Kagyu Changchub Chuling: Taking Refuge - 2000

A few years ago I was living in a small garden community in Portland, Oregon's Rose City area: Mir Cabaaning. Sid and Marilyn, who owned the property, were printers. One of their clients was Sanje Elliott, former head of the Art Department at Naropa University, and a master thangka painter. When I met Sanje I was also undergoing a profound visionary period during which I was having encounters with various deities of all religions. I was spending hours with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, receiving teachings and empowerments. When I found out that Sanje was about to start teaching a beginning thangka painting class, I was thrilled. I signed up.

There were four of us students. Sanje's routine was to begin with a little song in Tibetan, really a prayer - which we'd say in English as well:

So nam, di yi tam chezig pah nye top ne nyeh pay dranam pah jene kye ga na chi ba lap truk pay yi si pay tso le dro wa drol war sho

By this virtue may we become enlightened, and, having vanquished all negativie influences, liberate all beings from the ocean of existence, which is turbid with the waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death. Tuji che.

We went down to the basement to watch an hour of slides of Buddhas rendered in paintings and sculptures from all over the world. Then we would go back upstairs to our thigses (basic proportioned grids/drawings), drawings, and finally, paintings. We received the previous week's drawing with Sanje's comments. We then corrected our work, and moved on to our next level. Sanje always made us chai with a little vibhuti (sacred ash) from Sai Baba in it, and there was always good sacred chanting on the CD player, and we could talk.

One morning Sanje asked if any of had ever had the experience of suddenly bursting into tears when encountering some form of Buddhism - perhaps music, movies, art.....And several of us raised our hands. I was amazed and relieved to see that others had been through this, too! For me, every time I had seen a movie about Buddhism, such as The Little Buddha, or Seven Years In Tibet, or Kundun, at some point in the movie I had burst into tears. Now Sanje was telling us that this was a typical response for those who had had a number of previous lives as Buddhists - we were being "called home."
Ah.
This made the deepest kind of sense to me, especially since I was still experiencing communication - hours of it at a time - from deities arriving in my space on huge lotuses. Through my shamanic training I'd become used to communicating with all sorts of beings in this way; but these encounters with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas were really pushing me hard. I began to think that perhaps if I were to ground myself in formal Buddhism - take refuge in a sangha in this life - that this pressure might ease.

I finally called Lama Michael Conklin of Kagyu Changchub Chuling. I had to call three times before he answered. Later I realized that it was important for me to "knock three times" before receiving an answer - an ancient spiritual tradition. I began attending sangha, and finally I had the opportunity to take refuge. There were a number of us who went through the ritual that day. We each made three full prostrations before entering the meditation room. Lama Michael gave us instructions, and then cut a lock of each person's hair. The whole sangha was enjoying the ritual, and members were lightheartedly teasing initiates about the hair-cutting. Though I'm not shy, I was glad to be only one in a group of newbies this day. After the hair-cutting, Lama Michael gave us our Tibetan refuge names.

Something did change for me, energetically. It did happen that the Deities on the lotuses began to allow me more "normal" time after I took refuge. That was an immense relief. I sometimes joke, nowadays, that other people take refuge with the Buddha - but I took refuge from the Buddha(s).