Голоса трёхлетнего ретрита: медитация три года спустя (2013, Аризона), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
So, I thought we'd do a short meditation to start. So, get comfortable, and take three deep breaths, just deep, deep inhales, and deep exhales, three times. Then just begin to follow the breath, starting with the exhale, and just allow yourself the beauty of the breath being a sacred object for just a minute or two.

Now either place four finger widths down from your navel, imagine it, or literally put your hand there, and then go directly back to the front of the backbone, maybe a quarter of an inch just inside the backbone. Put your mind there, bring the breath there, and imagine right in that spot, there's a tiny circle of space, no wider than your index finger, the tip of your index finger, and just breathe into that point. Now imagine a tiny sun there, no larger than a mustard seed, right in the middle of that perfect, round, tiny space.

Imagine it's radiating light. Try to see, feel the light that's emanating from this tiny sun. Then begin to see the rays of light expanding out through your legs, down to your feet, and then up through the abdomen, rising up into your chest, permeating every aspect of your body, and bring it higher into the heart.

Imagine that you're looking at that point, watching the radiating sunlight permeating the body, and bring it up into the throat, into your arms, down into your fingers, up through the spine, into the tip of your head. And just feel the warmth of the radiating light from this tiny, small, mustard-seed-sized sun, and then just let it leave every cell of your body, and let it go out to all of us here, to each other. Let these light rays touch each other, and then imagine that it continues to expand outward, and let it go further, to Buoy, into Mexico, throughout the state, effortlessly, throughout our country, throughout the continent.

Let it expand to the globe, and let it touch the crowns of everyone, every sentient being on this planet, and maybe for just a brief moment, feel the inseparability of all of us, and feel that exchange of energy between each one of us. And then slowly withdraw the rays of light, bring them back, back into the sun, and then come back to your breath, and then open your eyes. SASHIBUKI MIKTCHEN ME TOKTRAM VIRABLINCHI NINDE GYENPACHI SANGE SHINGDU MIKTTE UWARGI DROKUN NAMDAR SHINGLA DUPAR SHOK ITAM GURU RATNAMANDALAKAM NIRYATAYAMI SANGE CHUDAN DZOGYI CHOKNAM LA CHAM CHU PARDU DAKMI CHI DAKI CHEN YEN GYI PAD SO NAM KYI DROLAR PENCHUR SANGE CHUPAR SHOK SANGE CHUDAN DZOGYI CHOKNAM LA CHAM CHU PARDU DAKMI KAP SU GYI DAKI CHEN YEN GYI PAD SO NAM KYI DROLAR PENCHUR SANGE CHUPAR SHOK SANGE CHUDAN DZOGYI CHOKNAM LA CHAM CHU PARDU DAKMI KAP SU GYI DAKI CHEN YEN GYI PAD SO NAM KYI DROLAR PENCHUR SANGE CHUPAR SHOK I think I needed that more than you, actually. Well, welcome to this final quiet retreat teaching.

It's such a beautiful gift for us, for all of you who make the effort to come and see us and be with us for this weekend. I don't think I'll ever exhaust my gratitude to Holy Geshe Michael and our caretaker saints who continue to sustain us to the end in here. It's a miracle.

And all of you out there who haven't stopped, continue to sponsor us, this possibility. I hope we meet you someday. I hope we meet you someday and thank you in person.

And all of those special ones, you know who you are, who continue to send me those goodies. And just support me in your hearts. It's priceless and precious, and I love you all.

I can't wait to see you. And then the 30 holy angels over here, who, I think they pretend to let me be the director, you know. They're amazing.

I aspire to them on so many levels. They teach me every day. Just their level of giving is just...

amazing. So today is actually the, what is it, November 10th. It's our 1046th day of Deep Retreat.

And we have 144 days left. And one more Deep Retreat period to go. I think it's, yeah, it's two months.

Two months. It all just feels like a dream to me right now. Like, how the hell did we do it?

All the factors that had to come together, I mean, at great expense and sacrifice. Thousands of hours by dozens of people, both in preparing us to get in and then keeping us here. Sustaining us here.

At great cost to many. Karmically, it's such a... It's quite a responsibility on our side to not waste our time and to keep our side of the commitment.

