I originally released my conversation with Lama Karma Chotso in June of 2022. I happily share it again to entice us all to reconnect with timeless spiritual wisdom as we launch into a new year.

Since Lama Karma Chotso and I spoke last year, she has decided to let go of her beautiful Buddhist Center in the El Portal section of Miami where she has lived and taught for over 20 years. With the re-release of ths MY FOURTH ACT podcast episode, I invite all of us to embrace the gift of impermanence and have the courage to let go of something we love.

Lama Karma Chötso is a fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist lama. She began to study the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in 1982 after meeting Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche in New York City. Lama took refuge with him there, and 4 years later he ordained her as a novice nun. Lama Karma Chötso entered a three-year, three-months meditation retreat held in strict seclusion in 1986 and completed the retreat in 1990.

Lama Karma Chötso has practiced buddhadharma for 35 years. She is also a musician and trained in thangka painting. Her community work includes serving as volunteer service chaplain for Hospice Care in Broward County and teaching meditation and tai qi to inmates at Broward Correctional facility. Her sangha, the Open Awareness Buddhist Center, gathered for over 20 years in a beautiful sanctuary in the El Portal section of Miami before closing its doors.

Since Lama Karma Chotso and I spoke last year, she has decided to let go of her beautiful Buddhist Center where she has lived and taught for over 20 years. With the re-release of ths MY FOURTH ACT podcast episode, I invite all of us to embrace the gift of impermanence as we enter 2023 and have the courage to let go of something we love.

https://lamakayc.com/

He looked at me, I looked at him and there was the connection. It felt like a connection I'd never had before. I could just you could see with this man sitting in a room, and I was nowhere near any kind of realization, but you could tell that he was had accessed a realization of the nature of mind that none of the rest of us had.

Hey, this is Achim Nowak, executive coach and host of the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. If life is a five act play, how will you spend your FOURTH ACT? I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected FOURTH ACTS, listen, and to be inspired. And please rate us and subscribe on whatever platform you are listening on. Let's get started. It's a joy and privilege for me to welcome Lama karma jitsu to the mind fourth act podcast. And I'm just going to call her Lama as we speak. Lama is a fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist Lama, she began to study and practice the Katju lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in 1982. After meeting Carlo Rinpoche in New York City, she took refuge with him there and four years later, he ordained her as a novice nun, Lama entered a three year a three month retreat meditation, held in strict seclusion in 1986. And I want to talk about that and completed the retreat in 1990. Lama has practiced the Buddha Dharma for it says for 35 years and I was wondering the math is like 40 years. When you Googled IQ Lama, which I did, you will first be guided to her recorded music which surprised me. Lama is also trained in Tonka painting. Her community work includes serving as professional volunteer service chaplain for hospice care in Broward County, and teaching meditation and Tai Chi to inmates at Broward Correctional Facility. Her Sangha gathers in a beautiful sanctuary in the el portal section of Miami, which it calls home. And it is that the name is the open awareness, Buddhist center. It is such a pleasure for me to meet you, and have this conversation Lama welcome.

Well, thank you. It's such a pleasure to meet you. And to be able to do this this conversation. I love conversations versus lecture.

Yes. So in the spirit of compensation, especially given what my understanding you realize journey is, before you were led to Buddhism, when you were a young girl or teenager, and if people ask you, so what do you want to do when you grow up? What was in your mind? What were you thinking? Oh, what

was in my mind when I was young? You know, that's like, you know, 50 some years ago. So, I probably wanted to be a star. I don't know, I was a musician. And I was a singer. And I think I saw that as my way forward. Yeah. It didn't end up that way. But I think that at that time is what I saw.

Part of what really interests me about the conversation, just to give you a preview to our listeners is my sense is that you found a deep purpose early on, and you have continued to investigate deep on it, and found ways of being of tremendous service through something that is that speaks to you through you'll come through you. Can you give our listeners a sense, like when you first encountered Buddhism and the particular form of Buddhism, what inside of you went or knew that wow, this is it?

