Lama Padma Gyatso is the resident lama of Chagdud Gonpa Amrita in Seattle. He and his wife, Susan, have three grown children—Jesse, Jordan, and Melong—all of whom have children of their own. Lama Dorje and Lama Trinley spoke with them at Amrita as sangha children played in the background.
Lama Trinley: As dharma practitioners raising children and working toward integrating spiritual practice into our family life, we experience everything from inspiration to frustration. Since you two know something about that, could you offer some advice to other dharma parents?
Lama Padma: We went to India in search of dharma, and that was where our first son, Jesse, was born. We also met our teacher, Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, a monk, whose advice was to renounce worldly life, go into retreat, and meditate, just as he had. He was like Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi who went off into the mountains alone to practice. All Kalu Rinpoche ever said to me was, “Go .Leave. Meditate. You can do it. But if you don’t leave, you will never do it.”That was pretty much the message I got from him for years. He never modified it, but he did become kinder to me because I had some faith and was able to hang in there, I suppose.
His advice was very difficult for me at the time; I felt my family responsibilities were competing with what I imagined were my dharma responsibilities. I lived for many years with that conflict, and it was not a pleasurable experience. I was always flipping back and forth between the two. That didn’t change much for about ten years, until I made some inroads with my practice. Then, as the dharma began to blend a little with my mind, I saw that there was no competition between my family and my spiritual practice, and they could even support each other. But that perspective didn’t come right away.
Dharma practice is a struggle for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the responsibilities of a family can teach you to approach practice in a more sincere way. With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and how you are making things a little more difficult for your family by being absent, even if it’s just for a short time. So you can apply yourself very directly to your practice.
One of the first things I realized when I began to practice more, doing short retreats, was that I didn’t have bodhichitta. My concerns were very limited. Even though I would say the prayers of bodhichitta at the beginning of each practice session and meditate on them, I was certain that any real love I felt never truly extended beyond the confines of my self-clinging, in particular beyond my immediate family. That was very disheartening. I really wanted to accomplish something, but all I learned was what my problems and limitations were.
Susan: We had met the dharma before we had children. Without dharma, especially the teachings on impermanence, I don’t think we could have managed, either in our marriage or in raising the children. The dharma really did seem to be a part of our daily life, so I never felt the same competition between dharma and family that Lama Padma did.
One day while we were receiving teachings at Kalu Rinpoche’s gonpa in India, I was sitting in the back so I could look out the window and watch Jesse play in the courtyard. At one point I became so engrossed in the teachings that I forgot to look out for some time until suddenly Kalu Rinpoche said to me, “Dechen Wangmo!” That was the name he had given me. He pointed out the window and said, “Jesse!” Jesse, less than two years old at the time, had climbed up onto the gonpa roof. I leapt up and ran down the stairs. By the time I got to Jesse, a monk had rescued him. While I was out of the room, Kalu Rinpoche said, “You saw how Dechen Wangmo ran. That’s the way you need to practice dharma. Your mind is like that baby on the roof. You need to practice dharma— just like that.”
Lama Dorje: If one of your students asked you if he or she should have children, what would you say?
Lama Padma: When they ask it’s usually too late, but I have specifically advised some new practitioners to wait to have children— to pray about it for a while. I prefer not to get that involved in people’s personal lives, but I have said that it would be better if dharma blended with their minds before they had children. That’s just my opinion. We never planned on having children— they just happened. For some people, dharma practice may mean taking on a new level of responsibility. If they have children, it’s important to assume the responsibility of parenting before taking on a lot more. That being said, however, I have to admit that I did leave my family for personal retreats for up to six months at a time, and I have no regrets.
Susan: Looking back now, I can understand why he needed to leave. He had become almost transparent as a father and a husband. He had not made a firm decision to be with us, because his conflict with the dharma was so great. Kalu Rinpoche made it clear that it would be best for him to do retreat for a while. The only reason for the conflict in his mind was that he loved us so much. But when his teacher said, “Practice in retreat for six months,” he agreed to do it. It was winter of 1973. Jesse was five and Jordan was 18 months old. One day he was there, and then he was gone.
When my mother found out that Kalu Rinpoche had told Richard to do retreat, she was furious. She drove from Long Beach to Hollywood and somehow managed to find Kalu Rinpoche. She was quite upset with him. She said, “Rinpoche, what kind of a religion would make a man leave his wife and two little children?” Kalu Rinpoche looked at my irate mother and said, “Ah, Karma Yontan (that’s what he called Lama Padma), he loves Dechen Wangmo. He loves her so much I sometimes worry he will not even stay in retreat. Maybe he will just come home.” My mother didn’t know what to say after that. I think that in talking with him she started to soften a little; her anger melted. Kalu Rinpoche always knew the right things to say.
Having Lama Padma in retreat was hard for me at first, because I missed him so much. We had always been together, but suddenly, when I sat down to have a cup of tea, he wasn’t there. Taking care of two little children was extremely difficult for me; I kind of lost it at times, but I didn’t give up. We were living in Seattle and at that time, the early seventies, there was no dharma community where I might have found support from others who had gone through similar experiences. As intense as it was, though, I learned a lot.
At the end of his retreat, Lama Padma came back with a firm resolve to be my husband and a father to his children. The following year our daughter, Melong, came into our lives.
Lama Trinley: How did you meet Chagdud Rinpoche and come to establish a Chagdud Gonpa center?
Lama Padma: Around 1981 I was asked to start a Kagyupa center with weekly meditations. Since we occasionally hosted other lamas, I got a call from someone asking if a Rinpoche, Chagdud Tulku, could teach at our house. His name sounded familiar, so I agreed. After that, we hosted him and Lama Tsering regularly at our house. Rinpoche didn’t like being fussed over, so he would eat at the kitchen table with us. I’m sure over the years he had a strong influence on our kids just by being there.
Susan: He would sit there with a knife and a piece of meat and just watch every- thing going on around him. I remember looking at him once and thinking, “He’s a buddha, and he’s sitting here.” Devotion began to arise naturally, and then everything unfolded when he started offering more retreats here.
Lama Padma: In the beginning, Rinpoche came to Seattle five or six times a year. Then, as his activities began to increase everywhere, he came less frequently, but always a few times a year. Rinpoche was very respectful of the boundaries of our center. I supported his activities up to a point, but I had a responsibility to hold the Kagyu center.
I had the opportunity to observe Rinpoche for many years. When he first came, he said, “If you have any questions, ask me.” He knew that all my practices were written in Tibetan. Because of that I always had questions about translation. In retrospect I suppose it was the traditional way a prospective student and teacher check each other out. I wasn’t looking for more practices or another teacher. The only thing I was looking for was more time. But over the years, going to Cottage Grove and Williams, it became obvious to me that Rinpoche was my teacher. In 1989, when my responsibilities at the Kagyu center came to a proper conclusion, I offered to help Rinpoche with Amrita in a more active way. Since then our sangha has been meeting for meditation at least once a week.
“With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and apply yourself directly to your practice.”
Lama Trinley: What aspects of the dharma did you talk about with your kids?
Lama Padma: We mostly talked about karma and impermanence. We never talked much about meditation or tried to get them to meditate. I don’t think they would have liked that.
Susan: And generosity. They often gave up their rooms for visiting lamas or sang- ha members who needed a place to stay, and that taught them non-attachment as well.
Lama Padma: They didn’t have a strong feeling about their possessions or personal space. It’s hard to know what you actually teach your children versus what they learn on their own. Jesse was always very generous; he was always giving his things away. We couldn’t have taught him that—it was just his nature, and it still is.
Susan: In India, when he was only two, beggars would come up to us and he would look at me with tears in his eyes and say, “Mama, give.” I didn’t think kids could be like that. Maybe we didn’t really do so much.
