Голоса трёхлетнего ретрита: медитация три года спустя (2013, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
It's good to almost see you. It feels very close now and I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody. I asked one of the caretakers what they thought I should talk about and she said, well what I'd like to know and what I think other people would like to know is what the hell you've been doing in there the last three years.

I thought that sounded like a fair enough question. I thought a picture says a thousand words so I made a small video and I thought we'd start with that. So I hope you enjoy it.

It's mostly me and my new friends. I spoke with Geshe-la and he suggested I talk about some of the good things of retreat and some of the challenges of retreat and how I've dealt with that and I thought kind of like the good and the bad and ugly of retreat and I thought that sounded like a good idea, maybe show a progression on my three years of So to begin with, I was a little nervous coming into retreat and I'd been at the end of the last three retreat and when everyone got out and everyone was really happy to get out. I heard about how hot the earth were and how cold they were and some people spoke about really struggling.

They wanted to leave every day. They fought wanting to leave and so I thought there'd be some struggles and I was expecting some physical and mental challenges and I just want to start by saying how for me how smooth the transition was and I feel very happy and very healthy and retreat has been good and I feel very fortunate to have able to spend these last three years in retreat and there's a lot of people here to thank for that so I wanted to start by thanking you. I think the idea of retreat might sound confining or limiting and in some senses it is. I don't leave the vicinity of my cabin for most of the year.

I don't write or talk or see anybody other than in breaks and breaks are getting fewer and farther between but what I've found and what I suspect other people found is that retreat has been very freeing and freeing in a couple different ways. Freeing obviously just from the, you know, from things like having bills and having a job to go to pay those bills. It's freedom from that and freedom from social obligations and freedom from wallet and freedom from keys and it's freedom from media and television and radio and magazines and newspapers and Internet and answering machines and cell phones and text messages and instant messages and whatever else is new that we don't know about.

It's freedom from, it's like 90% of what I'm normally engaged in got wiped off the mat and it's very interesting to see what's left when you take away 90% of what you're normally engaged in. Secondly I found it was freedom from how other people see me. Like we tend to put each other in these little boxes of how I expect people to act, their position in a organization or their job or their role as daughter or partner or as youth worker or campground host.

We tend to have these expectations of people and that reflection of how the people see me was removed and it felt like this vast open landscape and it felt very healthy for the mind. Instead of being in this box it was this vast open landscape and obviously at first what I found was there was a lot of time to reflect and I really resonated with Karen's talk last year. She said her first year is a lot of purification and I felt that too.

She talked about purification from the hot and purification from the cold and purification from snakes and from singing too loudly. My purification came in the sense of really intense regret and guilt and feeling like a failure and especially about some of the things I've done in the last six months prior to retreat and it was interesting because the lamas had taught that those last six months prior to retreat are very important and you really need to crank up the virtue and Geshe-la said you know you'll probably go through a freak out and you probably won't recognize it at the time and I had a lot of regret about some of the things I'd done and for the first time I think I had started this whole life review of looking at all my selfishness and pride and arrogance and for the first time in my life I think I had to deal with it. I couldn't just ignore it.

I had time to actually, I couldn't be too busy to not deal with it. I kept on coming up and it was a long process. It was months, many months, but it was very cathartic and how did I how did I deal with it?

I turned to one of the greatest teachers of our time, television, and I turned to my favorite TV show which is My Name is Earl and like my counterpart on the show I literally and figuratively made a list of all the people I felt I'd harmed and the situations I'd screwed up in and I you know looked at those situations and kind of acknowledged my part in it and I said a lot of apologies and and learned from them and tried to see them in a higher view and how they brought me to where it was and to purify them in that way, but it was long, it was hard and I went through the list and I crossed off names and crossed off names and I got down to the last few names and they were hard to cross off the list. They're hardest, they're hard because they kept on coming back on. I'd cross them off, they'd come back on, cross them off, they'd come back on and they're the people that I love the most.