And we do. So... I was starting to think about the beginning when we started.

It was less than a year before we actually, most of us began building our cabins. I mean, it was like a blank slate up in the valleys. What's going on?

Then I think around, I don't know, maybe March 2010, cabins started sprouting up like mushrooms. The two retreat valleys, it instantly happened. I think I came once to look at a spot that Mom Christy had given me and I thought, my God, it's happening.

It's really happening. And then I... I was a bit on the fence.

I wasn't sure, but finally October came around. I said, I'm doing it. Two and a half months before we went in.

Thank you, Doug, Steve, Johnny O, Maddy, Jared. Thank you, Christina, Dan and Doris, Mark, Tad, Teddy, all of you that got me in here. Amazing.

You did it. And then we came in totally broke. I mean, some of us in debt, I left a little bit of debt.

And then I remember handing over my passport and driver's license and thinking, this person will no longer exist. The way I know him now, when I get out in 2014, it was just a surreal moment. So we're approaching this three-year point now in only six weeks.

And I see that all of us have changed. Our lives feel like living miracles. We've been through so much together.

So in what, eight or nine, ten months, there'll be 27 cabins available to all of you. And there'll be 31 of us to assist you with doing your own retreats, whether it be a week, two weeks, a month, three months. I really think there's a limit to what you can do with your practice when you're still in the world.

You need to get really quiet and temporarily pull the plug on your over-committed lives. I remember it. And then put into practice what you teach.

And we really got good at it. There's an art to it. We can help you.

I guess I sound a little bit like I'm on the promotional bandwagon. But, you know, where we live in the Two Reef Retreat Valleys, we're on three sides. We're surrounded by beautiful state parklands, hundreds of thousands of acres.

We're 125 miles from the nearest city. You rarely find a nighttime sky like ours in the country. It's just breathtaking.

The deep silence with the occasional winter wind. So we're charging up our cabins for you. And we hope you come.

So as we wind down off this remarkable ride, I felt it was time to reflect on why we stayed. And I know if I asked each and every one of us, we'd have 31 unique reasons. And I thought, well, yeah, I'll share some of them which may or may not be valid for all, but I thought it was time.

And, you know, we're all a little bit anxious about coming out. Quite honestly, some I can't wait. But, you know, most are really in no hurry at all.

So, you know, we all have this gene, I think, inside of us called the stubborn gene. And it hasn't been, maybe it has been scientifically discovered, but I'm telling you, it's in us. It's in there.

It helps us stay. I think it really does. But of course we would stay.

I mean, we're not exactly doing retreat in bamboo huts with leaky roofs. We're so comfortable in our three-star cabins. You know?

I mean, our groceries are delivered every two weeks. We have door-to-door laundry service in deep retreat periods and home repair service 24-7. Medical.

Three years of this at great cost to many. So, you know, it's really true, though, that I believe that the efforts that we're making in here to try and attempt to get enlightened in this very lifetime is creating enormous results, I think, and resonates out to you into our world. Geshe Michael, when he was here last time, he mentioned to me that the new president of China is Buddhist with a lama.

I mean, think about that. So we do stay. Deep, deep desire to get out of this cyclical existence for good.

I think we're all very sensitive to what appears to be the suffering in our world. I came to this path several years ago due to a major dose of suffering, kind of pretending to live an enjoyable life of material pleasure and cultural status. I just kept coming up emotionally empty, existentially angst.

On a very subtle level, some of us know and stay because we know how close we are to getting out. Some of us maybe have. You get taste of those on the cushion and you keep coming back.

And then you sometimes have these eureka moments when you expose another thread that leads you to the origins of one more samsaric cycle that you've created in the past and is still karmically playing out in your life. In those moments, the hard work pays off and the results can be euphoric. You have just eliminated one more unhealthy, habituated habit and replaced it with a new awareness as to know not to repeat it, this ignorant subconscious tendency again.

In those moments, every aspect of your world on some level has been purified. And you stay and you keep going. And yeah, we do stay because we did come in here to reach certain spiritual goals.

Every deep retreat period, it seems like we... I don't know, it seems like there's one more answer that edges us closer to completing the vision of who we want to become. What future do we want to create for ourselves?

