For example, Orthodox icon-painter

Didn’t care what Russian nobles would say

at exhibition in St.Petersburg.

 

He eat a bread and water,

prayed to God

and painted God.

 

 

And do you also paint God,

If to say relatively and primitively?

 

If to say relatively and primitively,

That is what relative and primitive is.

 

 

That we paint

could be called by European psychologists

our deep archetype.

 

 

According to Buddhist concepts

 

 

we paint the subtlest and purest layer

of our consciousness,

 

our own deep spiritual world.

 

For instance, I’m painting a God of Compassion

and I repeat this compassionate state of mind

again and again, all the time.

 

There is magic in it.

 

When one recites mantras,

 

it is the same.

 

Junction between sound and consciousness.

Vibration.

 

It’s so strange, natural, but strange

to find Sasha Kocharov here.

 

When nine years ago Sasha, we both - Andrey and me,

and Slava Komarovsky

first came here

 

we were mastering this world together -

 

learnt Tibetan, met His Holiness the Dalai Lama,

heard the stories about reclusives…

 

Then each of us looked for the answers

to his own questions, brought from Russia…

 

Then Andrea and me returned home to Russia,

but Sasha remained here and became a part of this world.

Now he is a professor of the Buddhist University in Sarnath,

teaches Tibetans their Tibetan tanka painting.

 

 

He says: Look at him!

He wishes nothing but woman.

He would give off all for woman.

 

 

This is a penis 

 

And you ask: but what would be woman’s one?

 

And how do they conjunct?

 

By these very cutters

every day monks cut on the stones prayers

for benefit of all sentient beings.

 

 

 

Everywhere in India, Nepal, Tibet

one can find such prayer on the stone

in the remotest places

high in the mountains.

 

Monks say

that the prayer should be

as constant as breath

and as regular as heart pulse is.

I went to India to see

a real saint –

how he eats, how he leaves.

First months I would see in every monk

great Teacher.

 

But a monastery is a kind of Young Pioneer camp

Do your think, that monks are not cool?

They are! They are cool indeed!

See, to bear this all one needs such inner discipline!

And they have nothing for that

but food and bed.

If say now they put on you monk’s robe,

after one week you would say: “What a sheet!”

 

 

Well, but in general all this is great…

So why have you left?

Me? I haven’t left … I’ve left not this –

but all this organization…

There is too little freedom here…

Monk is always tied.

 

 

 

For Tibetans it is not so important

If one is monk or not.

 

 

To become real master

one needs long retreat,

 yogic practices.

 

 

And here in the monastery

studying,

there is no time to think about meaning of life.

 

See, now they pray in the temple from 5 a.m. till night.

I came in my cell, thinking: now I would undress…

Then – Blazes! Already trumpet’s sound, morning –

why I’m dressed?!

 

Russia. Ban’kovo village.

 

Speaks Andrey Terenyev, doctor of philosophy.

 

To enter Buddhist tradition

and not lose the heat,

but continue spiritual practice,

one should be remarkable person.

 

 

There are no many such people,

even among Tibetans,

not only among our people.

 

 

One should have great purposefulness.

 

 

But there is a lot of temptations around –

one can become great scholar

or great translator

or somebody great else …

 

 

I learnt that it was possible to make real hitch

only relying on the Teacher,

that is entering the tradition

and doing those exercises,

which the Teacher would give especially you –

for your unique case.

 

When I went to Buryatia

and found there a Teacher,

I started to do something,

then felt tremendous relief

in moral and spiritual aspect

and inspiration.

 

Teacher, I started to do

People there would regard Russians

Interested in Buddhism

as eccentric ones.

 

 

I remember one old Buryat woman

Asked me: “Do you want to be lama?”

 

 

I never got any idea

to attain some profession there…

I wished to become Buddha!

 

In 70-s when in USSR it was impossible

even to dream about India,

 

 

Andrey with Sasha Kocharov

went to Buryatia

and met there their first Teacher.

Such teachers are called “granddads” there.

 

 

 

They stayed in his house,

Cleaned manure,

weeded the kitchen-garden.

 

 

 

“Granddad” went through 12 years

of Stalin’s concentration camps/

He was an artist, a doctor.

Nobody in the village knew

How high lama he was,

though lots of people addressed him

for curing and advices.