Well, I did not encounter it at an early age, I didn't encounter it until I was 33. So and nothing else had ever spoken to me or felt like a legitimate genuine path of spiritual evolution. You know, I think dogma always turned me off. And it was simply I'm not saying that I searched that deeply, you know, but when I was 33, I looked at my at my life, and I went, you know, I keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. And that's the, you know, definition of insanity. So let's try to get sane. And the very first thing I thought of was meditation So I went to all of my friends in New York City and I said, I really want a meditation teacher, I want to learn how to do this. And they came up with all different kinds of scenarios. And I would try these places. And I would walk in, I would be there five minutes, and I just get up and leave because it wasn't it. And finally, a friend of mine, she was a soap opera star at the time actually introduced me to someone who had just come back from India, about a few weeks later, he we sort of become friends. And a few weeks later, he called me and said, There's something you have to do. It's called the college chakra empowerment or initiation. It happens in two weeks. And I know that this is what you need to do. So it was four days, and it was this and that I just went, you know, can I just learn how to manage? You said, Is it look, I will do everything, I'll pay for it. I'll do everything. I just know, this is what you need to do. I said that I would come the Thursday evening, introductory thing first. And then he said something that really got me he said the word, the name Kalu Rinpoche. And I got those goosebumps. And I said, Oh, okay. And then when I actually was sitting in a room, and he sat, they call it a throne, but it's really just a high box that the teacher sits on, so everyone can see him. And they dress it up with brocades just lovely, meaningless, but lovely. He sat there and took one look at me and I just went, you know, he's got what I need. And if he's already got it, then he can lead me to it also. So that was when it started.

I chuckle as described the throne, the brocade and all those things, because, you know, I, my spiritual journey for several decades was in Hinduism, but my the person who was my version of your caller, you know, she would sit on a little throne. And the moment you see the eyes you go, okay, there is something here. It makes me think of this way, because what you just described. And I think it's so hard for us, and again, I'm putting myself into it is, is that moment of surrender to somebody who has an energy of wisdom, something that is larger than what we can access on our own.

That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah.

Was that willingness to surrender instant? Or did it gradually deepen? As you learned more from Carl Rinpoche?

Well, I'm not sure I would have called it surrender. I think the surrendering happened gradually, gradually, gradually, as I began to understand the teachings of the Buddha. But that moment was was resonating, it was a resonance. He looked at me, I looked at him, and there was the connection. It felt like a connection I'd never had before. I could just you could see with this man sitting in a room, and I was nowhere near any kind of realisation. But you could tell that he was had accessed at a realization of the nature of mind that none of the rest of us had.

So I think of him as the as the messenger. But the message is Buddhism, the wisdom, the knowledge, energy, and all those things. So when you have to reflect on the substance of what you've learned, besides the connection to seeing each other, what was it about Buddhist knowledge, wisdom that initially drew you to it?

I think that it was this what we call skillful means or methods. One of the things that I mean, he immediately captured me what the next morning when I showed up at this empty auditorium of Columbia University, and the International House, I walked into an empty auditorium and the stage was completely filled with monks and nuns and Rinpoche and the mandola and everything else. All I remember is walking and suddenly this you know, how thoughts come without bidding, right? Um, wow, I'm finally home. And I think that was part of it. And then the next four days were just extraordinary. When I got off the bus the last day coming down Riverside Drive, I was in a different world. Because my perspective and my perception had changed that much in four days. And about two weeks later, he taught something called tantric Shinae. I did that practice, I was doing that practice an hour a day within, like a week. And that was really powerful for me.

Would you describe their practice and how, how their practice impacted you. If you wanted to give us a taste of that?

