A personal account by one of Lama Jampa’s students, of the book launch held in Bristol UK in October 2021 where Lama Jampa read from his new book: River of Memory: Dharma Chronicles.
Sometimes the way things come together can seem a little bit like magic, and this seems especially the case when it comes to meeting my Buddhist lamas. It happened again last week – one evening after work when a great story began to unfold …
We’d been invited to a book launch in Bristol, where Lama Jampa was the guest of honour, and we were promised “the memories, dreams and reflections of a modern Western lama” as laid out in his new book; “River of Memory: Dharma Chronicles”.
It was a bit of a rush for me to get there after work, and my head was full of a busy day with no real expectation of how the evening would go. That weekend we’d just welcomed Lama Jampa to Bristol for a major dharma teaching with over 120 people in attendance, but this was a different kind of event – a book reading in an informal venue designed, perhaps, to open a different door onto the dharma for a new crowd.
A sign on the pavement directed us down some stone steps to a basement door, opening into a dimly lit hotel bar, known as The Square Club. This was a part of Bristol I knew very well, having spent many of my younger years studying and working in a building just a few doors down the road.
Being back in that part of town flooded my mind with memories of the sadness that had characterised my life at those times - the times before I had encountered my first Buddhist teachers; His Holiness Sakya Gongma Trichen, Lama Jampa Thaye and Karma Thinley Rinpoche.
Here I was again but this time, out of the blue, Lama Jampa would take centre stage. It was surreal. It felt like the meeting of two worlds and was like a mirror reflecting the transformation that had taken place in my own life. I was a very different person now to the one that walked this street years before, and I knew that I had my Lamas to thank for that; they had opened my eyes to what I needed to do to turn my life around.
Amid the flurry of thoughts of the past arising, triggered by the context of this old familiar place, I saw Lama Jampa emerge through the door, sit down, and in his warm, gentle and unhurried way start to tell us how the Buddhist path had been for him.
The book gives an extraordinary account of his dharma life, and one can only marvel at the life Lama Jampa has led and the accomplishments he has achieved with such wisdom, compassion and power.
Hearing him makes the Buddha’s teachings feel so utterly present; and the Buddhist path seem so accessible to us all, even to a very ordinary person. How can this be happening to me? How can it be possible for someone like me to follow the path? Lama Jampa’s life is the perfect template and inspiration for turning our lives around. He shows us by example, that the spiritual path can help anyone and everyone who cares to follow it, be they princes from India 2,500 years ago or working people from the West in the modern world. As a great teacher once said, dharma belongs to those who make an effort. It is a path out of suffering, with clear instructions on finding happiness for ourselves, understanding the causes of our suffering and for developing the ability to begin to help those we see suffering around us.
During the evening Lama Jampa read from his book, starting with pages 7-15 (I recommend reading these – they will have you hooked!). Later he talks of the role the Beat poets had in his life, people like Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan, and it was moving to hear their same lyrical and melodic lilt echo through his own writing as he read, seated on a velvet chair in his pointed brogues, the window behind him showing passers-by on the dark Autumn street above.
There is timeless wisdom in this book and I’m sorry I can’t do justice to it in this review so my only suggestion, if you’re interested, is that you try and meet Lama Jampa, or one of the other great Buddhist masters he mentions in the book, face-to-face one day. Then follow the four main elements of Buddhist training: receiving and maintaining vows, receiving textual teachings, obtaining vajrayana initiations and practising meditation.
A key theme of this book is that there is nothing that can come close to the power of hearing the teachings of the Buddha in the presence of someone who has already gone some way to follow them. It becomes apparent as you read, how extraordinarily rare it must be to find anyone, let alone a Westerner, who has followed the Buddhist path in the assiduous way that Lama Jampa has.
Hearing the dharma (the truth) direct from an authentic Buddhist lama is a little like magic and this evening was just one example of this. It felt like two rivers meeting - hearing Lama recount his river of memory and merging this with my own reflections and experiences. Somehow it clarified what is worth doing in life.
I’d like to thank Lama Jampa and those who organised the event. My memory will be the warm and all-encompassing smile from Lama Jampa as he handed me my signed copy of the book.
River of Memory: Dharma Chronicles – a series of videos of Lama Jampa talking about his book
River of Memory: Dharma Chronicles – a book review on the website of Lama Jampa Thaye
Lama Jampa’s forthcoming teaching events