Lama Padma: Like the rest of us, children are always experiencing the pain of loss and change. They don’t really know what to make of it all. I think those are the most valuable points that parents can emphasize: that actions have effects and that things are impermanent. When we were in India, we met the great Chatral Rinpoche and asked him what we should teach our children. He said to teach them the refuge prayer. So when they were young, we would always say refuge prayers at night with them and offering prayers before we ate. I don’t think we worried about whether they would become Buddhists, but we did want to make sure they had some understanding of karma and impermanence so they would have an advantage in their lives. We knew they would be better off.
Susan: You can only give them so much. Although all our children are respectful of the dharma, our daughter, Melong, seemed to have a real interest in Buddhism. When she was very young, I took her to retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and she loved his teachings for children. She also went to the preschool at the Japanese Seattle Buddhist Church. Finally, when she was in high school, she went to one of Rinpoche’s teachings and understood how meaningful it was.
Lama Padma: When our boys were young, the national Buddhist community was not highly developed. Our living room was a shrine room, which was not normal. Other children hadn’t even heard of Buddhism and didn’t understand it, so our kids felt embarrassed. Now Buddhism has become more of a presence in our society. My parents had such a hard time with me in the sixties. I saw that they suffered because my interest in Buddhism was so far outside their experience. Now, we worry about being parents and try to gauge how both we and our children are doing, according to our ideas about dharma.
From my perspective, I’m not sure it helps to have too many ideas about raising children, or what you are going to do with them, as if they were a product that you ordered. Nor should we be disappointed when they don’t fulfill a warranty we thought we had on them. It’s not just what we do. Kids come in with their own karma. Basically, our job is to learn how to create conditions for them to work with that karma so they will begin to understand how cause and effect works, and how parents and children can grow together.
Some kids have difficult karma. When one of our sons was very young, he always felt as if he were being choked by his shirts, and whenever he heard sirens, he would start crying and say they were coming to get him. Later, he flirted with being an outlaw and got kicked out of the public schools, but we kept praying and continued working with him. Once when he got busted, the police were involved and he said to me, “Your dharma protectors—that’s why I got busted.” And he was actually very happy about it. My kids had heard me doing protector practice every night the whole time they lived at home.
Susan: First we grounded him, and then we sent him to a Catholic all-boys high school. All of our children went to Catholic schools at some point. It turned out to be wonderful for him. He responded well to the discipline and excelled in so many ways. He loved to debate. He loved the spiritual retreats they offered and became the leader of a prayer group, but never converted to Catholicism.
Lama Padma: The thing is to hang in there— to keep going, as Chagdud Rinpoche always says. Keep raising your kids. It never gets easier, because each situation and child is unique. You need to have tools that will work in any situation. The amount of intelligence you can bring to any situation is directly related to the amount of patience you have. If you’re angry with yourself, your child, or the situation, you can’t function well. You will only make mistakes. And that’s what you will regret.
Fortunately, our family has been really close. I think it is because Susan was always so communicative, not letting things go unresolved. Just making sure that communication was open saved us many times.
Susan: I found I was interpreting the world for them; they needed that. When they saw a disturbing film, they would come to me for advice on how to feel or think about it, so that it wasn’t so threatening. It takes a lot of energy, but being present for and listening to your children helps them interpret the world and gives them the means to work with it. Every night, while I was preparing dinner, my children would tell me about their days, and I would try to respond to each one appropriately.
One night, when one of our sons was in junior high school, an upset mother called to say that he and her son were at a drug dealer’s house; she didn’t know what to do. I calmed her down and then said to Lama Padma, “Get your coat. We’re going somewhere.” We went to the house, knocked on the door, and let ourselves in. We walked through the whole house, looking around and sniffing at everything. It was quiet, a few kids sitting around, a couple on the couch with
their arms around each other, and some in the kitchen eating popcorn. We found our son in the back bedroom reading comic books on a bunk bed. When we walked in, he looked up and said, “Hi.” We said we had come to offer him a ride home. I called the upset mother and told her what we had seen. We always tried to check out everything. It seems you have to do that— just go check it out and see what they’re doing.
Lama Padma: Susan and I came out of a youth culture that tried everything. Not much shocked us. And although we were worried by some of the things our kids did, we weren’t provincial or narrow-minded. We weren’t overwhelmed because we had experienced, or at least had seen, a lot. I guess our kids knew we had some perspective just by the way we lived.
During a certain period, we were even seeing a family counselor about one of our children. When I was at Rigdzin Ling, I asked Rinpoche for his advice. I’ve never talked to lamas much about personal things. That’s not my relationship with my teachers. But I explained to him very clearly what was going on in my life and in my mind with this one child. And then I asked, “What should I do, Rinpoche? Should I do this, should I do that?” He looked right at me and everything stopped. He said, “Have no hopes or fears.” It was almost as if he had shouted “P’hat!” His words cut right through me. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a hopeful answer. I just stood there in shock because it was way too much for me. But by the time I got to the door, I realized that that was it. That was the answer. I just stayed with that answer and it has become the answer to everything for me.
Lama Padma Gyatso is the resident lama of Chagdud Gonpa Amrita in Seattle. He and his wife, Susan, have three grown children—Jesse, Jordan, and Melong—all of whom have children of their own. Lama Dorje and Lama Trinley spoke with them at Amrita as sangha children played in the background.
Lama Trinley: As dharma practitioners raising children and working toward integrating spiritual practice into our family life, we experience everything from inspiration to frustration. Since you two know something about that, could you offer some advice to other dharma parents?
Lama Padma: We went to India in search of dharma, and that was where our first son, Jesse, was born. We also met our teacher, Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, a monk, whose advice was to renounce worldly life, go into retreat, and meditate, just as he had. He was like Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi who went off into the mountains alone to practice. All Kalu Rinpoche ever said to me was, “Go .Leave. Meditate. You can do it. But if you don’t leave, you will never do it.”That was pretty much the message I got from him for years. He never modified it, but he did become kinder to me because I had some faith and was able to hang in there, I suppose.
His advice was very difficult for me at the time; I felt my family responsibilities were competing with what I imagined were my dharma responsibilities. I lived for many years with that conflict, and it was not a pleasurable experience. I was always flipping back and forth between the two. That didn’t change much for about ten years, until I made some inroads with my practice. Then, as the dharma began to blend a little with my mind, I saw that there was no competition between my family and my spiritual practice, and they could even support each other. But that perspective didn’t come right away.
Dharma practice is a struggle for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the responsibilities of a family can teach you to approach practice in a more sincere way. With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and how you are making things a little more difficult for your family by being absent, even if it’s just for a short time. So you can apply yourself very directly to your practice.
One of the first things I realized when I began to practice more, doing short retreats, was that I didn’t have bodhichitta. My concerns were very limited. Even though I would say the prayers of bodhichitta at the beginning of each practice session and meditate on them, I was certain that any real love I felt never truly extended beyond the confines of my self-clinging, in particular beyond my immediate family. That was very disheartening. I really wanted to accomplish something, but all I learned was what my problems and limitations were.
Susan: We had met the dharma before we had children. Without dharma, especially the teachings on impermanence, I don’t think we could have managed, either in our marriage or in raising the children. The dharma really did seem to be a part of our daily life, so I never felt the same competition between dharma and family that Lama Padma did.
One day while we were receiving teachings at Kalu Rinpoche’s gonpa in India, I was sitting in the back so I could look out the window and watch Jesse play in the courtyard. At one point I became so engrossed in the teachings that I forgot to look out for some time until suddenly Kalu Rinpoche said to me, “Dechen Wangmo!” That was the name he had given me. He pointed out the window and said, “Jesse!” Jesse, less than two years old at the time, had climbed up onto the gonpa roof. I leapt up and ran down the stairs. By the time I got to Jesse, a monk had rescued him. While I was out of the room, Kalu Rinpoche said, “You saw how Dechen Wangmo ran. That’s the way you need to practice dharma. Your mind is like that baby on the roof. You need to practice dharma— just like that.”
Lama Dorje: If one of your students asked you if he or she should have children, what would you say?
