Once again I don’t know where to begin. A few weekends ago I traveled to upstate New York to attend the cremation puja for Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. This event will be one of those before and after points in my life, defining everything that surrounds it, but I can barely express why it was significant. Have you ever watched reality unravel before your eyes, turning every frame of reference inside out? Not so much? How about trying to describe what salt tastes like? It’s that sort of conundrum. Words are inadequate. It’s just something you experience, without interruption. The danger is that the more I try and recall that experience, the further away from it I get. My memory gets in the way and tries to solidify and reify the whole thing, when the experience is of reality itself as something less than solid, something a little more relative. Trying to convey or capture it with words or concepts defies the experience itself, but the real lesson learned is that spaciousness is always available to drop into. The nature of mind is the same in Delhi, New York as it is in Chicago, Illinois. It’s no different in Lhasa or Berlin. It’s there for any of us to realize, but it takes consistent practice to see clearly. Our concept addicted minds are usually too busy throwing barriers in our way, all in an attempt to make sense of that which ultimately can’t be pinned down.

Khyabje Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche was born in East Tibet in 1924. He is one of a very few who received their monastic training in traditional Tibet prior to the communist invasion of the late 1950s, and managed to flee to the West. At the bequest of the Sixteenth Karmapa, Rinpoche came to the United States in the 1970s to establish a monastery and three year retreat center, which eventually blossomed into a network of dharma centers, continuing the 900 year old tradition of the Karma Kagyu on a new continent. Rinpoche was a living treasury of knowledge, widely respected across Buddhist traditions, known for his boundless compassion and also tough as nails.

I had not originally planned to attend the funeral ceremonies for Rinpoche, once they were announced. I was already scheduled to attend a group retreat in Wisconsin that weekend, and besides, upstate New York is quite a drive from Chicago, much farther than Wisconsin. I was content that I would at least be on retreat that weekend, and that I would try to honor him in that way. But then Lama Sean let it be known that another member of our sangha was making the drive, and looking for a co-pilot to share the wheel. With two drivers, the roughly twelve hour drive could reasonably accomplished in one day, and I could attend the ceremonies without missing any more work than I’d already blocked out for my retreat. I had only met Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche once, on the occasion of His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa’s visit to Chicago KTC, and I had on a few occasions attended teachings he gave via webcast. I was saddened that I would never again have the opportunity to study with this great master, but here was perhaps one final chance to strengthen that connection. I decided to make the trip.

Impermanence is one of the underlying tenets of Buddhism. This life is seen as transitory, and death is merely another stage on that journey, a seamless transition from birth to rebirth. More so than perhaps any of the Buddhist traditions, Tibetans have developed a number of practices to prepare for the moment of death, with the aim of maintaining awareness throughout the dying process. When a great master, or even an accomplished practitioner dies, many signs are demonstrated which fly in the face of Western medical reasoning. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa achieved parinirvana in November, 1981 at a cancer treatment center in Zion, IL, and there are tales scattered across the internet of the many signs he demonstrated, seemingly returning even after clinical death, in the presence of hospital staff. On October 5, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche had suffered a stroke, and after it was determined that there was nothing that doctors could do for him, he was brought back to his room at Karme Ling monastery, where he passed away the next morning. His body was left undisturbed and he remained in samadhi, a state of meditative repose. After three days, the area around his heart is said to have remained warm, and he was again left to continue his meditation.

One of the most astonishing features of Tibetan Buddhism is the demonstration of the rainbow body. After seven days in samadhi, Rinpoche’s body is reported to have begun shrinking in size. At the same time, multiple rainbows were observed around the grounds at Karme Ling. Were he not to have been cremated, it’s possible that eventually there would have been nothing left but hair and nails, as this material is already dead to begin with. Rinpoche’s kudung, or body relic, was wrapped in ceremonial brocade and displayed in the shrine room for several days at Karme Ling prior to the cremation. I was able to make it into the shrine room briefly, before the pujas began, and witness this relic for myself.

Karme Ling is a closed retreat center, where retreatants participate in the traditional Tibetan three year retreat. There is no time off, and there are no visitors. It’s a spacious enough center for the few dozen lamas who are attending or administering the retreat, beautifully nestled in the Catskills, but on this weekend it was a bustling hubbub of activity, crowded with hundreds of visitors from around the world coming to pay their respects. Our party of three was gathered near the columbarium where the puja was to occur when we heard that we were allowed to visit the shrine room. We made our way to the Lama’s House, ridiculously crowded, and as we entered one of the lamas told us to proceed upstairs, even as visitors were streaming down the stairs. I fought my way upstream, losing track of my companions, past some tables where breakfast had been set out, and into the small shrine room where Khenpo Karthar had been seated upon a throne, shrouded in brocade. Lama Karma was already requesting that everyone leave the shrine room, so that the lamas could prepare Khenpo’s body relic for the procession, but I made my way as close as I could to the throne, offering prostrations along the way. I hoped that I might be able to offer a khata, a ceremonial silk scarf, but as I got nearer another lama swooped in and gathered all the khatas. I simply stood there for a moment, trying to take in the entire scene.

Here I feel compelled to pause, and explain a bit about what I do for a living. I’ve been a carpenter for probably more than twenty years now. I got involved with television in 2013, building the sets that allow the actors to inhabit their world of make believe, and allow you to believe it. I’ve been involved with theater even longer than that. I understand stagecraft. I know how the magician makes it appear that the lady gets cut in half. (Spoiler alert: It’s just cabinetry) Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche was a tough guy, a muscular dude even at 96 years old. He was not tiny, but if somebody had asked me to build a palanquin with a false bottom so they could wrap his body in silk and brocade and make it appear as though he were the size of a child, I could figure out how to make that happen. None of that is at all relevant.

As I stood in the shrine room, staring directly at Khenpo’s body relic, I couldn’t at all get my mind around what was directly in front of me. There was no clear boundary between where his body ended and the room began. It was if the space surrounding us had itself cracked open, and I felt as if my own being were dissolving into that space. My shoulders fell backwards, distinctions between big and small became meaningless, my head exploded and nothing at all happened, all the in the same instant. The room was emptying quickly, still a scene of commotion, and I didn’t want to linger where I wasn’t wanted. I gathered my khata and turned around, completely bewildered by what I had experienced, but also feeling grounded in that moment of groundlessness, a sense of connection at last.

It’s pointless to try and summarize what went on that day. It’s the winner take all in the category of “you had to be there”. I can sit here in my apartment in Chicago, a cold morning in early November, typing out words on a laptop, deleting, revising, coming up with better words, but the words are all going to fall short. The truth is they’re only getting in my own way. In some ways that experience is gone, never to be repeated, but the ability to tap in is ever present. I’ve had smaller experiences since that day, whispers of an understanding that is bigger than my day to day reality. They’re fleeting and elusive, and when they occur my instinct is to grab on to them, to try and hold on and define them, and that’s when they vanish, only to be replaced with the block of concrete that passes for my comprehension. It’s a very subtle practice, but I have faith that it can be developed, bit by bit. Small moments, repeated. To do anything else at this point seems futile.