Buddhist Empowerments
I took the P’Howa empowerment this evening and the Wrathful Guru Rinpoche empowerment yesterday from Tulku Loga Rinpoche, the head of the Kathok Monastery in Tibet.
In the last year, I’ve taken formal Refuge via H.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya Rinpoche at the Sakya Monastery.
I’ve received the following empowerments:
- The Green Tara Empowerment from Her Eminence Dagmola Jamyang Sakya
- The Red Tara Empowerment from Lama Tsering Everest of the Chagdud Gonpa. This is from the terma discovered by Apong Terton.
- The Medicine Buddha Empowerment from H.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya Rinpoche.
- The White Manjushri Empowerment from Acharya Lama Gursam
- The Wrathful Guru Rinpoche Empowerment (Guru Drakpo) from Tulku Loga Rinpoche. This is from the terma discovered by Rigdzin Longsal Nyingpo.
- The Amitabha P’howa Empowerment from Tulku Loga Rinpoche. This is from the terma discovered by Rigdzin Longsal Nyingpo.
This is the sum total of my Buddhist empowerments.
I feel the most immediate connection with Red Tara and that practice but it is also the empowerment with the fullest sadhana (and commentary) that I’ve taken. I feel a lot of pull towards the Wrathful Guru Rinpoche empowerment but there is no practice text available yet for it. It’s still being translated.
I still quite like the atmosphere at Chagdud Gonpa Amrita. It seems to be a much more diverse crowd than some Dharma centers.
I have noticed something a bit annoying about Tibetan Buddhist Dharma Centers though. There is no greeter or “help the newbie” person at all. In any church, pagan or even OTO open event, somebody official would be watching for people who were obviously confused or didn’t know how things worked and would both welcome them and give them some basic pointers. I’ve seen a lot of “Do this when people do this in ritual” instruction at the Gnostic Mass or open circles. At Buddhist events, everyone seems to assume that everyone there is an expert already.
There was an obviously lost fellow there this evening, which brought it home. No one has ever bothered to show me how to enter a shrine room correctly, how to prostrate, what to do with that saffron water, etc. I had to figure it out for myself by watching and by references in a few books. Hell, Sam Webster told me more about Tibetan Buddhist protocol in his practices that borrow from Buddhism than any Buddhist has in person… Anyway, that’s just an annoyance.