Lama Padma: When they ask it’s usually too late, but I have specifically advised some new practitioners to wait to have children— to pray about it for a while. I prefer not to get that involved in people’s personal lives, but I have said that it would be better if dharma blended with their minds before they had children. That’s just my opinion. We never planned on having children— they just happened. For some people, dharma practice may mean taking on a new level of responsibility. If they have children, it’s important to assume the responsibility of parenting before taking on a lot more. That being said, however, I have to admit that I did leave my family for personal retreats for up to six months at a time, and I have no regrets.
Susan: Looking back now, I can understand why he needed to leave. He had become almost transparent as a father and a husband. He had not made a firm decision to be with us, because his conflict with the dharma was so great. Kalu Rinpoche made it clear that it would be best for him to do retreat for a while. The only reason for the conflict in his mind was that he loved us so much. But when his teacher said, “Practice in retreat for six months,” he agreed to do it. It was winter of 1973. Jesse was five and Jordan was 18 months old. One day he was there, and then he was gone.
When my mother found out that Kalu Rinpoche had told Richard to do retreat, she was furious. She drove from Long Beach to Hollywood and somehow managed to find Kalu Rinpoche. She was quite upset with him. She said, “Rinpoche, what kind of a religion would make a man leave his wife and two little children?” Kalu Rinpoche looked at my irate mother and said, “Ah, Karma Yontan (that’s what he called Lama Padma), he loves Dechen Wangmo. He loves her so much I sometimes worry he will not even stay in retreat. Maybe he will just come home.” My mother didn’t know what to say after that. I think that in talking with him she started to soften a little; her anger melted. Kalu Rinpoche always knew the right things to say.
Having Lama Padma in retreat was hard for me at first, because I missed him so much. We had always been together, but suddenly, when I sat down to have a cup of tea, he wasn’t there. Taking care of two little children was extremely difficult for me; I kind of lost it at times, but I didn’t give up. We were living in Seattle and at that time, the early seventies, there was no dharma community where I might have found support from others who had gone through similar experiences. As intense as it was, though, I learned a lot.
At the end of his retreat, Lama Padma came back with a firm resolve to be my husband and a father to his children. The following year our daughter, Melong, came into our lives.
Lama Trinley: How did you meet Chagdud Rinpoche and come to establish a Chagdud Gonpa center?
Lama Padma: Around 1981 I was asked to start a Kagyupa center with weekly meditations. Since we occasionally hosted other lamas, I got a call from someone asking if a Rinpoche, Chagdud Tulku, could teach at our house. His name sounded familiar, so I agreed. After that, we hosted him and Lama Tsering regularly at our house. Rinpoche didn’t like being fussed over, so he would eat at the kitchen table with us. I’m sure over the years he had a strong influence on our kids just by being there.
Susan: He would sit there with a knife and a piece of meat and just watch every- thing going on around him. I remember looking at him once and thinking, “He’s a buddha, and he’s sitting here.” Devotion began to arise naturally, and then everything unfolded when he started offering more retreats here.
Lama Padma: In the beginning, Rinpoche came to Seattle five or six times a year. Then, as his activities began to increase everywhere, he came less frequently, but always a few times a year. Rinpoche was very respectful of the boundaries of our center. I supported his activities up to a point, but I had a responsibility to hold the Kagyu center.
I had the opportunity to observe Rinpoche for many years. When he first came, he said, “If you have any questions, ask me.” He knew that all my practices were written in Tibetan. Because of that I always had questions about translation. In retrospect I suppose it was the traditional way a prospective student and teacher check each other out. I wasn’t looking for more practices or another teacher. The only thing I was looking for was more time. But over the years, going to Cottage Grove and Williams, it became obvious to me that Rinpoche was my teacher. In 1989, when my responsibilities at the Kagyu center came to a proper conclusion, I offered to help Rinpoche with Amrita in a more active way. Since then our sangha has been meeting for meditation at least once a week.
“With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and apply yourself directly to your practice.”
Lama Trinley: What aspects of the dharma did you talk about with your kids?
Lama Padma: We mostly talked about karma and impermanence. We never talked much about meditation or tried to get them to meditate. I don’t think they would have liked that.
Susan: And generosity. They often gave up their rooms for visiting lamas or sang- ha members who needed a place to stay, and that taught them non-attachment as well.
Lama Padma: They didn’t have a strong feeling about their possessions or personal space. It’s hard to know what you actually teach your children versus what they learn on their own. Jesse was always very generous; he was always giving his things away. We couldn’t have taught him that—it was just his nature, and it still is.
Susan: In India, when he was only two, beggars would come up to us and he would look at me with tears in his eyes and say, “Mama, give.” I didn’t think kids could be like that. Maybe we didn’t really do so much.
Lama Padma: Like the rest of us, children are always experiencing the pain of loss and change. They don’t really know what to make of it all. I think those are the most valuable points that parents can emphasize: that actions have effects and that things are impermanent. When we were in India, we met the great Chatral Rinpoche and asked him what we should teach our children. He said to teach them the refuge prayer. So when they were young, we would always say refuge prayers at night with them and offering prayers before we ate. I don’t think we worried about whether they would become Buddhists, but we did want to make sure they had some understanding of karma and impermanence so they would have an advantage in their lives. We knew they would be better off.
Susan: You can only give them so much. Although all our children are respectful of the dharma, our daughter, Melong, seemed to have a real interest in Buddhism. When she was very young, I took her to retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and she loved his teachings for children. She also went to the preschool at the Japanese Seattle Buddhist Church. Finally, when she was in high school, she went to one of Rinpoche’s teachings and understood how meaningful it was.
Lama Padma: When our boys were young, the national Buddhist community was not highly developed. Our living room was a shrine room, which was not normal. Other children hadn’t even heard of Buddhism and didn’t understand it, so our kids felt embarrassed. Now Buddhism has become more of a presence in our society. My parents had such a hard time with me in the sixties. I saw that they suffered because my interest in Buddhism was so far outside their experience. Now, we worry about being parents and try to gauge how both we and our children are doing, according to our ideas about dharma.
From my perspective, I’m not sure it helps to have too many ideas about raising children, or what you are going to do with them, as if they were a product that you ordered. Nor should we be disappointed when they don’t fulfill a warranty we thought we had on them. It’s not just what we do. Kids come in with their own karma. Basically, our job is to learn how to create conditions for them to work with that karma so they will begin to understand how cause and effect works, and how parents and children can grow together.
Some kids have difficult karma. When one of our sons was very young, he always felt as if he were being choked by his shirts, and whenever he heard sirens, he would start crying and say they were coming to get him. Later, he flirted with being an outlaw and got kicked out of the public schools, but we kept praying and continued working with him. Once when he got busted, the police were involved and he said to me, “Your dharma protectors—that’s why I got busted.” And he was actually very happy about it. My kids had heard me doing protector practice every night the whole time they lived at home.
Susan: First we grounded him, and then we sent him to a Catholic all-boys high school. All of our children went to Catholic schools at some point. It turned out to be wonderful for him. He responded well to the discipline and excelled in so many ways. He loved to debate. He loved the spiritual retreats they offered and became the leader of a prayer group, but never converted to Catholicism.
Lama Padma: The thing is to hang in there— to keep going, as Chagdud Rinpoche always says. Keep raising your kids. It never gets easier, because each situation and child is unique. You need to have tools that will work in any situation. The amount of intelligence you can bring to any situation is directly related to the amount of patience you have. If you’re angry with yourself, your child, or the situation, you can’t function well. You will only make mistakes. And that’s what you will regret.
Fortunately, our family has been really close. I think it is because Susan was always so communicative, not letting things go unresolved. Just making sure that communication was open saved us many times.
Susan: I found I was interpreting the world for them; they needed that. When they saw a disturbing film, they would come to me for advice on how to feel or think about it, so that it wasn’t so threatening. It takes a lot of energy, but being present for and listening to your children helps them interpret the world and gives them the means to work with it. Every night, while I was preparing dinner, my children would tell me about their days, and I would try to respond to each one appropriately.
