Namgyal Memorial Weekend

by Thelma Rodgers

• starting with the wholehearted welcome of the caretakers and the residents of the Buddhadharma Program - hosts and cooks for the weekend - even missing some events so the meals were ready on time. Thank you for such dana!
  
  
• and such magnificent meals! Celebrations of life and settings for interaction - people appreciating the present experience of good food and Wangapeka, catching up on years apart, and making plans for the future;
  
  
• working together to remove stumps from the Namgyal Memorial site;
  
  
• the moments of meeting
  - of old friends and memories - companions from many years in the Teaching;
  - making new friends, new connections in the knowing that we had all come together for this time to remember Namgyal and the teachings.
  - the celebration of each others lives - the young babies in the Whare, watching the images of Mark and Kathryn's wedding - life goes on, the teaching continues.

• Terry speaking on Saturday morning of Rinpoché's dying - the last years of illness, the final summer of teaching, the events of the days before he died, his death and the days leading up to the cremation - an immersion not only in the detail of events but in appreciation of Terry - his love, care and the wry humour that described the search for a car that occupied the final few days, or the forklift truck moving the coffin in the middle of ceremony. More of a heart transmission than a narrative!
  
  
• sharing memories of Rinpoché on Saturday afternoon - braving the seat at the front of the Whare to recollect the man, the Teacher and the Teaching. Everyone with their own story, their particular view. A growing sense of the past as not separate from the present, but merging and augmenting; a simultaneous presence felt not thought. A growing sense also of the community of remembrance, and of the lineage of teaching.
  
  
• the main ceremonies beginning mid-morning on Sunday with a guided meditation by Terry in the Whare ... at the top of a waterfall in a cave is the Namgyal figure, and from him flows streams of lights like jewels out into the world ...
  
  
• then in procession to the Pagoda where Tarchin and Terry together lead the Taking of Refuge before installing some of Rinpoché's ashes in the Pagoda. Colourful circumambulations of the Pagoda and Metta meditations are followed by a walk down the long steep drive to the Wangapeka River;
  
  
• at the river the mood is both more casual and more profound. Perched on the rocky banks we watch as ashes are mixed with rose petals, blessed and offered against the backdrop of the wide river flowing. Small caves on Jones' Ridge evoke the earlier guided meditation, bellbirds ring out their responses, Tarchin offers poetry. Each one of us comes to stoop and release a handful of the petals and ashes to the flow of the river, to think of Rinpoché's Teachings flowing out to the world. It is spontaneous, intense, simple, overwhelming - past, present and future surging in mighty waves, becoming simultaneous - all happening now.