Tales with My Lama: Dharma House
The driveway of the old Heruka House that I used to live in.
Pastor David has been a student of His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche for over 15 years. Within the ‘Tales With My Lama’ series of articles, he explores his spiritual relationship with Rinpoche, sharing anecdotes, stories, observations and little Dharma nuggets. It is all told to inspire others for their own spiritual relationship with their teachers.
Tales with My Lama: Dharma House
His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche once explained that as Buddhist practitioners, we should “regard the home as where we can practise the Dharma.” Rinpoche told us about many students of one of his own teachers, His Eminence Gangchen Rinpoche. These students moved from faraway places to live near their teacher. According to Rinpoche, living near our teachers speeds up our Dharma learning and practice because being in close proximity makes it easier for us to receive more teachings, serve the teacher and be a part of a Dharma community.
When we strive to practise the Dharma, we can encounter various obstacles and difficulties. These range from internal ones like our own laziness, attachments and negative emotions, to external ones like sickness, accidents, as well as friends and loved ones who may distract us away from the Dharma. That is why it is important to cultivate like-minded spiritual friends who encourage our practice, transformation and at times, counsel us with the Dharma. It was with this in mind that Rinpoche began to develop the beginnings of a spiritual community by developing Dharma houses.
In the early days, when Rinpoche was developing the Kechara organisation, Rinpoche encouraged various students to band together and rent a place to live together, rather than living separately on our own. Rinpoche even gave each of these houses a name. At the time, I was looking for a place to live when I heard about this and I quickly enquired about it. Not long after that, I moved into what Rinpoche went on to call Heruka House. There were many other such houses, such as Tara House, Drakpa House, Naropa House, Jamyang House, Setrap House, etc. The names gave each of our residences an identity to reflect our shared pursuit of the Dharma.
H.E. Tsem Rinpoche with my dad and I at Heruka House. My dad had just sponsored a new Lama Tsongkhapa statue behind us.
It was really neat to have a communal altar to the Buddhas right in the hall of our residence, instead of in our rooms, like when we were still living with our families. At Heruka House, Rinpoche temporarily placed a large set of Je Yab Se Sum statues (or Lama Tsongkhapa with his two heart sons) on the main altar. Because I love altars to the Buddhas so much, I also maintained an altar in my own room. In this manner, all of us living in the Dharma houses set up the altars as we liked and made as many offerings without worrying about what others might think. It was an important practice for us, since making offerings is an act of generosity. Once we have developed the energy of generosity in this way, we can expand it to other areas in our lives too.
As always, Rinpoche went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable in our Dharma Houses by getting us items that we needed like shelves and wardrobes, and other conveniences. If we needed furniture, Rinpoche went on trips to Ikea to buy these and brought the furniture back for assembly. I was involved in some of these trips for other Dharma Houses. Rinpoche even made sure that our pantries and kitchens were well-stocked with food, drinks and snacks. That’s the extent Rinpoche went to, in order to ensure we were loved, comfortable and ready to do Dharma work to benefit the world. Rinpoche would do this for all the Dharma Houses in the early days.
Later on, Rinpoche periodically made surprise visits to the Dharma Houses. It was his way to check on us and see how we were doing, and if we were maintaining the cleanliness of the place, especially our individual altars. In his teachings, Rinpoche often emphasised that altars should be regularly cleaned and fresh offerings should be set out as part of our daily practice. Also, we shouldn’t let offerings become old or stale. Rinpoche explained that these practices help us to purify our negative karma, especially a type of obscuration called ‘drib’, that causes obstacles such as sleepiness when listening to Dharma teachings. In other words, cleanliness of our altars and houses is important for our practice, which can definitely be a challenge for some people.
Aside from the altar in the house, Rinpoche also encouraged us to invite stone Buddha statues and place them in the garden of our Dharma homes. In fact, Rinpoche bought and gave stone Buddha statues to many students and made them available in the Kechara outlets as well. These statues were worthy objects of refuge and we could make offerings of real candles outdoors without worrying about fire hazards. And we also burned abundant amounts of powdered juniper and Tibetan sage as incense offerings (which we call protector incense). The whole atmosphere was aesthetically pleasing and brought a sense of calm and blessings to a simple suburban garden. Heruka House had a stone Buddha Shakyamuni, to which I made many candle offerings. Since it was outside and in a protective candle holder, it felt safer to leave them unattended, especially when I was not home.
Dharma Houses became the precursor to Kechara Forest Retreat, where we now have a large community living and working together in the Dharma. When we are alone it can be very hard to do Dharma work because of the obstacles we can face. But if we have a Dharma community, we can overcome these obstacles together and accomplish so much more to benefit others. It’s in this manner we can accumulate even more merits, which helps us to progress further in our spiritual practice.
A nice picture of my Heruka Housemates at H. E. Tsem Rinpoche’s residence.
For more interesting information:
- Tales with My Lama: Going to the movies with Rinpoche
- Tales With My Lama: The Geshe Who Loved Butter
- Tales With My Lama: Rinpoche’s Heruka Statue
- Tales With My Lama: Rinpoche on a ‘Holiday’
- Tales With My Lama: Dorje Shugden on The Head
- Tales With My Lama: What is the New News?
- Tales With My Lama: Rinpoche Felt He Was More Indian
- Tales With My Lama: What Does Rinpoche Like About Liz Taylor?
- Tales With My Lama: Daily Practice
- Tales With My Lama: Laugh Away Your Ego
- Tales With My Lama: Why Rinpoche Has To Suffer
- Tales With My Lama: Larger Than Life
- Tales With My Lama: Manjushri
- Tales With My Lama: Audience With Tsem Rinpoche
Please support us so that we can continue to bring you more Dharma:
If you are in the United States, please note that your offerings and contributions are tax deductible. ~ the tsemrinpoche.com blog team
This dharma community (sangha) must stay pure and sacred. May the three jewels always connect Kecharians to their holy guru and May your spiritual bond and learning be supremely perfect and wonderful Pastor David. 🙏✨🌟💫👍😇