One night, when one of our sons was in junior high school, an upset mother called to say that he and her son were at a drug dealer’s house; she didn’t know what to do. I calmed her down and then said to Lama Padma, “Get your coat. We’re going somewhere.” We went to the house, knocked on the door, and let ourselves in. We walked through the whole house, looking around and sniffing at everything. It was quiet, a few kids sitting around, a couple on the couch with
their arms around each other, and some in the kitchen eating popcorn. We found our son in the back bedroom reading comic books on a bunk bed. When we walked in, he looked up and said, “Hi.” We said we had come to offer him a ride home. I called the upset mother and told her what we had seen. We always tried to check out everything. It seems you have to do that— just go check it out and see what they’re doing.
Lama Padma: Susan and I came out of a youth culture that tried everything. Not much shocked us. And although we were worried by some of the things our kids did, we weren’t provincial or narrow-minded. We weren’t overwhelmed because we had experienced, or at least had seen, a lot. I guess our kids knew we had some perspective just by the way we lived.
During a certain period, we were even seeing a family counselor about one of our children. When I was at Rigdzin Ling, I asked Rinpoche for his advice. I’ve never talked to lamas much about personal things. That’s not my relationship with my teachers. But I explained to him very clearly what was going on in my life and in my mind with this one child. And then I asked, “What should I do, Rinpoche? Should I do this, should I do that?” He looked right at me and everything stopped. He said, “Have no hopes or fears.” It was almost as if he had shouted “P’hat!” His words cut right through me. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a hopeful answer. I just stood there in shock because it was way too much for me. But by the time I got to the door, I realized that that was it. That was the answer. I just stayed with that answer and it has become the answer to everything for me.
Lama Padma Gyatso is the resident lama of Chagdud Gonpa Amrita in Seattle. He and his wife, Susan, have three grown children—Jesse, Jordan, and Melong—all of whom have children of their own. Lama Dorje and Lama Trinley spoke with them at Amrita as sangha children played in the background.
Lama Trinley: As dharma practitioners raising children and working toward integrating spiritual practice into our family life, we experience everything from inspiration to frustration. Since you two know something about that, could you offer some advice to other dharma parents?
Lama Padma: We went to India in search of dharma, and that was where our first son, Jesse, was born. We also met our teacher, Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, a monk, whose advice was to renounce worldly life, go into retreat, and meditate, just as he had. He was like Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi who went off into the mountains alone to practice. All Kalu Rinpoche ever said to me was, “Go .Leave. Meditate. You can do it. But if you don’t leave, you will never do it.”That was pretty much the message I got from him for years. He never modified it, but he did become kinder to me because I had some faith and was able to hang in there, I suppose.
His advice was very difficult for me at the time; I felt my family responsibilities were competing with what I imagined were my dharma responsibilities. I lived for many years with that conflict, and it was not a pleasurable experience. I was always flipping back and forth between the two. That didn’t change much for about ten years, until I made some inroads with my practice. Then, as the dharma began to blend a little with my mind, I saw that there was no competition between my family and my spiritual practice, and they could even support each other. But that perspective didn’t come right away.
Dharma practice is a struggle for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the responsibilities of a family can teach you to approach practice in a more sincere way. With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and how you are making things a little more difficult for your family by being absent, even if it’s just for a short time. So you can apply yourself very directly to your practice.
One of the first things I realized when I began to practice more, doing short retreats, was that I didn’t have bodhichitta. My concerns were very limited. Even though I would say the prayers of bodhichitta at the beginning of each practice session and meditate on them, I was certain that any real love I felt never truly extended beyond the confines of my self-clinging, in particular beyond my immediate family. That was very disheartening. I really wanted to accomplish something, but all I learned was what my problems and limitations were.
Susan: We had met the dharma before we had children. Without dharma, especially the teachings on impermanence, I don’t think we could have managed, either in our marriage or in raising the children. The dharma really did seem to be a part of our daily life, so I never felt the same competition between dharma and family that Lama Padma did.
One day while we were receiving teachings at Kalu Rinpoche’s gonpa in India, I was sitting in the back so I could look out the window and watch Jesse play in the courtyard. At one point I became so engrossed in the teachings that I forgot to look out for some time until suddenly Kalu Rinpoche said to me, “Dechen Wangmo!” That was the name he had given me. He pointed out the window and said, “Jesse!” Jesse, less than two years old at the time, had climbed up onto the gonpa roof. I leapt up and ran down the stairs. By the time I got to Jesse, a monk had rescued him. While I was out of the room, Kalu Rinpoche said, “You saw how Dechen Wangmo ran. That’s the way you need to practice dharma. Your mind is like that baby on the roof. You need to practice dharma— just like that.”
Lama Dorje: If one of your students asked you if he or she should have children, what would you say?
Lama Padma: When they ask it’s usually too late, but I have specifically advised some new practitioners to wait to have children— to pray about it for a while. I prefer not to get that involved in people’s personal lives, but I have said that it would be better if dharma blended with their minds before they had children. That’s just my opinion. We never planned on having children— they just happened. For some people, dharma practice may mean taking on a new level of responsibility. If they have children, it’s important to assume the responsibility of parenting before taking on a lot more. That being said, however, I have to admit that I did leave my family for personal retreats for up to six months at a time, and I have no regrets.
Susan: Looking back now, I can understand why he needed to leave. He had become almost transparent as a father and a husband. He had not made a firm decision to be with us, because his conflict with the dharma was so great. Kalu Rinpoche made it clear that it would be best for him to do retreat for a while. The only reason for the conflict in his mind was that he loved us so much. But when his teacher said, “Practice in retreat for six months,” he agreed to do it. It was winter of 1973. Jesse was five and Jordan was 18 months old. One day he was there, and then he was gone.
When my mother found out that Kalu Rinpoche had told Richard to do retreat, she was furious. She drove from Long Beach to Hollywood and somehow managed to find Kalu Rinpoche. She was quite upset with him. She said, “Rinpoche, what kind of a religion would make a man leave his wife and two little children?” Kalu Rinpoche looked at my irate mother and said, “Ah, Karma Yontan (that’s what he called Lama Padma), he loves Dechen Wangmo. He loves her so much I sometimes worry he will not even stay in retreat. Maybe he will just come home.” My mother didn’t know what to say after that. I think that in talking with him she started to soften a little; her anger melted. Kalu Rinpoche always knew the right things to say.
Having Lama Padma in retreat was hard for me at first, because I missed him so much. We had always been together, but suddenly, when I sat down to have a cup of tea, he wasn’t there. Taking care of two little children was extremely difficult for me; I kind of lost it at times, but I didn’t give up. We were living in Seattle and at that time, the early seventies, there was no dharma community where I might have found support from others who had gone through similar experiences. As intense as it was, though, I learned a lot.
At the end of his retreat, Lama Padma came back with a firm resolve to be my husband and a father to his children. The following year our daughter, Melong, came into our lives.
Lama Trinley: How did you meet Chagdud Rinpoche and come to establish a Chagdud Gonpa center?
Lama Padma: Around 1981 I was asked to start a Kagyupa center with weekly meditations. Since we occasionally hosted other lamas, I got a call from someone asking if a Rinpoche, Chagdud Tulku, could teach at our house. His name sounded familiar, so I agreed. After that, we hosted him and Lama Tsering regularly at our house. Rinpoche didn’t like being fussed over, so he would eat at the kitchen table with us. I’m sure over the years he had a strong influence on our kids just by being there.
Susan: He would sit there with a knife and a piece of meat and just watch every- thing going on around him. I remember looking at him once and thinking, “He’s a buddha, and he’s sitting here.” Devotion began to arise naturally, and then everything unfolded when he started offering more retreats here.
Lama Padma: In the beginning, Rinpoche came to Seattle five or six times a year. Then, as his activities began to increase everywhere, he came less frequently, but always a few times a year. Rinpoche was very respectful of the boundaries of our center. I supported his activities up to a point, but I had a responsibility to hold the Kagyu center.
