Episode Thirty-Four: The Interview-Don Handrick

This Buddhist teacher reminds us all that what is most magical is our own dynamic minds. In this longer episode we learn that it is his devotion to Green Tara that has shown him miracles and magic aplenty.

Transcript

One thing I might say in this whole idea of like magic or miracles was a quote that came from Lama Yeshe.

He was of course,

As I said,

Over there in India and Nepal,

All these people coming over there looking for mystical experiences,

Magical experiences,

All these wild things,

And Lama Yeshe pulled the student aside once.

He says,

All these people,

They're looking for something magic.

But he says,

Ah,

The mind is magic.

Who are you?

How do you self-define as a human being?

If you go to a party and you're introducing yourself,

Who are you?

You know,

It's an interesting question.

When I think about who are you as a human being,

I think of a little thing that was,

You know,

Those little pieces of paper that are on the end of a string of a teabag,

You know,

And there's like,

I think yogi tea or one of them has like little sayings on it.

And one of them said,

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I don't know,

There's kind of that flavor to it,

Like,

You know,

Who are you as a human being?

Who am I this time?

Because of course in Buddhism,

We have this whole idea of rebirth that people have,

You know,

Continue to take rebirth in a variety of forms depending upon karma and what have you.

So my karma for this life is that I'm,

I don't know,

I'm a gay man.

I like to identify myself as a gay man just because I think it's an important part of who I am and how I developed into the person that I am now.

I also of course see myself as a Buddhist,

Practicing Buddhist and Buddhist teacher.

In Buddhism,

We don't necessarily have ministers per se,

We have teachers,

People who impart the Buddhist teachings to others.

This has gotten to be what I see as my real identity for the last,

I don't know,

16,

17 years.

But beyond that,

I mean,

I think I'm just an ordinary person in many other ways.

I don't really have any sort of outrageous things about me,

Anything that would make me kind of different from others in some ways.

I suppose my history would be a little bit different because of who I was and where I lived and the experiences that I had.

But I do feel like I'm just simply someone who's wanting to be a good person in the world,

Wanting to help others,

Driven by some measure of compassion and concern for the suffering in the world,

And wanting to address that through what I do and how I am.

I grew up in a Roman Catholic household.

My parents were both Roman Catholic,

And I would say my father was a bit more devout than my mother.

I was a practicing Catholic,

Would go to church every Sunday,

What have you.

But my father,

I think,

Was more involved in heartfelt prayer.

He would go frequently.

I grew up in St.

Louis mostly.

My father was in the army,

So we moved around a bit,

And settled in St.

Louis around,

I was around the age of nine or ten.

And my father would frequently stop in.

There was what's called the Pink Sisters.

It's a particular order of the Catholic nuns,

And they would practice silence.

They lived with this vow of silence all the time,

But they had this beautiful little chapel in St.

Louis that my father would frequently go in after work when he finished his work,

As he was working initially in the army,

But then went and worked civil service after that.

But he would stop in there and often do what I imagine to be hours of prayer sometimes.

Felt a very deep connection to the Virgin Mary,

Had a lot of that kind of spirit within him that was really inspiring to see.

Nonetheless,

I found myself kind of having a bit of a struggle with Roman Catholicism.

Obviously being gay,

That was a big part of it.

Was just trying to reconcile who I was as a person with a religious tradition that essentially felt like I was living in sin,

Or had that kind of impression.

And even to hear the recent words of Pope Francis around not wanting to condone the marriages,

Same-sex marriages,

Because it would be condoning the sin,

You know,

Like this great sin that we all live with or whatever.

But I left the Catholic Church when I was in college.

I had one Sunday,

I think I went to Mass,

And the sermon had some anti-gay messages to it,

Very homophobic message.

And I of course was dealing with a lot of homophobia myself.

Was very closeted to a large degree.

Found it very difficult.

Left a very bad taste in my mouth around Roman Catholicism.