Well, I would like to I'm not supposed to teach tantric Shinae. You know, but the basis of it is a method of this isn't in tantric Buddhism, it's called Mondrian are some times where you build something up in your mind. And you make it as clear as you possibly can. And then you dissolve it. The point being, that you're letting your mind know on a really profoundly deep level, that all that nonsense that's going on, has has no true reality. And that's what made the huge difference to me. The first night that he taught after the empowerment, he taught about how to do the practice, and he was teaching about, you know, building up this, this image of color chakra, and it was you're very detailed and very complicated. And then you said, and then you dissolve it. And I went, That's it. That is it. And somehow, you know that, right? If you have a connection with that kind of thing, you know, oh, that is that's the trick. That's the part of it. That is really important.

Oh, there's so much wisdom and all of that, that just, I just just appreciate what you just said, Oh, we have about 40 minutes today, which is the impossible to to get into. So lots of interesting things. One thing, and I'm asking this question in the spirit of our listeners, what my sense is what you did at that point in your life, you decided to become a lama and to become Initiated and become ordained. And to me, my sense is, and please correct me if I'm wrong. That's it. That's an intentional transition from one form of life, to another form of life, another way of serving, if I'm gonna play devil's advocate, you might have had a lot of friends who went god, I'm so glad she discovered Buddhism, but she just went over the edge, she's gonna become a Tibetan nun, like what the hell is wrong with her? You know, can't you just go to the Buddhists and meditate with day a week? Isn't that enough for her? How did you manage the transition? From one way of being one? What were your social life, your your, your people who love you into Wow, I'm gonna commit myself to this way of being and working and serving?

Well, it does happen gradually, you know, the first thing is, is that you have to take care of yourself. You know, first of all, you have to get someplace where you know that you are making decisions for your life with some clarity, and some understanding. So I that didn't happen overnight, it was more it was a gradual process, although I was taking hours a day that I would normally be out with my friends, you know, running around the city, seeing this opening going to this restaurant or something. So all of that took back took a backseat to what I was discovering, in my own mind. So that was a gradual process. And we have in Tibetan Buddhism, we have something called the preliminary practices. And also that, you know, that first weekend, Cole Rinpoche had said he was there in New York City, because he was going to put the very first Americans into what's called a three year three month retreat. And I poked my new friend in the ribs and said, that's what I'm going to do. That's why I'm here. I have to do that, you know, so that I spent the next four years preparing and one of the in part of the preparation was to do all of the preliminary practices and prepare yourself for that.

Now, my understanding is that three years, three months meant three years, three months in silence. That correct,

mostly, if we were in if we were getting a teaching on the next practice we were supposed to do of course, we could ask questions. Right after we finished lunch, we would have an hour and a half when we could if we wanted to speak to one another about, you know, if we had questions and things luckily for us, we had three or three women plus the Cook had all done a three year retreat before. So mine was the second three year retreat. So but it was mostly in silence. And then it was six months when he couldn't speak at all.

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what it is hard to put it into words. First of all, once you've meditated, and we were there for three years and five months, and some because of some some occurrence that we got to stay longer. How did it change me? I mean, how did it not change me? Right, everyone? Yeah, we were changing all the time. This is one of the things about, right, you know, we are impermanent, we are changing constantly, our situation is changing. But when you're doing these profound practices, like literally, from four in the morning until 10, or 11, at night, when you are sleeping in meditation position for three and a half years, when when you're doing these profound practices, something is changing underneath that doesn't really manifest in your physical being or in your normal everyday habits for a long time, because it is so powerful. But it really does change you you come out of that, and you look at the world and you go can go back in. You're not ready for this yet. That's one of the slots this you have, of course, and then you begin to see how how effective the practice of Buddha Dharma is, because you see people who haven't been practicing, I mean, just extraordinary compassion comes up for them.

