In Pursuit of Mysteries

Madison, Here I Come!

I’m going to Madison, Wisconsin at the end of January now. I hadn’t originally planned on attending this but an old friend of mine that I reconnected with last year is also involved in Dzogchen and Vajrayana. Younge Khachab Rinpoche is now his primary teacher and he’s been telling me a lot of excellent things about him. Apparantly, he’s quite the scholar and he’s very open to teaching Dzogchen and related practices to sincere practitioners without being ultraorthodox like some teachers are notorious for being. That isn’t to say he’s out in the weeds but that his focus is on practice and in working with people. One of the fundamental things I’ve been looking for in my involvement with Tibetan Buddhism is a teacher that I can make a personal connection with and actually get to work with individually.

To this end, my friend, William, who is in New Mexico, and I will be going out to Madison together. He’s going to introduce me to Rinpoche so I can have an interview with him and attend some teachings to see his style and way of doing things. If all goes well, I’ll go out for a May Dzogchen retreat there as well and I’ll be working with Rinpoche and his Madison group to bring him to Seattle to teach. If all goes well, I’ll volunteer to host him and organize the retreat. William feels that Rinpoche is in the kind of position with his students that Norbu was 15 or 20 years ago when there were only a few people so it was possible to get a lot more hands on time with the lama.

Younge Khachab Rinpoche

Winter Retreat Teachings 2005

• Younge Dorje Drollo Empowerment
• Dream Yoga Instruction
• Tibetan Dream Interpretation

January 28-30th

Rime Shedrub Ling Tibetan Buddhist Meditation and Teaching Center Madison, WI

The Younge Dorje Drollo is a complete Three Roots (Tsa-Sum) practice with Lama, Yidam and Khandro contained in the mantra and visualizations. The outer practice focuses on the Five Family Buddhas and Consorts. This famous practice was discovered by the Terton Younge Migyur Dorje.

This is one of the most powerful practices for removing negative obstacles in one’s life, particularly important for entering the New Year and multiplying the positive attributes for success in dharma practice.

Khachab Rinpoche is renowned for his success in dream yoga practices. He is often called by other Lamas and teachers for predictions and interpretations. Dream interpretation can be tricky, what may seem positive or an omen to ones practice is often the sign of an inner interruption or spiritual obstacle. If one does not recognize the dream and its signs, one can very easily perpetuate the negative forces. Rinpoche teaches the yogic technique of recognizing our clear-light mind during sleep, learning to maintain our awareness through the dreaming process and interpreting the appearances that occur.

Teachings held at: 715 Hill St. Quarry Arts Building Room 170

(East of Whole Foods off University Ave.) Madison Wisconsin

Friday 5-8pm Dream Yoga Instruction

Saturday 9-12 and 2-4pm Dorje Drollo Empowerment and Instruction

Sunday 9-12 and 2-5pm Further Instruction and Dream Interpretation

Contractors and Satan

This is long, overly detailed and probably not worth reading unless you care
about houses or something.

Originally, I was supposed to have the roof guy come over tomorrow but the
hole in the roof has been driving me crazy and I can see some water damage in
the dry wall. Meanwhile, today and tomorrow are supposed to be the dry days this
week with today being completely sunny.

When I first tried to schedule last week, they had an afternoon slot free
today but the start time was fuzzy because theoretically, there is a morning job
starting at 8:00 AM first. I took the 8:00 AM Tuesday one instead because Monday
was my first day back at work and they couldn't promise when the guy would show.
I changed my mind with all of the anxiety the leaking has been causing me. When
I got up this morning, I called the contract service and they said, "Well, that
slot was taken but someone just cancelled so we can give you the afternoon slot.
The handyman will call you around 11:00 AM to tell you when he'll be there."

In order to get some real work done, I telecommuted in the meantime. I'd been
gone last week and almost everyone was still out. I can do a VPN and get onto
our intranet through my card key and some security hoops. I used the time to
close old tasks, do the monthly purge of old work e-mail, sent out some notices,
schedule some reviews, and do bug triage. Around 11:00, the fellow calls me and
says, "well, I'm kind of tied up here. It might be four or five hours until I
can come…" WTF?!?! The sun goes down around 4:30 and this guy isn't
going to be be doing roof work in the dark. I complained and said, roughly,
"Dude, I'm here waiting at my house instead of in my office because I need this
done and I had an appointment for today." Anyway, he said he'd do what he could
and if he couldn't finish, I'd get the original 8:00 AM slot tomorrow.