It's so intriguing to me.

Your father sounds like he had a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Is that true?

Yes,

I definitely felt that.

Even when he passed away,

He passed away at the age of 70,

About 21 years ago now.

And when I was there during his last weeks of life,

Very much tried to recite prayers,

The Hail Mary,

What have you,

Things like that in his presence,

Because he felt very inspired by the Virgin Mary and had great devotion.

It's a really particularly beautiful devotion,

I think.

Yeah,

You know,

The feminine divine,

Which of course is,

You know,

Something that we can acknowledge as a key thing in the history of humanity,

I think is really important,

You know,

And Mary symbolizes that within the Christian traditions,

To a large degree.

In Buddhism,

Tibetan Buddhism in particular,

You know,

We have Tara,

Tara being kind of the embodiment of various aspects of the enlightened mind of a Buddha.

And in particular,

There's one green Tara,

And maybe I'll talk about that in a moment,

But essentially this is a Buddha in particular that I felt a strong affinity for as well,

Who plays a really prominent role in terms of helping people on their spiritual path.

I started opening up to doing a lot of work in the community,

Particularly around HIV.

In the early 80s,

Of course,

There was a lot of fear and concern about what it was and who would be affected by it,

What have you.

I was one of those people who didn't have a lot of people I knew initially who died from AIDS.

It was sort of hearing about it on the periphery,

People who I would kind of know,

Oh,

Yeah,

I saw them at a bar once and now they're dead.

I ended up being HIV negative,

Which I suppose is its own kind of miracle in some ways,

Something that,

You know,

I don't know how that all happened,

But I was able to take care of my partner until he passed away.

And I was really strengthened by what I had done in those intervening years because I got much more involved around HIV.

I even did some volunteer hospice work,

Working with people who were dying,

And it kind of strengthened me to be able to be with Ed when he was passing.

The interesting thing about that was that that became the doorway through which I found Buddhism.

If I hadn't gone through that experience,

I don't know where I would be now,

What I would be doing.

But in 1992,

There was a book that was published that's called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche.

Ed's brother,

Ted,

Who happened to be in San Francisco as well,

He asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year.

Ed had died in August,

And so I was still dealing with my grieving and still trying to find meaning out of all of that.

And I told Ted,

Well,

There's this book that's in the bookstores that I've been seeing that I think would be really interesting to read,

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

You know,

It sounds very appropriate for where I'm at in my life right now.

And so he bought me a copy for Christmas and I started reading it.

So 1993 was my year of kind of immersing myself in that book,

And I went on retreat with Sogyal Rinpoche in November of 93.

He's passed away since,

And of course he had some controversy around him that I don't need to get into,

But nonetheless he inspired me greatly.

That's kind of my spiritual journey in terms of how it got me to Tibetan Buddhism.

It was very much from sort of turning away from Catholicism,

Moving to San Francisco,

Sort of exploring who I was as a gay man,

But then coming to understand,

Of course,

That I really still needed some spirituality in my life,

Something that would help answer a lot of the questions that I had.

I found this tradition that I'm currently with that's called the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.

And it was founded by Lama Yeshe back in the early 70s.

He had come from Tibet to India,

And a lot of Westerners were going to India and Nepal and kind of looking for spiritual experiences.

And of course smoking a lot of hash and doing a lot of other crazy things as well.

But anyway,

They started teaching Westerners in that time frame.

And Lama Yeshe,

From what I hear,

I never met him,

But he was really incredible in terms of being able to meet these hippies exactly where they were at,

Talk to them as if he was one of them.

Well,

I went up to Milwaukee,

To Marquette University for my college.

And so I went up there at the age of 18 and began studying up there.

Then between my junior and senior year at Marquette University,

I'd never been to California,

Never been to San Francisco.

And my initial plan actually was to go to Los Angeles.

I don't know why,

I mean,

I had this vision of Los Angeles being kind of a great place to go.