For any listeners who are not familiar with Buddhism, and you've dropped many wonderful hints around practices, but you know, I feel like I'm asking all these impossible questions, but I read it all. If you were to let somebody who doesn't know wisdom, say these are the three or four either ways of thinking or practices that I know as a lama will have a profound impact on you. Based on your understanding of Buddhism, in your practice, what what would you want to share with us

that day? Well, first of all, you have to study, you have did we call it the view, we had view meditation and conduct and the view, you have to be able to incorporate an open your mind enough to be able to, to have a new perspective on your experience in this life. And so your view begins to, hey, let's see, it begins to open up, it begins to like, sort of all of those hard constructs that we've built in our minds into sort of melt away, and other views come in. And so based on an intellectual understanding, that's a really good foundation, then you couple that with the meditation practices, where you're working on training the mind, like in some Buddhist ways that they practice, it is one way we practice another way. So there's, you know, Thai Buddhism, there's Japanese Buddhism, there's Chinese Buddhism, and there's Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Buddhism. And hopefully, you know, now we have American. So it's a matter of working with both of those. And through the view, one begins to understand conduct through the meditation, one begins to understand one's own habitual mental patterns. When you're meditating year after year after year, and those same patterns arise, you know, you get tired of it, you say, Wow, this is really boring. You know, this is so boring. There's got to be more to it. And then the conduct that comes out of the intellectual view, and the meditative experience, hopefully we'll have some clarity, some compassion, and some wisdom to it. I guess that's what I would You say to a beginner?

You use that wonderful phrase. Things melt away. What are some things that melt away from most people? If they apply themselves as you just suggested? What is the stuff that melts away? Well,

one thing they say about the Dharma in Mahayana, Otara, tantra shastra, it says, The Dharma is free of attachment and freeze from attachment. That's one of the extraordinary things that begins to melt away, is the grasping on to things that are constantly changing. So what are we grasping at, or grasping at something and trying to fix it in time and fix it in space, and that becomes a fixation. So one of the things that really begins to melt away is all of our ordinary fixations, on just aspects of our life, you know, how we interact with others, and how we begin to train ourselves out of the tyranny, let's say, Ken, you will sell self involvement. That is what really melts away.

Oh, what a beautiful phrase, the tyranny of continuous self involvement. I love that. Because I know exactly what it means. And I feel blessed that I've had my own experiences of light. So when you're talking about melt away, I know what that is. Yeah, but thank you. Thank you for explaining it so nicely. Since I did the math, as I was introducing you, you first encountered Carlo Rinpoche as it says in 82, that's 40 years ago. Yes. So what I'm really wondering about, because you are a teacher, you are a guide. But you're also I would imagine a human being who is continuously learning, growing, discovering new things about a path that you entered 40 years ago. If you had to name just one or two things that you go, these are things that maybe as I continue to be on this Buddhist journey, what are the things that I continue to discover about me in life?

Oh, for heaven's sakes. This stupidity, after 40 years, there's still like, you're still gonna do stupid things, believe me? And even if you don't think they are, somebody else will, you know, what I've learned about myself is I've just learned about more and more and more of my habitual patterns, many of them from AV over 40 years, those have changed dramatically. I have to say, thankfully, but you know, there are still little hangers on you notice. If you're mindful, I hate using that term. But anyway, mindful, if you're on top of it, if you're doing watchful introspection, let's put it that way. You can see what it is that you're continually, you know, doing it. And I think one of the things that happened with me is that the worrying and the concern about outer manifestations of samsara began to I began to turn more into what's really going on in my own mind, because the day that I pass out of this life into another Bardo, I need to know what's going on. When you begin to see that, then, you know, it's like everybody's so seems to be so fearful or anxious about looking at ourselves dispassionately. But if we can do that, one thing I've gotten better at is looking at my own faults, and we've all got them. We're all human, you know, none of us is a Buddha, another person is perfect. And that's okay. That's what you work with. But if you don't allow yourself to see clearly what those faults are, and what you need to work on, then you can get anywhere. I think that's one of the most important things that I've come up with.

Just the question that's formulating my mind as you're talking is how do I balance and maybe I don't have to balance you know, the, what I call intentional time to practice through certain things versus every moment in life becoming a living, breathing meditation, and there is no separation between the formal and just doing life. Like can you talk to that, like, how does it all come together at some point, maybe it doesn't or how How does it?