They're my family and the people I've been in relationships with. I worked at it and I got down to the last name and it was the hardest name to cross off the list because it was my own name. It was me.

I had to learn how to forgive myself after a whole lifetime of criticizing other people. Finally I was alone in my own cabin and I had no one to criticize and that voice of criticizing other was now criticizing me. I'm not you know too lazy, not good enough, failing and I remember the day I kind of finally broke.

I was writing a poem about how I just spent another 15 hours of solid practice and still hearing that voice of lazy, not good enough and realizing that I couldn't do anymore. That wasn't the problem. That voice would never be satisfied.

I had to change that voice and there came a time in retreat where I had to shift from the purification into creating a vision for myself and who I wanted to be in my life and who I wanted to be in retreat and to reach that vision. It wasn't like hitting rock-bottom. It wasn't depressing.

It was also very freeing, like freedom from 90% of what I'm engaged in and freedom from however the people see me and that was freedom from how I saw myself. So what was that process like of kind of creating a vision and working towards achieving, towards reaching that? What I found was that in that same six or nine months, that period, I started to notice the benefits of the little things I was doing right.

You know the foundational practices that I was finally doing right that were supporting me in reaching that vision. Things like sleeping. I found when I came into retreat I was just chronically overtired and I had this habit of pushing myself too hard.

Geshe-la called them Gandhian experiments, like experiments we finally have time to do, that Gandhiji used to do. You have time to do them in retreat, like how much sleep do I need? When is the best time for me to sleep?

And for me food was the next big one and again I carried all these habits into retreat with me of eating too fast and eating on the run and eating while multitasking and eating the wrong foods. And it was a learning process. And one of the main things I found was I learned how to trust my body to tell me what I needed.

Some days at the end of the day I'd have a bowl of granola and a salad for lunch and I'd be at the end of the day and I'd think that that can't be enough food for me. I can't live off that amount of food and so I would just make a meal and I'd eat and I'd just feel crappy. I'd feel heavy and I learned the truth that meditation and yoga are food, they are sustenance, and to trust my body and what my body was saying.

And it became clear because in the breaks I'd meditate less and I'd eat twice as much. So I really learned, I learned a lot. And also some of the other foundational practices like my once every six weeks book became a six times a day book for the first time in my life.

And what I found was this, there is this critical mass or this point where after six months of keeping my book six times a day it became like a habit or a way of life. And instead of just checking my book six times a day, it was in my heart throughout the day I was checking my motivation, checking my morality. And that was a very beautiful turning point.

And then, you know, to have the space and time to do yoga practice. I do two hours of yoga a day and I love my yoga practice after it's done. Also, I got to experiment with the yoga cleansing techniques, the kriyas or shakarmas or karma yogas.

Things like neti or or nali or I learned how to do the dowdy cloth where you swallow 15 feet of cloth and pull it back out. And salt water cleanses and kundal kriya and the basic yoga cleanses like mula shodhana and things like that. I was being naughty in Sanskrit there.

But what I found was that I have an outside of my body to clean and inside of my body to clean and I learned how to do that. And I feel very healthy. And I think I've had, I think I had one cold in the last three years.

And then, of course, as soon as I wrote that part of my speech I got this latest bug or whatever it is that's going around. But other than that, I feel like I've been very healthy and very lucky. And all these things kind of helped me reach, create a platform for me to reach those goals.

And one of the other things that really helped was the community. And I didn't expect that because I thought, you know, I would only see people two or three times a break. And both lamas kind of encouraged me to to go to ceremonies and help.

And I really resisted it. I didn't want to be, I felt guilty about being social. But what I found was that breaks were incredible times of learning for me and inspiration.

And that was, it was, it was such an amazing group of people. And mainly I just found that I had support and encouragement to find new levels of truth and honesty and integrity. And that was interesting partly because it's a silent retreat, like we don't talk for the most part.

