The Three Jewels - Part 3

In Buddhism, "The Three Jewels" refer to the trinity of the Buddha, his teachings, the dharma, and the monastic community of spiritual friends, the sangha. The Three Jewels was also the name of a small store on the lower east side of Manhattan where Geshe Roach taught many of his early classes. The location gradually evolved from a tea house to a bookstore and gift shop to a meditation and community center.

The store was originally run by a nun, Ani Pelma, who was part of a Gelugpa monastic order of nuns and monks ordained by Khen Rinpoche (Sermey Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin), Geshe Roach's root teacher. At the time, Khen Rinpoche was the abbot of Rashi Gempil Ling Temple, a Mongolian Buddhist temple, in New Jersey.

As I continued to videotape dharma classes at night and on weekends, I became acquainted with many of the American dharma students, nuns and monks. Through the original Dharma Talks series in New Jersey, I met Lisa Hochman who had a background as a PBS television producer. Lisa was of immense help in the early stages of planning and filming this documentary; she possessed a piercing intelligence, was extroverted and immediately likeable, and had knowledge of many other dharma centers and scenes. She had been an eclectic Buddhist, originally a Jew who floated amongst many different Buddhist groups, teachers, and retreats.

Lisa accompanied me on many tapings and conducted the interviews while I did the lighting, worked the DV camera, and adjusted the sound levels. We discussed the general questions beforehand, but the discussions were free form and open ended. It was Lisa's idea to expand the interviews and include not only lay practitioners, but nuns and monks as well. We began to explore the reasons why individuals were choosing the path of Buddhism and monasticism.

Geshe Roach was instrumental in helping me to interview his root teacher, Khen Rinpoche, in New Jersey, perhaps the only documentary footage of this extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist lama, who achieved the highest geshe degree as a young monk.

The Three Jewels - Part 2

Some time after meeting Geshe Roach, I started attending dharma classes he held on the lower East side of Manhattan. Those early classes were taught in a student's loft space, decorated with beautiful hanging Thanka paintings and Buddha statues.

At some point, I started videotaping the classes with Geshe Roach's permission. All of his classes were audiotaped on cassette and later assembled into an archive. In fact, the Asian Classics Institute produced an entire series of courses for Buddhist home studies that were distributed to lay people, including prison inmates. Payment was based on one's ability to pay. The studies focused on the texts and topics Buddhist monks were taught to attain the geshe degree, awarded to monastics at the conclusion of a full course of studies.

As I videotaped the classes, the idea for a documentary started to take shape. The classes were filled with American converts who, like me, were being instructed in what I would consider orthodox and very pure Buddhist teachings, fundamental courses on morality, ethics, and that most fascinating topic, emptiness.

The Three Jewels - Part 1

In 1996 I met Geshe Michael Roach, a monk, and Ani Pelma, a nun, through a series of dharma talks my wife Michele and I sponsored in New Jersey. Michele contacted many Buddhist organizations in New York City, literally going through the Manhattan Yellow Pages, asking for referrals for speakers. She was single-minded and undeterred in her mission, and we were surprised at how open and friendly the people were we contacted. It didn't take long to fill 6 slots, scheduled every 2 weeks, for the Spring.

With little beyond word of mouth and a tiny text ad in our local newspaper, the Bergen Record, we launched our Buddhist Talks. We didn't care how many people showed up and didn't ask for donations or support. We just wanted to so something interesting and, hopefully, inspiring for others. I didn't realize it would be us who would be inspired.

Geshe Roach was our first invited speaker. He was the director of an organization called the Asian Classics Institute (which I'd never heard of), headquartered on the lower east-side of Manhattan. He was trained in Tibetan Buddhism in the Gelugpa sect, the Dalai Lama's sect, one of four in Tibet (Gelug, Sakya, Kagyu, Nyingma). Before meeting Geshe-la (the "la" is added with endearment), I had no previous exposure to Tibetan Buddhism. I grew up in my family's Japanese sect of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism.

Geshe Roach's talk was on the subject of karma. As he began his lecture it was apparent to me that this was someone who grew up in the States, for his dialogue was suffused with colloquialisms and examples peculiar to American culture. I could immediately relate to him, which made his teaching all the more meaningful and significant for me.

His discourse on karma was circuitous and meant to make an impact. I remember Geshe Roach asking why it was that there were two close friends involved in a car accident where one was decapitated and the other survived with hardly a scratch. "Why?" he asked. "Why is it one met a horrible, sudden end, and the other walked away unscathed?" We all sat dumbfounded, stunned by the strong image conjured in our minds.

Quite coincidentally, a man who worked for my father, Leonard Gizzi, in his early 30s, was decapitated in a car accident while driving to work one morning in the mid-1970s, on his way to my father's office. That thought shot through my brain like a lightning bolt, stinging my spine. It was a terrible, untimely death, but no one for an instant doubted its randomness or its unfairness. Lenny was an impish, quiet, noticeably shy, and thoughtful young man who was well-liked by all. He was a hard worker who never complained, and my dad was very saddened by his passing. As was I.

Geshe Roach scanned the room and stared right through each of us. "Don't you see?" he implored. "It was their karma. Their individual karma was the cause of the accident, of one's almost instant, gruesome end, and the other's having to live with the nightmare of surviving it. Their deeds of this or a past life led them to this inextricable moment in time."

For the next hour Geshe Roach went on to explain the many flavors and degrees of karma, its components and contributing causes, its mysteriousness, and the fact that only a completely enlightened Buddha could completely fathom its inner workings.

I was absolutely mesmerized.

For all the years in my youth I had attended the New York Buddhist Church with my parents and brother, I had never heard karma explained so thoroughly by any Reverend. This was a complete and satisfying explanation that spawned as many questions as it answered. But for that ninety minutes something inside of my mind expanded.

For the first time, I was hearing the dharma.