Meeting Bhante

On 30th December we went to see Bhante. It was a delightful meeting with lots of to reflect on. A few highlights are his thoughts on initiations etc in the Tibetan tradition, that they are to be taken poeticly otherwise they become rites and rituals (my interpretation), I plant seeds of higher vision in myself and I nurture that seed and it grows. It is not that some "other" being does it to me. I found this empowering. He said that what comes from the outside is inspiration. He was very affirming of our going forth and reflected on his own and how it is hard to do that now, in fact there are signs saying Sadhus will be prosecuted up in places. He also encouraged us to bring back our learnings into the order and said we will come back more mature order members. His thoughts on Tsultrim Allione being an emanation of Machig labdron were "we are all emanations of Machig". Also that the nature of mind context is just another context, not a higher teaching.