PS. Levekunst said that after he died, they opened up his personal/family temple. In addition to what you'd expect, Rama and Sita were painted on one wall, and Krishna and Radha on the other. A Shiva linga with the three horizontal stripes was over the door. Yet he criticized lamas in his own tradition from a conventionally moral standpoint- called them alcoholics and samaya breakers even. Released fish and birds. If we want a model who was not crazy wisdom, but still inscrutable, deep, principled but without being rigidly sectarian, CSDR is hard to beat. I mean, who can but be humbled by a 100 year old Tibetan vegetarian. Thomas Merton would have come back from zen in Kyoto to study dzogchen w CSDR in Kalimpong if he'd had sufficient merit- see his Asian Journals- but he got electrocuted by a fan in Thailand before he could make it. No worries, I'm sure he got a crack at it early on in his subsequent life, and Is now practicing privately but to great effect somewhere on this planet we all share, karmically and literally.
PPS. I did get some QT w Anyen R.- fine Lama, do go see him, go out of your way. He has the goods and was born to teach. But anyway, he and Allison (his wife and translator) stayed w Chatral R. for a while. CSDR must have been in his late 80s by then, but he caught a snake with his hands, and he was so happy with himself that he just danced around for a bit, enjoying life with a snake in his 80 year old hands, life touching life to live, you know.
([just my commentary:] We could all get there in this life-it’s an open secret. Life is the empowerment and the samaya, just keep up a practice. Explicitness never hurts, but it’s not strictly required.)
PPPS. Just because it's a deep cut from a book that almost no one reads- Sangharakshita of FWBO/ bad Buddhists fame was student of Chatral R., also Dudjom, Dilgo, JKCL, at least in the sense of attending public teachings, tho if he even got DI, he didn't know it- definitely not a subitist that guy*- but anyway, he says in one of his autobiographies- prob the 2nd? he had like three 400 pagers- that he asked CSDR a question, probably some obscure, metaphysical bit of whatever, and CSDR- who would have been a young man then, we're talking about the early or at latest mid 60s- just held out a hand full of semi-precious kind of junk stones and offered it to the poor sad, smart, overwhelmed,closeted English deserter kid (Sangharakkhita/Sangharakshita), and he got a little relief, at least for a while.
Lama Kyeno!
PPPPS. At the end of the trip wound up at RY monastery; rest=history.
[sad violin music playing
#atleastwe'renotGurdjieff].
*i do remember in one of his books he (Sangharakshita) talked about an empowerment he got from Dudjom- I don’t know what, and not even sure he said I in the book- he said that, mid-wang, he had the distinct subjective impression of a red laser from DR’s heart/mind to his. God bless a makyo, Namo all the Sacred Nyams, whatever gets you by. Bodhisattvas and allies persevere,
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