Steven Seagal Speaks

An interview with screenwriter Stanley Weiser
 
In an interview with screenwriter Stanley Weiser, the martial arts expert and action film star Steven Seagal breaks his silence on his many years of Buddhist practice and addresses criticism of his recent recognition as an incarnate Tibetan lama.

Stanley Weiser: First off, can you tell our readers a little bit about your background in the art of aikido—how long you trained, who your teachers were, when you attained the status of a master?

Steven Seagal: Well, the title of master—on paper—is something that I probably received in the early eighties. I still don’t believe that I have attained the level of being a master. Maybe some other people think I am a master, but in my mind I am certainly not.

Stanley Weiser: When did you start aikido training?

Steven Seagal: In the mid-sixties I started training with Ishisaka Kiyoshi.

Stanley Weiser: What tradition of aikido was that?

Steven Seagal: There is only one tradition. I say that because people who were connected with Ueshiba Morihei, the founder, feel that if someone is doing another style, they shouldn’t call it aikido. For me, his is aikido because he invented it.

Stanley Weiser: Did you have a spiritual-friend relationship with him as your teacher?

Steven Seagal: I did not get to study with him by taking his hand or anything like that. The most I ever got to do was hear him teach.

Stanley Weiser: Were you introduced to Buddhism as an off-shoot of your martial arts discipline?

Steven Seagal: Well, to be honest with you I am not sure. I was born with a serious spiritual consciousness and for many years studied different paths. I went to Japan in the late sixties and began Zen sitting. I visited monasteries, studying Buddhism and receiving spiritual instruction. This was the beginning for me, the way I believed it should be—the development of a physical man through martial arts and polishing the spiritual side simultaneously.

Stanley Weiser: You also studied acupuncture?

Steven Seagal: Right. That was the way I was originally introduced to Tibetan Buddhism. There was a handful of lamas who had come over from Tibet. They were sick and had been tortured. Because I was studying acupuncture, I was asked to try to look after a couple of them, even though I didn’t speak Tibetan. We were able to eventually communicate. I learned a little Tibetan and I became very close with them.

Later on, I became involved in certain things that are not really the kind of things that I look back on with fondness. This was at a time when the Khampas were still fighting the Chinese and the CIA was helping them, and because of the severe repression of the Tibetan people, I wanted to get involved. My involvement, though, was minimal.

These were the years when my interest in Tibetan Buddhism flourished, but my involvement in any of the spiritual endeavors and training remained my personal business—not secret as some of the other things were, but just private. This was at a time when I very much wanted to be invisible in the dharma community, for a lot of reasons. Only in the last few months have I come out of the closet.

Stanley Weiser: Can you say anything about your involvement with the Tibetan freedom fighters?

Steven Seagal: I think it is probably best if we don’t get into that. We are trying to live in a world where we can choose the middle path and seek harmony, and I don’t want to appear to be a dangerous revolutionary person, because I am really not. I am here on this Earth for one thing and that is to see if I can somehow serve humankind and ease the suffering of others.

Stanley Weiser: Who was your root guru?

Steven Seagal: Basically, for me His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was the greatest, and now I have a very strong devotion to Minling Trichen and His Holiness Penor Rinpoche.

Stanley Weiser: There are the recent reports that Penor Rinpoche has recognized you as a tulku. Is that correct?

Steven Seagal: Gosh, I don’t think that is the way that I would put it. There’s a very despicable magazine that made accusations that I had bribed Penor Rinpoche and all the other higher lamas into giving me recognition. Well, first of all, this a recognition that people have been telling me about for more than twenty years, people who have known me in the dharma for a long time, long, long before Penor Rinpoche ever formalized this. It was something that I had always kept secret, and in fact denied. So if I denied it then, why would I bribe people for it now? You see why it is so pitiful. I don’t mind them insulting me but it is a shame that people are scandalizing the dharma and saying bad things about Penor Rinpoche and other high Nyingma lamas.

Stanley Weiser: You are saying that for more than twenty years people have talked to you about possibly being a tulku?

Steven Seagal: There are people who had said to me that I am an incarnate lama, or tulku. Penor Rinpoche basically recognized me as Kyung-drak Dorje, who was the reincarnation of the translator Yudra Nyingpo. According to Jamgon Kongtrul’s Lives of the Tertons, Yudra Nyingpo was a disciple of the great translator Berotsana and became both an outstanding scholar and an accomplished meditation master. Many of his reincarnations, such as the Minling translator Lochen Dharma-shri, were able to contribute to Buddhism and it seems that he has taken rebirth as a number of tertons (treasure-revealers).

Stanley Weiser: Do you have memories of past lifetimes?

Steven Seagal: From the time that I started going to India and meditating I did start getting memories that were fairly unclear. Just a few days ago, I was sitting with a lama and one of the things he said to me was that you have a very good imprint of many strong past lives, and therefore your realization will come more swiftly than some people’s.

Stanley Weiser: What did he mean by that?

Steven Seagal: I can’t really explain it. But with something like ngondro, if you practice and practice and dissolve into the emptiness with the practice and you are concentrating on bodhicitta more than anything else, you will probably start to slowly dissolve the veil of who you think you are into your true nature, which is a combination of all your lives. We just have to remember them. This is where retreat is beneficial.

Of course, as you practice longer, you will develop some different siddhis. But none of them really matters. What matters is what you do with your life. In contrast to what that magazine had to say, whenever someone has asked me, are you a tulku, what I have consistently said is that I don’t believe it is very important who I was in my last lives, I think it is important who I am in this life. And what I do in this life is only important if I can ease the suffering of others, if I can somehow make the world a better place, if I somehow serve Buddha and mankind, if I can somehow plant the seed of bodhicitta in people’s hearts.

Stanley Weiser: So contrary to the fact a lot of people think this recognition was some kind of sudden discovery, it has been developing over a long period of time.

Steven Seagal: Oh, I have been doing serious meditation in my own pitiful way for probably twenty-seven years.