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Namgyal Memorial Weekend
From the Namgyal Memorial Weekend 20 March 2005 || 'Thinking of my Lama' by Tarchin Hearn | Article by Thelma Rodgers | and many photos
19-20 March 2005
an alchemy of memory and community
 by Thelma Rodgers
It's Tuesday and I'm sitting in the car, waiting at the lights at the bottom of Queen St Auckland for a few hundred people to finish crossing, when the memory of the past weekend at the Wangapeka surges through body and mind to meld with present experience in an overwhelming wave. The busiest intersection in NZ, apparently so distant from the Namgyal Memorial Weekend, has evoked the same response - a body alchemy of memory and community, of past and future merging in the present, together with the sense of deep communion with those around. I shake my head, remind myself that this is not the time or place to lose control of the car and continue on to work. The sense of what happened lingers - not as conscious thoughts and memories but as body feelings of deep energies coiling and shaping, and only now, a few weeks later, do words start to emerge from the experience.
In my recollection of the weekend, gems of memory are embedded in a mounting tsunami of remembrance and community.
The sense of sangha grows as the weekend progresses -
- 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.
Community also in the cascade of ceremonies, interspersed with meditations and pujas -
- 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.
Heart full, mood euphoric, a final celebratory feast then people start drifting away, one by one, carload by carload, saying 'it's been a good weekend', 'it's been so good to catch up with people', 'let's meet like this again sometime'. The sense of community and lineage is very strong. It is almost teatime before the Buddhadharma residents are left to get on with their course.
We came together for a weekend to remember and say farewell to the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoché; and the essence of this time was celebration - of Namgyal, of the teaching, and of community.
All is blessing, all is flowing.
Sarva Mangalam.
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