 

Traditionally Russians are Christians.

His Holiness thinks it is good,

If people follow their own belief.

 

But if you are interested in Buddhism,

you should go deep into the meaning of it.

 

 

This is a meeting of H.H. the Dalai Lama

with Russian Buddhists in India, Dharamsala. 1999, March.

The interpreter is Slava Komarovsky.

 

TO become Buddhist, to follow Buddhism

doesn’t mean to recite prayers, finger rosaries

or build temples.

It means to change yourself, to train the consciousness.

 

Nobody waited for me in India

and I didn’t know, what I would do there –

I didn’t imagine that I would become an interpreter.

But I wasn’t going to return to Russia.

 

 

May be I’m a bit bias

regarding those Europeans who become monks,

but I think there is no sense in it.

 

 

People expect too much

from monkshood.

 

They think, if one shaves his hair

and dresses red robes,

he is already Enlightened.

 

But then he sees

that nothing changed –

nor people around

neither he himself.

 

 

And then one feels irritation

and disappointment.

 

 

I also had all this.

 

But the less you think about yourself,

the easier it is to overcome it.

 

If one realizes that

anger and attachment are extra load,

these passions would gradually disappear.

 

Buddhism explains logically very clearly,

how one should deal with own conscience,

that’s why it is so good.

 

But all these problems stay so deeply

and don’t go immediately.

 

And Russia is painful point,

there they can appear again.

I’m afraid to return.

 

But don’t you think that

from the point of view of common people

all our Buddhist activities are

just escaping from the world?

 

 

Yes, from aside it looks like

escaping from the reality.

 

But for me it is escaping

to reality.

 

When one has changed his mind,

at least to some degree,

then it’s o’key to return to society

and help to others.

But there shouldn’t be hurry in it…

 

Actually Buddhism is not

socially directed religion.

 

That is influence of Christianity,

not its own content.

 

 

There on the mountain

my Teacher Tibetan lama lives.

Lifting there,

you go like through the customs.

 

 

The reclusives, living on the next slope,

said that my Teacher

went down to the teaching of Dalai lama.

Also may be because he was ill.

 

May be I have to engage only in meditations,

trying to live like you do.

 

 

Doesn’t matter – one may be all his life a reclusive,

But even not enter spiritual path.

 

Meditation is mastering one’s own mind

to develop compassion

and get realisation of reality.

 

 

There are such monks who do only

work during all their life.

And this is also the path.

 

 

 

It happens sometimes

that such monk lives inconspicuously,

but then says: “Tomorrow I’ll die.”

 

 

 

His breath cessates,

heart stops,

but the body doesn’t decompose.

 

 

Only then people realize

 

 

 

In Buddhism it is most important

how the person dies.

Then his essence appears.

 

 

Only two months passed

since Andrey and me together

planed to go to India.

 

 

Now he is in the hospital,

waiting for surgery on heart.

 

 

I tried to habituate myself to impermanence and death.

But when it happens, the only prayer is that he would be alive!

 

 

 

Lhamo is an oracle,

she is sixty.

 

 

She has terrible destiny,

her son is crazy.

 

 

May be, because of that

she became a healer,

or may be contrariwise…

 

 

 

I was an interpreter for her,

I talked with her about meaning of life,

about monks, everything…

 

 

I thank her very much.

 

 

Lhamo told me

that for foreigners

after two-three years

 Buddhism goes aside,

becomes a profession.

 

Why you shoot?!

 

Lhamo has noticed cicatrices

on the arms of Lyosha.

 

What is it? When? In Russia?

 

Are you crazy? Why? What happened?

Because of the girl?

 

 

They are shooting! I won’t speak…

 

And what was attitude of your parents

towards your converting into Buddhism?

 

 

-                                                None.

-                                                Now for me they are already

-                                                as non-parents

 

 

I don’t communicate with them since long ago.

 

 

Because of your faith? Why?

Before didn’t you wished them to bring you

to Orthodox seminary?

 

 

Well, it was ages ago…

But now it is something like this…

 

 

Aren’t they religious?

I know a little about them.

 

 

When did your contrariety happen?

Well, may be, when I went to India first.

 

 

 

How did they find it – as a craziness?

Why I know?