And what I found was the way we communicated with notes. Like there's a lot of, when you write a note with someone, there's a lot of presentness and even more so a sign language. There's a lot of eye contact and you can't talk to somebody with your back to them or you can't talk to them from another room.

And there's just a lot of, just the level of concentration in the group is so high that when you talk with somebody, they're right there and they're with you. And for me, it created a sense of this psychological safety where I was able to talk about things that I just generally would rather not talk about and go to places I generally just haven't. And that was very cool.

It was kind of like how the six times a day book became part of a way of life. It was like our sojourn practice, a group confession, kind of subtly became a way of life too. And it was very beautiful being in such a unbelievably supportive community to help me reach who I wanted to be as a person, who I want to be as a person.

So it's an incredible community. And it hasn't all been roses. There's been some tremendous heartbreak and some tremendous pain in the psalm.

And some people have figuratively and literally done some tremendous face plants. And it can feel a bit like a pressure cooker. Sometimes like we've all only seen the same 30 people for the last three years.

And you know, one way or another, it feels like everyone kind of knows your business and can be a little claustrophobic. And you know, obviously we've had some bizarre and tragic events. You know, try to meditate when your lama gives a public teaching about stabbing your husband.

Or a month later when there's search-and-rescue helicopters flying around the psalm. Or that night when you find out your friend is dead. The next day, instead of meditating, I was halfway up a mountain bringing stuff down from the cave.

And I was pissed off and disillusioned, confused. It wasn't what I had signed up for. And there's a group of us and we were we were bringing stuff down.

And it was pretty heavy. Not the stuff, the mood. And so we're walking down and, you know, guess who we run into?

Ursula. I'm not saying she wasn't, but the angel I expected to meet in my retreat wasn't a very short Austrian carrying a gun and a badge that said sheriff. We ran into the cops.

It was the first time in my life I was happy to hear, you have the right to remain silent. It was kind of fun to know sign language because for better or for worse we could talk amongst each other and kind of make jokes. They didn't know what we were saying.

And Ursula, she was hard. She was the hardest sheriff I've ever met. She said, names, first and last names, not your Buddha name, your real name.

She turned out to be cool. Once she let everybody know who was boss, she was very respectful of our bizarre situation. And to make a long story short, you know, like go home and try to meditate on your three-year retreat after you get interrogated by the cops.

It was hard. And I wanted to speak a little bit about how I personally dealt with it, those hard times. Firstly, Geshe Michael was amazing.

He came in and he was just very honest and very open. And we met as a group and he shared some stuff with the group about why the board felt they needed to make the decisions that they made. And that was good for me because I was, frankly, I was pissed off about some of the board decisions.

I was on the other side of the fence for a change. And helped me get my head on straight. And then he met with every single person individually.

And I was one of the last to meet him. And I went up to his cabin. And when I got there, he had these huge blood blisters on his fingers from writing so much because we were all in silence.

And he had respected our silence. And he'd been writing for three days, three long days. And, you know, for me, I needed my Lama.

And he was there. And secondly, at that time, what I found was the, instead of fragmenting, the community came together. And I think Brady is going to talk about it a little bit.

So I'll mention him because I suspect he won't. He's put a lot of time into administrating the retreat. And it's been very inspiring for me to see how he's put so much love into what he's taken on.

And he's, you know, one of many, many people that have stepped forward to form this community that's unbelievable. I can't imagine a better place for spiritual practice. And I can't imagine a better community.

Like, I love the campground. But this is totally different. Totally, totally different.

And then the third thing was my immediate community. You know, we came together, we had some long nights of writing notes, venting our frustration and opening our hearts and trying to work on worldview. And by the end of that break after Ian's death, I think we were all pretty ready to get back into retreat and get back on the cushion and get back to why we came in.

And honestly, those tragic events weren't the hardest thing for me. They were a struggle. And they still are a struggle.

