I want to write a brief message about my dear Dharma sister,  Tsering Lhamo. She is an old friend we met in Singapore some 12 years ago and have been very close ever since. She is also a student of Garchen Rinpoche, who is her root guru. In addition she had also gone on a pilgrimage to the holy mountains of Lapchi with Garchen Rinpoche 8yrs ago for a month long retreat. Lapchi is where Milarepa had previously meditated and subdued all evil forces in the cave of Subjugation.

As some of you may know, I gave an oral teaching on Gampopa’s Thargyen, “The Jewel Ornament of Liberation”, at the Manjushri Dharma Center in Pacific Grove. Every Wednesday for almost 3 years, I went through the text, speaking and explaining in Tibetan, which was translated by  Jampa Tharchin in the presence of the California Sangha. These talks were audio recorded and sent to some of my students in the United States and overseas. She undertook the transcription of all the recorded teachings, of which there are hours of audio. So far, she has painstakingly transcribed 41 sessions amounting to almost 900 pages. She anticipates that, upon completion, there will be around 1500 to 1700 pages in total. She listens to the recording multiple times when transcribing, writing and editing to ensure continuity and clarity in her English transcription of David’s translation.

Throughout the talks on “The Jewel Ornament of Liberation,” I found that people had many questions concerning the text and learned more about Western disciples’ minds. Many of my students, including my Dharma friend Lama Rigzin who lives in England, requested that I compose a shortened summary of the text, but without poetic and flowery language, so that it would make it easy to translate into other languages, and would be accessible to people of different cultures. For the benefit of my students, I wrote “Excellent Path of Freedom: The Jewel Ornament of Liberation in Brief.” I later gave talks on this teaching in brief, which were also simultaneously translated into English with help of Jampa Tharchin over a few months on Wednesday nights at the MDC. These teachings were also recorded and a CD was sent to her which she plans to transcribe in its entirety. She has also completed the transcription of Tokme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of Bodhisattva Teachings which i had taught and were previously recorded and distributed in a 13 CD set. All our previous sessions at Wave Street Studios since the very beginning of our live sessions ten years ago have also been transcribed. It is my wish to print all of these teachings into booklets for the benefit of all my students.

I also want to say that she is currently writing my childhood story and autobiography, “The Precious One from Digla: Oyotari”. In 2009, she expressed her interest in writing about my childhood experiences and formative years in Tibet. This, along with requests from other students who had asked me about my life and background, prompted the initiation of this undertaking. She spends countless hours listening to me on voice recordings, conversing with me, transcribing, and converting everything into literary prose.

In addition to this labor, she has sponsored my most recent publication, the book “A Ship Sailing to Liberation: A Commentary to the Heartfelt Advice of Dharma Nectar”. She has told me that it is her aspiration to finish my autobiography and transcribe the two Thargyen oral teachings before she passes, after which she says that she can die with no regrets. And she believes that if the reading of this autobiography changes even one person’s life, her efforts will have been worth it. Her endeavors are a great service to me and my Dharma, and I believe that these activities are also beneficial to her. I hope that these efforts will benefit many, and I wish to thank her for all of her hard work, diligence, and patience; she is an example of a student full of devotion to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

We do not necessarily need to perform 100,000 prostrations or recite hundreds and thousands of mantras. But just by merely doing positive actions, we would be planting the seeds of virtue that would sprout and ripen in future lifetimes. The seed of Buddha nature is already in our hearts and minds. We just need the nourishment of water and sun for it to grow and bloom.

Written by Khenpo Karten Rinpoche, originally posted on his Blogspot.