 

 

Did they try to bring you over?

I don’t remember. I was ages ago.

I just wanted and went.

I don’t want about parents.

That’s unpleasant topic for me…

 

 

Lyosha happened to meet in the monastery the Teacher – lama Godi.

Forty years ago in Tibet, occupied by China, they imprisoned him, but even there older lamas passed their Buddhist knowledge to younger ones in order to preserve a Teaching.

 

In prison they thought about compassion – towards Chinese soldiers.

Later lama Godi like many other Tibetans managed to flue through mountain passes to India.

 

Are you a monk?

Why! I have two sons and a daughter. I’m ngagpa, - ngagpa, that is married lama.

 

Ngagpa regards bear as a nectar

 

when with woman, you imagine yourself as a couple of gods and everything goes differently.

 

Are you married?

My wife died.

 

Did your teaching help you to rub through her dearth?

 

It is a matter of Teaching. There was nothing to rub through. There is no use of grief. Died is died. The same - I’ll also die.

 

So what is there use in?

So in what is there use ?

 

The first is a good thought. The thought that all sentient beings are my mums and dads. Even inhabitants of the hell and hunger spirits are my mums and dads.

 

See, the dog barks – and it is also my mum and dad.

 

 

They don’t know how to pray, they can not practice, can not attain Enlightenment. I pray for them.

It is not so important for me to become Enlightened, I pray that they could attain Enlightenment.

 

 

I don’t know what I would feel when in reality I’m dying, but now I don’t have a fear of dearth.

 

I lived long and managed to have done something from what I wanted to.

 

Besides, the idea of rebirth became closed to me. And I don’t fear.

Thus I watch this Lyosha Goryachev and think over: is he soft-headed as he looks to be? But from other side he is not an idiot, not at all…

 

 

 

That better psychotherapists say! May be I’m psycho? How can I know? How can I know what I would do after five minutes?

 

May be I’ll rape you! Who knows! Unpredictable.

 

 

 

Not believe? For nothing you don’t believe .

O’key. You don’t know – but you know something about yourself…

And what you could say – to others – about yourself, about Buddhism?

 

Say, you or me – we deal with Buddhism all our life, but common people who live differently in their affairs can find no sense in it, no value. Then what would you say?

 

One Tibetan told me: everyone has his own religion. That means everyone has his own way.

 

Yes. But if we say like this it happens that Buddhism stays a kind of “a thing in itself”, means that there is some mystery in it…

 

Why should I tell something to you or somebody?

 

No, you should nothing…

 

I may chaff at it, laugh, but it is very deep inside me, that is something very precious for me, holy…

 

 

Then I would like to understand what it brings to you

 

What brings? Nothing! Brings nothing… lots of problems

 

I’ve got an impression that you have tangled

 

But why do you know what is inside me? How do you judge? By TV or what? By outer signs?

 

By outer signs

 

But why you, Buddhist, judge by outer signs?

 

Because there are no other signs.

 

there are no other signs?!

And why do you judge people at all?

 

Look at your faults, don’t look at other’s faults. Doesn’t Buddhism says: judge yourself?!

 

I’m trying to understand what you want to say.

 

TO you – nothing! And to anybody I want to say nothing.

 

When you get here first,

It seems that everybody around –

Indians, Tibetans, Europeans

are Enlightened.

 

 

 

And because of it you feel

that you yourself are nearly

getting Enlightenment.

 

 

But after the first trial

you understand that

this inner stranger, bitchy and long-tongued

whom you hoped to leave at home,

didn’t disappear at all.

 

 

A fellowtraveller in the bus said

that Tibetans are accustomed from childhood

to meditate about benefit of all sentient beings.

 

 

A man, who concentrates on kindness

six times a day, of a surety becomes different.

 

 

But they say that even for Tibetans

One life is not enough.

Александр Кочаров

 

Participated:

Alexey Goryachev

Margarita Kojevnikova

Yaroslav Komarovskyi

Alexandr Kocharov

Andrey Terentyev

 

Scenary

S.Karandashov

M.Kojevnikova

V. Chutko

 

Producers:

Sergey Karandashov

Vladimir Tchoutko

Scolar consultor

Margarita Kojevnikova

Звукооператор                                            Лариса Маслова