#6 COLORADO: What are you doing New Year's?

LOSAR!!  The Tibetan New Year (same date as Chinese New Year), Friday February 12, 2021, celebrates the beginning of the year of the Metal Ox, so much more stable than that pesky Rat.   I zoomed in to a wonderful talk with Lama Tsultrim Allione of Tara Mandala in Pogosa Springs, Colorado, all about this holiday. 

As for Lama Allione, she is one of the first American-born Buddhist Lamas in the Tibetan tradition.  Her biography is fascinating .  To sort of sum it up, a copy of Man and his Symbols by Carl Jung led her to Nepal to learn to paint mandalas, and after long study, and the death of one of her twin daughters, she felt led to learn about women in Buddhism, particularly the 11th century female saint Machig Labdron.   Then, after learning the Chod practice of 'feeding your demons' developed by Labdron, Lama Allione was recognized as her reincarnation.  And that is the Tibetan way. 

Early on in this zoom talk, I felt powerfully connected during a compassion meditation from our heart center for all beings.  "This is real," she said, and it was.   Lama Allione expressed surprising affinity to Eastern astrology, and proclaimed that this year would be more stable and more positive, although it required great patience.  

She noted that students at the retreat center had just come out of two weeks of retreat and the night before Losar had set some water outside, with which they washed their faces that morning. A traditional practice of purification and connection. "Star water" she said. 

From Machig Labdron: 

                                             Bless me so that I may stop cherishing

                                             This illusory body of the four elements.

                              Bless me to develop the ability to experience the single flavor

                                Of discordant conditions, sickness, demons and obstacles.

                                               Bless me to know the inherent nature

                              Of all that appears, the miraculous display of my mind.

And from her reincarnation now: 

We’re always encountering situations in which we’re liking or disliking things. We like or dislike foods. We like or dislike places. We like or dislike people. We think something is pure or something is impure; something is dirty or something is clean. These beliefs of duality are all things that the dakinis break through, even those golden rules of celibacy and vegetarianism practiced by the monks. They open and embrace all phenomena, recognizing all phenomena as “one taste,” as equal.