Well, I can try. I, you start off with formal practice, because the formal practice is what begins to introduce you to your own junk. Right? The formal practice is what introduces you, and you do it because it's a technique that works. Just sitting, like let's say, Oh, I don't want to be an angry person anymore. So I'm going to throw away my anger, you've already lost the game, why you've lost the game, because you've turned anger into something that's real, you have reified it. You say, Oh, there's a thing there. If I throw that away, I'm going to be okay. It's not the case at all. First of all, anger has no true existence whatsoever. So you have to have skillful methods to perceive these things in their truth, which is, you know, and what, which is that their essence, is actually wisdom. When you have these different what we call mental afflictions, which, you know, when you're angry, you're not in a state of peace. So we say that that's an afflicted state, right? So you use these formal practices, in order to be have techniques that you can trust, will help you get to this point of seeing these things in a different way. Seeing through them, rather than engaging and becoming involved in them. Yeah. Does that answer your question at all?

It did. I'm gonna walk us into it. So quintessential spiritual quest that I've contemplated the last 30 years and had conversations about wanting to see where you take would go with that. Since we talked about anger right now. Somebody might be listening, but going, oh, wait a minute, we're in a very dark time in the world right now. Russia invaded Ukraine. racism in this country is horrible. We had the George Floyd murder, if I'm a conscious person, these things should make me angry, you know, I don't want to be touched my way out of caring about anything like, this is good anger. And I'm proud that I get angry about

sorry. The thing is that ah, when one is in a state of anger, there is a level of confusion in that, that doesn't allow you often to make the decision or take have make have a choice in your action. So I know people talk about righteous anger, I don't like that term. Anger is not clarity, anger is not wisdom yet, when it transforms is going to transform into I think it's discriminative wisdom or something like that. But the fact of of your response to a dark world, then where is your light, you can let the world be dark and add your dark anger to that dark world. Or you can turn inside and find your light, and use that clarity and that wisdom and that compassion to face the world with a different example, at the very least, of how we can interact sane manner. Because honestly, I totally get the anger. If you don't think I am untouched. You think that I am untouched by the ivaldi shootings. Not another thing coming. If you think I'm untouched by what's happening to Ukraine, that's not the case. You can but when you are too attached, you can't see clearly enough to see a way forward, that's actually going to work. So I think that when that anger begins to take over, then we have to look inside ourselves. Because we have to know how to handle our own anger before we can handle anybody else's. If you can get to that space to that wonderful space of said oops, there goes anger again. Oops, there goes desire again, oops, there was this. Yeah. And with an understanding that in between those is where your wisdom lies, where your compassion lies. You can't be angry and compassionate at the same time. I'm sorry. I mean, not at the same moment.

As somebody who has been a spiritual traveler for a while that another question that always interests me, and it plays out in different ways in different communities. So I'd love to just hear your take on it. When we are a spiritually Eat or have a community, however defined. We become all sorts of stuff gets projected onto us. I think many people want us to be a guru. They want to elevate us, they want to make us more special because we are the channel to something that the other person has always sought. How do you manage that part? Were living in this space in a beautiful place in Miami male portal, where the center people come to it. And you are. I assume too many. The gentle wise one, how do you navigate all of it? You're shaking your head. No, no, no, no, but But you know the dynamic. I'm talking about how does that show up in your world? How do you manage that?

