Tantra for Lovers & Breeders: an interview with Lama Glenn H.Mullin

As part of the research project that we're currently working on, we interviewed Lama Glenn H.Mullin on the Narayan Center in Buenos Aires on 01/30/2026.

The question guide was pre-arranged. Lama Glenn and eight of his closest students participated in the interview.

We have lightly edited the interview to remove the "uhms" and "ahs" (mostly on Lama Fede's side) but we have uploaded the unedited video. You can access the video here.

We will publish the full scholastic analysis of the interview in our journal (Sonam) but we wanted to make it available for the public. As always, the definitions and positions in the interview are the interviewee's own and do not reflect Vajrakula's own understanding.

We thank you Lama Glenn H.Mullin and his Maitreya Sangha for this wonderful opportunity.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Excellent. So, again, welcome to this interview. I am Dr. Federico Andino and I will be taking this interview on behalf of the RIEB and Conicet-Sigeva, which is an institution of research. Gracias. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. So, the first thing I would like to start is talking a little bit about your background, right? All these kind of graphical interviews tend to focus on the background.

You told me a little bit that you were from an Irish lineage, right? I know that you were born in Quebec, but one of the things I was interested to hear, to read, I read a lot about you in the last few days, was this lineage that you have, that you mentioned your mother, talk a little bit, maybe about Francis Bacon.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Myself, I was born in Quebec. My dad was Irish-Canadian, fourth generation. And because of World War II, he joined the army to fight in Europe.

And fortunately, he met my mom, fortunate for me. Of course. And her father, my grandfather on her maternal grandfather, had been in the British army in India from about 1890 to 1910, that kind of period.

And when the British invaded Tibet, kind of accidentally, they didn't plan an invasion, but it just sort of happened with a small force. You're talking about, sorry, the Young Husband Expedition. Yeah, the Young Husband Expedition.

And when he was in Lhasa, he went for a walk in the mountains nearby, and he went into a mystical trance. And when he came back, he was a kind of a changed man. And he was scolded for the invasion.

He wasn't supposed to invade, but his orders were not clear.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So your grandfather was actually Young Husband, Charles Young Husband? What?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

No, no, no. But my grandfather was in India when that happened. And then he became a young husband, became a mystic.

And when he left the army, he became the head of the Mystical Society of England. And so for the British, this was very shocking, because generally the British were a little bit on the snobby side when it came to culture. And they regarded wherever they had colonies as sort of being a little bit less civilized than they were.

So this very well-educated Lieutenant Colonel Young Husband goes to Tibet and comes back as a mystic. So it was a little bit like, I don't know if any kind of soldier goes somewhere and comes back a completely sort of spiritual person. So it made a very big, big story, you could say, for all the British papers and British magazines.

And it continued from that time on. And my mom was actually part of Theosophical Society. And so she had some connection with literature of Asia.

So later, many years later, when I met the Dalai Lama, she wrote to me, even if you die tomorrow, you could not bring greater honor to this family. So for her, it was really something very wonderful. For my dad, he was kind of an Irish kind of fellow, more on the practical side, but you went to engineering school, why don't you get a job as an engineer?

So he was more of a secularist, you could say. Many families in Canada, I think, the ladies tend to be a little bit more spiritual and the guys a little bit more bare, hard work and money. But my dad was a good man.

So, but what's the connection with Francis Bacon? Well, my mom's side of the family states that they're descended from not Francis Bacon's wife, because it was an arranged marriage and they never had children. But he had several mistresses.

And so she would always say, remember, Glenn, you're descended from Francis Bacon. So we expect who wrote the Shakespeare plays. And so we expect big things from you, writing-wise.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So that is that Francis Bacon is the re-author of Shakespeare play in your family tradition?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yes, yes, yes. I think anyone with an IQ bigger than 160 knows this is true.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Maybe, I'm just asking.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

No, some people think it was Ben Johnson, his kind of a main candidate for the writer of the Shakespeare plays. Ibn Marlow also, too. I have heard so many, so many.

Yeah, because Shakespeare was not educated in the classics, in the Greek and Latin classics, Roman classics. And his writings have so many references to those classics that the other had a very good editor or else someone else wrote them and he presented them on stage. And for me, it's not been a big issue in my life.

We don't get any royalties from the Shakespeare plays. Sadly, sadly.

[Lama Fede Andino]

But this is interesting because in a way, one of the things that struck me when I was reading your biography is that, in a way, it kind of parallels a little bit this idea, you know, of a Tulku, right? Because you already had a connection, several connections, so to speak, with the mystic path, let's call it this way, well before you started your journey into Lhasa, right? Sure, yeah.

So you had, especially from the, let's say, mother's side, a lot of connections. From the father's side, is this more practical Irishman. Were there any kind of special connections or any kind of difference in your family?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I think in the Buddhist world, we think everyone has many, many past lives. And to go somewhere deep into anything in this lifetime, you had a strong seed from that in a previous lifetime. There's that very strong belief in the Tibetan world, or in the Buddhist world, and also in the Greek world.

I mean, Socrates and Plato, these were the Zeus culture, which is basically reincarnationist. So, I often tell people who say, what's the logic of reincarnation? To read Socrates, I think his apology is in the Plato Apologies with Plato from Socrates.

And I think his presentation is still holds very strong reason to it. Of course, you can go to the Indian texts like Dignaga, and Dharmakirti, and these super logicians, but it's not as familiar to our culture, that way of using penetrating awareness, or reason, or logic, or whatever we call it. Whereas, for us, Socrates and Plato are very user friendly.

I mean, we grow up with them, we've had them in our culture for more than 2000 years. I think everyone, when they're a little kid, they have some sort of feeling about the past that goes beyond mom and dad, their mom and dad. I know I did as a young boy, very clearly.

And it was not a big thing in my mind. It's just kind of something floating around, kind of an experience, you could say. But in the Buddhist world, we say, if you meet a teacher with whom you have a strong karmic connection, even though that teacher's nobody special over the teacher next door, there will be a kind of a special resonance.

The fifth Dalai Lama puts it in a poem, he says, when the qualified teacher meets with a student with whom they have a karmic connection, all of the karmic seeds from past lives become activated. I know for me, I've had that kind of feeling when I met Dalai Lama, his two gurus, other great masters. It was really like they were like grandfather, father, you know, immediate family members.

I mean, I felt within 30 seconds of being in front of Dalai Lama, I felt I had known him for like 1000 years. And I think many people who meet him have that kind of experience. And I had the same thing with his two gurus, Ling Rinpoche, Bishan Rinpoche, several other Lamas whom I met.

Of course, that's not scientific proof that there's some sort of direct connection there. It could just be a sort of genealogical reverberation of some kind of simpatico energy, something like that. But the Buddhists of Asia like to think of it as a stream of lifetime connection.

And I'm okay with that.

[Lama Fede Andino]

No, we're also, just to clarify, when we do these kind of interviews, it's not like we don't try to prove any kind of theory. This is not a, you have to say anything that's scientifically based.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, yeah, everything I say is scientific, because you can always be studied by science. Right. But I don't try to promote one or another kind of scientific theory.

But when it comes to something like reincarnation that people have strong feelings for, there is some kind of, you could say, inquiry from the science side. And as you know, because you've been doing the science of meditation, Dalai Lama has pushed scientific studies of shamatha meditation, vipashyana meditation, right now with Emory University, the compassion in Stanford, the compassion project. Those kind of things can be studied.

And when I was living in Dharamsala, I interviewed Dalai Lama many dozens of times for various purposes. And on one occasion, he said it would be wonderful to do an interview, to do a scientific study of tukdam, when a lama dies and the heart stops and breath stops, but they just sort of sit there for a day or a week or a month or longer without any other signs of degeneration. But he said, I'm hesitant to ask any lama to do that, because then you never know how long anyone's going to live.

And after a couple of weeks, these scientists sitting around will get impatient and think, when's the old guy going to go so we can do these tests? And he said, the lama will feel that because I, Dalai Lama, asked him to do this, he should die early. He should use his meditation to just leave his body.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So it's a good idea when you have someone you don't like, to do this.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

You can do it with someone you don't like perhaps, but then they'll torture you by just hanging on for five years. They won't die because you don't like them. But as you know, Herb Benson and a group from Harvard came to Dharamsala in the mid-seventies and did sort of studies of the readings of the Tummo practice and breath retention.