I had the opportunity to observe Rinpoche for many years. When he first came, he said, “If you have any questions, ask me.” He knew that all my practices were written in Tibetan. Because of that I always had questions about translation. In retrospect I suppose it was the traditional way a prospective student and teacher check each other out. I wasn’t looking for more practices or another teacher. The only thing I was looking for was more time. But over the years, going to Cottage Grove and Williams, it became obvious to me that Rinpoche was my teacher. In 1989, when my responsibilities at the Kagyu center came to a proper conclusion, I offered to help Rinpoche with Amrita in a more active way. Since then our sangha has been meeting for meditation at least once a week.
“With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and apply yourself directly to your practice.”
Lama Trinley: What aspects of the dharma did you talk about with your kids?
Lama Padma: We mostly talked about karma and impermanence. We never talked much about meditation or tried to get them to meditate. I don’t think they would have liked that.
Susan: And generosity. They often gave up their rooms for visiting lamas or sang- ha members who needed a place to stay, and that taught them non-attachment as well.
Lama Padma: They didn’t have a strong feeling about their possessions or personal space. It’s hard to know what you actually teach your children versus what they learn on their own. Jesse was always very generous; he was always giving his things away. We couldn’t have taught him that—it was just his nature, and it still is.
Susan: In India, when he was only two, beggars would come up to us and he would look at me with tears in his eyes and say, “Mama, give.” I didn’t think kids could be like that. Maybe we didn’t really do so much.
Lama Padma: Like the rest of us, children are always experiencing the pain of loss and change. They don’t really know what to make of it all. I think those are the most valuable points that parents can emphasize: that actions have effects and that things are impermanent. When we were in India, we met the great Chatral Rinpoche and asked him what we should teach our children. He said to teach them the refuge prayer. So when they were young, we would always say refuge prayers at night with them and offering prayers before we ate. I don’t think we worried about whether they would become Buddhists, but we did want to make sure they had some understanding of karma and impermanence so they would have an advantage in their lives. We knew they would be better off.
Susan: You can only give them so much. Although all our children are respectful of the dharma, our daughter, Melong, seemed to have a real interest in Buddhism. When she was very young, I took her to retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and she loved his teachings for children. She also went to the preschool at the Japanese Seattle Buddhist Church. Finally, when she was in high school, she went to one of Rinpoche’s teachings and understood how meaningful it was.
Lama Padma: When our boys were young, the national Buddhist community was not highly developed. Our living room was a shrine room, which was not normal. Other children hadn’t even heard of Buddhism and didn’t understand it, so our kids felt embarrassed. Now Buddhism has become more of a presence in our society. My parents had such a hard time with me in the sixties. I saw that they suffered because my interest in Buddhism was so far outside their experience. Now, we worry about being parents and try to gauge how both we and our children are doing, according to our ideas about dharma.
From my perspective, I’m not sure it helps to have too many ideas about raising children, or what you are going to do with them, as if they were a product that you ordered. Nor should we be disappointed when they don’t fulfill a warranty we thought we had on them. It’s not just what we do. Kids come in with their own karma. Basically, our job is to learn how to create conditions for them to work with that karma so they will begin to understand how cause and effect works, and how parents and children can grow together.
Some kids have difficult karma. When one of our sons was very young, he always felt as if he were being choked by his shirts, and whenever he heard sirens, he would start crying and say they were coming to get him. Later, he flirted with being an outlaw and got kicked out of the public schools, but we kept praying and continued working with him. Once when he got busted, the police were involved and he said to me, “Your dharma protectors—that’s why I got busted.” And he was actually very happy about it. My kids had heard me doing protector practice every night the whole time they lived at home.
Susan: First we grounded him, and then we sent him to a Catholic all-boys high school. All of our children went to Catholic schools at some point. It turned out to be wonderful for him. He responded well to the discipline and excelled in so many ways. He loved to debate. He loved the spiritual retreats they offered and became the leader of a prayer group, but never converted to Catholicism.
Lama Padma: The thing is to hang in there— to keep going, as Chagdud Rinpoche always says. Keep raising your kids. It never gets easier, because each situation and child is unique. You need to have tools that will work in any situation. The amount of intelligence you can bring to any situation is directly related to the amount of patience you have. If you’re angry with yourself, your child, or the situation, you can’t function well. You will only make mistakes. And that’s what you will regret.
Fortunately, our family has been really close. I think it is because Susan was always so communicative, not letting things go unresolved. Just making sure that communication was open saved us many times.
Susan: I found I was interpreting the world for them; they needed that. When they saw a disturbing film, they would come to me for advice on how to feel or think about it, so that it wasn’t so threatening. It takes a lot of energy, but being present for and listening to your children helps them interpret the world and gives them the means to work with it. Every night, while I was preparing dinner, my children would tell me about their days, and I would try to respond to each one appropriately.
One night, when one of our sons was in junior high school, an upset mother called to say that he and her son were at a drug dealer’s house; she didn’t know what to do. I calmed her down and then said to Lama Padma, “Get your coat. We’re going somewhere.” We went to the house, knocked on the door, and let ourselves in. We walked through the whole house, looking around and sniffing at everything. It was quiet, a few kids sitting around, a couple on the couch with
their arms around each other, and some in the kitchen eating popcorn. We found our son in the back bedroom reading comic books on a bunk bed. When we walked in, he looked up and said, “Hi.” We said we had come to offer him a ride home. I called the upset mother and told her what we had seen. We always tried to check out everything. It seems you have to do that— just go check it out and see what they’re doing.
Lama Padma: Susan and I came out of a youth culture that tried everything. Not much shocked us. And although we were worried by some of the things our kids did, we weren’t provincial or narrow-minded. We weren’t overwhelmed because we had experienced, or at least had seen, a lot. I guess our kids knew we had some perspective just by the way we lived.
During a certain period, we were even seeing a family counselor about one of our children. When I was at Rigdzin Ling, I asked Rinpoche for his advice. I’ve never talked to lamas much about personal things. That’s not my relationship with my teachers. But I explained to him very clearly what was going on in my life and in my mind with this one child. And then I asked, “What should I do, Rinpoche? Should I do this, should I do that?” He looked right at me and everything stopped. He said, “Have no hopes or fears.” It was almost as if he had shouted “P’hat!” His words cut right through me. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a hopeful answer. I just stood there in shock because it was way too much for me. But by the time I got to the door, I realized that that was it. That was the answer. I just stayed with that answer and it has become the answer to everything for me.
Lama Padma Gyatso is the resident lama of Chagdud Gonpa Amrita in Seattle. He and his wife, Susan, have three grown children—Jesse, Jordan, and Melong—all of whom have children of their own. Lama Dorje and Lama Trinley spoke with them at Amrita as sangha children played in the background.
Lama Trinley: As dharma practitioners raising children and working toward integrating spiritual practice into our family life, we experience everything from inspiration to frustration. Since you two know something about that, could you offer some advice to other dharma parents?
Lama Padma: We went to India in search of dharma, and that was where our first son, Jesse, was born. We also met our teacher, Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, a monk, whose advice was to renounce worldly life, go into retreat, and meditate, just as he had. He was like Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi who went off into the mountains alone to practice. All Kalu Rinpoche ever said to me was, “Go .Leave. Meditate. You can do it. But if you don’t leave, you will never do it.”That was pretty much the message I got from him for years. He never modified it, but he did become kinder to me because I had some faith and was able to hang in there, I suppose.
His advice was very difficult for me at the time; I felt my family responsibilities were competing with what I imagined were my dharma responsibilities. I lived for many years with that conflict, and it was not a pleasurable experience. I was always flipping back and forth between the two. That didn’t change much for about ten years, until I made some inroads with my practice. Then, as the dharma began to blend a little with my mind, I saw that there was no competition between my family and my spiritual practice, and they could even support each other. But that perspective didn’t come right away.
Dharma practice is a struggle for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the responsibilities of a family can teach you to approach practice in a more sincere way. With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and how you are making things a little more difficult for your family by being absent, even if it’s just for a short time. So you can apply yourself very directly to your practice.
