ENLIGHTENED DISINTEGRATION

"You'll begin to experience a shift in your conventional perception and identification of things."

The Rinpoche had dissolved his ego in emptiness so found it alien to be diagnosed with an affliction that was so intrinsically wrapped up with the dualistic identity he already believed he'd shed like the skin of a snake.

"What I am trying to explain to you, Rinpoche, is that you may find from now on you're experiencing more forgetfulness with everyday tasks. And it's possible that you begin to forget the names of people previously familar to you. You might even become increasingly anxious about these bouts of absent mindedness," his kindly faced doctor, Bhandari, explained to him as simply as he might to a young child. He wasn't patronising his revered patient but simply trying his best not to disturb him. This particular type of diagnosis always required a great deal of sensitivity in handling the patient and their slow dawning comprehension of the grave situation they would now face.

Smiling, the Rinpoche took the news with the equanimity one might expect from someone who'd been immersed in daily spiritual practice for the past seventy years of his life.

"I've been trying to forget all my life."

The doctor expected this kind of vague answer from the spiritual practitioner and gave him the relevant literature on his newly diagnosed condition before wishing him goodbye from the door of his office.

"You can call me whenever you need to discuss anything. You have my number."

"You should try to forget, too!" the elderly monk said, laughing in a playful manner.

The doctor, though spiritual, was trained as a man of science and felt certain that the Rinpoche would probably deny his slow degradation which made him profoundly sad. A lifetime of discipline, practising each and every day at the temple and for what, he thought to himself.

Before he succumbed to melancholy, he called for his next patient to come to his office.

Throughout the following years it slowly began to happen, like a candle with a short wick whose flame begins to splutter in the darkness of the temple.

For the Rinpoche, his idea was to meditate on the disintegration of mind through whatever tools of perception he could hold onto.

"The biggest mistake is to resist the coming storm clouds," he told his students one morning when he was guiding their group meditation. "Better to become the storm clouds, yes?"

They nodded solemnly, observing each of the Rinpoche's utterance like precious jewels.

"Until that moment when you finally dissolve your singular idea of the self, like a bead of water into the lake of totality, you will remain forever suspended in samsara."

Leaving him to rest, as his energy levels were becoming ever more depleted with each passing day, his oldest student, Dampa, made sure to top up his jug with fresh water and re-light the golden lamp that had gone out.

"Dampa! Thank you," the Rinpoche said softly in his frail, tremulous voice.

Somehow, the fact that the Rinpoche could remember his name reassured Dampa and he bowed graciously toward his master.

He wondered how good solitude actually was for Rinpoche, given the nature of his condition. Did he forget a little more each time he was left alone? If he was to remain by his side all day and all night, would he be able to keep his illness in abeyance? Ah, but this was conventional thinking he could hear his master's voice saying in his head as if he was already a figure from the recent past.

When the full shadow finally cast across the Rinpoche's mind like an eclipse of the moon, his accumulated wisdom over a lifetime was dispersed like scattered ashes. All that was left was the tired, exhausted body that shuffled around the temple and the mountainside like a living ghost.

Dampa was distraught at seeing his master unable to recognise those all around him but tried to apply some of his teachings so that he could reconcile with his cruel fate. It was, as his master had reminded him on many occasions, his karma.

In attempting to understand the multitude of paradoxes in the Rinpoche's enlightened disintegration, Dampa found it was the first and most simple lesson that his Rinpoche had told him at the age of seven that cut to the heart of the matter.

He remembered like it was yesterday the first morning he had been taken to the temple and left by his parents to study. Confused at his being abandoned, he began to cry.

"Attachment is the root of all suffering, Dampa. You'll cry until you don't. We all have to cry out our attachment."

Attachment to identity was no different, he thought. Letting go was the only liberation. Though his master was still appearing in conventional appearance, his identity had now become absorbed into totality itself. He should no longer think of him as a conventional appearance of beingness.

As he was expected to handle many of the Rinpoche's lessons at the temple from now on, he realised that much of what he felt he'd lost, he'd actually gained. For it was now his time to carry the dharma on and teach it as an effect of the wisdom taught to him by his master.

This sudden sense of an inseparable totality gave Dampa a genuine sense of  liberation. He felt enormous gratitude for having understood this most precious lesson and realised that even his dualistic sadness for Rinpoche was an important part of the learning.

One of the last things Rinpoche had said to him before he began to completely lose his conventional state of mind had resonated in a profound way for Dampa.

"Grieve for what I was in the conventional sense if you must. But celebrate the totality of all things when you work your sadness through."

Entering the darkness of the temple, Dampa went to gather some items for his early evening meditation.

Lighting a golden lamp filled with yak butter, he picked up a prayer wheel and began to spin it as he incanted sacred Sanskrit texts in honor of the Rinpoche and all sentient beings, appreciating there was ultimately no separation between all subjects.

And his own self.