Lama Monlam has visited Catalonia and held conferences and a stay at the Montserrat monastery
DÍDAC P. LAGARRIGA Barcelona
28/09/2016
His mere presence asserts the environment without the need for words. With a permanent and sincere smile, expressive cluster that disarms and brings you closer, he shakes hands with everyone who approaches him. walk slowly, as if caressing every little stimulus he receives gratefully and returns compassionately. little, hunched over, of pansida skin and shaved head, wrapped in the traditional green and yellow habit, lama Monlam moves forward lucidly, aware of the expectation it generates. With almost ninety years (was born on 25 of December of 1926), this Tibetan exile in Nepal spent thirty years doing continuous meditation alone after leaving the monastery he had entered as a child. His disciples say that this characteristic marks the differential fact with more intelligent blades·intellectuals, since the ascetic practice continued for so many decades, with great physical effort, it has given him a more intense and experienced dimension. An extremely subtle dimension in which to cultivate what in Buddhism is called Bodhisattva, that is to say, the attitude of benefiting others as much as possible.
“Sense an exact equivalent to the West, a lama could be a mixture of priest, psychologist and physician”, Lama Yeshe will explain (1935-1984), one of the best known llamas, forerunner of the introduction of Tibetan Buddhism to the West during the decade of 1970.
The lama Monlam, but, he repeats again and again that he is not a lama: "My knowledge is scarce. If people call me lama it's because they get carried away by appearances, but I'm just a simple monk", he assures with his humble and smiling face. Used to so many years of solitary meditation, he never imagined that he would now go around the world giving conferences and helping as much as he can the people who approach him. This "simple monk", lama for everyone but himself, saw how unexpectedly his life changed when the year 2002 an Italian Buddhist doctor, visiting Nepal, he found him almost dying from the harsh physical conditions he had been subjected to, mixed with his advanced age and the lifestyle he led. The doctor invited him to Italy, where Lama Monlam received treatment and got better. Their annual visits were born from this emotional bond, since 2006, to several Italian Buddhist centers of the international organization FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition), where he teaches seminars on meditation.
An expected visit
This year lama Monlam has also visited Catalonia invited by the Tushita del Montseny meditation center (member of the FPMT). A journey focused on meeting others and the dialogue that took him to the Casa del Tibet in Barcelona - where he gave a conference on Tuesday 20-, in Montserrat, hosted by the monks of the monastery, and in the heart of Montseny, where he offered meditation practice to Tushita last weekend, always accompanied by his niece Tenzin Tsomo, of 28 years, faithful interpreter and helper.
"We all seek not to suffer, it is a human quest. But happiness is never stable because we never get rid of suffering completely”, he said at the start of his lecture at the Tibet House, full of gum a gum. It's not about, as he explained, to speak only of Buddhism, but to understand the mind and afflictive emotions. According to your perspective, we are responsible, each of us, to understand these emotions, like pride, attachment or anger, which he defined as "true enemies". He also insisted on the need to develop ways of understanding the mind and its functioning, like the case of meditation, which serves to reflect on our negative behavior and achieve positive change. “Understand how distressing emotions, that cause suffering within us and in the world, are not an intrinsic part of us is a very important value compatible with all beliefs and religions", the lama will insist, what's going on·home to the responsibility of each one to achieve this inner change.
From Montserrat to Montseny
The visit to Montserrat the next day, prompted by the lama's desire to speak with this monastic community, began with the conventual mass, followed by a guided visit by brother Carles Xavier to the less crowded areas of the monastery. Commonalities immediately emerged, like the last hermit of that place, Father Basili, who befriended the Dalai Lama (a figure very close to lama Monlam). Besides, the meetings within the framework of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue were discussed, in which they had been made, among others, Zen meditations in the oldest chapel of this emblematic place. The old man was also attracted by a garden with a strong oriental influence, designed by the monk Vicenç Santamaria, admirer of zen gardens and l’ ikebana. After sharing a meal with the Benedictine community, was received by prior Ignasi M. Fossa together with other monks, who listened to the venerable Tibetan's wishes to promote a universal ethic that, without leaving aside religions, can alleviate all the suffering the world is experiencing. In conclusion he asked them to do their best to work in this direction and, perhaps carried by the emotion of the reception, he expressed his desire to be reincarnated as a monk of that community.
In the following days of his passage through Catalonia, lama Monlam was in Tushita, an ancient and welcoming Buddhist center, opened more than twenty years ago in Arbúcies, to offer an intensive meditation training where forty people participated aware of the importance of receiving the knowledge of someone as charismatic as him. Included in the hours of continuous practice, on an austere diet of oatmeal and tea, the teacher again emphasized the need to work for the ethical dimension without the need to erect walls between beliefs, and he remembered the responsibility that everyone has in this huge humanitarian task, individual i col·teaching, in which a personal and constant effort is needed to find the keys that free us from distressing emotions that are too ephemeral to let them control our lives.