I was in Dharamsala at that time, and he did two books. One was general meditation, the relaxation response. And in an interview I saw of him, he said, we didn't want to call it studying meditation because scientists wouldn't like the name and they wouldn't read it.

We called it the relaxation response because scientists love to relax. Actually, I know that. And the second book he did was beyond the relaxation response, you know.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Sorry, I know that study and the one in Harvard that he did about Tummo, that it was published in Harvard. I think I put it in one of my post-doctoral research, I think I worked on that. So this brings me to another point.

I'm going to go back later on, as we move on to Ling Rimpoche and Trijang Rimpoche. But before we go into that, just to kind of flesh out the first part of your life. So you go to Dharamsala, right?

You go in a moment that's wonderful, and you have access to all these teachers that know a little bit of like a legend, right?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah. And when I was after college, I went to England to meet my mom's side of the family. And when there, six students from the U.S. passed through town on their way to Dharamsala. And they were studying with the Dalai Lama's older brother in Bloomington, Indiana. You probably know him, Professor Norbu, he's written quite a few books. But they mentioned Dalai Lama was opening an institute for training Western people.

And it really resonated with me. And so I really wanted to go. And the next year, I finished what I was doing in England, and the next summer, next spring left for India, went to Dharamsala.

Originally thought to stay about three years, but after three years, it was quite, I mean, I loved every moment I was there, but it's quite difficult to study Dharma at that time, because translators, I didn't know Tibetan, Lamas didn't know English, and translators who knew English, either didn't know Buddhism very well, or if they knew Buddhism well, they spoke English kind of like baby English, you could say. So it was quite kind of a slow process.

And I think in some ways, the Lamas wanted to slow Westerners down a little bit. We have a very kind of rushed culture. And so they kind of purposely sort of tried to slow us down a little bit.

But after three years, I mean, I'd gone through a lot of very wonderful material and received many transmissions, initiations, and so forth. But I wanted more. So eventually, it became 12 years.

And I would have just continued, but I had to go to Canada for some paperwork with the government. And when I was gone, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated. And the assassination was sponsored by Indian people in Canada, living in Canada.

And so our visa situation became a little sensitive. And so I couldn't go back very quickly. And of course, Dharamsala also became quite violent, because traditionally, Dharamsala had belonged to the Punjab.

And Mrs. Gandhi had stolen it from the Punjab in order to divert their water to Delhi. And the Punjab had said, no, we're not giving you our water. And she said, okay, I'll just take off the Himalayan part of your province, call it Himachal Pradesh, and put in someone who will give me the water.

So a lot of Sikhs still living up there. So there's a lot of communal violence, you could say. People were very irritated at the Sikhs for the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi. Needless to say, of course, the Dharamsala Sikhs didn't have any connection with them. But they're still wearing the same kind of turban. People like to take their frustrations and anger out on someone.

So a lot of the Dharamsala community, actually their visas were canceled. And there's a lot of sort of a temporary pause in the program at Dharamsala. So I couldn't go back for about a year.

Then for the next seven, eight years, I'll go for four or five months, six months a year when Dalai Lama was giving important transmissions. I think the most wonderful thing for me was just kind of this beautiful language of the Buddhist tradition. This kind of idea of Buddha nature and everyone is equal.

Between you and a Buddha, there's no difference, actually. You're all on that same platform, if you will. Some people are just a little more like in the tango.

Everyone has got a little tango in them. But some people are just more advanced in it, you could say. So I really like that language from the Dharma tradition.

And I think it went well with my Irish background. We tend to be cheerful people and to like cheerful language. We say “The Scots do the complaining, we should do the cheering".

[Lama Fede Andino]

Yeah, well, it was still very hard. I lived in the Troubles in England and Ireland. And it was also hard people.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin] 

Where?

[Lama Fede Andino] 

In the Troubles in England and Ireland in the 90s.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin] 

That was a little different. In Canada, we didn't really have a connection with that.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Not with the IRA?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

No, nothing. No, no.

It was sort of something very foreign. And it was, you know, the IRA thing. It was basically just the British made a unpractical, a non-practical division of Ireland.

And mostly giving the land in Northern Ireland to the Protestants, whereas the Catholics were actually the minority. And only if you were a householder could you vote. So only everyone could vote, but only if you had a house.

Yes. And they gave most of the housing to the Protestants. And most people also ranted, yes, it was a terrible, terrible thing.

Yeah, and the South Irish wanted to unite with the North. And some Protestants in the North said, well, if we do that, we're going to lose our special privileges. And I think England too, they mostly wanted to keep Northern Ireland as a kind of a training ground for their police and security force.

[Lama Fede Andino]

That's why you have Come out, ye Black and Tans, which I absolutely love.

I still remember singing it at pubs.

But going back to your trip there, and I like this idea that you were mentioning before that everyone has voting nature. There are some people who can say that they are more advanced than others, right? Because this maps very well with the Tulku system, right?

And with all the Rinpoches that are in the Tulku system. So what was your experience talking about the importance of these advanced people, especially in Western context, in which there is not this tradition, right?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah. I mean, with Tulkus, if they're really advanced people, it really depends on their training. Once when I did a radio show in Canada, they said, are those Tulkus really reincarnation of the same people?

And once when the Dalai Lama was asked this question, he said, well, we don't know really if they're reincarnation to the same people, but I think Tibetans had a very good science of finding talented children. And once Taksei Rinpoche, Dalai Lama's older brother, sort of clarified that a little bit or expanded upon it. He says that the kids who are chosen as Tulkus usually turn out very well.

Of course, they do have good training and all of that. And they don't have 100% success rate, but pretty high, 95% or something like that. Compared to ordinary non-Tulkus, it's kind of 50-50.

Part of it, of course, is the education. And if you are recognized as a Tulku, then you're kind of encouraged to think of your responsibility in life from a very young age. The previous one did this and this and wrote this book and did this great deed and so on.

So I think sort of encouraging that sense of deep responsibility in the child is a big help. I think in my own life, my mom, whether it was true or not, saying we were descended from Sir Francis Bacon, who wrote the Shakespeare plays, did give me a sense of kind of purpose, you could say. And a lot of young people, and they're teenagers, they just kind of get a little lost and confused.

And our Western culture is kind of like someone juggling 100 balls at the same time, things going up and down all over the place. Our modern culture, I think, is very confusing and confused, not rooted in a very enlightened worldview, you could say. Kind of at a crossroads.

In the Buddhist world, of course, we think that's prophecy, because every 500 years, the world kind of makes a shift. And from the time of the Buddha, the halfway point, the next 500th century began in 1956, when I was seven years old. And so I was born into the new age.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Age of Aquarius?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, not in the Buddhist world, they don't link it to astrology, but they link it to kind of the world unfolding in 500, sort of like an onion, the layers of an onion, so to speak, or something like waves on an ocean, the first 500 years like this and another like that. And each time, the kind of civilization makes a major shift.

And I think it does work out in my lifespan, seeing how the world changed in World War I and World War II, because there were world wars involved everyone. And the end of World War II really saw the world become what Hillary Clinton referred to as a global village. I mean, between cultures flowing everywhere, and Japanese culture is suddenly everywhere in the States.

And then with the Vietnam War, suddenly the Thai Buddhist culture is everywhere in the States. And because the U.S. really screws up in Vietnam, then suddenly you've got a couple of million Vietnamese Buddhists in America all with their various views, and Cambodia, Thailand, like that. So I think that 500-year idea is strong in the Buddhist world.

If we look back over the last 2,500 years, they've kind of worked like that. And I think 1956, for me, because I was seven and could speak and walk and talk fairly at that time, I was quite happy when I heard it was the beginning of a next 500-year cycle. Let's hope that they are better.

Let's hope that they don't necessarily... Everything is good in its own way. I think there's always life on Earth for humans.

It's kind of a training ground, you could say, a learning experience. And there's any age you live in, there's ups and downs. There's no question of that.

And I think the downside of the cultural confusion is a lot of cultures get a little disorientated. And, you know, if we look at Islam today, they're suffering a little bit from, you could say, cultural destabilization. They're trying to keep the best of the old and trying to come into the new, and then what is the best of the old and what is the best of the new.

And Islam is kind of a strong example of that, I think, just because it was such a solid culture for 1,500 years. And with very great civilizations, Persia, the Turks, the Turks, and so on. So they're sort of struggling a little bit to come into the present time.

But I think they have such a great history in the past that they'll land on their feet.

