New to this forum and Vajrayana in general.
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 9:26 am
I would like to apologize beforehand because I really have no clue about.... well.... anything. However whenever I was horribly confused (I still am) I would google a question and somehow end up here. I don't know if this is the right place to put this... so if it's not please delete it. You'll have to excuse my extremely long post, but I'm not sure where else to say it... Also, I'm not sure what I should or shouldn't say. I'm very sorry for that. And thank you all in advance.
-The rest can be ignored if you are on a busy schedule as it's not very important, but there are many MANY answers that I wish to find. I apologize greatly, I do not know the proper terms for anything so please be patient with me. Thank you.
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Simply put, I am extremely horribly discouraged and ashamed. I have been recently more or less converted. That's a long story that I won't go into but it happened over the course of 3 days with me converting on the second day. In these 3 days I met 3 great teachers. On the same day that I decided to follow this path I was immediately accepted as a student of one of the three teachers that were there. I'll try not to mention names because I'm not sure what their names are since they seem to use a few different ones and I mean no disrespect. It has been I'll guess a few months to half a year since I have been under his instruction. He is a wonderful teacher, very kind and extremely patient and I can't help but cry when I think of his kindness to someone as clueless and new as me as he usually didn't accept students. Even the other teacher emails me to teach me even with his busy schedule. However.... I am simply clueless. One of the other teachers there gave me a book, Patrul Rinpoche's "The Words of my Perfect Teacher", and told me to read it many times. I'm so worthless that I'm only about 60% of the way through my first time reading it and I still barely know anything.
My teacher had to go on a long trip to Asia and was going to be gone for 4 months. This just broke my heart and spirit somehow knowing I just met him and he was leaving already. I kept asking and asking if he would teach me anything which was rather selfish of me considering how busy he is. He simply gave me some prayer beads, said "He never leaves", and told me to simply say "Om Mani Padme Hum" every day which is such a simple task that I still failed at. I'm not even sure what it means and when I looked it up I can't memorize it correctly. I'm constantly letting my teacher(s) down and I feel so undeserving... At this point I'm at a complete and total loss of what to do. My teacher finally came back to the states and he's coming down here in only a month or so!!! Where should I really start, what are the "basics"? I can't waste time, he's much too busy with other matters and time with him is extremely precious to me.
And my final question for curiosity's sake is what exactly is a Rinpoche? I'm sorry that's a rather dumb question I'm sure.
Thank you all, I left out a few details to make it as short as possible. Thank you for your time and advice.
Where I live, as far as I know I am alone. I have no true "spiritual friends" other than my teacher, another teacher, and that's it. I'm just terrified for some reason. Sorry for being overdramatic.... I don't mean to be I'm just really new.
-The rest can be ignored if you are on a busy schedule as it's not very important, but there are many MANY answers that I wish to find. I apologize greatly, I do not know the proper terms for anything so please be patient with me. Thank you.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Simply put, I am extremely horribly discouraged and ashamed. I have been recently more or less converted. That's a long story that I won't go into but it happened over the course of 3 days with me converting on the second day. In these 3 days I met 3 great teachers. On the same day that I decided to follow this path I was immediately accepted as a student of one of the three teachers that were there. I'll try not to mention names because I'm not sure what their names are since they seem to use a few different ones and I mean no disrespect. It has been I'll guess a few months to half a year since I have been under his instruction. He is a wonderful teacher, very kind and extremely patient and I can't help but cry when I think of his kindness to someone as clueless and new as me as he usually didn't accept students. Even the other teacher emails me to teach me even with his busy schedule. However.... I am simply clueless. One of the other teachers there gave me a book, Patrul Rinpoche's "The Words of my Perfect Teacher", and told me to read it many times. I'm so worthless that I'm only about 60% of the way through my first time reading it and I still barely know anything.
My teacher had to go on a long trip to Asia and was going to be gone for 4 months. This just broke my heart and spirit somehow knowing I just met him and he was leaving already. I kept asking and asking if he would teach me anything which was rather selfish of me considering how busy he is. He simply gave me some prayer beads, said "He never leaves", and told me to simply say "Om Mani Padme Hum" every day which is such a simple task that I still failed at. I'm not even sure what it means and when I looked it up I can't memorize it correctly. I'm constantly letting my teacher(s) down and I feel so undeserving... At this point I'm at a complete and total loss of what to do. My teacher finally came back to the states and he's coming down here in only a month or so!!! Where should I really start, what are the "basics"? I can't waste time, he's much too busy with other matters and time with him is extremely precious to me.
And my final question for curiosity's sake is what exactly is a Rinpoche? I'm sorry that's a rather dumb question I'm sure.
Thank you all, I left out a few details to make it as short as possible. Thank you for your time and advice.
Where I live, as far as I know I am alone. I have no true "spiritual friends" other than my teacher, another teacher, and that's it. I'm just terrified for some reason. Sorry for being overdramatic.... I don't mean to be I'm just really new.