But the big things are kind of easy to grapple with, in some ways. For me, the harder things were the amorphous things, like the things I couldn't quite put my hand on. And frankly, it was mostly just, just didn't feel like my meditation was getting any better.

And that's, that's essentially all I do. So it was kind of a drag. It got bad, I made a new mantra.

Om, Geshe Michael, I can't meditate, ahom. And every time Geshe-la would come in, you know, I would, I would dutifully repeat my mantra for him. And Geshe-la, I can't meditate.

He, he's, you know, for about a year, no matter what I asked him, he just said, we'll do the four Starbuck steps. I think it was the Year of the Karma of Love book, maybe. And I, I tried to explain to Geshe-la that I was one of 30 people in the world that can't actually do the four Starbuck steps properly.

I can't do step three. And he understood my predicament. And he did, you know, sometimes he does this thing where he, where he looks up and his eyes kind of roll back.

And, and for me, it's one of my favorite times as a student, because I feel like he's talking to the Buddha or some enlightened being or the divine that I can't talk to. And I've become a good student for about 15 seconds. I really opened my heart into my mind.

I'm like, Geshe-la, just give me my perfect advice. You know, just tell me what I need to do. Like, I really want to figure this thing out.

You know, like, whatever you tell me this time, I'm really going to do it. I'm really going to apply whatever it is you tell me. I'm going to do it this time.

I'm going to be a good student. Just tell me what I need to know. Just give me that perfect advice.

And he kind of finishes getting the download. And he looked at me and he said, I want you to grow a mustache like Song Rinpoche. Song Rinpoche has got this huge, long, beautiful mustache.

At that moment, I learned you have to be careful what you promise your Lama. Luckily, I found it helpful. What Geshe-la said, actually, he did say that, but what he also said was to work on content, work on being content.

Like there's this connection between contentedness and being in the present moment and stillness. Like you can't have stillness if you're not in the present moment and you can't be in the present moment if you're discontent. Like you're probably discontent thinking about things that happened in the past and reliving the past, wishing you'd done something different or regretting something or you're, you know, you're worried about the future, like what will happen when your free food runs out?

Wondering if the whole country is up in smoke. And what I found was when I looked at my discontent, it often related back to those basic foundational practices. Like was I not in the present moment because I was too tired because I didn't sleep?

Or was I not in the present moment because I'd eaten too much at Seichu? Or was I not in the present moment because I'd done something without thinking about how someone else would feel about it? And I'm crossing another name off in my mental list in my meditation because I hadn't kept my morality.

And or I've been listening to music like that damn potato chip song. That thing went through my head for three weeks. It was horrible.

Every time I sat down to meditate, all I got was Grant singing the potato chip song. It was horrible. Horrible.

And you know, I confess I got a little jealous of people's meditation. I remember going to one person and asking her for, I knew she did the same type of meditation, and I went to her for some advice and she said, I don't really do that anymore. My tumult is really strong.

I just meditate on tumult. I was like, on tumult? Wow.

So I went to, there's some person. They started talking to me about their disillusioned experiences. And not that long after that, someone came up and asked me if I had any experience or anything to say about absorptions.

No, I'm sorry. I'm a bystander in conversations about stillness and prana in the central channel and bliss. In one sense, it was kind of cool to hear about all the things I'd studied in Tantra, to see that they're true and they're coming true for people, and people are achieving their goals.

But on the other hand, you know, like, why not me? Like, I go to all the group events. I stick to the program.

I don't read novels. Why not me? I'm a please come, angel of diamond, please come, over and over and over and over again.

And I was excited about mantras because the texts say that after 100,000 mantras, then something special will happen. And so I was really looking forward to that. And the buildup kind of grows as you get towards 100,000 mantras.

And I got down to the last day and the last, you know, I'm sitting there doing my last lap on the rosary, and I was excited. And I got down to my last mantra. Suddenly, nothing happened.