[Lama Fede Andino]

This brings me to a kind of different topic.  It is about the West versus East that you were mentioning before.

You have spoken a little bit about what we could call the Freudian bridge. You have spoken about Freud and Jung about being bridges to this kind of thing. So would you like to elaborate a little bit?

I never found exactly which Freudian or Jungian, when the things are read, approaches you thought as a bridge. I would like to clarify that, understand that.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I think in my own life, because I went to engineering school, so then bridges are kind of like an engineering thing. When my dad said, why are you becoming a Buddhist writer and doing translations from Tibetan? And I said, well, I like the idea of bridges, but I like to bridge this wonderful culture in our modern world.

And I do think there's something significant about China coming into Tibet and the Tibetan lamas scattering everywhere. And to facilitate that cultural cross-fertilization, I'd like to play a role in it. It's kind of a simple thing, but build a bridge between cultures rather than just across a river here and there.

And with Freud and Jung, Freud, I mean, he did look more at the early Greek and Roman cultures for his mythology, you could say, the Oedipus complex. And when you're being born, wanting the attraction young boys have for their moms and young girls for the moms and fathers and things like that. So he brought in those kinds of ideas.

And I think he probably had some connection with the Buddhist world at that time, because the first really Buddhist movement in Europe was in Germany. And then also the Russian movement was very big. And of course, Russia and Germany were kind of partner countries in a lot of times and places.

But Jung is the one who takes it a little bit further, you could say. But I think from Tantra's side, Freud is a little bit stronger. This whole thing with sort of the power of sexuality to influence our lives and to create a happy person or an unhappy person, a person with a sense of a complete, fulfilled and fulfilling life, or a person who lives in frustration and stress and feels something is missing.

I think it was very important that he brought that out. But like he put it, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. He said that when smoking a cigar once.

And Jung, I think, looks a little bit more at the Sangha, the mind-only school, mental factors, or Semchung, as Tibetans call them. And of course, Jung then he writes forwards to the first edition of Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated by Lama Dawa Kesi Sanduk, edited by Evans Wentz. I think he also does one on Tibetan Yogas and Secret Doctrines, perhaps.

He wrote forwards to two of those books and not like one or two page forwards, but they're quite meaty, 10, 15 pages, 20 pages.

[Lama Fede Andino]

I was a couple of years back, I was the chair of the Tibetan Studies here in Argentina. And one of my great problems was Jung's preface in both of those, because he does a wonderful job of turning the Bardo Todol into Jungianna. But he does a very bad job of actually explaining what the terms mean.

He turns everything into Jungianna. So I was curious a little bit about this. For example, when you say about the mind-only school, the Yogacara, when he talks about the Yogacara, what we would call the Kunzhi, the base.

Of course, the base in the Yogacara is something to be purified, right? Or the base in Vasubandhu, for example. It's something, if you talk from Dzogchen, it's something that's the experience of the base is what purifies.

But for Jung, it's kind of the place where all these archetypes live, and it generates some confusion. So do you think that it's still usable? This kind of confusion, even if it's kind of started, or do you think that it creates more noise?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I mean, I have a lot of friends and students who practice Jungian psychology or Jungian psychotherapy, you could say. And generally, they seem to benefit their students a lot. Most of them also study a lot of Dharma, so maybe they iron out a few of the wrinkles in his interpretation of things.

Because obviously, at that time, those books were really the first slightly correct translations of Tibetan Buddhist books. Before that, they were like one or two page little documents translated with very agonizingly and published in the Royal Asiatic Society. Or, you know, you have Waddell's Lamaism in Tibet, where he goes in and buys a whole monastery and then just makes a little story about everything in the monastery.

And there's a wonderful contribution in its own way, but it's not very intellectually satisfying or very profound, you could say. It's maybe perhaps of more anthropological interest, or just artistic cultural interest than mind interest. So those early books were really the first to come out that were properly translated.

There were some translations from Pali, of course. But the translations from Pali were the Rye-Davis series Wisdom of the East, and they're all in very Christian language. And they're all sponsored by Christian enthusiasts.

And I think at that time, their idea in the Christian world was if we understand them better, we can more easily convert them to Christianity. And so the language is kind of very awkward for a modern reader, that sort of Victorian or mid-Victorian to early Edwardian kind of Christian English, a little bit James's second biblical sort of inclination here and there. And it doesn't really, I mean, it's a beautiful read.

I don't want to in any way denigrate their many years of work and a great benefit for future generations. And of course, most of those materials have been re-translated by Sri Lankan and Thai monks who learned English in Harvard or University of Chicago. So they've all been reworked very nicely.

But I think in terms of Jung's interest, he really liked the Tantra side, the whole mandala issue. And I know quite a few psychologists who basically take his mandala, what he used to call mandala therapy, and had people make mandalas out of sand or paint as a way of like working through their sort of mind states. And even at the museum in Atlanta, the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, I curated quite a few art exhibits for it.

Over the years, I was asked to be sort of a guest curator of Buddhist art from time to time. But one of the art exhibits they did, which I really enjoyed, was the mandalas made by Jung himself. And that was inherited by his family and they had never been shown in public.

And this museum director in Atlanta, a really wonderful guy, just sort of phoned them up and said, we've heard about these and we've heard you've never, ever shown them. Would you please allow us to show them over here in Atlanta? They just said yes.

I mean, obviously the way Jung used them wasn't the way we use them as tantric practitioners in the way they're used in tantric practitioner isn't really like an experiential way of making your own sand mandala. But you can see how he came to that, came up with that idea as a treatment for people. You get the mandala perfectly.

It's kind of like balancing your own emotions and your own mental states and sort of taking it into the elements, earth, water, fire, air, and the five wisdoms and the five skandhas, the five kind of aspects of a human being on which we impute the sense of I. So it was very wonderful going through that exhibit and just seeing that approach to them. Of course, I didn't know anything about it before I saw the exhibit.

I had read his introductions to various books and I read a couple of books on his memories, dreams, and reflections, et cetera. But I never really pursued psychology, Western psychology as kind of a major passion or anything like that. But wonderful to see how much footage he got out of what he knew of them.

And even today, I know quite a few psychologists who still do sand mandala therapy with some patients. Then they do feel they get something out of it, a sense of balancing various elements of their life, you could say.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Thank you. Thank you. This is wonderful.

We're coming towards the middle part of the interview. Okay.

Are you feeling comfortable?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I am so comfortable that if I get more comfortable, I may just stretch out and take a nap. If you like to stretch out, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Anything else to drink? No, thanks. Everyone is feeling all right.

Excellent.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Hey guys, pass those around over there.

[Lama Fede Andino]

We have also vegetarians for people who are purely vegetarian.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Oh, excellent. So I don't think we have any vegetarians here, but Antonio, once a week, we'll eat a vegetable. That's good.

Just to show that he's an omnivore. And Martin makes a very wonderful Argentina barbecue. Oh, wonderful.

But he's half vegetarian. But he's Chilean. What?

He's Chilean. Oh, are you a vegetarian?

[Lama Fede Andino]

So now let's move a little bit onto more the teaching side, right?

Which is something I'm deeply interested to hear your approach. The first thing I want to ask you has to do with all these difficulties and all this process of adaptation that happens. All the what?

The process of adaptation that happens teaching Tantra in the West, right? So the first thing that is interesting to me is that you have a very particular phrase to talk about laity, which is lovers and breeders.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Which is what?

[Lama Fede Andino]

Lovers and breeders, right?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Lower? Lovers and breeders.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Lovers and breeders.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Yes. Oh. I did read a lot.

I did read a lot.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I don't think I used the expression lovers and breeders, but I have heard lovers. Okay.

(editor’s note: Lama Glenn uses this on an interview called Tantric Buddhism in the Modern World, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ivzMFAOemE&t=2242s . He coins the term “Lovers and Breeders” at the 37:22 mark)

And a few of my gay friends I was with when I went to a poetry reading in Atlanta. They said, oh, Glenn, you've come to our poetry reading. You're a breeder.

And I said, it's my hope. So. Lovers and breeders.

[Lama Fede Andino]

It is, at least it is published in an interview with you. I don't know if they lied or not, but it is published.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Okay. I mean, I do many interviews and when I travel and people sometimes do my Zoom and how they cut it and paste it, I don't know. But anyway.

Anyway.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Lovers and breeders.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I like the expression.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So what is your view on this divide that happens, especially in the Gelugpa Institution, right? Between monks that go to the tantric colleges, which are not all the monks, as you well know, they're the Shedra monks, they're the Yogic monks.

