to Mark. Tsoknyi appeared to place life before religion, for only in that way did it become religion.
It had not always been this way. When he first came to this country, a quarter century back, Tsoknyi taught in the traditional manner. At an early retreat of his, a young woman in a tie-dyed dress had poured out her endless troubles to him. She was on the verge of suicide, she wailed, asking what she should do. Tsoknyi told her to look beneath her disturbed emotions, into the basic clear nature of mind. (Probably not very helpful — if she could do that, she wouldn’t have needed to be there.) Today Tsoknyi’s answer to such a person might be, “Did you take your meds?”
Just as Father Dave has shifted a religious approach from right creed (orthodoxy) to right experience (orthopraxy), so Tsoknyi has changed the what of religion (right and wrong, ethics, eschatology, etc.) into how (how to handle problems, how to counter fear and depression, how to psychologically activate our better nature). If the various faiths enlisted enough Father Daves and Tsoknyi Rinpoches, religion might never be the same again.
Interlude: A New Mantra, Followed by Lunch at the Bliss
Should you become interested in contemporary spirituality, first thing, go out and buy a life vest. For you may soon be drowning in a sea of platitudes: “each moment be mindful” or “live in the present” or “be positive, no matter what” (which, even when sound advice, gets worn thin). Tsoknyi had been so refreshing at the party because he expressed things I’d never heard before.
For instance? At one point he announced that he had a new mantra. “What is it, Rinpoche?” people eagerly asked. “What is your new mantra?” Tsoknyi said, “Simply this: It is real, but it is not true.” Frankly, I was perplexed. Weren’t real and true interchangeable?
The next day, heading into town to have lunch at the Bliss Café (then the one restaurant/bar/hangout in town), I continued to mull over that real-versus-true difference. I could make a little sense of it. Real: every day (when it’s not overcast) we can see the sun rise and the sun set; true: as the Earth circles the sun, there is neither rising nor setting. Probably all religions rely on this distinction between real (or relative) truth and absolute truth, in order to counter momentary obsessions that at the time seem only too real.
Here is a personal sort-of example.5 In reality, Washington, DC, is a better place for me to live. Arriving back in DC from Crestone, I land in every creature comfort and necessity, in deliciously oxygen-laden air, in more civilized temperatures, in the most politically liberal city in America and architecturally its handsomest. Yet in DC many people might as well wear blinders, so blinkered is their view of what’s existentially permissible, and in that constricted atmosphere I wind tighter and the unvoiced part of me grows more silent. In truth, Crestone is a better place for me to be, for it supports a wider spectrum of what constitutes a legitimate experience, and in that atmosphere I gradually shake free enough to hold less and less of myself back. The better reality versus the better truth: What to do?
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