I just sat there like a sucker for a few hours waiting for the magic. Nothing, nothing happened. Nothing.

And I, which was okay, because the texts say at 400,000, then something will definitely happen. You'll meet a, you'll have a, you know, you'll meet the divine in some. So I was expecting the angelic choir to come through my roof and the beings of light to come through the door or the wall.

I didn't care. I just, well, however they came in was fine. And I cleaned my whole house and made a big meal and put some nice clothes on.

And I packed my bag, packed a bag and put it by the door. I was ready to go. Maybe they wanted to go somewhere.

I did 400,000 mantras and nothing happened. Nothing. Like I just woke up with a big food hangover from eating so much.

Nothing, nothing happened at all. I did a million mantras and nothing happened. A million.

When I saw Geshe-la next, I complained bitterly. Geshe-la, this is crazy. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

I've done this a million times. These practices aren't working. And he laughed.

And he gave me some good advice and some ideas on how to tweak my practice. He said, don't give up. Keep going.

Don't give up. But, you know, why? Why keep going?

You know, I feel like I got to a point where 10 years of spiritual practice, three years of retreat, nothing's working. You know, where does the faith come from? Where does the hope come from?

You know, why, why, why keep going? Why get back on my cushion? Why, why another hundred thousand mantras?

Why another lay rung? Why more goddamn yoga? I start to hear those voices in my head again, you know, like failing and not good enough.

Why, why keep going? Where does that faith come from? I feel like I'm running out of tricks.

I'm running out of ways to change my practice. I feel like I'm running out of time. I feel the weight of the responsibility of people that are counting on me and the growing debt to sponsors.

You know, why, why keep going? Why more mantras? There's a, you know, one day I was, I was doing my offering bowls.

I was up early. It's 430 and have a piece of incense and purifying a bowl. I put it down, pick up another bowl, purify it, put it down, pick up another bowl, purify it.

I go to put it down and there's a diamond in the way. So I move the diamond, purify the next bowl and put it down. And I started filling the water bowls and I must have been tired.

I was halfway through before I kind of clicked. A diamond. I picked it up and there's a diamond on my altar.

It wasn't there yesterday. I haven't left. And right away the mind looks for a rational reason for it to find an explanation.

And what I, what I found is in my life, just got to a point in my retreat, in my life, it just got to a point where I realized it just was kind of, kind of boring to continue to rationalize and explain away the, the, the magic for the mundane. And it became a time when there was just too much light coming in, too many cracks, too many coincidences, one too many. Rainbows that appear for no reason and, and other things.

And there, retreat, retreat is a, retreat is a priceless gift to dig through the trenches of your mind and to create a vision for yourself. And to strive towards that vision and, and to, and to fly. And there's been times for me in this retreat when everything just clicks.

And that voiceless voice in my head stops. And it's so calm and so peaceful and so beautiful. And it's like I walk around in my cabin and it's a, it's a whole new world.

I've never experienced it. It's like the same but more real. And it's like I think when the, the subtle dullness finally lifts, you, you realize you've been in a fog your whole life and everything is just clear and calm and beautiful.

Out of that, out of that silence this love just permeates out and it's, it's not a, not a love for a this or a that. It's not a love for the squirrel or the fox. It's not a love for an object.

It's, you take away all the objects and the love is still shining like the sun. It's, it's a beautiful, beautiful metaphor. And out of that silence, love permeates and there's this bliss that arises in my mind.

Just calm, happy, joyful, bliss that for me it's also a little scary because I don't want to lose it again and I know it can always be like that. Out of that silence, love permeates and that bliss arises and sometimes there's this, sometimes there's this wisdom that comes where things I've heard a thousand times or I've said a hundred times or I've read clicks in a direct way. Like not a, not an intellectual way but a way that becomes part of who I am.

