Chapter 3: Retreat

Dropping Outer Activity

When I first moved into the gonpa, I began to meet regularly with Lama Drimed. He was curious about Baba so I gave him Play of Consciousness, Baba’s spiritual autobiography. When he returned it to me, he told me it was an authentic path, but he couldn’t understand why we did not do retreat, pointing out that Baba did retreat. I had no answer.

Baba had done retreat at his hut in Suki, but no one was encouraged to follow suit. I assumed this was because no one was at the stage where they would have the kind of transformation that he had. I thought that perhaps it would come later.

Baba said that his yoga, Siddha Yoga, included all the other yogas, and that whatever was needed in a seeker’s development would unfold spontaneously over time through the grace of a siddha guru. At his Ganeshpuri ashram people were going through all levels of purification – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Many were having kriyas throughout the day. You might see someone dancing in the garden, or another sitting in the hall doing mudras. There were usually a few people here and there absorbed in samadhi. I find it hard to believe now, but I wept daily for three years. It was an intense crucible of sadhana.

When I got to the gonpa, I concluded that my time to do retreat had finally arrived. I was thrilled that retreat was an important part of this new path. Although we practiced daily at the gonpa, the most intensive practice took place in retreat, which I did every summer, usually for 8 weeks.

During my first dzogchen group retreat, there was a period of a few days during which we were dropped all outer practices and just sat. We could eat, walk, sleep and if necessary, bathe – but nothing else. I was in bliss. Lama Drimed told us not even to offer prostrations to him when he entered the room. This was shocking to some, as were the instructions to stop any outer practices which one was holding as a commitment. Some just could not give these up. He was never rigid and seemed to me to always give permission to any exceptions that were requested.

I so enjoyed those few days of dropping all outer actions, that I knew I wanted to follow this pattern in retreat. He agreed and I did my first retreat, soon afterward, for a month. When I was agitated, which was often, I resorted to reading my notes from the six week group retreat with him, which was allowed, or taking walks or daydreaming or fantasizing. I felt guilty and like a failure for not being able to meditate for four sessions of two hours each without these indulgences. It was so obvious to me that I was a complete mess and I despaired. My early retreats involved a lot of striving and suffering. This went on in different ways for years.

Catharsis

Retreat was excruciating – and liberating. The prominent feature of my retreats in the early days was an upwelling of old psychic material. This purification was often alarming and depressing and I would not have allowed it to go on if I hadn’t been instructed to just watch it all calmly, no matter what.

There was sexual stuff that arose no matter how much I hated it. It reminded me of Baba’s experiences in his retreat. Then there were old memories that just insisted on being replayed. It was annoying and also very boring, but apparently there was nothing to be done about it.

I assumed that everything in my ordinary consciousness had to be unraveled. I often wondered if I were doing something wrong, but Lama Drimed told me it was all fine. Over the years this upsurging of psychic material lasted a shorter and shorter time and was less intense. I was also more detached from it year to year.

In the early years, I just kept going without any real clarity. For a long time, I felt that the goal receded further and further the more I learned and looked at my mind. This may be because at the beginning one has no idea of what there is inside that must be purified. For me there was a fair amount of despair, but the kindness of the lama and the teachings kept me going.

No matter what my experience was, I was reassured that it was fine and that I should just keep going. This meant, of course, to keep on practicing in the way one had been instructed. One of Rinpoche’s most common sayings – and the saying on a very popular T-shirt sold at the gonpa - was, “Keep going.” For example, when I told Rinpoche that I had completed my ngondro, he smiled and said, “Keep going.” This was a pith instruction that I took very much to heart.

Lama Drimed often told us that “time in” was a huge component of the path. I believed it when he said to just keep going and things would get better. Still I would worry about whether or not I was doing it right. Perhaps it would improve if I were able to do it right. I would also wonder if I were just fatally flawed and too recalcitrant to get anywhere. Numerous doubts such as these arose. I had no choice but to keep going.

Things did get better, slowly and gradually, and with many setbacks. I think that some of the improvement with my mind was just accepting the process. Even if the acceptance was only due to feeling that I had no choice, still it was acceptance and that is always a good thing.

It was in retreat that I finally had time to let my being settle into its own natural rhythm. Never before in my life had I had days on end all alone, with nothing to do but cook my meals, eat, tidy up, walk, practice and sleep. I didn’t even have to tidy up or walk if I didn’t feel so inclined. It is brilliantly liberating and at the same time excruciatingly revealing.

In retreat I was faced with all my demons without any means of distracting myself from seeing them. Without the habitual buffers they were felt very intensely. Doing outer practices such as making offerings, sadhana practice or puja, mantra repetition, prayers, study and/or prostrations are a great way to distract oneself from facing the inner chaos, pain, emptiness (with a small e), rage, sadness – and all the other multifarious ways that the poisons of the mind may manifest. This is how it is supposed to work.

