Emails to the Lama

Clear and straightforward explanations inspired by the crazy wisdom.

Denouncing both spiritual materialism and religious materialism, in these incisive responses to his correspondents’ emails, Lama Darjeeling showed himself as he was all his life: an iconoclastic master, outside the well-trodden paths of spiritual ego. Meditation is beyond the ego, the search for benefits, trends, techniques. Its “non-goal” is vacuity. Meditation on vacuity is the ultimate path of meditation, when one goes beyond all techniques and cuts through all illusions.

“O zealous disciple, do you understand that this thing called “meditation,” which consists in doing nothing in order to get nothing, is the most precious, the most sublime, the most formidable and the most revolutionary in the universe?!”

In these posthumous emails of Lama Darjeeling, gathered here, issues relating to meditation, the practical application of Buddhist teachings in daily life, the relationship of the Buddhist approach to religions, as well as the Mahayana and Madhyamaka Buddhist views on duality, impermanence, vacuity, Enlightenment, hopelessness, “that’s like it is,” karma and free will, the block universe, and ultimate reality are addressed.

Deceased in October 2014, Darjeeling Rinpoche left behind numerous emails that attest to a prolific and stimulating activity of communication with many people around the world. When the issues of legal succession were resolved, a team set out to explore his computer and analyze all the documents that could extend his teachings beyond death. This is how we were able to develop this project of compiling and publishing some of the many emails that Lama Darjeeling was able to exchange over the years. In the responses to the questions posed by his correspondents, we find the major ideas of Darjeeling Rinpoche, as he presented them in these three reference works, but also other more advanced teachings. All the emails selected for this book have been classified into four categories that form the chapters of this small book: Buddhism and meditation, Buddhism in practice, Buddhism and religion, Buddhism and science.