And out of that silence this, this love permeates, bliss arises in my mind and I get a taste of achieving that vision that I've, that I've set out for myself to reach, to become that person that I want to be. And that in those moments this boy who has always been afraid of his own voice learns that it's, it's okay to sing. This boy has always been a little shy and self-conscious of what others will think.

Learns that it's okay to dance. This boy who has held back a lifetime of tears learns it's okay to cry. This boy who has never truly opened his heart to anybody, felt what it's like to love.

This boy who for his whole life has demanded that the world be normal finally let's go and let's be filled with dance and let's be filled with song. Let's be filled with love. My, my whole life I've had this feeling since I was very young that there's something more, something more, something I'm supposed to do, something more to life.

These, I always ask that, these questions, why, why, why am I here? What is this about? These, these questions have been my constant companion.

These questions have been with me wherever I've gone and they've, they've led me down some strange roads and led me down some dead ends and I think some of those roads were hard for the people that were close to me to have to watch me walk down. But, you know, especially my parents. But those questions have driven my journey and my journey has felt like my destiny.

So I've had to let it evolve out of my soul. I've had to walk down those roads and now I feel so grateful to have so many friends that share the same drive for truth, for what is ultimate. And I've been able to spend three years of my life with you.

And there's a, there's a lot of people here who have been supporting me, have been supporting us. I know I can't be here alone. I know I couldn't be here without you.

So, please, you know, please, please stay. Please keep supporting, please keep supporting us. Keep supporting Diamond Mountain and the board and caretakers, Geshe Michael.

And some of those dead ends I, I know I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have made it out of if it wasn't for Geshe Michael and his teachings. So, Geshe-la, I, I didn't quite make it, I have a little more, a little more, a little more to go on my journey. And I know I can't make it without you.

So, please stay in my life. Maybe we should have just done the video three times. Got a little heavy.

Okay. I, I wanted to, I wanted to end with a meditation, a very short meditation. So, please, get comfortable and find, find your breath, find contentedness in the moment, and relax your face.

And I want you to visualize, imagine that you've made the decision to do Long Retreat like maybe six months, or a year, or three years, and you, you've studied well, and understand that you, you know the reasons why you want to do retreat. Why you've made that decision, and how it's the best thing you could do for others, and the best thing you could, maybe the best thing you could do to achieve your goals. And so, picture having made that decision.

See yourself walking up the road towards the gate, towards the entrance of retreat. And as you get to the gate, feel that fear arise. How, how can this help anybody?

Feel the doubt. What if something happens to somebody that I love? Someone who's been there for me my whole life.

What if I can't be there for them? Feel that fear of losing three years of your life. And then, look up and ahead of you, see your lama, very happy, smiling, waving you forward, urging you on.

And so you walk through the gate into retreat, hear the gate close behind you, and see your lama, very happy, smiling, feel the weight of the world lift off your shoulders. Know with genuine certainty that you've done the right thing. You've given yourself a chance.

You've done the right thing. Okay, well, I feel like that, instead of taking an hour, took about 35 minutes. I'm a little nervous today.

But when I studied in the Bahamas with Swami Svarupananda, he'd look at his clock and say, I have one minute and I'm going to take it. So, I feel like I have one minute and I'm going to take it, because I don't get to talk much. And I have about 10 minutes of people that I wanted to thank.

But I'll just thank one person and then I hope that everyone knows who I have to thank. Everyone knows, you know, if you're one of those people. And so I'll thank one person and you thank yourself for me.

My mom came down from Canada. And my dad would have come, but he ironically got stabbed in the leg somehow. And my parents have always been my biggest supporter, supporters.

So I wanted to thank my mom. Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad.

Okay. Venerable Phil, could you do all the prayers? You cut us off short yesterday on two of them.

[Speaker 2]
Venerable Phil, could you do all the prayers for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us, for us Salum laudamus te Rejum re Dhamma kuni Tobar shok

[Speaker 1]
Thank you very much for joining us today.