Shambhala Publications released How Not to Miss the Point: The Buddha’s Wisdom for a Life Well Lived by Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche in June 2024.
Do nothing unvirtuous.
Do everything that is virtuous.
Train your mind.
This is the Buddhadharma.Anitya. Duhkha. Anatman. (Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche)
Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, born Tsering Paldrön in 1967 and daughter of the 11th Mindrolling Trichen, is a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who bridges the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages. Recognized at the age two by the 16th Karmapa as the reincarnation of Khandro Orgyen Tsomo, she received both traditional Dharma training and a Western education. Fluent in multiple languages and known for her eloquent, incisive teachings, she leads the Samten Tse Retreat Centre in India and Lotus Garden in the US, and has taught internationally since the 1990s.
Rinpoche is active in lineage preservation, interfaith dialogue, humanitarian work, especially important during these cultural and societally volatile times, and is the author of This Precious Life, a guide to Buddhist practice in the modern world. And this is something that she excels at: understanding this “modern world” in which she teaches.
She understands that the teachings of Buddhism are not static. She is realistic in her approach and reminds us to retain perspective of the cultural roots of teachings which we are ill advised to adhere to with zealot blinders. Her grounded, straightforward approach and her unpretentious candor, come across on every page, making this book do what the title says it does—get to the point.
Rinpoche does not waste anyone’s time with hyperbole decorated with extraneously flowery terms. She’s not lost in terms at all, in fact. While it’s interesting to know what a word is in its native language, especially when there is no exact correlative word in a Western language (and there happens to be a rather useful table of Tibetan, Sanskrit, and English terms at the end of the book), being distracted by word snobbery is akin to the snobbery of wearing the coolest looking mala as if it were a fashion contest with an enlightenment supremacy award.
And I adore Rinpoche all the more for succinctly addressing this, a bugbear of my own since, as a child, I witnessed similar behavior from some students of the extraordinary Geshe Namgyal Wangchen, who for a while lived with us and made our home a hub of Buddhist activity.
In fact, what Rinpoche beautifully reminds us here is that being a Buddhist is not even necessary. It is certainly not a prerequisite for being a good and evolving human, although it offers a very useful framework for those who feel that they would benefit from guided parameters of kindness and the nature of mind, consciousness, and reality through the lens of the Buddha’s insights. But when we become stuck in the trap of what we wear, the mantras we recall correctly and recite flawlessly, which empowerments we have banked, even which guru we were empowered by (however important that may be—and there is an entire chapter dedicated to the subject of gurus), we miss the point entirely.
With a kind yet pithy pen, Rinpoche reminds us that an adherence to being correct can lead to a paint-by-numbers type of practice of the teachings rather than an organic and lived reality. So much so, that she almost endorses transcending being Buddhist altogether.
This book isn’t a rant, however. It’s not a heavy fist thumping down upon the heads of folks who follow this path with the disciplined manner of a meticulous student. It is a pertinent yet warm reminder and permission to do one’s best with as much awareness and kindness as possible. With the teachings of the awakened Siddhartha Gautama as a guide, we should understand that the world in which he lived is not the world we inhabit today. The Buddha’s insights may stand, yet Rinpoche is a breath of fresh air in her retelling of his story and the environment in which Buddhism was born and evolved. Aside from any esoteric aspects of this master teacher’s consciousness, the Buddha’s earthly incarnation was in the culturally shifting sands of India. The long-established, rich, and profound spirituality of Hinduism seemed to be drifting into an abstract concept as the grass-roots, lived existence of class and gender-divide was becoming an abysmal chasm that caused much suffering in its fissuring.
Rinpoche’s pragmatic recounting of life in India, through the lens of history rather than a romantic narrative, renders a young nobleman deeply unsatisfied with the establishment’s toe-the-line answer of “because I said so” (something to which many a rebellious adolescent can still relate). It simply wasn’t an adequate answer to his deeper questions of the increasingly hypocritical reality he witnessed in society. It led Siddhartha to seek more coherent answers; answers that were grounded in a lived, compassionate wisdom rather than hierarchical rhetoric. And there turned out to be a poetic simplicity to his findings. Yet these simple, poetic teachings require expanding into useful introspective considerations and guidance that can be offered in accessible ways, as the Buddha well understood the mind’s complexity and the innate proclivity of humans toward confusion. Our mammalian search for happiness is simultaneously simple, inherent, and overstated.
While there are a multitude of literary pages in the world written by incredibly learned teachers and dedicated to how Buddhism and our search for happiness can be realized in everyday life, Rinpoche takes the route of extrapolating its essential nature that is beyond religion and its potential trappings. An interesting approach from such a lineage holder, yet the Buddha’s core teachings are still very much the point of the book, as evident in its title. Thanks to her international education and decades of international travel, these pages are filled with a nuance that Anglophiles will appreciate, although it may well serve as a mirror for some readers, should they have the eyes to really see.
See more
How Not to Miss the Point: The Buddha’s Wisdom for a Life Well Lived (Shambhala)
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