And then the almost non-existence of the same structure within Western society. Right. How do you see this change?

Is this something that you think it will get built at some point? Do you think that we are going to move towards a more laity oriented practice?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, it's hard to know how things will go in future, but I think, yeah, the huge number of monks in the Tibetan world, it's really a very much, I think, a kind of a political statement. Because China, of course, you're free to believe or not believe. And I think many young men and women, Tibetan young men and women, think they should be either lovers, monks, or breeders, get married and make kids.

And so they become monks or nuns as a kind of a way of preserving their culture, doing what they think is the best possible thing to preserve Tibetan culture. And I think if Dalai Lama hadn't pushed non-violence, then most of them would set up little military militias, pockets of militias, 10, 25 people to destabilize Chinese government and make China's occupation of Tibet uncomfortable. But because Dalai Lama has discouraged violence, and they all like him very much, very few of them go that route.

So many of them think is the best thing they can do is put one of their kids in one of the monasteries, whether it's male or female, okay, thank you, whether it's male or female, and hope that them dedicating their life in that way will preserve Tibetan culture very nicely. And in terms of the sexuality in Tantra, that's kind of a different issue. Because, as is said in all of the tantric texts, the highest person can just unify form and formlessness.

Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. There the emptiness represents the female side, the vagina, and the penis represents the form represents the male side of the penis, which is placed in the vagina.

And on a very simple way, that natural male femaleness of the universe is sufficient with someone who's on a very high level to penetrate to enlightenment. People's not quite so advanced, they might have to use the unification of their own male femaleness in their body, with kind of a visualized energy practices of male female, the so-called jnana mudra, or a wisdom consort, awareness consort. And this, as said in all the tantric commentaries, for those of lower or medium karmic propensities, they should rely upon a karma mudra, physical consort.

Now, you know, it's not my place to discuss how monks choose what to do and not to do. I had a discussion once with the Dalai Lama on monks misbehaving. And Dalai Lama said, what's one thing is important to keep in mind is that in the pure vinaya of India and Tibet, no one else can tell a monk anything.

Nobody has the power to disrobe a monk. If you're dressed like a monk and you're misbehaving, and I'm the abbot of the monastery you're in, I can't tell you give back your robes. I can tell you you're not allowed to stay in the monastery because you've got a girlfriend or five girlfriends or however many, so you'll have to go live somewhere else.

And you might find some monastery will let you live there. And usually in Buddhism, they only make a problem if there's a complaint. So Buddha made it that way very purposely.

So monks should, he said there's no need for any precepts. If you meditate regularly and you're reasonably clear-minded, you will always know what to do. And one of the monks said, yeah, but we've got a few really dumb monks, so we better have precepts.

And so Buddha said, okay, if we have any complaints, we'll make a precept. And a few complaints came. Someone killed, one of the monks killed 60 other monks, so they made the rule, okay, no killing.

And so on for the other precepts. One of my Lama friends, Jimmy Riggson, quite well-known in Europe, Nyingma Lama, he said, we're very fortunate that Buddha decided to die at age 80 because he could have lived to 100 or so. But even living then that long, there were 253 complaints, so 253 monks.

So because he died at 80, he would have lived another 20 years, there'd be another 50 of them. But the Lama said, it's up to a monk to keep his own precepts. It's nobody else's business.

Now, that's not true in other countries. Thailand, if a monk misbehaves, it's stealing from the king. So depending on the king at any given time, it can be a problem.

And in Korea, also, they can be in serious trouble. They can't just be kicked out of the monastery. They can become a legal issue because they have government sponsorship.

Changwala told me that. I don't know of any monks who misbehaved in Korea.

[Lama Fede Andino]

I do know one or two, but I don't know any monk that misbehaved in Korea at six o'clock in the afternoon.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

But in terms of doing, engaging in the practice, I mean, in generation stage, generally, the mandala practice, which was so popular with Jung, and the use of mantra and samadhi, and the four buddha actions, I think just our natural sense of our male-female quality inherited from our male-female ancestors, for most people, will be enough to bring them very deep realization. Now, completion stage, you can get quite high up on the tumult totem pole without concert practice. And it's often said to go in the illusory body, what is it?

Ngawen, sumwen, and semwen. So the third refining of bodily energies, refining of emotional energies, and refining of the subtle mind energies. So we can get through those first two stages of mantra without really using raw sex.

Let's say raw sex. But to go from emotional refinement, to separate the course and subtle energies of emotion and thought, to semwen, the very subtle dimension of mind, only if we engage in actual karmamudra can we control the drop and move the drop, giving rise to the great bliss, which is the foundation of release, basically.

[Lama Fede Andino]

This brings me a couple of questions. I have a couple of questions about this, which are branching from this. The first, I need you, I want to do two or three questions.

So perhaps I'll tell you all of them.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

No, no, just one. Just one, and we'll go from there.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Okay. So the first one is, yes, following Tsongkhapa, the thing is that monks should engage in the Jñanamudra, right? Or in the visualized concert.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Who's that? Tsongkhapa. Following Tsongkhapa, right?

I don't know if that's true. Do you think that, what would you understand this position to be? Would you say that?

Well, for instance, Tsongkhapa, in the Samway Nampar, the secret biography written by Jamyang, what's he called, Jamyang Chöje, the founder of Drepung, says when Tsongkhapa was teaching guhya samaja, illusory body, and he came to the Luang Ngo and semwen, he said, I achieved the semwen state of realization 10 years ago. Well, you cannot achieve it 10 years ago without having engaged in that practice. So one could take this as a hint.

And I think later on, when Tibetans became a little bit more secretive about tantra, then the language changes. So for instance, when I was first studying in Darmstadt with one of my very great lamas, he mentioned that in Tibet, if you do the three-year retreat, if you get to the level of Luang Ngo and semwen, then the teacher, and you sort of get stuck, the teacher, your teacher will perhaps... Provide you a consort.

Perhaps recommend that you practice with a consort. And then during the teaching, he said, usually in that case, you practice in a retreat setting for between three months and 18 months. And if you achieve realization within that period, most people at least three months to achieve and stabilize.

And if by 18 months you haven't gotten there, then that's it. Off you go, go back to the monastery and keep doing it. Just continue your practice in an ordinary way.

[Lama Fede Andino]

But this brings me to another thing. So what you're saying, just so I understand it, what you're saying is that in some cases, even if you're a monk, you need to do karmamudra practice with an actual consort.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah, because in fact, when you do karmamudra, you don't break any monastic precepts. Right.

[Lama Fede Andino]

If you do it with a qualified consort. What? If you do it with a qualified consort.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

That's nothing to do with a qualified consort. You are a qualified practitioner. Because a monk only breaks his sexual vow if he releases.

Or a female only loses her monastic vow if in the orgasmic state she doesn't redirect the energies. Okay. Which means basically in the monastic world in Tibet, you should get about halfway up the tumult totem pole if you're a monastic.

And you should feel you have total control of your energies.

[Lama Fede Andino]

You've got to reverse them, essentially.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

And then if you do release or the female doesn't control, they say it's the negative karma is equal to killing your guru. Why? Because it's the achievement of the clear light mind, which is the real guru.

And when you release, you lose that power. So it's not really like if I killed some of my Tibetan lamas.

[Lama Fede Andino]

No, I understand. I understand. But the idea is that how do you see this working within the Western context?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Because as you said... Yeah, the main problem is, you know, mantra is supposed to be practiced somewhat secretly. But it's not that it's secret from everyone.

But your practices should be a little bit discreet. And it shouldn't be like coffee, cafe, chit chat stuff. And so one should treat it with great discretion.

Yes, a little bit, I think. In old days, if you were like my brother, for instance, he wasn't as discreet as me. And growing up Protestant in Quebec, which is 80% Catholic.

So as you know, the main difference between Protestants and Catholics is we can wear condoms, they can't. So this was like a big point with the young French girls, because none of their boys were allowed to wear condoms. They were Catholic.

We could wear condoms. And so as a result, we could quite easily date French girls because we had condoms. But if we let it out publicly, there would be hell to pay.

So one time my brother was dating a French girl and her father found out she was dating a Protestant and beat her up very badly. The next day she came to school with lots of bruises. So you didn't know that difference between Protestants and Catholics?

No?

[Lama Fede Andino]

No, it's not like that.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

It was like that when I was a kid, but you're a young man. That could be.

