Rinpoche Through My Eyes – Mission Impossible
Joy has been a student of His Eminence the 25th Tsem Rinpoche for over 15 years. Through the years, Joy has witnessed Rinpoche’s compassion and the unconventional methods he uses to benefit others. Some of the short stories she shares will tell interesting miraculous events that Rinpoche will not mention due to his humility. She hopes these stories will serve as an inspiration in your own spiritual journey.
Rinpoche Through My Eyes – Mission Impossible
As Dharma practitioners, we strive to eradicate the negativity in ourselves that has bound us to samsara (cyclic existence) for eons. Getting rid of negativity, however, is no easy feat and most of the time we do not even recognise these problems in us in the first place! That is, until we meet our spiritual teacher.
We often procrastinate personal improvement regardless of how many self-help books we have read. However, when you have had a spiritual teacher like His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche, who selflessly took upon himself the task of helping you in your spiritual path, breaking out of one’s negativity often came in the form of interesting assignments.
“It is for you to win. I never assign you anything that will make you fail.”
~ Tsem Rinpoche
Despite knowing this, receiving an assignment from Rinpoche was either an exciting or challenging experience. In fact, just by identifying how we felt at the time of receiving an assignment was itself a lesson on how we perceived things.
I remember once I was given an assignment along with three of my Dharma brothers and sisters. It was an assignment to find a doll and spaceship from one of Rinpoche’s favourite childhood sci-fi movies, Mission Stardust. Upon receiving the assignment, it did not feel like such a monumental task. After all, how difficult would it be to find a doll?
After hours scouring through the internet for a few days, our enthusiasm and morale slowly started to dissipate. What we first thought to be an easy assignment turned out to be one of the most challenging tasks ever, something that I would never forget even after so many years.
“Yet another mission impossible!” I thought to myself at that time. No one was selling this doll because no one had ever made it!
We weighed our options and asked ourselves if we should inform Rinpoche about the bad news – that we just cannot find a ready-made figurine to buy off the shelf. After further discussion and contemplation, we decided against it. After all, if it wasn’t just a doll, would we have given up so quickly? What if it was for someone we loved like our parents, our child or our spouse? Would we have given up so easily?
Click on image to enlarge
Knowing very well that there was no way we could purchase the doll and the spaceship because they did not actually exist, the only way to acquire it was if we were to make it ourselves. Being pressed for time, as it has been about two weeks with no positive news, our creativity began to kick in.
I contacted my favourite art shop to commission an artist to create the spaceship from Mission Stardust. Unfortunately, the series never aired in Malaysia; nobody knew about it and because of this, the artist was a little reluctant to make a replica of the spaceship. This became another challenge, to convince the artist how simple the spaceship looked and that he should be able to model it easily. Thankfully, after much persuasion, he finally agreed to give it a try.
Now, the next thing was to figure out how to create a doll of Thora, one of the main characters. After discussion with the team, we agreed that the fastest way to make the doll was to modify a Barbie doll. So I went to check out the toy store Toys“R”Us and fortunately, they had a doll with the right hair colour, just like Thora’s! We restyled her hair to have a fringe like Thora and commissioned Kechara Saraswati Arts (KSA) to sew her outfit. The outcome was perfect!
When the day came to submit our assignment, we reflected on the many lessons, obstacles and challenges we experienced from one simple assignment. We hoped that Rinpoche would be happy with what we managed to create, and placed both doll and spaceship on a tray as creatively as we could for it to be presented to Rinpoche.
To our delight, Rinpoche was thrilled with the doll and spaceship, and even wanted to create a blog post on it! If one could feel the joys of practising the 50 Stanzas of Guru Devotion, I would say this was definitely it for us.
Mission Stardust spaceship was handmade using clay and Thora was a Barbie doll that was modified. Her clothes were sewn by our art department, Kechara Saraswati Arts (KSA).
Rinpoche always liked spontaneity and creativity especially when it came to benefiting others. Being brought up in a materialistic and consumer-based world, sometimes we do not realise how it affects the way we operate in our daily lives. Everything is so easily available that we have become lazy and forgotten that not too long ago, many things were handmade and our imaginations were our playground. Rinpoche often encouraged us to think out of the box and find alternative ways to solve our problems if it could not be done conventionally. Rinpoche always inspired us to be innovative because nothing is impossible if we are determined enough. It was this positive thinking and attitude that Rinpoche tirelessly tried to nurture in his students. After all, what we think is what we become.
Rinpoche certainly taught our team to never give up and showed us what we could achieve when we worked harmoniously together. Putting aside our differences, fears and insecurities was an important lesson as we focused on achieving results. And yes, the results are important but even more important is the journey towards getting those results. It taught us that if we put our minds toward something, no matter how difficult it may be, we can achieve it regardless of how we perceived it in the beginning.
For more interesting information:
- Rinpoche Through My Eyes – Invoking the Buddhas to Come Forth
- Rinpoche through my eyes – Food and Dharma
- I Witnessed the Compassion of Tsem Rinpoche
- Stories from a Chela – Spiritual Nourishment for All
- Stories from a Chela – Supernatural Protection
- Growing up with Rinpoche: Necessity, not convenience
- Tales With My Lama : Audience With Tsem Rinpoche
- Tales With My Lama : Laugh Away Your Ego
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There is a saying nothing is impossible, we must give a try .
We will never know till we try it. If we have discipline, patience and determination nothing is impossible. Well , Rinpoche being spontaneous and creative styled of teachings benefited many of us. Interesting when Rinpoche had given an assignment in such a way , that one will never thought its sound simple but its challenging . Glad Joy , you and others did it well completed the task without giving up.
Thank you Rinpoche for this teachings and thanks joy for sharing this with us .