If a retreatant is overwhelmed by the psychic eruptions, then the outer practices provide a way to calm oneself or to get more centered and balanced. One can always pray, which is something I resorted to a great deal. As the years went on, the aversion to the psychic eruptions grew less and I found that I even rejoiced in the process, which was certainly not pleasant by ordinary standards.

It was not unremittingly difficult. There were long hours of deep peace and happiness. For example, during my retreats at Rigdzin Ling, I discovered within myself a love of nature. As I sat for hours, eyes open, looking out at a landscape with sun and sky, I found myself totally in love with what I was seeing.

I remember one day in a tent gazing at an entire window filled with green leaves rustling slightly in the wind and being overwhelmed with the beauty of the trees. All I could think was how lucky I was to be there and to be able to see those beautiful trees. How lucky I was to live in a world that had such wonderful things as trees in it! It was a spontaneous and natural experience of the praise of God.

After some time, my critical mind would intervene and ask, “Is this rigpa?” My mind would then go on recalling the instructions to decide whether or not I was doing it correctly. I would also critically analyze my experience to see if it matched the “correct” one. These were my mental/emotional habits and that is what retreat does. It brings them into sharp focus and makes you stew in them, experience the results and then finally decide to give them up.

Long Retreat?

Once in conversation with Khentrul Rinpoche, my philosophy teacher, he mentioned that it took about two months of retreat for his mind to really settle into meditation. I had never done retreat for longer than two months and I wanted to see what happened during a much longer retreat. I figured that for me it would take much longer than two months for what Khentrul Rinpoche had described to happen to me. For a long time I had the goal of doing an extended retreat, maybe even the traditional three year retreat.

Eventually I decided that it was more appropriate to let go of goals that offered only future satisfaction. I began to ask what it was I wanted in the moment. What did I really want? Was it some imagined experience called “mind settling into meditation” or was it something else? In exploring this, I saw that the only goal that gave me real peace was that of being of benefit to others.

All other goals had some subtle feeling of the contraction of ego in them. I knew that I could only serve others well if I were spiritually mature. And so, while I was maturing spiritually, I wanted to interact with others and not sit alone all day in a hut or cave. I felt best suited to a combination of retreat and service, a kind of retreat in the world. It felt more relevant to life in the 21st century.

Retreat is an incredible gift and luxury. I found that it was extremely difficult for me to separate from the obsessions of ordinary life without a period of “cold turkey” in which I could actually experience the alteration in my state and see for myself the negative effects of a totally outward focus.

It is hard to convey the profundity of spending time not communicating with or even seeing people. I remember practicing silence with Hari Dass Baba in my early days in India before meeting Baba. We wrote on little chalk boards hung around our necks. There was definitely a positive energy shift that came from not speaking – and this was in spite of the fact that we communicated constantly on the chalk boards.

I Quit

During my last retreat at Rigdzin Ling, I had the experience of giving up. I could tell the story making it sound more spectacular and “spiritual” than it was, but it really was quite ordinary. It was very real and very intense, but it was not accompanied with great joy or jubilation. One day as I was meditating on my cushion looking out the large window of the Pie, Prema and John’s retreat cabin high up on a hill in the forest, my mind began to come to a point of focus. I suddenly said – possibly out loud – “I quit.” Surprise. Stillness.

Then I asked what I was quitting. The answer was that I was quitting it all, quitting being a spiritual person. I just wasn’t going to do this any more. It was not from any feeling of negativity, but just a certainty. I got up and began to read a book. Later I opened up my laptop and played a game of solitaire. God did not strike me dead. I had to laugh at the shadow of old habits of fear and guilt. But I had given all that up! I realized that my peers would consider my actions as negative, as a failure, as deluded, etc. But I didn’t care. I was finished. It was not that I considered any of it wrong or bad – just that I was done with it.

An hour or two later, during which I felt quite normal, I noticed that I had set up my shrine to make the daily protector offerings. Prema asked me to do this since I was doing retreat on her land. I thought that it wasn’t the protectors’ fault that I had quit, so I went ahead and made the offerings with the appropriate prayers. It wasn’t for me, so it felt fine.

I left retreat a few days later and didn’t tell anyone about my experience until one Open Space some time later. I presented it as a delusion. I really wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it was very deep and very real. Perhaps it was quitting Rigdzin Ling, which I did soon after. Perhaps it was quitting formal practice. It was definitely quitting seeking. There was the experience, “Whatever I am now is good enough.” I had a sense of satisfaction with myself – not that I thought highly of myself or that I had attained any great height of realization. I knew that the process would continue, but in a different way.