One of the first things I realized when I began to practice more, doing short retreats, was that I didn’t have bodhichitta. My concerns were very limited. Even though I would say the prayers of bodhichitta at the beginning of each practice session and meditate on them, I was certain that any real love I felt never truly extended beyond the confines of my self-clinging, in particular beyond my immediate family. That was very disheartening. I really wanted to accomplish something, but all I learned was what my problems and limitations were.
Susan: We had met the dharma before we had children. Without dharma, especially the teachings on impermanence, I don’t think we could have managed, either in our marriage or in raising the children. The dharma really did seem to be a part of our daily life, so I never felt the same competition between dharma and family that Lama Padma did.
One day while we were receiving teachings at Kalu Rinpoche’s gonpa in India, I was sitting in the back so I could look out the window and watch Jesse play in the courtyard. At one point I became so engrossed in the teachings that I forgot to look out for some time until suddenly Kalu Rinpoche said to me, “Dechen Wangmo!” That was the name he had given me. He pointed out the window and said, “Jesse!” Jesse, less than two years old at the time, had climbed up onto the gonpa roof. I leapt up and ran down the stairs. By the time I got to Jesse, a monk had rescued him. While I was out of the room, Kalu Rinpoche said, “You saw how Dechen Wangmo ran. That’s the way you need to practice dharma. Your mind is like that baby on the roof. You need to practice dharma— just like that.”
Lama Dorje: If one of your students asked you if he or she should have children, what would you say?
Lama Padma: When they ask it’s usually too late, but I have specifically advised some new practitioners to wait to have children— to pray about it for a while. I prefer not to get that involved in people’s personal lives, but I have said that it would be better if dharma blended with their minds before they had children. That’s just my opinion. We never planned on having children— they just happened. For some people, dharma practice may mean taking on a new level of responsibility. If they have children, it’s important to assume the responsibility of parenting before taking on a lot more. That being said, however, I have to admit that I did leave my family for personal retreats for up to six months at a time, and I have no regrets.
Susan: Looking back now, I can understand why he needed to leave. He had become almost transparent as a father and a husband. He had not made a firm decision to be with us, because his conflict with the dharma was so great. Kalu Rinpoche made it clear that it would be best for him to do retreat for a while. The only reason for the conflict in his mind was that he loved us so much. But when his teacher said, “Practice in retreat for six months,” he agreed to do it. It was winter of 1973. Jesse was five and Jordan was 18 months old. One day he was there, and then he was gone.
When my mother found out that Kalu Rinpoche had told Richard to do retreat, she was furious. She drove from Long Beach to Hollywood and somehow managed to find Kalu Rinpoche. She was quite upset with him. She said, “Rinpoche, what kind of a religion would make a man leave his wife and two little children?” Kalu Rinpoche looked at my irate mother and said, “Ah, Karma Yontan (that’s what he called Lama Padma), he loves Dechen Wangmo. He loves her so much I sometimes worry he will not even stay in retreat. Maybe he will just come home.” My mother didn’t know what to say after that. I think that in talking with him she started to soften a little; her anger melted. Kalu Rinpoche always knew the right things to say.
Having Lama Padma in retreat was hard for me at first, because I missed him so much. We had always been together, but suddenly, when I sat down to have a cup of tea, he wasn’t there. Taking care of two little children was extremely difficult for me; I kind of lost it at times, but I didn’t give up. We were living in Seattle and at that time, the early seventies, there was no dharma community where I might have found support from others who had gone through similar experiences. As intense as it was, though, I learned a lot.
At the end of his retreat, Lama Padma came back with a firm resolve to be my husband and a father to his children. The following year our daughter, Melong, came into our lives.
Lama Trinley: How did you meet Chagdud Rinpoche and come to establish a Chagdud Gonpa center?
Lama Padma: Around 1981 I was asked to start a Kagyupa center with weekly meditations. Since we occasionally hosted other lamas, I got a call from someone asking if a Rinpoche, Chagdud Tulku, could teach at our house. His name sounded familiar, so I agreed. After that, we hosted him and Lama Tsering regularly at our house. Rinpoche didn’t like being fussed over, so he would eat at the kitchen table with us. I’m sure over the years he had a strong influence on our kids just by being there.
Susan: He would sit there with a knife and a piece of meat and just watch every- thing going on around him. I remember looking at him once and thinking, “He’s a buddha, and he’s sitting here.” Devotion began to arise naturally, and then everything unfolded when he started offering more retreats here.
Lama Padma: In the beginning, Rinpoche came to Seattle five or six times a year. Then, as his activities began to increase everywhere, he came less frequently, but always a few times a year. Rinpoche was very respectful of the boundaries of our center. I supported his activities up to a point, but I had a responsibility to hold the Kagyu center.
I had the opportunity to observe Rinpoche for many years. When he first came, he said, “If you have any questions, ask me.” He knew that all my practices were written in Tibetan. Because of that I always had questions about translation. In retrospect I suppose it was the traditional way a prospective student and teacher check each other out. I wasn’t looking for more practices or another teacher. The only thing I was looking for was more time. But over the years, going to Cottage Grove and Williams, it became obvious to me that Rinpoche was my teacher. In 1989, when my responsibilities at the Kagyu center came to a proper conclusion, I offered to help Rinpoche with Amrita in a more active way. Since then our sangha has been meeting for meditation at least once a week.
“With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and apply yourself directly to your practice.”
Lama Trinley: What aspects of the dharma did you talk about with your kids?
Lama Padma: We mostly talked about karma and impermanence. We never talked much about meditation or tried to get them to meditate. I don’t think they would have liked that.
Susan: And generosity. They often gave up their rooms for visiting lamas or sang- ha members who needed a place to stay, and that taught them non-attachment as well.
Lama Padma: They didn’t have a strong feeling about their possessions or personal space. It’s hard to know what you actually teach your children versus what they learn on their own. Jesse was always very generous; he was always giving his things away. We couldn’t have taught him that—it was just his nature, and it still is.
Susan: In India, when he was only two, beggars would come up to us and he would look at me with tears in his eyes and say, “Mama, give.” I didn’t think kids could be like that. Maybe we didn’t really do so much.
Lama Padma: Like the rest of us, children are always experiencing the pain of loss and change. They don’t really know what to make of it all. I think those are the most valuable points that parents can emphasize: that actions have effects and that things are impermanent. When we were in India, we met the great Chatral Rinpoche and asked him what we should teach our children. He said to teach them the refuge prayer. So when they were young, we would always say refuge prayers at night with them and offering prayers before we ate. I don’t think we worried about whether they would become Buddhists, but we did want to make sure they had some understanding of karma and impermanence so they would have an advantage in their lives. We knew they would be better off.
Susan: You can only give them so much. Although all our children are respectful of the dharma, our daughter, Melong, seemed to have a real interest in Buddhism. When she was very young, I took her to retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and she loved his teachings for children. She also went to the preschool at the Japanese Seattle Buddhist Church. Finally, when she was in high school, she went to one of Rinpoche’s teachings and understood how meaningful it was.
Lama Padma: When our boys were young, the national Buddhist community was not highly developed. Our living room was a shrine room, which was not normal. Other children hadn’t even heard of Buddhism and didn’t understand it, so our kids felt embarrassed. Now Buddhism has become more of a presence in our society. My parents had such a hard time with me in the sixties. I saw that they suffered because my interest in Buddhism was so far outside their experience. Now, we worry about being parents and try to gauge how both we and our children are doing, according to our ideas about dharma.
From my perspective, I’m not sure it helps to have too many ideas about raising children, or what you are going to do with them, as if they were a product that you ordered. Nor should we be disappointed when they don’t fulfill a warranty we thought we had on them. It’s not just what we do. Kids come in with their own karma. Basically, our job is to learn how to create conditions for them to work with that karma so they will begin to understand how cause and effect works, and how parents and children can grow together.
