Mudra of Samaya

Renewing The Bond Of Deep Sacred Trust

Photo reportage: Chogyal Namkhai Norbu’s 1987 Visit to Samye Monastery, Tibet.

John Shane Text and photos (except photos of family and Rinpoche as professor) © John Shane

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In 1987 and 1988, and also later in 1991, I traveled around the world with Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, and wherever we went I carried with me – in a heavy-duty suitcase – a Sony 8mm camera, boxes of video cassettes, a small external video monitor, microphones, and a VCR, as well as other equipment that I used for recording and on-the-spot editing.

But, while I did occasionally shoot video of Norbu Rinpoche when he was giving teachings, the responsibility for recording the teachings was mainly taken by others, and I mainly used my camera to record what we did when Rinpoche wasn’t teaching.

No matter what country we were in, no matter who we met, Rinpoche would always find some game to play, some trick to show us, some song to sing, some joke to tell, some improbable adventure on which to lead us.

Norbu Rinpoche was, of course, a profoundly serious person in every way, but, as I viewed the videos from our travels over and over again while taking screenshots from them, the thought came to me that Rinpoche’s seriousness and the playfulness that I was noticing when I watched the videos were actually inseparable, and that his extraordinary playfulness was actually the outer aspect of his profound inner seriousness.

Watching him laughing and joking in so many of the videos as he engaged with so many different people in so many different circumstances, I began to feel that it was the profundity of his inner seriousness that enabled him to carry out every outer activity so playfully.

It occurred to me then that what gave Rinpoche the inner freedom that enabled him to be able to play so freely in the world was his complete realisation of the emptiness of all phenomena, his unshakeable understanding that everything arising in his field of experience was the play of the energy of his own primordial state.

In other words, his profound inner seriousness manifested outwardly in his living his life with an utterly confident spontaneous playfulness.

Of course, this is just a subjective impression that I formed from observing Rinpoche closely in his life and then, more recently, watching the videos I shot while traveling with him.

Others who were close to Rinpoche and knew him well may have formed other impressions.

I can only speak for myself, and I do so accepting that I may be wrong.

But it seems to me that it was because Rinpoche recognised everything arising in the field of his experience as the play of the energy of the primordial state – his natural condition – that he was able to simultaneously carry out so many activities in the world with such precision and to carry such great responsibility so lightly.

Norbu Rinpoche’s life was a life of commitment to others.

His whole life was a mudra of commitment. By ‘mudra’ I mean here, rather than just a shape made with the hands, a complete gesture made with one’s whole being.

Rinpoche’s life was a mudra made in fulfilment of his vow to live for the benefit to all beings, a fundamental aspect of his Samaya.

But, while one might see a spiritual commitment or a sacred vow in terms of it being a binding obligation and thus as something very heavy, it seems to me that a major part of the total gesture of Rinpoche’s commitment – his Mudra of Samaya – was lived out in the playfulness with which he fulfilled his many obligations.

As I see it, this playfulness in action was what enabled him to do so much with such grace. He was able to offer personal advice to so many people, to give so many profound teachings for so many years, to found and manage so many centres in so many different countries with different laws and customs, and at the same time also to write so many books, because he could do it all playfully.

But, while the profound seriousness of Rinpoche’s commitment to the Dzogchen teachings and to bringing those teaching to others is – rightly – always commented on in written accounts of his life, it seems to me that the extraordinary playfulness that accompanied his seriousness can tend to be overlooked when people write about Rinpoche, and that’s why I’m making a point of focussing on it here.

In due course, I plan to edit, color correct, and create audio commentary for the video footage that I shot in different parts of the world so that the videos can be enjoyed by others and perhaps others, seeing the video, will also be reminded of Rinpoche’s playfulness in action.

But, in the meantime, the best I can do, as part of my own Mudra of Samaya, is to share with you some of the screenshots that I’ve recently made, as a way to renew the bond of deep sacred trust that we individually and collectively share with each other through our own and others’ connection to Norbu Rinpoche.