What parts of ourselves do we let go? What parts of ourselves do we develop and nurture? We help each other stay.

We created this community based on the tradition and practice of Mahayana Buddhism. We've learned to serve each other so well, some of us to its highest capacity, to be nei-llamas to each other, to become our own lamas. And it reflects, I believe, the level of renunciation that we seem to have now.

Just now. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, his definition of renunciation is beautiful. He says, what the spiritual warrior renounces is anything in his or her experience that is a barrier to himself and others.

In other words, renunciation is being more available, being more gentle, being more open to others, and within this context of openness, there is a discipline as to know what to ward off and reject and what to accept and cultivate. The positive aspect is caring for others. The negative is fighting off the tendency, the attitude of selfishness.

It hasn't been a cakewalk for us. I thought it would be a little bit more so, but... You know, and then there are the breakdowns, right?

I call them spiritual shakedowns. Geshe-la used to love that song, right? There is beauty in the breakdown?

I don't know. Not when you're in one, in my experience, but afterwards, yeah, there is beauty in the breakdown. You're never really quite prepared when they happen.

But, you know, we hold the safety net up for each other and we're available. We take care of each other in those moments. Some of us have even faced our addictions and have beaten back their causes for good.

It's a beautiful thing to see. We did have a minor crisis about a year and a half ago when the all-natural, back-to-nature Fudge Mint cookies were removed from the snack list on our food order form. I thought a couple of us were going to leave.

I mean, it was grounds for starting a support group. But, you know, we stay. You see, nothing stays hidden in deep retreat.

All aspects of the mind have to be looked at. Exposed. The beauty, the possibilities, the limitations, the obstacles.

And then the breakthroughs happen. When we first came in, I think Earl was talking about it yesterday, we had to wean ourselves off the text messaging habit or the cell phone habit or Internet. Too much access to entertainment.

I tell you, for weeks and months, my mind would review countless scenes from favorite movies or even TV shows from decades ago. All those episodes of Twin Peaks. God.

The mind records everything. So be careful what you submit yourself to. It's all sub-atomically archived in there.

It took a long time to exhaust the archive I had in me. But then I reached a certain point when there was no new input, and I thought, well, maybe it's time to explore other forms of entertainment. And we have this amazing circulating library of books that come in, such great Dharma books.

Even wonderful biographies. And that's great, you know, but I'm kind of talking about observing the nighttime sky on a dark moon and seeing the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, scoping out Venus on the western horizon just before dark and seeing what phase it's in. Exploring the world around me became my entertainment.

This desert wilderness starts to get under your skin and you begin to explore these countless small worlds around you. A while back I noticed a slight shift in how I was perceiving this kind of world around me. It was like perceiving the phenomena around you without a language.

Or you could say simultaneously with a pre-language. In contrast to viewing our world by first thinking the words and then perceiving it, when you see and perceive the world around you without a language, it's fresh, imbued with a new feeling. It's like seeing something for the very first time, and then a few moments later the mind thinks about it, which is talking ourselves into seeing our world.

When you are seeing your world directly, everything is precise, and every intricate detail and design is fantastic. The ordinary ceases to exist in those moments. You're actually perceiving our universe on a micro level.

I think great artists, writers, poets, painters can catch this. I mean, you look at a Van Gogh landscape and he brings you right into those moments when he perceived his universe, that pre-language universe. And it's a reflection, I think, of the inner work we do in our deep retreats.

You know, we have this undistracted time to see how the mind functions, how thoughts and emotions arise, and how we identify with them. And then dis-identify with them. And then resolve them back into emptiness.

I think what kind of shook us to the core was about staying, was our passing of our brother Ian Thorson on April 23, 2012. Prior to his passing, Lama Christy McNally and Ian were asked to lead through a retreat. Holy Lama Geshe Michael was there for us, along with our caretaker saints at the time.

It was then that I was asked to be the new Insam Director of the retreat by Geshe Michael and our DM board. What we really didn't know, of course, and you know this, is that the departure of Lama Christy and Ian never really happened. They never left our retreat boundaries, which extend far south into the parklands.

These two events, to put it mildly, were critical points of crisis that could have been the turning points for some to leave. Our highest worldview was tested to the core. I think each one of us had to understand for ourselves why karmically such a sudden shift in our reality appeared the way it did.