Well, 3:00 PM rolls around and I'm still working from home. Yee-haw. He calls
and gets over here about 3:30, which doesn't make me happy. He's a nice guy
though and I try not to give the man, personally, grief. When I called his
office to confirm that I could still have the appointment tomorrow (because I'm
like that and I don't trust people), the woman there gave me the unsolicited
tale about how his morning appointment had about three times the work that she
had said that she did and they'd been caught in the middle.

So, around 3:30, he finally gets the guided tour. "Look, water damage. Climb
up this ladder, look there, place where water comes in roof. etc. etc." He gets
up on my roof and finds the source of the problem, which is damaged flashing on
the sewage vent on the roof. The damage is from when it was put in and then, on
top of that, they didn't quite fit the composite roof material over it. So, my
roof is about eight or nine years old, at a guess, and this has been slowly
damaging this one spot over this whole time until it finally got through the
plywood and started dripping inside my attic. Nice. Thanks a lot, fuckheads who
installed it wrong in the first place.

We debate what he can do and I rule out the cheap and dirty fix which may not
be perfect. He's coming back in the morning with a new cover for the pipe to
replace the entire damaged unit, new composite roof tiles to re-roof around it,
and maybe some plywood if he needs to replace the damaged substrate. He says
that I should wait until I have the roof redone for that if possible because
then we go from a little bitty whole to making a foot or two wide one that he
then has to seal up again…

While he's here, I have him look at the water damage. Dry wall is his
specialty, as it turns out, and I can see the damage (warping) from the wet.
It's mostly dry now. He looks at it and says "well, this is probably pretty weak
now and should be replaced." He then pokes at it again and his hand goes
through it into my attic. "Yep, that's pretty brittle." Thanks, Dude.
I'll just put some duct tape over the half-fist sized hole in my bathroom
ceiling.

He's going to put new drywall in, mud it, etc. but he probably won't have
time tomorrow so it will be another trip.

So, what's the sum total that the fixing of my roof in the one spot and
fixing the dry wall will cost me? He expects around
$1,000. Jeeezus F. Christ! Well, there goes the money that would
go into savings for a little while. Let's hope that my house doesn't suffer any
other collapses soon.

Christmas

Christmas Day and all of the joys associated with it!

R and I got up this morning, got ready and then headed straight over to my
grandparents for Christmas morning, which I traditionally do with these fine,
Christian, folk. My grandparents, my daughter and my ex-wife were all over
there, the latter two having spent the night. Did I mention before that my
ex-wife, Chris, is always around my grandparents' place? They watch Madeline a
lot of the time and Chris helps my grandmother out a bit so they've got some
sort of weird symbiotic thing going. Having my first wife and my current wife
both there was different, to say the least.

This is the first time that R has gone there as she normally is in the Bay
Area with her family but couldn't go this year. We did the normal gift exchange
and then went and did the Christmas Brunch at the dining room of their
retirement community. The food there is generally better than you'd expect and
we had a good time. Eventually, after the brunch and chatting for a while, we
took our leave.

After a quick stop by the only open Starbucks in the area, we headed over to
Rubylou's place for her casual Christmas rescue mission. Rubylou has an open
house every Christmas afternoon and evening for any strays, lonely Jews, and
people needing to recover from family gatherings. There was a pretty good spread
of food there and I got to spend some time talking to Rubylou, her SO, Sean the
Apple Guy, and playing with Lulu the Kitty and Livy the baby. Strange as this
may seem to some people, little babies like me almost as much as cats do and I
played with Livy on and off the whole time that I was there. She's a fun kid.

We just got home a short while ago and I'm ready to unwind a bit. Today was
the first day of rain all week and it turns out the my emergency seal on the
roof does nothing so the drip was back this morning and afternoon. Luckily, the
rain seems to have stopped so I can quit being annoyed by it for now. This had
better be fixed on Tuesday though.

I think I'll go read my Grimwood novel now.

Listening To: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Brother, My Cup is Empty