And then one of my cousins,

She had lived in the Bay Area in the 60s,

And she said,

You know,

You don't want to go to Los Angeles.

You want to go to San Francisco,

Much better place for you.

I don't know what she knew about me that I didn't know about myself,

But essentially,

You know,

She kind of guided me on my way.

And that's when I went there,

That was in 1979,

The summer of 79,

Between my junior and senior year of college.

And of course,

I met Ed that summer,

Fell in love with him,

And then really didn't want to go back.

But I decided I would go ahead,

Drive back to Milwaukee from San Francisco,

And try to finish my senior year of college.

And I quit after a couple of months.

So it was October of 79,

The end of October,

When I drove the car back to my parents' place in St.

Louis,

Got on a plane to San Francisco,

Never went back to St.

Louis,

At least to live.

Were your parents like,

What is he doing?

Well,

The problem was,

Of course,

I didn't come out to them at that time,

You know,

So I couldn't really share so much of my life with them that I felt bad about.

I didn't come out to them until 10 years later,

1989.

And that was prompted to a large degree because of Ed having AIDS then,

And I felt like I couldn't hide who I was and what was going on in my life from my parents any longer,

Because I felt like I might need their support,

Might need,

You know,

For them to know what I'm going through,

And because of course at that time,

AIDS was a death sentence for pretty much everyone.

You know,

I knew that that was on the horizon and I'd have to be dealing with it.

So I came out to them then,

And of course,

My father had a lot of fears about me being with a man who has AIDS,

You know,

And yeah,

Although I was negative,

He just didn't have a lot of understanding about how the virus was transmitted and all these other things.

So in the end,

They both supported me very much,

You know,

Through Ed's passing and,

You know,

The grief afterwards.

At the time though,

Of course,

There was so much confusion in 1979 when I left so much confusion about why are you doing this and what is this all about?

And then I told them,

I said,

Well,

I just really am not happy here and I really want to be happy.

And they said,

Well,

If this is what will make you happy,

We support you,

But we don't agree with you.

We really wish that you would stay and finish your education.

I decided,

I didn't want my theology credits to like go to naught.

So I went to University of San Francisco and finished my degree there.

And so my parents were able to come out and come to my graduation ceremony in 1987.

This was again before I'd even come out to them.

So I think they suspected at that time when they came out because I was living with Ed.

So they knew that there was a man there in the house with me,

But it was just like it still was a little blind to them.

At least my mom,

At least my father,

I think had some clue.

Your parents sound really wonderful and generous and kind.

Wow.

Yeah,

I mean they were.

You know,

My father in spite of a lot of his really,

You know,

Devotion to Mary and these sort of softer sides of him,

He also had,

He was army,

You know,

So he had that mentality a lot of the times too.

But what was really interesting is that I saw him soften over the years,

Particularly as I changed as a person.

I'll share one comment that jumps forward maybe about 20 years from when I left to go to San Francisco in around 1999,

About a year before he died.

I came home from Italy where I was studying in that program that I mentioned,

The master's program,

And I was sitting with my father at the breakfast table or something,

And he said,

You know,

Don,

I don't know much about Buddhism,

About what you're about these days,

But I see that you're happy and that makes me very happy.

And I just almost cried right there at the table with him because,

You know,

That was just revealing to me something that,

You know,

And of course he knew that he was,

His health was declining,

He had diabetes that had caused kidney failure,

That had caused a lot of other problems,

You know,

And so he knew that he was on his way out.

When he said that to me,

Like I said,

It just made me melt inside and I will remember those words from him till the day I die.

Talk a little bit about Green Tara and the role that that being,

That Buddha has played.

When we talk about Buddhas in our tradition,

Of course,

We're not like trying to signify a particular individual entity per se,

Because when we talk about people achieving Buddhahood,

They become part of sort of this larger enlightened presence in the world and manifest in whatever way is useful to others.