[Lama Fede Andino]

That could be. Yeah. So the idea is that what you're saying is it should be something that's essentially kept under wraps or kept discreet, right?

That the practice should be kept discreet. However, in this world that we have, where we have people like Sogyal Lhakhar and other people who have created some abuse on that, isn't that some danger?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I mean, that's a different kettle of fish. Sogyal was not a monk. Right.

Right. That's what I meant at the beginning. So then he's free to date as many women as he wishes.

[Lama Fede Andino]

But even to the point of abuse?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

That word abuse is mainly used by lawyers in the West. I mean, we men are always abused by women for thousands of years. We have to go out with a spear hunting those tigers.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Have you hunted a tiger at some point in your life?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

You're talking past lives there. No, I'm just joking.

I shouldn't make light. But I think what is abuse? If both people are over 18 and they say, would you like a date?

And the other one says, yes, I would like a date. Then it's their business. Otherwise, I had this discussion with a billionaire friend in Phoenix, Arizona.

And I says, if you're going to make that distinction between power and blah, blah, blah, then we should have to classify people based on looks. Because the biggest source of sexual attraction is looks. You know, a man sees a beautiful woman and he goes, bang, bang.

A woman sees a super handsome man, kind of the same thing happens. So if you're going to get rid of abuse, we should just basically list everyone from a one to a 10. And 10s can only vote 10s.

And they 10s. And 9s can vote 9s. And 8s can vote 8s.

The next most sexist thing is fame. So then depending on how well known you are, you 10 to 1, you can only vote. 1s can only vote.

Or money. If you've got 1 million, you can only date millionaires. If you've got 10 million, you can only date 10 millionaires.

Those things are very strong attractions in the sexual world. What you're saying is that unless we regulate... I mean, if you're going to use that word abuse, you have to take it in a bigger context to involve everything.

Now, I think if anyone is unwilling to get involved in a romantic relationship, they don't want to, and it's sort of pushed on them, then that's a problem. With Julio Lagart, that happened. Well, I have no idea.

I mean, I didn't know him very well. I met him twice, I think. And yeah, so I didn't have anything to do with him or his Dharma Center.

And he's dead, so I won't have much to do with him in this life. So anyway, I do know that he suffered a lot of political problems from his misbehavior.

And so he had to kind of go into hiding.

[Lama Fede Andino]

For his crimes, yes.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, he bought a place up behind Santa Barbara, and sort of he wouldn't teach in the state, because if he showed up anywhere, the demonstrators would come and demonstrate against him.

So naturally, I think it's unfortunate if something happens like that.

And in his life, I think there was a little bit of a malfunction there, emotional malfunction. But many people have emotional malfunctions. If it goes on the romantic side and becomes unpleasant on the romantic side, then it's either, depending on what country you're in and what are the laws of romantic engagement, in Canada, if both are over the age of 18 as consenting, then it's not a problem.

If someone says no, then you place a police charge and have them arrested for rape. And if they're under 18, arrest them for rape. So I look upon it as a, not as an ethical issue, I look upon it as a legal issue.

And of course, it's good that monks and ex-monks and tulkus and rinpoches and all human beings can be role models in good behavior. But not everyone is, and so it comes down to legality. So I said that when arguing with a British friend who was like doing a kind of internet storm against three or four lamas, and I just told them, they asked me to include it and share their things on my Facebook and other media platforms.

And I says, no, it's a legal issue. If they broke the law, try to get them arrested. If they didn't break the law, just beat them in a bar, beat them up.

I didn't say that. But I think traditionally, it's better to deal with those issues in a legal way. And otherwise, it depends on the law of the land on whether or not anyone can sue such a person.

So Sogyal did pay a lot of money, I think, to some of the people in a lawsuit I heard. Again, I never spoke to, I don't know any of them personally. I did meet a couple of his sponsors in England, because I did a book called Living in the Face of Death, which, by the way, Patricia has just translated into Spanish.

And then later, he did a book called Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and he quoted my book quite a bit. So when I went to London, some of these people came and met me and said hello, and we're both friends. I was friends, and they were also friends with the Tibet Foundation director in London at that time.

Yes. Probably better to put that one on. Yes.

[Lama Fede Andino]

That's a lot. That's a lot of light. Are you all right with it?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

It doesn't bother me. Excellent. I was born in the light.

That's nice. What does that sound? Blinded by the light.

So for me, I think sexuality has, in Tibetan, it's called sangwe chopa, which means private activity. Sangwe literally means secret. But it really means private.

It's between consenting adults, should be. The age of an adult differs in different countries, but it should be regarded, I think, as more of a legal issue and less of an ethical issue. But in the Christian world, we tend to make sexuality a big part of ethics.

I think it's because, you know, Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the apple, the fig, the big leaves, the snake. So it plays a bigger part in our mind than it does in the minds of many cultures.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Right. But in our vows, for example, in the Pratimoksha vows, right? Individual liberation vows that we have.

We take individual liberation vows, right? And there's one for lay people who says we should not abuse it, right?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, well, that's called chupa lopa. Chupa lopa. And not everyone takes all five.

You can take one or as many as you like. And when Gompopa talks about them in a general way, then one thing is don't have sex more than five times a day. Have you adhered to that?

[Lama Fede Andino] Yes, of course. Okay.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

So you passed the test?

[Lama Fede Andino]

I passed the test. Yeah.

We try to keep our vows.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

You're not supposed to take anyone under age.

And in Tibet and in Asia, that usually meant 13 or 14. The Japanese ambassador to Mongolia told me that. I didn't know that, but he says in Japan, the age was once you turn 12 to 13 was dating age.

And you're supposed to get the orifice correct, right? Have you always managed there?

[Lama Fede Andino]

Usually, yes. Thank you.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

And what is that? What else? Oh, yes.

There shouldn't be someone under the care of another.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Yes.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

So someone else's child or someone else's wife or spouse. There's one more. Oh, not during menstrual cycle.

Or in the place, not in the waiting room, waiting to see your Lama. You wait there. Lama Glenn is a little busy right now.

And we have time. Yes. And so there it's like Matthew is sitting there and Chökyi Lama and saying, oh, it's going to be about 20 minutes.

We got a free 20 minutes.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Are you telling me you have a problem keeping that one?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I never took that precept at all.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Oh, really?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah.

The five times a day thing turned me off. As an Irishman, I've never tried more than five. But I knew if I took that precept, the next day I'd be walking down the street and a group of six women would say, please take us home and make love to us.

And also, I don't like sexual morality. I'm a pure Buddhist. Buddha said we should be able to meditate, look at things with a pure mind and know what's best.

So the only one I took was not to steal. I said to my Lama, I can take that one not to drink beer or wine, but I couldn't take it not to drink whiskey. It's an Irish tradition.

He said, oh, then don't bother.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Wait, the one about not killing, you kill people regularly?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

And the one about not killing, I prefer not to take that one.

I trained in martial arts in high school and college, and you never know when someone's going to need a strong judo chop. So I prefer not to take that one. And the one about not telling a lie, much of our conversation today would have been difficult if I had that one.

So let me change a little bit. I always tell my students, just take one and keep them. Any one that you think would make a problem in your life is the one you should take.

If you want to take two or five, then that's up to you. But that's what my Lama told me at the time. He said, just take one.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So let me, because not to run too much of the time, let me go to the next step, which is something I wanted to ask you a lot about. You teach a lot about the four activities.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

The what?

[Lama Fede Andino]

The four activities in Tantra, right? And there is usually a big disconnect in the way that Tantras are usually taught or written, and the way in which they are practiced, especially in the West, in which the more magical side, and I know that you have talked about the reality of the deities, there is usually when it's being taught, it's taught more at the level of, let's call it like general meditation, in which there is nothing of the activities of the deities that you are expected to do, right? This is something that when I was training, it was very strange for me. You would read, I don't know, Chakrasamvara Tantra, right?

All these wonderful activities for slaying, and then you weren't expected to do them in a way, unless you were a particular rupture on a particular retreat or something like this. How do you feel this kind of magical side exists within the teaching of Vajrayana in the West?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, I think generally when we practice Tantra, we really have four main things we want to do, right? First is our body should be pure light, pure energy, call it the temple of a god, to put it in Western languages, but it's a deity body, and the place we are should be like a mandala. We should have a sense of its pure energy factor.