Some kids have difficult karma. When one of our sons was very young, he always felt as if he were being choked by his shirts, and whenever he heard sirens, he would start crying and say they were coming to get him. Later, he flirted with being an outlaw and got kicked out of the public schools, but we kept praying and continued working with him. Once when he got busted, the police were involved and he said to me, “Your dharma protectors—that’s why I got busted.” And he was actually very happy about it. My kids had heard me doing protector practice every night the whole time they lived at home.
Susan: First we grounded him, and then we sent him to a Catholic all-boys high school. All of our children went to Catholic schools at some point. It turned out to be wonderful for him. He responded well to the discipline and excelled in so many ways. He loved to debate. He loved the spiritual retreats they offered and became the leader of a prayer group, but never converted to Catholicism.
Lama Padma: The thing is to hang in there— to keep going, as Chagdud Rinpoche always says. Keep raising your kids. It never gets easier, because each situation and child is unique. You need to have tools that will work in any situation. The amount of intelligence you can bring to any situation is directly related to the amount of patience you have. If you’re angry with yourself, your child, or the situation, you can’t function well. You will only make mistakes. And that’s what you will regret.
Fortunately, our family has been really close. I think it is because Susan was always so communicative, not letting things go unresolved. Just making sure that communication was open saved us many times.
Susan: I found I was interpreting the world for them; they needed that. When they saw a disturbing film, they would come to me for advice on how to feel or think about it, so that it wasn’t so threatening. It takes a lot of energy, but being present for and listening to your children helps them interpret the world and gives them the means to work with it. Every night, while I was preparing dinner, my children would tell me about their days, and I would try to respond to each one appropriately.
One night, when one of our sons was in junior high school, an upset mother called to say that he and her son were at a drug dealer’s house; she didn’t know what to do. I calmed her down and then said to Lama Padma, “Get your coat. We’re going somewhere.” We went to the house, knocked on the door, and let ourselves in. We walked through the whole house, looking around and sniffing at everything. It was quiet, a few kids sitting around, a couple on the couch with
their arms around each other, and some in the kitchen eating popcorn. We found our son in the back bedroom reading comic books on a bunk bed. When we walked in, he looked up and said, “Hi.” We said we had come to offer him a ride home. I called the upset mother and told her what we had seen. We always tried to check out everything. It seems you have to do that— just go check it out and see what they’re doing.
Lama Padma: Susan and I came out of a youth culture that tried everything. Not much shocked us. And although we were worried by some of the things our kids did, we weren’t provincial or narrow-minded. We weren’t overwhelmed because we had experienced, or at least had seen, a lot. I guess our kids knew we had some perspective just by the way we lived.
During a certain period, we were even seeing a family counselor about one of our children. When I was at Rigdzin Ling, I asked Rinpoche for his advice. I’ve never talked to lamas much about personal things. That’s not my relationship with my teachers. But I explained to him very clearly what was going on in my life and in my mind with this one child. And then I asked, “What should I do, Rinpoche? Should I do this, should I do that?” He looked right at me and everything stopped. He said, “Have no hopes or fears.” It was almost as if he had shouted “P’hat!” His words cut right through me. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a hopeful answer. I just stood there in shock because it was way too much for me. But by the time I got to the door, I realized that that was it. That was the answer. I just stayed with that answer and it has become the answer to everything for me.
Lama Padma Gyatso is the resident lama of Chagdud Gonpa Amrita in Seattle. He and his wife, Susan, have three grown children—Jesse, Jordan, and Melong—all of whom have children of their own. Lama Dorje and Lama Trinley spoke with them at Amrita as sangha children played in the background.
Lama Trinley: As dharma practitioners raising children and working toward integrating spiritual practice into our family life, we experience everything from inspiration to frustration. Since you two know something about that, could you offer some advice to other dharma parents?
Lama Padma: We went to India in search of dharma, and that was where our first son, Jesse, was born. We also met our teacher, Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, a monk, whose advice was to renounce worldly life, go into retreat, and meditate, just as he had. He was like Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi who went off into the mountains alone to practice. All Kalu Rinpoche ever said to me was, “Go .Leave. Meditate. You can do it. But if you don’t leave, you will never do it.”That was pretty much the message I got from him for years. He never modified it, but he did become kinder to me because I had some faith and was able to hang in there, I suppose.
His advice was very difficult for me at the time; I felt my family responsibilities were competing with what I imagined were my dharma responsibilities. I lived for many years with that conflict, and it was not a pleasurable experience. I was always flipping back and forth between the two. That didn’t change much for about ten years, until I made some inroads with my practice. Then, as the dharma began to blend a little with my mind, I saw that there was no competition between my family and my spiritual practice, and they could even support each other. But that perspective didn’t come right away.
Dharma practice is a struggle for everyone at the beginning, but I think that the responsibilities of a family can teach you to approach practice in a more sincere way. With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and how you are making things a little more difficult for your family by being absent, even if it’s just for a short time. So you can apply yourself very directly to your practice.
One of the first things I realized when I began to practice more, doing short retreats, was that I didn’t have bodhichitta. My concerns were very limited. Even though I would say the prayers of bodhichitta at the beginning of each practice session and meditate on them, I was certain that any real love I felt never truly extended beyond the confines of my self-clinging, in particular beyond my immediate family. That was very disheartening. I really wanted to accomplish something, but all I learned was what my problems and limitations were.
Susan: We had met the dharma before we had children. Without dharma, especially the teachings on impermanence, I don’t think we could have managed, either in our marriage or in raising the children. The dharma really did seem to be a part of our daily life, so I never felt the same competition between dharma and family that Lama Padma did.
One day while we were receiving teachings at Kalu Rinpoche’s gonpa in India, I was sitting in the back so I could look out the window and watch Jesse play in the courtyard. At one point I became so engrossed in the teachings that I forgot to look out for some time until suddenly Kalu Rinpoche said to me, “Dechen Wangmo!” That was the name he had given me. He pointed out the window and said, “Jesse!” Jesse, less than two years old at the time, had climbed up onto the gonpa roof. I leapt up and ran down the stairs. By the time I got to Jesse, a monk had rescued him. While I was out of the room, Kalu Rinpoche said, “You saw how Dechen Wangmo ran. That’s the way you need to practice dharma. Your mind is like that baby on the roof. You need to practice dharma— just like that.”
Lama Dorje: If one of your students asked you if he or she should have children, what would you say?
Lama Padma: When they ask it’s usually too late, but I have specifically advised some new practitioners to wait to have children— to pray about it for a while. I prefer not to get that involved in people’s personal lives, but I have said that it would be better if dharma blended with their minds before they had children. That’s just my opinion. We never planned on having children— they just happened. For some people, dharma practice may mean taking on a new level of responsibility. If they have children, it’s important to assume the responsibility of parenting before taking on a lot more. That being said, however, I have to admit that I did leave my family for personal retreats for up to six months at a time, and I have no regrets.
Susan: Looking back now, I can understand why he needed to leave. He had become almost transparent as a father and a husband. He had not made a firm decision to be with us, because his conflict with the dharma was so great. Kalu Rinpoche made it clear that it would be best for him to do retreat for a while. The only reason for the conflict in his mind was that he loved us so much. But when his teacher said, “Practice in retreat for six months,” he agreed to do it. It was winter of 1973. Jesse was five and Jordan was 18 months old. One day he was there, and then he was gone.
When my mother found out that Kalu Rinpoche had told Richard to do retreat, she was furious. She drove from Long Beach to Hollywood and somehow managed to find Kalu Rinpoche. She was quite upset with him. She said, “Rinpoche, what kind of a religion would make a man leave his wife and two little children?” Kalu Rinpoche looked at my irate mother and said, “Ah, Karma Yontan (that’s what he called Lama Padma), he loves Dechen Wangmo. He loves her so much I sometimes worry he will not even stay in retreat. Maybe he will just come home.” My mother didn’t know what to say after that. I think that in talking with him she started to soften a little; her anger melted. Kalu Rinpoche always knew the right things to say.
