Dodrupchen Rinpoche

Dodrupchen Rinpoche. Following my time at Trinity College, and serious consideration to convert to Judaism (forever grateful to Rabbi Stanley Kessler and Bernice Saltzman who encouraged me to remain a Christian and to embrace my religious tradition), I began to explore some Eastern religions and philosophies. In particular, I had come across the writing of Sri Aurobindo who at the time (mid-1970s) led a community in India in Auroville. Sri Aurobindo incense was also widely available in those days when I would travel into Cambridge, MA with the Outerspace Band to play, most frequently at Jack’s on Massachusetts Ave, and Club Zircon in Somerville.

Space was living in Wendell, MA, a small town of about 700 people and half a dozen rock bands. Eric Weiss was our main manager and booking agent. One day Eric asked me to drive him to what we discovered was a small temple of devotees of he Tibetan Lama, Dodrupchen Rinpoche. Eric was going to purchase a car that was for sale in the paper. When we got there we discovered, much to our surprise, that Dodrupchen was visiting along with a companion, Lama Jingtse at The Mahasiddha Nyingmapa Center, in Chesterfield, MA at the time. Before buying the car we were introduced to the two Lamas, sitting in a circle on the floor in the meditation room. After a lively discussion, Dodrupchen taught us the Om eh ah hum vajra guru padma sidhi hum chant sitting in front of a shrine decorated with Christmas tree lights! I have used the chant throughout my life for over 43 years. It remains the primary focus of my mindfulness practice, and I am forever grateful for this chance encounter that has so enriched my entire life in ways that are simply inexplicable.

The meditation room in Conway

As we sat in the circle, Dodrupchen would ask what we did, while Jingtse would interpret. When I said I played drums, Dodrupchen seemed perplexed, so Jingtse began to wildly wave his arms and legs in the air, while still seated on the floor, making some noise to demonstrate! The Rinpoche nodded in understanding. Before purchasing the car, an Oldsmobile as I recall, we were invited to watch the Rinpoche eat his noonday meal, which we did. Such a chance meeting, occasioned by a classified ad for an automobile, resulted in one of the most important episodes in my spiritual journey. The chant is a fixed part of my very Being, and reconnects me with Dodrupchen and the eternal spheres of the divine every time I employ it.

About the same time, we met a young woman in Cambridge who went by the name P Susan, Susan McCaffrey, who was the first of several devotees of Meher Baba I would meet back in those days. It was Baba who coined the phrase, Don’t Worry, Be Happy, which later became, of course, a Top 40 hit with a bullet by Bobby McPherin. P Susan gave me a book of Baba’s teachings, and another devotee gave me a photograph of Baba playing a drum! Baba did not speak for the last several decades of his life on earth, but rather communicated with hand gestures and with a letter-board. It would be Pete Townshend of the Who, however, who would be perhaps the most famous of the Meher Baba devotees. And it was Baba who inspired much of the Who’s music, just as George Harrison was advancing the teachings of ISKON, the Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the guru Srila Prabhupada, through his music and that of the Beateles. Oddly, when Space moved out of the Big House in Wendell on the Green, the Hari Krishnas moved in! Since they shaved their heads, and I still had the barber kit my father, Robert A Kubicek, used to cut my hair through my high school years, and at the time I had not had me hair cut for some seven or eight years, I gifted the electric shears and scissors to them as a house warming gift of sorts. Although considered a nuisance at airports and on the streets at the time handing out copies of the Bhagavad-gita, years later I would find myself teaching the girls at St. Tim’s from that very same book of Hindu wisdom, which itself is a portion of the longer poem, The Mahabarata. In the Gita, Lord Krishna shares much of the same wisdom as our own Lord Jesus in conveying a message that we are all together and individually the Lord’s Beloved.