Everything we consume, whether it's music or fragrance or sound or taste, touch, any of the five senses, plus even thought, should be pure, juicy, amrit, taken as tantric nectar, healing nectar from the heavens, and trinle, everything that happens to us is a gift, enlightenment gift, and everything we do is an enlightenment gift. If we keep those four together and do our generation stage practice for at least 10 minutes a day, for me, that's a good basis. If you can do it for a half hour a day, that's wonderful.

If on top of that, you can do two more for a half hour a day, that's fabulous. If you can do four times a day, four times a day of two and a half hours each, great, but like Dalai Lama puts it, if you can do five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening, you're going in the right direction. In terms of the trinle, doing the peace, increase, power, and wrath, then you're not even allowed to do them unless you've completed the qualifying retreat with the fire puja.

Then if you have completed that, you should think of which activities you want to do. Usually, peace and increase are the two main ones done by general practitioners. In Yamantaka, only if you've completed the four-year retreat should you do the subduing and the wrath.

Chongwo-la loves the activities. He's done like 400 fire pujas or 300 fire pujas. He was a Zen monk for 16 years and then became a tantric practitioner with me and practices very, very strongly and just loves the practice.

So, everyone finds their own way, but in terms of what we're doing to accomplish our self-enlightenment, generation stage, completion stage, in terms of what we're doing to benefit others, that's the trinle shi, the four activities. Like Dalai Lama says, the best way of benefiting others starts with a smile. So, I often smile.

Sometimes if someone's made me very irritated, I'll smile at them.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So, you think it's not that the main part is not an important part?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

What?

[Lama Fede Andino]

It's not an important part of the path in that way. It's better to focus on generation stage, completion stage?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, there's two things in Tibetan, right? Rang Dun Shen Dun. Accomplishing one's own purpose and accomplishing the purpose of others.

One accomplishes one's own purpose by accomplishing dharmakaya realization or dharmakal realization, and that happens on one's meditation cushion pretty well, and doing it between sutra, tantra, generation stage, completion stage. Benefiting of others, of course, happens mostly between meditations, although on your meditation cushion, you send out light and touch everyone with good light and all that sort of stuff, which is very nice. But immediately benefiting others, usually it comes by means of ritual.

So, for instance, in dharmashala, I would translate a lot for peoples with health problems and wealth problems, career problems, relationship problems, and lamas would often recommend some kind of ritual. So, if one has done those practices oneself and completed the Lerung ritual, you can do it yourself. Otherwise, you can have a qualified practitioner do it for you.

And yeah, I translated and attended many exorcisms and healing rituals, all of those kind of things. Generally, they worked very, very, very well. They had very dramatic effects, I would say.

[Lama Fede Andino]

And how common are these done in your kula? What? How commonly are these done in your groups?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

In my group? Well, Matthew, I think, once a week does like Tara practices and Amitayas, and Martin leads his group in various practices, and I don't like to give away all their secrets, so don't remember, don't forget. Tantra is supposed to be a little bit secret in the practice.

Chongwola, as I said, he does at least one fire puja a week for someone. And once a week, he does caring for the dead, bardo, bardo chezin, helping those in the bardo. At least once a week, he leads one, and Martin joins sometimes, and Matthew joins sometimes, and people from other countries, Russia, and so on, they join.

If you have the initiation and have done the fire rite, you're allowed to participate. And if one of our group is seriously ill, then they'll do an Amitayas from Rechungpa Milarepa, sometimes 30 or 40 practitioners who have completed the retreat and fire puja will come on board and throw in a little bit of goodwill. And someone very important in our family, in the sangha, someone's parent has died.

Although with Koreans, we get more requests for dead dogs and dead cats, we're still waiting for a dead goldfish request to help in the bardo. The big sponsors of such rituals are the dead dog group. I love dogs.

[Lama Fede Andino]

If my dog died, I would do as many rituals.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, let me tell you, Chongwola, because he's Korean, I'm sure he's done at least 25 dead dog rituals and one or two dead cat rituals.

[Lama Fede Andino]

We don't know for sure.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

We don't know for sure. But as you know, the Koreans have a very strong ancestor worship. We often call it in the West.

But it's not really ancestor worship. But once a year, you remember your ancestors. And they used to have a whole map of the whole family tree for many generations.

Now, I think one of the recent presidents, maybe in the 60s, said seven generations is enough. And someone recently also said, shortened it to three, just do three. But because of that, in Korea, he does one a week.

But when we have special requests, anyone's parent has just died or a sister, brother, that sort of thing, our sangha will do it. And then it's whether anyone can join in depends on have they received that initiation, done that qualifying retreat. And each retreat has a different practices, a different sort of number of mantras, you could say, or length of time for the qualification.

But very often, Chongwola have 30 or 40 people would join in if it's for something that, you know, our sangha feels is kind of an important occasion. And I think those help a lot. And then in terms of just rituals to help people get good jobs.

For instance, I got two Korean friends who their brother moved to Canada and finished school and wanted to get a job. And he's got a son and daughter just finished school and he wanted them to get jobs. So he asked for some mantras to do it and our sangha did.

And lo and behold, the daughter got a job and the brother got a job. Well, son, we're still waiting. He's got to strengthen his working spirit a little bit more.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So if you had to explain what is the effect of this, how it works, how would you say that?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I think the way it works is really the whole universe is interconnected. Mm-hmm. And how things arise dependent from one another.

And it's really an energy field connecting them to everything. And because of our past life experiences, we have an infinite number of karmic seeds, you could say. And if we want something to go in a particular way, the easy way is to ripen that karmic seed.

And karmic seed there means a kind of an energy factor. For instance, just recently in Brazil, we did a countryside retreat and one of the young ladies coming to the retreat had recently lost her job. So she had applied for a bunch of jobs.

And the work situation in Brazil isn't that good right at the moment because of, well, the big orange guy and his tariff things, maybe he has an influence.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Not only in Brazil.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah. So she comes and she's there and we just start doing the practice and she gets a note from one of them saying, oh, we've decided you're the perfect candidate and we just have to decide on salary. And so she sent back what she had been making at her previous job.

And then the next day we're doing another mantra practice pulling out, sending out light and pulling back all of the ripening karma she's doing for herself. We're not aware of those, but I tell everyone, whatever you need in Amitayus, you do something for the enlightenment aspect, something for the spirit aspect, something for the elemental aspect, but then the powerful worldly forces and the powerful enlightenment process. So with the powerful worldly forces, activate karmas within yourself to accomplish what you think is a vision of a good life.

And the next day after doing that, she gets a call, we decided to give you a bigger salary than that. And this just happened like last week. I think, you know, people think positively and put some energy into it and connect with a kind of energy of the universe.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Manifestation, something like this.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah. Something like manifesting.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Yeah. And what is the role of samaya in this system?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, samaya in Tantra really is, there's only really one in my opinion.

I don't like all of, you know, these monks make all these lists of do's and don'ts. I don't think they work. I once said to Gyalwar Rinpoche, I was very good at mathematics, but I hate those kind of numbers, those kind of relations.

And what's the essence? And he said, from hinayana or individual liberation, try not to harm anyone. Mahayana or bodhisattva yana, try whenever you can be a little benefit and be beneficial to others, try to be a benefit.

And from Tantra side, always try to see your own sacred nature, be aware of yourself as your sacred nature. And with all other living beings, similarly, see their sacred nature. Whether you're talking to a drug addict or a drug pusher, like a doctor, most doctors are drug pushers in Canada.

I don't know about Argentina. I guess its like this? No, they write prescriptions, take this, take this.

But anyway, so no matter what, who you're talking to, look beyond the outer appearance and inside. You'll see their primordial radiance or put in nature, whatever you want to call them. And you can also see that the kind of network of energies connecting them to the world also has a kind of its own field.

So Dalai Lama said like that with Tantra, the samayas, always be aware of your own sacred nature and you interact with anyone else, have a sense of their sacred nature.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Interesting. So it's, for example, easily in the Viyadhara vows, right? In the what?

In the Viyadhara vows. I just forgot the word in Tibetan. The Rigdzin vows, right?

The Rigdzin, Viyadhara vows, the 14 root vows. The Guru is kind of the first root samaya. So in this essence, for you, the essence of samaya, it's Buddha nature, so to speak, rather than the Guru, as a point of view.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, your connection with your Lama is quite important because in Sutra, we say Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, but in Tantra, we say Guru, Yadam, Dhaka, Dakini. So we don't bother with the Buddha, we don't bother with Dharma, don't bother with Sangha, in an ordinary sense. Of course, we have that there in the background from Sutra, but the emphasis is your relationship with your teacher is important, your Lamas, which means always be a little polite to them.