But rather than including screenshots from video recorded in several different countries, I want to focus on footage that I shot in in one place, and, in honor of Norbu Rinpoche’s country of origin, the screenshots I’ve chosen to include here are taken from video I recorded during the four months that I spent traveling in Tibet in 1987 with Rinpoche and a small group of his other students.

At that time, after years of there being either no possibility of traveling at all in Tibet, or there only being the possibility of traveling in Tibet with the constant supervision of a government official as a guide, the possibility of traveling freely in Tibet opened up for a short while and, during our four months in Tibet, we were able to travel wherever we wanted without a tourist guide or an official supervising us.

For Rinpoche, despite the fact that there was an element of sadness for him in seeing his native country in the difficult situation in which he found it when he returned there, it was a carefree, joyful time – a time during which he renewed his contact with family members and friends who had remained living in Tibet, and a time in which he also renewed his connection with the culture of his native land, renewing in particular his connection with one of the most important sacred places associated with many of the spiritual traditions of which he was such a great exponent – Samye Monastery – the first Buddhist monastery that was founded and built in Tibet in the years 775 to 779 AD with the assistance of Padmasambhava himself – otherwise known, of course, as ‘Guru Rinpoche’ – the archetype of the ‘Precious Master’ who was the source of many lineages of teaching and practice.

My hope – my playful hope – is that looking at the sequence of images included with this article will, however briefly, give you the feeling that you were there at Samye in 1987 along with Norbu Rinpoche and that – if you do experience that feeling – it will give you a renewed sense of your deep, sacred connection to Norbu Rinpoche and to his other students, whoever they may be and wherever they may be around the world, and that, in this way, the Mudra of Samaya in your own life will be renewed.

John Shane

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As a young man, Norbu Rinpoche had a hard choice to make. If he wanted to fulfil his commitment to serve all sentiment beings, he knew he would have to leave his family and his native country. He traveled alone to the other side of the world carrying nothing with him but the teachings in his heart and mind.

When he arrived in the West, at first he became a Professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Naples. Later, after many requests, he began to give Dzogchen teachings.

When I met Norbu Rinpoche in London in 1978, he was still a young man, and he had learned Italian, rather than English, so he was teaching in that language. Since I knew Italian, already had a grounding in Buddhist teachings, and had followed other Tibetan Buddhist masters, not long after meeting Rinpoche, I began to translate for him at his talks and retreats in different parts of the world, and later began to work on producing books in English with him.

In 1987, while on a journey with Norbu Rinpoche that took us to many different countries, I traveled to Tibet along with Jo, who was then my wife, and our daughter Jessie – who was then 20 months old – and a very small group of Rinpoche’s other students.

When we arrived in Lhasa, Rinpoche stayed at his sisters’ small house on the edge of the town, while everyone else in our party stayed in hotels.

During our stay in Lhasa, among many other places, we visited the Lhukhang, the Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple that is situated on an island in a lake behind the Potala Palace, which can be seen in the photo above.

In order to be able to travel to sacred sites outside Lhasa, we hired a small bus with a local Tibetan driver. Donatella Rossi, an Italian student of Rinpoche’s, who spoke fluent Chinese as well as having a good knowledge of Tibetan, acted as our translator with our driver and any officials with whom we needed to interact.

When Norbu Rinpoche decided to visit Samye monastery, the first Buddhist temple to be built in his native country, we set out early in the morning in our bus, driving South East along rough roads for two and half hours to get there.

When we came to the Yarlung Tsangpo riv­er, also known as the Brahmaputra, the riv­er at the highest altitude in the world, we had to wait for the ferry to arrive, but, with the telephoto lens of my camera, I could see the ferryman in the distance, silhouetted against the sky as he approached us where we waited on the South bank of the river.

When the ferry pulled into the shore, we began to load our bags on board.