Shamar Rinpoche

Shamar Rinpoche, May 2005

Karma Pakshi Empowerment

On Sunday afternoon, May 22, 2005, Shamar Rinpoche granted the empowerment of Karma Pakshi to approximately 600 participants at Dhagpo Kagyu Ling.

The historical Mahasiddha (accomplished master) Karma Pakshi was the very first person in Buddhist history to be recognized as having deliberately taken rebirth through the power of his boundless compassion and realisation. He was motivated by the wish to bless and give guidance to beings in confusion, leading them to liberation from conditionned existence. Thus, the tulku lineages originated in Tibet with the Karmapas of the Kagyu school. Before he died, the great accomplished master Dusum Khyenpa (1110 – 1193), the First Karmapa, fortold his own rebirth as the Second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi (1204-1283), who was then the first tulku formally recognized as such.

Karma Pakshi is more than a historical figure, though. He is the manifest expression of enlightenment, accessible beyond time and space to the devoted practitioner who through meditative absorbtion can realize his or her own fundamental mind as being of the same nature as enlightened Karma Pakshi, that is, as having the same enlightened qualities.

In order to discover this dimension of our own mind, we must first be introduced by a realized master to the mandala – the sacred universe – of Karma Pakshi. Through this, we are able to practise his sadhana, or ritual, with all the according visualisations and mantras.

The Karma Pakshi practice is a guru yoga of the Vajrayana path. Thus it must be based on the foundations of the Hinayana path, focusing on freeing oneself from the sufferings of cyclic existence, and the Mahayana path, the altruistic commitment to help others be free of their dissatisfaction and suffering, and ultimately attain enlightenment.

In order to strengthen these fundamental aspirations in everyone present, Shamar Rinpoche began with the refuge commitments and then gave the formal vows of refuge to new practitioners.

It is always an occasion of great blessing and joy to receive an empowerment of this sort from such a great master. It imparts a powerful feeling of unity and purpose which inspires our practice.