Dear Vajrasangha,
If we want our lives to flourish, our vajra hearts to blaze with all the love and joy of our lineage, and our vajrayana sangha to thrive, it is a necessity that we gather together every year, face to face. And this means each one of us.
VTI as always, is our opportunity and container for this annual gathering. As it has been for the householder yogins and yoginis of our lineage from the beginning, going back to India. It is how our lives become most meaningful and transformed, and how the intensity and integrity of our lay lineage has survived for nearly 2,000 years.
Each one of us must make this the top priority each and every year. We must do so for ourselves first and foremost, but also for our sangha as a whole. This deep renewal and reconnection with our path and each other cannot happen in any other way. Without the intimacy and alchemical process that VTI provides, it is too easy for us to lose the thread and go into cruise control in our lives, meantime thinking everything is fine. A considerable level of commitment and devotion is required to join with our brothers and sisters in this regular way. But, as each of us knows all too well, the whole tantric journey requires nothing less from us on all levels.
At this year’s VTI we will practice together, engage with the teachings I, Caroline and others have for you, and we will also confab and dance and sing together.
At this time, we are continuing to move away from a what we might call a “guru centered” Vajrayana community to become a community that is self-regulating, self-sustaining, self-correcting, and self-governing. Such were the lay Vajrayana communities in India and Tibet of old.
This means that we need to take further, decisive steps, with every one of us maturing further and taking responsibility for our lineage, as Rinpoche used to say, fully, thoroughly, and completely. Everyone will to have a role to play. Indeed, everyone must have a role to play.
This will mean a further evolution of the more egalitarian structure we have been working on for years with our many mandala councils, a strengthened board and increasingly skilled staff. As always, the container of our community will be the natural hierarchy of myself as your primary Vajrayana teacher and mentor, Caroline as my co-teacher and lineage successor, and all the devoted and accomplished people in the various leadership roles. And that container will hold each one of us as we share in the empowerment, authority and the responsibility of the lineage as mature Vajrayana people. Soon, this is going to include empowerments for each one of you who are functioning as teachers on any level, from leading groups in your home up to those carrying our major programs. I speak for Caroline, our leadership, and myself: we very much look forward to working closely with you this summer to take this next critical step in this direction.
Warmly,
Reggie