of his heart.” There were two other young men who had that same close relationship with HHK 16; these were Tenzin Chonyi or Tenzin-la, and Shamar Rinpoche’s brother, Jigme-la. The training and lives of these three young men were closely supervised by HHK 16.

When HHK 16 was gifted with the land that became KTD, he chose Tenzin-la to stay in America to oversee that center. Jigme-la went to a center in France. “It is like sending away my eyes and heart,” HHK 16 said, but the young men were sent for the dharma, “not for ordinary purposes,” according to Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche.

Later, when BTR came to KTD, “he wore a tool belt for almost 15 years” while the monastery was being built. While construction was ongoing, Khenpo traveled and taught and founded 30 dharma centers throughout the country.

Khenpo had received three commands from HHK 16: to build a monastery, to start a three-year retreat, and to “take care of Tenzin-la if he has problems in the future.” Khenpo said that the 16^th Karmapa made this last statement with tears in his eyes.

This year, Bardor Tulku Rinpoche has resigned as a director of KTD (though he still teaches at the monastery). Khenpo explained that BTR is now 60 years old and has his own terma (treasure text) lineage to preserve, and that he has a lot to do and not much time to waste.

Note from A Word Witch: BTR also has his own new center, Kunzang Palchen Ling, across the river in Red Hook, New York.

“Now about my nephew,” Khenpo said. His nephew is Lama Karma Drodul, who is three people in one—teacher, translator (since he teaches in English), and attendant. Khenpo remarked that because of these skills, the affiliate centers “could save money” by inviting Lama Karma to teach.

Note from A Word Witch: Lama Karma is a shining presence at these teachings, always friendly and approachable when seen out and about, competent and clear when leading Mahakala or other practices, and compassionate in his translations during interviews. KTD is fortunate to have him.

Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin will continue to travel and teach, accompanied by his translator, Jigme Nyima.

KKR then said that he will continue to ask Lama Yeshe Gyamtso to translate for him when he can; everyone clapped enthusiastically.

Note from A Word Witch: I had heard a rumor earlier in the week that this was Lama Yeshe’s last year to translate for the 10-day teachings, so I asked him; that rumor is not true.

Khenpo closed his talk by saying, “We need to remember what we are about.”

We are not involved in the dharma to acquire position or rank, Khenpo said, but to fulfill His Holiness Karmapa’s aspirations and vision. That is our only purpose—to implement Karmapa’s vision.

Many people, myself included, were very moved by Rinpoche’s wise words. He said what needed to be said, and on an auspicious day to boot. This is a talk I will remember for a long, long time.

Sunshine State Water Wars (Part One)

Trouble is brewing here in the Land of Flowers, and it's something I'd bet that none of us who grew up here ever thought we'd see—a war that will eventually determine who, or what agency or business, controls the state's water supply.

I grew up in Orlando, about two hours south of where I live now. Although Orlando is an inland city, I felt as if I grew up surrounded by water, with lakes too numerous to count—where my dad went fishing almost every weekend—and springs and rivers in wild abundance. With its limestone-based karst topography, Florida has the largest concentration of first-magnitude springs in the world. Back in 1957, when my family moved to Florida and I started fifth grade, the idea that the state would one day face a water shortage would simply have made us all laugh. 

Fast forward (and, looking back, it's amazing how fast a forward it is!) to 2009, and much has changed. There are springs here in the Sunshine State that have now dried up or been fouled by pollution, lake levels that are shrinking, and lakes that have disappeared; and when I moved to my house near the river, I was shocked to find that there were four new requests for water bottling facilities on one 3-mile stretch of the Santa Fe River—not including the one water bottling facility, run by Coca-Cola, that has been up and running near Ginnie Springs for many years now.

I could go off on a tangent about how we all need to drink water, but how we don't all need to drink bottled water, and how bottled water is frequently no more pure or nutritious than water we get from the tap, and how the cost of bottled water is really higher per unit volume than the cost of oil—but you get the drift.

The threats to our water supply don't stop with the water bottlers, however. Recently the St. Johns River Water Management District, over in Palatka, approved a request in favor a permit that would end up extracting 5.5 million gallons of water daily from a springfed tributary that feeds the mighty St. John's River. The idea behind this approval, as near as I can tell, is that the people who live in Central Florida need the water for their lawns and golf courses more than the river needs it.

Will Florida follow California's model of piping water hundreds of miles in support of rampant growth and development? It seems we are headed in that direction.

There are quite a few citizens, however, who object to such a course, and I am heartened that they are making their voices heard. Somewhere along the way, though, business and development have twisted state laws in their favor, so it's hard for the water management districts or the courts to take tough stands in favor of conservation and environmental protection. Somehow, this needs to change.

One tangent I will happily go off on is how decisions about our water and our environment get made. Every environmentally-related hearing I've ever been to (and I haven't been to that many) has seemed to devolve, at some point, into opposing sides arguing "science." One side will cite statistics and "facts" to prove their point; the other side will then dredge up their own statistics and "facts" that prove the exact opposite.

Now, I am not stupid enough to write off science completely; as a childhood sufferer of frequent bouts of tonsillitis, I know I'd be dead if it weren't for antibiotics and other scientific advances. But science is, after all, a human system, and as a human system it's subject to human foibles and fallibility. Indeed, we determine the outcomes of scientific investigations largely by the questions we choose to ask. Bad questions bring bad outcomes; better questions bring better ones.

So I'd like to suggest that one key to ending our water wars might be to learn to ask better questions. Instead of getting bogged down in statistics, how might our discussions be different if we chose, instead, to step back a bit and ask some bigger questions: What kind of life do we want for our children and grandchildren? How do we give a place at the conference table to the flora and fauna of ecosystems that will be affected by potential water withdrawals? Is water a commodity that should be sold for private gain, or a resource that everyone needs to survive? If water is a resource, what are the ethical implications of piping a resource away from one area and toward another? Why are we even talking about piping water if we aren't practicing massive conservation efforts first? Do any of us—business people, developers, private citizens—even want to live in a state without springs or healthy rivers?

And finally—given that Florida's rivers and springs are true wonders of the natural world, is it too much to ask that our citizens and businesses make some sacrifices in order to save them?

Last year, one of my Buddhist teachers, Khenpo Ugyen Tenzin, came to Gainesville to give a weekend seminar to the meditation group to which I belong. Over the course of the weekend, there was some discussion about environmental issues, so on the Sunday morning when I drove Khenpo-la into Gainesville for the teachings, I took him on a quick detour to see the small spring that's about five minutes from my house. He thanked me for taking him there, and told me that the place was "very unusual."

Later that day, I asked him to pray for our rivers and springs, and explained that they were threatened by the water bottlers. Khenpo-la asked me if I didn't think there was a legitimate need for bottled water. "Yes," I said, remembering how power goes out after a hurricane and how natural disasters and wars can make it impossible for people to get fresh water. "But if all the water is pumped away, then what will remain for the people who live along the river, and for the plants and animals that the river supports?"

Khenpo-la thought for a moment and then said, "I will pray, then, for an auspicious balance."