It's a bit of the kind of woo-woo teachings in Buddhism.

But Green Tara,

As I said,

Sort of embodies the enlightened activities of the Buddha.

So if we think about these beings who have achieved this state,

Which they were ordinary beings just like us,

And they've developed their minds to that degree,

Where they can play a very key role in helping others on their path of awakening,

Green Tara represents that active part of it.

In fact,

When she's sitting on her lotus,

She has her one,

Her left leg drawn in,

That shows her kind of stability of wisdom and all these great qualities,

But then she has her right leg extended out,

Like she's ready to kind of like jump to your aid at a moment's notice.

The practice of Green Tara,

I didn't have that great a connection with it initially when I was involved in Tibetan Buddhism,

But in the year just before I went off to the master's program,

The seven-year study program,

I was actually sitting with Venerable Bhargina at our center in San Francisco,

And she said to me,

Well,

Don,

You know,

What are you doing to prepare,

You know,

To get over to the program?

Have you like looked into whether there's obstacles to your being there and studying and what have you?

And I said,

Well,

No,

I haven't really.

And she says,

Well,

You need to contact this lama.

There is this lama,

I think,

Lama Aconchok.

He was in Nepal at our monastery,

In Kathmandu,

Kopan Monastery.

I wrote to the woman who's there and I asked her,

You know,

I told her who I was and I was planning to go to the program,

And that Venerable Bhargina said I should contact this lama and find out what practices or what things might need to be done to clear any obstacles.

And he told me that I should do three of the sets of what are called the praises to Tara.

You recite these praises,

And of course,

I learned them initially in Tibetan,

Though there is an English chantable version of them as well.

And what he essentially said then was,

Yeah,

If you do this three times a day,

These praises to the 21 Taras,

I'll be fine.

And so I just completely,

You know,

Trust that this lama was giving me great advice.

And so I started reciting those.

So there were a number of incidents where I've kind of used that as a means to remove,

Maybe kind of temporary obstacles,

Things that were coming up.

But I've also sort of seen it as a main practice that I go to and have even done some green tar retreats where you focus on her in particular and kind of try to invoke her presence.

My own incidents of kind of invoking her and having her be sort of an instrument of helping to cut through some stuff have been pretty minor compared to some of the things I've heard from other people.

I'll tell you one of mine,

But it was not too long after all of that when I was actually going to Italy for the first time.

I was still in San Francisco.

And so I got one of these super shuttle vans in San Francisco.

They're kind of notorious for kind of taking you out to the airport.

Anyway,

I had gotten on one and the van was full of all these people and we were heading down Highway 101 to the airport and,

You know,

Had plenty of time to get out to the airport and what have you.

But all of a sudden we're in the fast lane and all of a sudden the van stops.

I mean,

The engine goes dead.

There's nothing happening.

He kept trying to turn the thing and trying to get it to run.

And of course,

We're in the fast lane and this is the beginning of like rush hour traffic.

And there's just like all this traffic and we're kind of worried about our lives if somebody could run into us,

You know.

And I start doing the praises to Tara and just kind of,

You know,

Because I want to make sure I get on my flight,

Get to Italy,

Begin my studies,

Whatever,

All of this.

And so I,

You know,

Had a good motivation for it.

And then,

You know,

After doing this for a while,

All of a sudden he turns it and it starts.

And I've had other incidents where I've used Tara to help start a car.

And it actually seems to help,

Even though the Master's program is long gone.

And he only told me to do that three times a day during the program.

I've continued to do it as a practice every day.

And so I really have come to find that to be,

Again,

Sort of my Virgin Mary,

Like my father found that in his own spiritual practice as somebody I turned to quite frequently.

I'll tell you one of the stories I've heard from somebody else,

Which is really a story that gave me goosebumps.

Well,

This was a story told to me by a woman named Jean Wilkins.

I think I can share her name.

She wouldn't have a problem with that.