And then, at the same time, we had to collectively and individually, process it all. And we did. Sometimes in small groups, in all-night sessions with no emotions held.

And it was hard. It changed us, though. It brought us so close together.

And we stayed. And, you know, this group of us, mostly them, I'm just in awe because they, during our break periods, the creative energy, it's just amazing what happens to us. So far, I was thinking, I think three books have been written right now, to this point, on Dharma.

A wonderful retreat has created a Buddhist Addictions Anonymous program, so when we have our future students who find the Dharma and are still holding on to their addictions, it will be priceless. A gifted songwriter and musician has created a compositional collection of songs that are awesome and dharmically messaged. I think two or three of us are actually translating Tibetan text into English.

Annie Palma, who we haven't seen in three years, she sends out beautiful watercolors of her garden. Poetry abounds. One of us, among other things, has plunged himself into the study of the other great world religions to create the possibility of inner faith communication.

I'm just in awe of them. I could go on. I mean, I just like to sit home and meditate all day.

I'm really happy on the cushion. So, we stay and we continue to hone our creative skills and then offer to the world the gifts of our beautiful and intuitive understandings. I think we all want to really try to keep Dharma in our life when we get out.

It's a challenge, and it's a little bit what I'm feeling. What's the antidote? How do we do it?

I mean, to sustain a solid and consistent practice when we leave. And I always come up like, just teach. Nothing else matters.

Just teach, and you'll hold it and work hard at sharing and teaching the incredible teachings we've been given. And I think we stay because we know we're a part of a greater vision for the world. In 1979, Chogyam Trungpa, he began to develop his vision for the Shambhala Training Program.

His vision of creating a sacred world in 1979 was unique to the West and still is. He uses this metaphor called the Great Eastern Sun as his model. And in this case, it represents the sun of human dignity or the sun of human power.

And the Great Eastern Sun is a rising sun, not a setting sun. It is the rising of human dignity, the awakening of human dignity, the rising of spiritual warriorship, and the synchronizing of the mind and body, which brings on the dawn of the Great Eastern Sun. It's a complete and straightforward vision.

It's an actual experience and not a concept. It's based on a vision of celebrating life as opposed to a setting sun which is going down and dissolving into darkness. It's also based on a vision of acknowledging ourselves and who we are.

You see, the world is very sacred, clean it up. And working with ourselves, the cleaning up begins with telling the truth, being totally honest, shedding away any hesitation about not being honest, about being honest. Because it makes us uncomfortable, right, or unpleasant.

The Great Eastern Sun hierarchy is based on seeing that there's a natural source of radiance and brilliance in our world, which is the innate wisdom of wakefulness, of human dignity. The possibility is there and it's not based on struggle or aggression. Of course, there are challenges.

But the sense of challenge is quite different than this setting sun model which is going down. The feeling of being condemned to your world and its problems. David Bohm, who has been depicting our setting sun world, his work in quantum theory has contributed to a new vision of our perception of the inseparability of consciousness in our universe.

He was a meditator. He pursued the study of the Eastern philosophical traditions. He warns us that we need to move away from a model of science that has contributed to the confusion of our thinking throughout society and within each individual.

The habitual pattern has and continues to lead us to a general confusion of the mind. And then this then creates a series of problems which interfere with the clarity of our perceptions so seriously that we can't solve the problems. And it extends to deletion and exploitation.

And it's the same for each individual human mind that has been fragmented into separate conflicting compartments according to one's own desires, or aims, ambitions, loyalties, psychological characteristics. Hence, some degree of neurosis is inevitable. But he goes on to say that the notion of these fragments as being self-existent is evidently an illusion.

And this illusion can do other than lead us into conflict and confusion. I like to believe we stayed because we're players in the Great Eastern Stun, leading us deeper and deeper into a wisdom that needs to be shared with the world. We're learning through the practices of Mahayana Buddhism, the art of being human, to embody the fearlessness of an enlightened society, a vision our lama lives and breathes.

So we've got this short little span of time left. And it's precious. And we'll do our best.

And we'll be ready to enter our world again. So thank you so much for coming. Please come back in April so we can see you and talk to you.

And thank you again for coming.