my memory of a meeting with the 16th Karmapa- a true story

i was visiting the San Francisco Zen Center in 1973 or '74 staying with my friend Meredith Cleaves a student aspirant to be ordained, who lived nearby, across the street from 3rd and Page.  I used to hitchike or bus down and visit awhile and sit zazen.  We were girls from Eugene Oregon, with a genuine interest in meditation and buddhism.

Suddenly one morning we heard compelling horns blaring, and ran out on the street to see what was happening.

 

A big gold cadillac was pulling up in front of the Zen Center, Dharma flags on the front fenders, a beautiful gold brocade over the passenger seat, where an apparently old Lama was being helped out of the car.

Persons on either side helped him stand as his legs seemed stiff or tottery, he seemed to me very old as tho' he'd spent a long life in meditation pose, but i was very young.

 

 

Tickets had been sold somewhere downtown which came with a wonderful fotograf of him when he was young and wearing turned up shoes and the Black Hat, five dollars, for admission to the Black Hat Ceremony he was giving later in a big warehouse building down by the water.  We knew him as the Karmapa or Black Hat Buddha.

 

 

I stood and watched on the sidewalk as monks in maroon robes, who i recall were the ones lining the steps up to the Center and playing the long Tibetan horns, and were from Trungpa Rinpoche's place in Colorado; and foreign Tibetan monks in gold robes i felt very shy around, who were with the Karmapa, and the zens in black, a small cluster out front on the sidewalk as i looked on.

 

The tall Japanese master of ceremonies from the Zen Center came down the steps and as they bowed and smiled in welcome, he pulled out a little silver or gold bell and so did the Karmapa and they spoke to each other in bells, having what seemed to be a complete conversation.

 

Then the Karmapa was taken up the stairs to a private tea with the masters of the place. The doors closed.

 

Suzuki Roshi was not alive at that time, but the Mrs. Suzuki was. I sat next to her in the zendo once and could feel the depth of her oceanic meditation practice.  For times of chanting they gave a card to hold and read the chants; some in phonetic Japanese and some in English.  This one I never forgot and still use:

 

ALL BUDDHAS, TEN DIRECTIONS, THREE TIMES

WISDOM BEYOND WISDOM
MAHA PRAJNA PARAMITA

 

Later at the wharf  he gave his hundred or thousand OM MANI PADME HUM ceremony of blessing and put on the Hat and transubstantiated.  Many had brought him flowers and scarves, he greeted and blessed all in the line to go by him at the conclusion.

 

I had made a hundred nice large copies of the foto taken so long ago even then, of the young 16th Karmapa and gave them away to friends.  Somewhere i may still have one.  They said he visited on that first visit to the States,  the Tail of the Tiger Zen Community in Vermont the SF Zen Center and the Hopi Chief and Nation which he had just come from and they said he made it rain for the Hopi in their drought.

 

And then one day decades later in Seattle i saw in a bookstore window near the UW, a young Karmapa on the cover....a beautiful book from Snow Lion Press; Music in the Sky.  He's back!  And now i have a ticket to see him and he is giving a Chenrezig ceremony at the Paramount June 1st in Seattle.  It seems to be the same ceremony as was given so long ago but now the ceremonial and meaningful Black Hat may be in Chinese hands, i do not know but it was only a cloth hat many hundreds of years old and maybe wore out....

Mayhap someone good will make the young Karmapa a new Hat.

 

sincerely Gretchen Adele aka Helenighthawk