Well, I think the whole point is to not try to manage it. No, you can't manage other people's projections. You can't know what other people are thinking. I mean, I worked with llamas, and like kala Rinpoche, they always knew what you were thinking they knew they knew your past lives, you know, they could tell you whatever it was, but for me personally, it's a matter of practicing with the student and saying, Okay, here's the method. So let's do this together. And it's easy to simply teach the method, sort of your own thing is way on a back burner. With that, I think the difficulty comes when people project something onto you. And you can say over and over and over again. That's not me, you know, but they the mind still has a tendency to do that. So it's you know, you you have to get a thick skin because they'll think that you're wonderful one day, and they'll hate your guts the next. I seriously,

I'm laughing, interesting. As we complete the conversation, what also interesting, where you're a woman of a certain age, you have been on this journey for 40 years. Are there any things that are personally for you? Like right now? 2022, whether we think this is real reality or not, this is the physical reality we live in. For you personally, any other things that are emerging new things, things where you go, Oh, this is something I might want to explore now, that wasn't even on my radar a year or two ago?

Yes, yes. About that. I wrote my COVID book.

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And what's in your COVID book?

Well, I had been working on the book before and thinking about it and knowing what I wanted to do, but it takes you know, takes a long time. And my doctor called me up a week after we had had our biggest event here at the center, and said, stay in place. Don't go anywhere, blah, blah. So I thought, okay, so I'm gonna do a really nice retreat, and one. And I thought, I sat back in my meditation one day, and I thought, what is it that I really would like to accomplish before the end of my life? And I thought, you know, I think I want to go back to the book, I think I want to go and see if there's a book there, really. So I picked out all of the different things that I've been doing over the years that were bits and pieces and stuff. And for two years, I did nothing but work on the book and meditate, really, you know, I talk online, of course, but but yeah, I'm hoping the book will get out there someday.

Congratulations. I mean, I am a writer. I like to write a book, that journey you're describing. I happen to absolutely love. Yeah.

And also, I chose to write a novel. Nice. Yeah. Because I really think that people who want to know more about Buddhism will get it through story, and character and narrative lines and things like that. I mean, I even want to pick up books of translations of things that were written by masters 1000 years ago. I didn't want to do that. And people aren't going to understand that anyway. So I thought, Okay, I'll write a story. So I did.

So if any of our listeners are listening to you going, Oh, she sounds kind of cool. I never really thought about exploring Buddhism, even though I'm aware of it, but like, I don't even know where I would get started in these people. I'm not assuming they're in Miami. So they're not necessarily coming to you. That's where people from all over the world listening to podcasts. Where would you suggest they go to begin to learn more about Buddhism Buddhism in their communities where they go,

I cannot tell you how much is online. All of the teachers are teaching online. Some of the great Tibet masters are teaching online. And there is also a lot of really good books but if you want someone who to just sit with you and teach you meditation, then you can go to Miami buddhism.org. We have a session on Tuesday evenings and we have a session on Sunday. Good morning, Tuesday evenings is teaching meditation and Sunday mornings is more, we chant and practice for an hour. And then I teach for an hour on more on the view on the basis and right now we're we're going through the sixth part of meters or the Six Perfections. But it's one place to start. It doesn't mean that that's the place for you necessarily. There's so much out there, zone. So John Young Chauncey Rinpoche has a lot of things online Natasja in there, I can't even begin to list all of the different things that you can find and teachings. YouTube has great stuff. So

what I appreciate about what you said is that if anybody is resonating with you, personally, and they're going to live in Miami, they don't have to, because you are online as well. And you. You mentioned the web, the website, I put it on, on the notes for the podcast, so and that is the best place to to learn more about you and also find out about your Online offers. Is that correct?

Yeah, when when everything is hybrid right now, though, most people don't come because in South Florida, we're having a surge of COVID again, which is okay. But yeah, online is great. And also on the website, there's an email. So if you want personal instruction, or have personal questions that you don't want to do in a zoom call, then you can always set up an appointment for an interview.

Nice. The website address is

again, if we could have a buddhism.org

That's pretty darn simple. Wonderful.

i Oh, we finally got that one. Got it.

Thank you for the gift of this compensation. It's such a

it was a pleasure to talk to you. This is really fun. I hope everyone enjoys it, because I certainly did. Awesome.

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Okay, bye for now.

37:01

Bye.

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