Jean was a student at,

Helped out with Upaya Zen Center here in Santa Fe.

And she would come to our center to study with me because she liked my teachings.

There's a difference between Zen and Tibetan in terms of the types of teachings they have.

But anyway,

She liked to study with me.

And she told me this story once because she's from Wales.

And there's a center in Wales that she was at,

A Tibetan Buddhist center.

And she was staying there for quite a while.

And there was a visitor,

A woman that came there.

And during the day she'd gone out on a,

For a hike.

And I guess the center is located in a wooded area and pretty dense woods.

And the woman wandered away into the woods and it got to be dusk.

And the woman had not returned.

And then it got to be dark and the woman was still not there.

And so they decided they would check with their resident teacher.

I don't know who his teacher's,

What this teacher's name was.

He lived in the upstairs area and then the gompa,

The meditation room,

Was down below.

So they went,

She went up there and asked him,

You know,

What prayers they should do or was there something that they should be doing to try to help this woman?

And he said,

Of course,

Do the praises to Green Tara.

And so they went downstairs and started doing the praises,

Chanting them.

And then they hear after a while a sort of thump from the upstairs,

Like the geshis,

Like,

Or the teacher's going,

You know,

Well,

Okay,

That's enough.

You've done enough.

And then within minutes this woman shows up.

And they asked her,

They said,

Well,

What happened?

And she says,

Oh,

I was hiking and I got really lost.

And then it got dark and I didn't know which way the center was at all.

And then I saw a green light and I started following where the green light was and got,

You know,

And it's not like at the center they have a flashing green light or something.

She saw this green light and the green light took her to the center.

And again,

You know,

There are people,

Of course,

Who think that maybe this was the teacher who was doing this to help her,

You know,

Maybe it's this being we would call Green Tara that is the enlightened mind of the Buddha that's there to help beings in their fear and what have you.

So,

But that one gave me goosebumps when I heard that story.

But I haven't had that kind of predicament where I've needed Green Tara to save my life,

Though maybe I would have been in a horrific accident on the 101 that day if Green Tara hadn't gotten the shuttle van started.

So I don't know.

One thing I might say in this whole idea of like magic or miracles was a quote that came from Lama Yeshe.

He was,

Of course,

As I said over there in India and Nepal,

All these people coming over there looking for mystical experiences,

Magical experiences,

All these wild things,

And Lama Yeshe pulled the student aside once.

He says,

All these people,

They're looking for something magic.

But he says,

Ah,

The mind is magic.

And of course in Buddhism,

This is what we really believe is that everything is created through the force of our minds.

You know,

We create our own reality,

We create our experiences,

We create the world we live in.

It's all a product of our mind through the force of our karma.

And of course we can change all of that,

And we can become just like Green Tara,

An enlightened being having a totally different experience on the basis of purifying our minds.

I don't tend to look so much outside for all this sort of magic,

But rather look inside for the magic that I can create through working with my mind.

In a Buddhist perspective,

We could say that any being that appears in this world that helps others spiritually could be a manifestation of what we would call enlightened mind.

If you become enlightened,

Do you dip in and out of enlightenment,

Or are you eternally enlightened?

Does that make sense?

Yeah,

That's a perfectly valid question.

And from our perspective,

It's an unchanging state.

I mean,

In terms of once you achieve it,

You will have that for eternity.

It's not,

You know,

That we degenerate from that perfect view.

Because essentially what the Buddhist path teaches is that we have had pollutions in our mind,

Some contaminations in our mind since beginningless time,

Which is a pretty outrageous concept.

I've gotten into discussions with some of my fellow interfaith people on that whole concept of beginningless time and what that means.

But essentially,

These contaminations in the mind are not there sort of inherently.

They go from life to life,

But they can be removed.

And of course the Buddhist path is mostly a matter of removing what is obscuring that Buddha nature,

What is allowing that to not manifest needs to be removed so that it can manifest.

