When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent
-Ryokan (1758 – 1831)
In the spring of 2013, I found myself in a tiny house in the midst of an Oregon forest nestled under towering Douglas fir trees and surrounded by green moss and thick grass. Next to my cabin flowed a beautiful creek. The water originated from snow-melt in the Oregon Cascade mountains. That creek flows to McKenzie River and eventually empties onto the Oregon coast. This forest was to become my secluded home for my solitary retreat for the next three and half years.
The land was owned by my friends and blessed by many Tibetan lamas, particularly a number of Kagyu Mahamudra masters. My cabin was a custom-made trailer tiny home. Outwardly it looks like a small cabin on wheels with cedar shake walls and a metal roof and inwardly, it is a cozy functional tiny lodge with a bedroom loft of three Japanese tatami-grass mats and a meditation seat in a 2-mat Japanese styled tea room.
This long-term retreat was traditionally called “Nyen-Chen” (Great Retreat), a life-time dream of yogi and yogini meditators in the Geluk tradition. It took me almost 40 years from my first spark of interest in the Buddhadharma for this retreat to finally ignite all the auspicious causes and conditions that allowed me to actualize this retreat. When my son, Mani, died suddenly at the age of 16 in 2003, I knew that there would be nothing to lose in devoting the rest of my life to Dharma practice. His life and death were great blessings of joy and sorrow for my dharma practice in retreat.
to be continued...
This story, your story is part of our lineage of blessing, our most nearest lineage, and I am enthralled, curious, inspired. Thank you for sharing.
(my tiny tent in the Mongolian wilderness during my retreat)
My root teacher is the late 9th Khalkha Jetsun Dampa Jampe Namdrol Chö kyi Gyeltsun (1933 – 2012), the spiritual leader of Mongolia. He passed away March 1, 2012 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a year before my retreat started.
I had the great fortune to see him and receive his blessings three months before his parinirvana. It was such an auspicious and emotional occasion for me to meet Rinpoche for the last time upon completion of a four-month wandering Chö retreat in the wilderness of Mongolia.
Chö, often spelled chod, is a tantric practice that aims at cutting through attachment to self. Chö practitioners visualize themselves in fearful situations and through making offerings see through the empty nature of fear and its root, self.
At that time I expressed my intention to enter a long retreat and to carry the lineage tradition that he generously passed on to his students. Despite manifesting illness, he acknowledged me by expressing his delight and encouragement by giving me a thumbs-up gesture as I left him.
Waves of emotions of joy, awe, heartbreak, and deep sadness overwhelmed my heart since I knew this would be the last time I would be seeing his holy face. At the same time, this last meeting confirmed for me my incredible fortune and feeling of deep responsibility, for the dharma practice and service.
The focus of this three-year retreat was to accomplish the commitments of one yidam deity while integrating everything to a deeper level that I had learned from my precious teachers, and from my spiritual and life experiences over the last four decades.
I felt like my psycho-physical energy system was rewiring. Within the container of the solitary retreat, it was time for me to reflect, restore and awaken into my relationship to my body, my mind, my dharma practice, and the relationship to who and what I truly am.
(to be continued...)