Source: Rethinking Service
Highlights
He did it for us because he cared immensely about our collective plight in samsara. Even while free and fully liberated, he remained in earnest compassion practice life-long. Those who criticize the Buddhist yogis who spend so much time in isolation as somehow selfish or aloof from the world, don’t quite appreciate the profound motivation underlying their practice and don’t understand the science of how karma works. As lofty as it might seem, these lamas seek to become the very condition, like soil and sun, for the karmic seeds planted by devotees to ripen, and in that way, Konchog is as close to embodying Christ’s consciousness as perhaps a human being can emulate.
Lama Konchog was one of the last true mountain yogis of this century and a mahasiddha, a saint-psychonaut, reportedly capable of advanced yogic self-control such as chulen, or yogic diet, converting nettles and even just the wind into subtle energy to nourish and sustain the body during harsh winters. Or yogic “swift feet”, the uncanny ability to rapidly traverse on foot vast and treacherous landscapes in a fraction of the time it takes ordinary folks. There are also reports of Konchog’s miracles, spontaneous healings of villagers, prophetic visions of the future, achieving the tantric rainbow body, and manifesting relics after cremation. As Konchog is the root lama of our lineage one can become more familiar with this modern-day Milarepa in this brilliant exposé, but it was his boundless compassion that overshadowed even his purported magical prowess.
As I discuss in my first book Gradual Awakening, accumulating merit is not a selfish endeavor, it’s a wise and necessary approach known in the lam rim as extracting the essence of the precious human life, doing everything we possibly can to purify karma, embody virtue, and awaken our minds for the benefit of others, rather than squandering our time following hedonic urges and fleeting pleasures. This may seem like a slight shift in emphasis, but when it comes to engaging in service it’s a 180-degree flip in orientation.
We’re not the benefactors, but the beneficiaries. Think about it for a second, how often do we get a chance to participate in an endeavor that fosters profound wisdom and universal compassion for ourselves while simultaneously broadcasting a positive signal to future generations for the next thousand years?
appreciating how living in service is a form of cultural self-compassion, a medicinal salve for the habituated self-preoccupation that makes one sick, and the ultimate safe direction or refuge for the soul, lost in the rounds of infinite time and space.
The service that Lama Konchog and the Rachen nuns emulate for us, represents a whole new way of life, I call living with the heart turned inside out, healing our soul from the impoverishing forces of materialism, scientific reductionism, and nihilism, which have alienated us while destroying our planet. Life-long service is not attached to the results, expects no rewards or accolades, and is tempered with humility and even invisibility.
Bodhicitta and bodhisattva vow as a commitment to lifelong path of service. All activities infused with the attitude of service. Making life truly meaningful.