So essentially,

Once you've done that work of removing everything that contaminates the mind and developing everything that is positive,

Then you've finished the work.

That's what our potential is.

When we talk about the mind,

The true potential of the mind is to fully awaken in that way.

And once we've accomplished it,

There's no going back.

There's no necessity to repeat it.

In Tibetan,

They took this word Buddha.

It's kind of an interesting little tidbit.

They took Buddha,

Which essentially in the Sanskrit means awakened one,

The one who has awakened from the dream of reality and understood things as they actually are.

And they made it into two words that are put together.

In Tibetan,

The first word is sang.

S-A-N-G is how it's usually spelled.

Again,

They don't use Western letters,

But sang means to have fully purified the mind.

Gye means to fully develop the mind.

So you have what was originally this concept of an awakened one,

Really manifested in terms of what it entails.

It entails complete removal of everything that obscures our mind,

So that those things never occur again.

And complete development of everything that complements the nature of our minds,

That makes us into magnanimous,

Wonderful,

Benevolent beings in the world that are totally dedicated to the welfare of others.

So essentially this is what the goal is.

And once you achieve the goal,

There's no degeneration from that.

I'm thinking that takes a lot of therapy.

Because I'm listening to you and I think,

Oh gosh,

Recently science,

And I know there's some debate on this,

Talks about generational trauma being encoded in our DNA.

And it's like,

How do you,

However,

They have done studies that show that you can change those patterns in your DNA,

That you can change those old stories,

Those old traumas,

Meditation,

Talk therapy,

Somatic therapy,

You know,

Any number of things.

It's different for every human how you can heal that.

But irrespective of all the various ways that we can heal that,

Or the stories from our childhoods,

Right,

That traumatize us,

You still have to do the work of healing those slights,

Those injuries,

So that you can move forward in your life.

And so I'm thinking that healing,

You know,

And healing oneself is a huge component to achieving enlightenment.

Two things that kind of shed light on that is,

First of all,

You know,

There's a Buddhist perspective that kind of everything that manifests in our lives,

Whether it be trauma we experience when we're young or challenges as adults,

Or whatever it is that we encounter,

Is all there to teach us,

You know,

And if we look at it from the karmic perspective,

We see that again,

We create the experiences that we have in a particular life.

And Venerable Pema Chodron,

I'm sure you've heard of Pema Chodron,

Wonderful teacher,

She's written so many fantastic books that have really helped,

You know,

Bring Tibetan Buddhism to a more secular audience,

But she essentially frames karma as life giving you the lessons you need to learn.

And so this is the way that we kind of,

It's like if I created this stuff,

Because this is the truth for every one of us,

Nothing occurs to us that we haven't created the karma for.

And it doesn't mean that we should beat ourselves up because we've created horrible things in our life.

It means that we should take responsibility for that and say,

What can I learn from that?

How can I actually grow and develop from that?

So everything we see is grist for the mill,

Is something that we can,

You know,

Develop from.

And of course,

I'm not saying again,

Buddhism has a monopoly on that idea.

I would say that's probably pretty common in a lot of thinking in our day and age,

Of people looking at things in their life as,

What can I learn from this?

How can I grow from this?

How can I see it as an opportunity and not something that defines me in such a negative way or drags me down or whatever the case might be?

But I think that's probably the most important element,

Is that we acknowledge that we're the creators of that.

So what do we do with that?

How do we actually make it into something positive?

Thanks for listening to episode 34 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,

As long as we open our eyes to it.

I'd like to thank my guests today,

Don Handrick,

For sharing his story,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Music L.

Files,

Raphael Crux,

Frank Schroeder,

Brian Holtz,

Music and Winnie the Moog.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to books,

People,

Music,

And change makers that are making this world a better place.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Don.

Investigate yourself.

What's your karma?

And what do you need to know about it?

What's your karma?

And what do you need to do to reach enlightenment?