And if they're looking a little thin, give them a cookie or something, fatten them up a bit and try to do the practice. The best offering is the offering of practice. And I think sometimes some of the schools make it a little kind of servantish or almost slavish, which, of course, Kalugpa school doesn't do that.

It's kind of forbidden, like Dalai Lama said, taking that to mean seeing the Lama as qualified, seeing the Lama as perfect, is just a way of you looking at the Lama with positive eyes. But don't forget Buddha's last teaching, take everything like an analyst buying gold, cut and test and burn, only accept if it meets your logic. So you still are in charge of your own life.

If you don't do that, and some Lamas that I've met do push the Samya thing to see me like the boss and what I say you do. Dalai Lama said, if you take it like that, it can easily be poisoned for both the guru and the student. And I completely agree with that.

And I've seen it with some Lamas and most Tibetan Lamas, 90% of Tibetan Lamas don't abuse that role. They see themselves more like your father, grandfather, in a loving relationship, and they don't see in that kind of a way. But some do, 5 or 10%.

[Lama Fede Andino]

And this is interesting because my last big question that I wanted to ask you was a little bit about Samaya and this role, because you have had this issue with Samaya in your own life, because you were a disciple of Trijang Rinpoche and Ling Rinpoche, and there was the famous Shugden issue that came after that. And this was a very watershed moment, right?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

For me, it wasn't at all important. It didn't mean anything. I didn't have that initiation, so it had nothing to do with me.

No, no, I perhaps spoke with you personally, but with the Gelug, you had a major... With some Gelug, but sure. Probably four or five of my Lamas did the practice.

And when Dalai Lama asked them to stop, maybe one or two did stop, I don't know. But if they didn't stop, then they stayed quiet about it. So to me, it wasn't at all an important issue.

And I spoke to Dalai Lama, and I said, I travel and teach a lot, and if that comes up as a question, what should I say? He said, well, I think best is to just say that if you want to be close to Dalai Lama, better not to do that practice. But otherwise, no problem.

That's how he said to me to say, and that's what I say to my students. So sometimes people will write me, blah, blah, blah, wants to practice with our group, and they also do Shugden, what's your opinion? I tell them, well, they can't do the practice in our facilities.

They're supposed to do it at home in their own place. And they don't talk about it to anyone because it's nobody else's business. A problem with those kind of deities are called Gelpo.

Probably 25% of Tibetan deities in all the schools are Gelpo. And so, Nechung, for instance, Padmasambhava installed in Samye, protector of wealth, is a Gyalpo. They are Gyalpo.

And many of the worldly deities. So, in the tree of merit, we put the lineage Lamas, and then we put the highest Yoga Tantra, Yoga Tantra, Charya Tantra, Kriya Tantra, then 35 Buddhism, medicine, and then on the tree, you have all of the ones coming from India, the Mahakalas and Dalai Lamas. They come from India, so they must be okay.

So we'll let them stay on the tree. Then the ones which were appointed in Tibet, like, you know, Padmasambhava appointing Pehar Gyalpo, is a Gyalpo spirit. And it can be useful if you use well.

Trouble is with Gyalpo, if you have perfect Yidam practice, then the Gyalpos will be your friends and will help very much. But if you don't have good Yidam practice, and you don't practice correctly, you breach Samya in your practice, they may, they're a little bit, they're like pitbulls. When they're in a good mood, they're very, very good.

And when they're in a bad mood, they're unpleasant.

[Lama Fede Andino]

But it's interesting that you have this more open. So for you, it would be a problem that people who worship Shugden?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I don't care who practices.

As long as they just don't generate problems within the groups, so to speak.

Right, right. Anyone asks me about it, I always tell them it's nothing to do with me. Dalai Lama said this, but at the other hand, when Dalai Lama gives big teachings and initiations, 200,000 people, 300,000 people come.

So including a few people who I knew did the practice. So they say, sure, I do the practice. And they don't want to give it up because they received it from their Lama in Tibet, who is dead.

And they have a very warm feeling for it. Or some cases, it's a family Lama, a family deity, been in the family for four, five, six, ten generations. And naturally, they don't, they feel very uncomfortable giving up.

And Tibetans, countryside people are a little on the superstitious side, a little bit like Brazilians. Is that right? They're a little on the superstitious side.

So they think if I don't do it, like my ancestors will suffer, or it's like it's letting down us, like letting down my ancestors. I sympathize with them. I mean, Pabongka Rinpoche himself in Tibet, you know, he practiced everything.

And he was from a Nyingma family. So he said, some people say I'm sectarian against Nyingmas. He said, how?

My parents are Nyingma and they've been Nyingma for hundreds of generations. They put me in this monastery when I was a kid. I didn't walk here myself.

They put me in this monastery. So how could I be sectarian? And he says, but my mother did say that we can only let him go on one condition.

Shugden was our family deity for many generations, and we'd really like him to continue that practice. Some people say as long as we are alive, something like that. He mentions in his own biography, he says, for me, it's no problem to do or not do any practice.

But my mom made that request, so it makes me a little sensitive on it. And he said that to the 13th Dalai Lama. You know, the problem came during the 13th Dalai Lama's early life, because Nechung was the protector of Dalai Lamas.

And the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th Dalai Lamas, well, the 8th was okay. The 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th all died young. So people kind of lost a little bit of confidence in Nechung.

And Shugden was getting a little more popular at that time. And I think the problem came because the Tibetan government was thinking of switching. But their Gyalpo Nechung was more popular with the general population because it came from Guru Rinpoche.

And yeah, made a bit of a social mess for some people. Like in South India, restaurants would put, if you practice Shugden, please don't eat here. Yes.

Yeah. You know, and kind of stuff like that. So that too.

[Lama Fede Andino]

What do you think that the yellow book, the Pod Ser, of Dzemey Rinpoche was also a little bit of a factor in this? Because it was the anti-Gelug script thing, right? He wrote the book detailing how the people...

Yeah, a lot of people blame him for that. Is that a factor in your opinion? Or was it a factor?

Was already done in the 13th Dalai Lama's time?

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Actually, the Dalai Lama had already sort of stepped back from a little bit because of the sort of bumping between the Nechung oracle and the Shugden oracle for who should be the oracle of Tibet. And in the biography of the third Dalai Lama said when the second died, he wasn't going to be reborn in Tibet because we've got a few civil wars going on in Tibet and all of that with all of the Sakyas and what have you. And then Padmasambhava appears to him with Atisha and Tsongkhapa and the three of them appear and Padmasambhava said, well, if you reincarnate in a hundred years, you'll become head of Tibet and you'll be able to solve these little conflicts.

And so he looked at Atisha and Atisha said, I agree. Tsongkhapa said, thumbs up on that. So he took reincarnation and exactly a hundred years later became the fifth Dalai Lama and thrown this thing.

And so, and Padmasambhava in that said, I'll give you Nechung to see that you're where Dorje Trakten, to see that all of your work goes well. And so from that time, Nechung became the other Dalai Lama's kind of strong protector. And in the fifth Dalai Lama's time became the protector of the Shishi Tsongkhapa, a spiritual secular government bringing all things worldly and nirvanic into harmony.

So for that reason, the Pahar Gyalpa was especially loved because of that prophecy and the connection to Padmasambhava, the connection to Semye Gyampa. And then Shugden only became a lot more popular when Dalai Lama died young, but in all fairness to the Nechung, he can't really be blamed for that. I mean, that's kind of a bit of a long shot, but that was in any way related.

But anyway, Dalai Lama became aware of that problem at a young age and knew he had to make a stance on it, I think. And yeah, from that time on, it just kind of developed like it did. And as you say, it has a little bit divided Gyalpa because those who practice it strongly sort of kind of have gone their own way.

But they're still very much Tsongkhapa practitioners of the official lineages, but just distancing them a little bit from Gyalwa Rinpoche. And when I asked Dalai Lama about it, he sort of looked at me and says, did you receive that Tsongkhe? And I said, well, no.

I said, well, nobody ever offered it to me, so I guess I don't have the merit.

[Lama Fede Andino]

You dodged a bullet there.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

What?

[Lama Fede Andino]

You dodged a bullet.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Well, in Dharamsala, both Lamas Geshe Dargye and Geshe Rabten didn't allow us to do any Dharmapala practices. They said yidam brings enlightenment.

