Dolly Girl: Late nights (early mornings) with a Rinpoche

Late nights (early mornings) with a Rinpoche

Published Saturday, March 31, 2007 by Dolly | E-mail this post

On the up: Rinpoche's entire life
On the down: Sleep deprivation

I am disgustingly busy and tired and washed-off-my-flat-feet in a way that really surprises my lazy self, but I just HAVE to blog this (PS It's taken me 3 days to write this, that's how busy!)

We had an interview session with Rinpoche on Monday night for his biography. From past sessions, we knew that this would be a very long night, so Sharon even came in her comfy sweats like she was staying over for a slumber party. Good thing she did, because we started at 8pm and ended at 11am (I still had heaps of work and meetings the day after so didn't get to sleep until 1am on Wed morning... an amazing feat for sleep-attached me)

But it was all totallycompletely100% worth it - it's crazy how much can happen in 15 hours and has this peculiar impact on me that nothing else ever comes close to. After hanging out with Rinpoche, going back to normal work and stuff feels just so ordinary and mundane and Totally Blah.

There is so much to his story that it would be impossible to get it all in one night. After the 12 hours, we had only gotten through about maybe 5% and it was already making our heads spin. You just wouldn't believe the kind of shit he went through, especially not as he's sitting 2 feet away from you radiating light and compassion and infinite joy all the time.

When I first started with Dharma, and went to Nepal with Rinpoche and some of the centre's members, we met one of Rinpoche's old friends, an old Tibetan Lama called Phutok Rinpoche who'd spent 22 years in political prison in Tibet (thanks to the charming Chinese who decided it would be fun to chuck lots of monks and nuns into jail). Phutok Rinpoche sat there in his miniscule room talking to us like yoda, full of light in his eyes and a smile as full of joy as it was of wrinkles that makes you cry into your tea.

Back then, it was inspiring and all that, but hearing Rinpoche's story caused a hundred million more sparks to light up and scream in my head. There is so much in it that would make you cry, but then you kind of realise that the whole point of it is not to cry, that you should actually be doing more for more people because you have this little magical chance right in front of you to do something that could change someone completely (and even if it doesn't, the possibility that it could becomes enough).

There's stuff in his life that scares you, saddens you, makes you laugh, makes you scream because it's so unbelievable and then, makes you want to get enlightened like RIGHT NOW because you see that it's alive and real and completely possible to get beyond where you are now.

You have GOT to buy the biography when we write it. Not because we're writing it, but because of what it will tell.

But okay, it's never just seriousness when you're with Rinpoche. A lot of it was also pick games, eating MacDonalds. Here we all are just mooching about as ladrang lounge lizards:

The pick games were especially tough this time. We established very early on that JP just Does Not Like Bill Keith, so of course, the more you dislike something, the more Rinpoche will push your buttons about it. So, just as an example, JP got to pick:

"PICK! Lick Bill Keith all over, every single crevice. Or Burn up Ben" (who was sitting right next to him)

Can you believe it. Evil JP picked to burn up Ben.

Even Sharon was made to pick. Normally, nobody touches Sharon, not even Rinpoche, because she's just so zen and wonderful about everything. But then we discovered she has a certain thing about/against a certain feng shui master. So she got to pick:

"PICK! Play spin the bottle with . Or be a car jockey and park cars all day" which is hilarious because Sharon does NOT do schleppy pleb jobs like park cars.

She picked to play spin the bottle.

I've decided that the only thing worse than having to play the pick game, is to be one of the options in the pick game because the options Rinpoche magicks out of his head are just so damn horrible. He can potentially turn anyone of us into someone else's biggest nightmare so doesn't it make sense that the only thing worse than choosing between nightmares, is to BE the nightmare?

Wonderful Jenny went out to buy MacDonalds at about 3am, and soon, with all the mooching about, we had managed to turn the ladrang into a veritable pigsty (gosh, see what the Rinpoches of the world have to put up with - sorry, Rinpoche. We did clean up after though!).

But look! Even Buddhas drink milkshakes!

Then we started talking about prostitution (it is always about sex because of the people that we always end up hanging out with). Rinpoche asked Ben how much he would charge people to have sex with him. Ben has VIRTUOUS PURE DARLING scrawled in big bold marker pen across his head and he is totally just Zen Ben all the time - all cool, and Dharma-devoted, unruffled and dressed in white - so of course, just because this question seems so totally inappropriate to him, he would get it.

He said he'd charge RM500.

So Rinpoche went around the room, "Well, how much would you charge JP?"

He said RM500.

"What about Joe?"

He still said RM500

"What about Susan? She's a girl! Women earn less than men, you got to give them a discount."

So he lowered his price down to RM400.

"What about Paris?"

(uh oh...)... but he said Rm200 and it was because he thought I was nice.

See, now I have a new way of gauging whether people think I'm nice; they'll charge me less than their usual rate to sleep with them. hah. (question is, why charge at all?! gee!)

At some point, JP opened his enormous mouth and said to Rinpoche, "Have you read Paris' blog?!"

I shot him my ugliest look and said, "You are GOING. TO. GET. IT." The last thing I want is for my Guru to read all the filth and rubbish that I spend my precious time pouring out to Nobody In Particular on this Tiny Web Space. I mean, I know non-attachment and all that, but in that crazy infinite quest for enlightenment and digging up the old Buddha nature and altruism and benefiting all sentient beings, I'd really rather not appear quite so vacuous to my Guru!

To his credit though, JP did say very nice things about Dolly Blog. I think he's appointed himself as my marketing manager which is nice, but err, it isn't working since there's still only about 10 people out of an entire 5billionpopulation earth reading it.

Then we started matching up characters in Lord of the Rings to people we knew. We'd already decided quite a while back that in our Asian version of LOTR, Rinpoche would be Gandalf and JP would the hobbit. To fill in the rest, we had Joe as Gollum (because he talks to himself), Ben as an orc, and this girl in the centre called Gimlee, as well, Gimli.

Then we got bored of this game and went back to pick games and making fun of the way Ben talks. Rinpoche suddenly pointed out how everything Ben says sound totally completely horny and sensual. Even things like, "No" and "Yes" and "That's all" sound pornographic when Ben says it; not in a nice turn-on kind of way but in this really strange retro kind of 80s music video way *feels disturbed now*

By about 7am, people were really starting to flag. I think the only ones with our eyes still wide as buttons (thanks to green tea) were me and JP. Joe had even untucked his shirt (positively shocking for neat, tidy, groomed Joe) and had become best friends with a cushion. He totally embodies the word "bed" (okay, let's be evil. you can read that in two ways) when he's asleep.

Finally, at about 11am, Rinpoche said, "Okay! I have to go do my sadhana now and that's going to take another two hours so I'm going to leave now."

We staggered out back home to bed. Well, some of us anyway - the rest of us like me got to go to work and get harrassed about Brylcreem advertorials again!

What's really freaky is knowing that while all of us were starting to feel like death on a stick, Rinpoche would be up quite a few hours more doing his sadhana, go to bed for about 3 hours, and then wake up bright and shiny and all ready to repeat as above.

Really, all seems possible with Rinpoche (burning up your friends, never sleeping, and selling sex). You realise very, very quickly that there's just no point in hanging on to hang-ups and expectations and warped ideas about the world because they are going to be totally destroyed when you're with Rinpoche (and if you don't realise that and learn to just relax, you're the only one who suffers!)

Zip. Before you know it, you're in some big, vast, empty, white space and although you don't know what's going to hit you next (or from where), you feel completely happy and still.

Late nights (early mornings) with a Rinpoche

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