Having Lama Padma in retreat was hard for me at first, because I missed him so much. We had always been together, but suddenly, when I sat down to have a cup of tea, he wasn’t there. Taking care of two little children was extremely difficult for me; I kind of lost it at times, but I didn’t give up. We were living in Seattle and at that time, the early seventies, there was no dharma community where I might have found support from others who had gone through similar experiences. As intense as it was, though, I learned a lot.
At the end of his retreat, Lama Padma came back with a firm resolve to be my husband and a father to his children. The following year our daughter, Melong, came into our lives.
Lama Trinley: How did you meet Chagdud Rinpoche and come to establish a Chagdud Gonpa center?
Lama Padma: Around 1981 I was asked to start a Kagyupa center with weekly meditations. Since we occasionally hosted other lamas, I got a call from someone asking if a Rinpoche, Chagdud Tulku, could teach at our house. His name sounded familiar, so I agreed. After that, we hosted him and Lama Tsering regularly at our house. Rinpoche didn’t like being fussed over, so he would eat at the kitchen table with us. I’m sure over the years he had a strong influence on our kids just by being there.
Susan: He would sit there with a knife and a piece of meat and just watch every- thing going on around him. I remember looking at him once and thinking, “He’s a buddha, and he’s sitting here.” Devotion began to arise naturally, and then everything unfolded when he started offering more retreats here.
Lama Padma: In the beginning, Rinpoche came to Seattle five or six times a year. Then, as his activities began to increase everywhere, he came less frequently, but always a few times a year. Rinpoche was very respectful of the boundaries of our center. I supported his activities up to a point, but I had a responsibility to hold the Kagyu center.
I had the opportunity to observe Rinpoche for many years. When he first came, he said, “If you have any questions, ask me.” He knew that all my practices were written in Tibetan. Because of that I always had questions about translation. In retrospect I suppose it was the traditional way a prospective student and teacher check each other out. I wasn’t looking for more practices or another teacher. The only thing I was looking for was more time. But over the years, going to Cottage Grove and Williams, it became obvious to me that Rinpoche was my teacher. In 1989, when my responsibilities at the Kagyu center came to a proper conclusion, I offered to help Rinpoche with Amrita in a more active way. Since then our sangha has been meeting for meditation at least once a week.
“With a family, free time for meditation or retreat is at a premium, so you tend to use what time you’ve created with great diligence. You realize how rare it is and apply yourself directly to your practice.”
Lama Trinley: What aspects of the dharma did you talk about with your kids?
Lama Padma: We mostly talked about karma and impermanence. We never talked much about meditation or tried to get them to meditate. I don’t think they would have liked that.
Susan: And generosity. They often gave up their rooms for visiting lamas or sang- ha members who needed a place to stay, and that taught them non-attachment as well.
Lama Padma: They didn’t have a strong feeling about their possessions or personal space. It’s hard to know what you actually teach your children versus what they learn on their own. Jesse was always very generous; he was always giving his things away. We couldn’t have taught him that—it was just his nature, and it still is.
Susan: In India, when he was only two, beggars would come up to us and he would look at me with tears in his eyes and say, “Mama, give.” I didn’t think kids could be like that. Maybe we didn’t really do so much.
Lama Padma: Like the rest of us, children are always experiencing the pain of loss and change. They don’t really know what to make of it all. I think those are the most valuable points that parents can emphasize: that actions have effects and that things are impermanent. When we were in India, we met the great Chatral Rinpoche and asked him what we should teach our children. He said to teach them the refuge prayer. So when they were young, we would always say refuge prayers at night with them and offering prayers before we ate. I don’t think we worried about whether they would become Buddhists, but we did want to make sure they had some understanding of karma and impermanence so they would have an advantage in their lives. We knew they would be better off.
Susan: You can only give them so much. Although all our children are respectful of the dharma, our daughter, Melong, seemed to have a real interest in Buddhism. When she was very young, I took her to retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and she loved his teachings for children. She also went to the preschool at the Japanese Seattle Buddhist Church. Finally, when she was in high school, she went to one of Rinpoche’s teachings and understood how meaningful it was.
Lama Padma: When our boys were young, the national Buddhist community was not highly developed. Our living room was a shrine room, which was not normal. Other children hadn’t even heard of Buddhism and didn’t understand it, so our kids felt embarrassed. Now Buddhism has become more of a presence in our society. My parents had such a hard time with me in the sixties. I saw that they suffered because my interest in Buddhism was so far outside their experience. Now, we worry about being parents and try to gauge how both we and our children are doing, according to our ideas about dharma.
From my perspective, I’m not sure it helps to have too many ideas about raising children, or what you are going to do with them, as if they were a product that you ordered. Nor should we be disappointed when they don’t fulfill a warranty we thought we had on them. It’s not just what we do. Kids come in with their own karma. Basically, our job is to learn how to create conditions for them to work with that karma so they will begin to understand how cause and effect works, and how parents and children can grow together.
Some kids have difficult karma. When one of our sons was very young, he always felt as if he were being choked by his shirts, and whenever he heard sirens, he would start crying and say they were coming to get him. Later, he flirted with being an outlaw and got kicked out of the public schools, but we kept praying and continued working with him. Once when he got busted, the police were involved and he said to me, “Your dharma protectors—that’s why I got busted.” And he was actually very happy about it. My kids had heard me doing protector practice every night the whole time they lived at home.
Susan: First we grounded him, and then we sent him to a Catholic all-boys high school. All of our children went to Catholic schools at some point. It turned out to be wonderful for him. He responded well to the discipline and excelled in so many ways. He loved to debate. He loved the spiritual retreats they offered and became the leader of a prayer group, but never converted to Catholicism.
Lama Padma: The thing is to hang in there— to keep going, as Chagdud Rinpoche always says. Keep raising your kids. It never gets easier, because each situation and child is unique. You need to have tools that will work in any situation. The amount of intelligence you can bring to any situation is directly related to the amount of patience you have. If you’re angry with yourself, your child, or the situation, you can’t function well. You will only make mistakes. And that’s what you will regret.
Fortunately, our family has been really close. I think it is because Susan was always so communicative, not letting things go unresolved. Just making sure that communication was open saved us many times.
Susan: I found I was interpreting the world for them; they needed that. When they saw a disturbing film, they would come to me for advice on how to feel or think about it, so that it wasn’t so threatening. It takes a lot of energy, but being present for and listening to your children helps them interpret the world and gives them the means to work with it. Every night, while I was preparing dinner, my children would tell me about their days, and I would try to respond to each one appropriately.
One night, when one of our sons was in junior high school, an upset mother called to say that he and her son were at a drug dealer’s house; she didn’t know what to do. I calmed her down and then said to Lama Padma, “Get your coat. We’re going somewhere.” We went to the house, knocked on the door, and let ourselves in. We walked through the whole house, looking around and sniffing at everything. It was quiet, a few kids sitting around, a couple on the couch with
their arms around each other, and some in the kitchen eating popcorn. We found our son in the back bedroom reading comic books on a bunk bed. When we walked in, he looked up and said, “Hi.” We said we had come to offer him a ride home. I called the upset mother and told her what we had seen. We always tried to check out everything. It seems you have to do that— just go check it out and see what they’re doing.
Lama Padma: Susan and I came out of a youth culture that tried everything. Not much shocked us. And although we were worried by some of the things our kids did, we weren’t provincial or narrow-minded. We weren’t overwhelmed because we had experienced, or at least had seen, a lot. I guess our kids knew we had some perspective just by the way we lived.
During a certain period, we were even seeing a family counselor about one of our children. When I was at Rigdzin Ling, I asked Rinpoche for his advice. I’ve never talked to lamas much about personal things. That’s not my relationship with my teachers. But I explained to him very clearly what was going on in my life and in my mind with this one child. And then I asked, “What should I do, Rinpoche? Should I do this, should I do that?” He looked right at me and everything stopped. He said, “Have no hopes or fears.” It was almost as if he had shouted “P’hat!” His words cut right through me. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a hopeful answer. I just stood there in shock because it was way too much for me. But by the time I got to the door, I realized that that was it. That was the answer. I just stayed with that answer and it has become the answer to everything for me.