When your yidam practice is solid, then you can take a Dharmapala. So maybe four or five years, three or four years later, I took the Yamantaka Dharmapala, Chögyal. And another four or five years later, I took Palden Lama, my heavy work, heavy-duty stuff.

And for money, then Vaisravana, take the money tree.

[Lama Fede Andino]

And the mangoes. Yes. What?

The mangoes and the big banners and everything. Yeah, yeah. Wonderful, wonderful.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

But you know, I mean, every Tibetan school has some controversial Dharmapalas, you know, Drikung, they've got like Achi Lama, who's like Drikung Chitsang's, the first Drikung was grandma. I mean, it's kind of a little bit of a stretch.

[Lama Fede Andino]

No, it's nice. I translated it.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

You know, it's a nice practice, but you know, it's a wonderful practice. It's not from India. So for that reason, it has seen a little bit differently.

And it's a personal one for the Drikung. And so each of the schools has a few of their own like that. Some of the Nyingma ones are, you know.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Also a little bit violent. It's like any good Gyalpo has to be violent.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

They're like a pit bull. Sweet when they're well fed and in a good mood.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Yeah. So just to kind of recap and to finish this, I understand everything that we were talking about. I think what would you be your, if you had to boil down today's talk, right?

I think that discretion is a big part of what you're saying, that you think that to move forward, we need to copy some of the discretion that the Tibetans have, right, in the practice of Dharma. But I get the main samaya that you think it's important. It's the one about Buddha nature, about seeing each other as...

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah. I mean, a simple example. Once I was driving, I used to bring groups of lamas over and we'd tour a hundred U.S. cities in a year, quite busy. And we're driving along and the head lama was 75 years old, quite old. Well, I'm 76, but he wasn't as fry as me. And he says, oh, the monks are getting hungry.

When are we going to stop? And I said, well, they're waiting at where we arrived for dinner. We can't stop and eat and be an hour late with a full stomach.

Oh, but it's seven o'clock. Then it's 7.30. So I said to him, well, Rinpoche, monks are not supposed to eat in the evening. You have that vow.

And he said, oh, how do you know that? Non-monks are not supposed to know the monk vows. And I said, well, Dalai Lama's office once sent down a little book that Dalai Lama had written on monk vows.

And it came to me to translate. And so I worked with the Tibetan one, the Tibetan counterpart, and we translated. And I know you're not supposed to eat in the evening.

He said, well, you shouldn't have translated that book. And this is a reason why. Then I said, well, Rinpoche, there are 253 monk vows.

Tibetans only keep about 20 or 25 of them, and they don't keep any of the other ones. Because they're kind of, you know, don't hide your rice under your nutrient to get more nutrient, get more rice, or don't hide your nutrients under your rice to get more nutrient. That's two of the vows.

So why not? We don't serve food like that anymore, so why not just drop that? He said, no, no, it's very great merit to preserve the Vinaya the way it was.

I said, yeah, but don't you think it's like bad karma to have those precepts and not keep them just because they're obsolete? And he says, no, no, no, no, they're not important precepts. What is important is taking them is great merit.

Of course, you can't keep them. You keep about 30 or 35 of the main ones, and that's all. So I'm sure he's right.

You know, in retrospect, like if they were to hold a meeting of all the Tibetan schools and say, which ones should we drop out? You'd have like one school with 183, and one other school with 21, and some other school was like, it would be like you create like 50 different sort of monkhoods, each feeling they had the more pure form of Vinaya. So I see what he was meaning by that.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Your view is that nobody keeps the vows, basically, all of them by the letter.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

No, no. I'm sure Dalai Lama eats in the evening from time to time because he travels and teaches, and he's got to fit things in. Different time zones and all of that.

[Lama Fede Andino]

But that's a high bar, like Dalai Lama, all the rest of the monks, they do not keep it, the 253.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

I mean, there may be a couple, maybe two or three on the planet who bother, because they don't think it's important.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Right.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

You know, what they think what's important is to memorize the 253 that were originally practiced in India because it was useful, but it's impossible to do in a modern society in India or America or Argentina or wherever. One of the monks that I translated was the precepts of a novice monk written by Nagarjuna, and with Lama Mipham's commentary to it, and quite a a hilarious, humorful commentary to it. I really enjoyed reading it and translating it, but he gets it down to like 10, which monks should actually keep.

And the hint is like, of course, the other 26 are there, but they're not very practical. Stick to those 10, and you've kind of got it. And I think most Tibetans are like that.

They see that 10 is very important, and the others, it's like, it's part of an ancient way of life and a different, you know, village life, you know, village life in ancient India. And so it's nice to keep them. I think it's just kind of a reminder of village life in India.

But in Tibet, if you didn't eat in the evening, then kind of a problem in such a cold climate. Then in India, you go to China, then you can't refuse anything that's offered in the vinaya. So if someone offers you meat, you have to eat it.

But in China, you get lots of Buddhist monks who will never eat meat in front of anyone else. I mean, they'll say to me, oh, Lama Glen, let's go out and have some meat. But if there's any Korean people around, they don't like to do it because they have a farm of vinaya influenced by the Chinese vegetarian Taoist movement, you could say.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Oh, yes. I have this here. Chinese people come tell me, you cannot eat meat, you're a Buddhist.

Oh, yeah.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

And when Dalai Lama came to Canada the first time, everyone figured he'd be a Buddhist. So the organizers organized like a table breakfast with the press, kind of a tradition with newspapers. So he's at this end, and they put three or four vegetarian dishes around him.

And all the rest down, they got bacon and eggs and chicken. Dalai Lama looks down, he sort of looks up, and he says, what's that? The guy says, chicken.

Dalai Lama goes, oh, give me please.

[Lama Fede Andino]

I remember one of my teachers, Khenpo Pema, once came here and he said, please, he said to everyone, do not feed me grass. I'm a Buddhist, but I eat meat. I'm not a cow.

Feed me human food.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Tibetans call, often they'll say, ribang khalat. You give them vegetables, vegetarian, ribang khalat, is this rabbit food? Yes.

But then in South India, the big monasteries have- All vegetarians. Have gone quite more vegetarian, because in South India, the diet is very easy to be a very healthy vegetarian. And it's much, I mean, they can cook meat in their own khamsan, in their own individual departments, but they won't serve it in the main temple or anything like that.

And Dalai Lama asked them to do like that, because it sort of upsets the Brahmins. And so if they're in another person's country, it's like if you go to Rome and you complain about pasta. Yes.

Or come to Argentina and complain about their wine.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Well, wine is nice, but wine in the US is also nice.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

What?

[Lama Fede Andino]

Wine in the US, in California, it's also nice too.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

It's nice. Yeah, but I think wine in Argentina is amongst the best in the world. How do I know that?

My Argentinian friends told me that. You have to try it. You have to try it.

[Lama Fede Andino]

Did you bring him to a winery? You should go. Next visit.

Next visit.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Yeah, so I think if I look at what I think is important in Dharma, I ask some of my students to use this kind of meditation robe. Because white is the basis, represents compassion, so we should try to become as compassionate as we can within the meditation. And the red represents wisdom.

And really, the wisdom of the examination of nature of self, interdependent origination, and beyond the independent origination, the infinity side of our experience. And a little red, black in the center represents strength, power, courage, fearlessness. So like Genre Z, Avogadhisvara, Manjushri, Vajrapani, often like that on an outer level.

So on the very least, when you meditate, try to become more compassionate. Try to look a little deeper. Who am I experiencing this life of mine?

What is the relationship between perceiver and perceived? And with the third part, to feel your power, feel your strength, to understand you're as great as any human being on this planet. Don't let any sense of inferiority hinder your progress.

And on the completion stage, bringing the male energy and the female energy into perfect balance and bringing those energies into the central channel and to the heart. And the black, when you bring them together and the whole sense of a separate self dissolves, and you go into clear like mind. So representing the outer, inner, and secret.

So I gave the outer and secret, the inner I'm not giving. Excellent.

[Lama Fede Andino]

So thank you so much. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. I'm going to say, is there anything you want to give me?

Once I'll just do it in Spanish. I think it's perfect. Excellent.

Thank you so much again. And then I'll stop the recording and we can relax a little bit and do it all again. Thank you so much.

Thank you, everyone.

[Lama Glenn H.Mullin]

Excellent.

#buddhism #glennhmullin #interview #samaya #abuse #shugden