April 2008
I’m currently planning to do a long retreat. Here are answers to some of the questions I’m often asked about it:
Where are you going to do your retreat?
In southern-central France in the Auvergne. It’s about 2,000 feet (700 metres) up in the Massif Central. From near where we’re staying you can see the range of mountains that includes the Puy de Dome. You can also see the golden roof of the temple of the Karma Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist centre founded by the late Gendun Rinpoche.
Why aren’t you doing it at a place you know?
I would be very happy to do so, except for one factor: I really want regular access to someone experienced who can guide my retreat. I have done quite a bit of solitary retreat over the years, as well as living at Vajraloka and Guhyaloka retreat centres. Whilst they’ve been very useful, I’ve come to the conclusion that I would make much better progress with regular access to someone to help me sharpen up my practice, point out my blind spots and bad habits, and generally help me to ‘steer to the deep’. So when Lama Lhundrup offered to help members of the Western Buddhist Order who wanted to do long meditation retreat, I decided to take him up on his offer.
Who’s Lama Lhundrup?
He’s a German-born senior disciple of Gendun Rinpoche, whom several Order members have got to know through meetings connected with the European Buddhist Union. Last year Subhuti and Dhammarati invited him to give a seminar on Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation at Madhyamaloka, where I met him. Lama Lhundrup’s main work is guiding people in long retreats, so we talked a lot to him about meditation and retreat. Those discussions stirred up the aspiration to do a long retreat that I have felt for many years, but the conditions have never been right.
Why are you doing the retreat with Vijayamala?
I’d originally thought of doing a long solitary retreat. When I talked to Vijayamala she was okay with that, but said it was something that she would also very much like to do. Lama Lhundrup’s experience is that westerners can become too isolated and self-absorbed in solitary retreat, so all their long retreats are in groups. He himself did a three-year retreat with his wife. Then they both took monastic ordination and did further retreats in single-sex groups. (He has done nine years of retreat altogether.) That experience of practising with his wife, which he felt was very effective, means that he is open to helping couples, provided they are mature enough, to practise together.
Vijayamala and I went out to the Auvergne last summer to reconnoitre. There were no suitable solitary facilities, and joining a single-sex group would have meant following a whole Karma Kagyu meditation syllabus. There is a very nice hermitage there for lay practitioners, but it charges retreat centre prices, which would work out very expensive over three years. So we looked into renting a place for the two of us, without much success.
Finally, one morning Lama Lhundrup received a note from a German couple called Michael and Christiane. They were experienced Dharma practitioners who had spent the last few years caring for Christiane’s mother, who had just died. The note said that now they were free to do a long retreat, their place had space for others to join them, and could Lama Lhundrup recommend anyone? In response Lhundrup didn’t send them a note, just us. So within an hour of sending their note, Michael and Christiane were confronted with a strange English couple from another sangha saying that Lhundrup had suggested we spent three years together. All four of us managed to cope well with this sudden turn of events, and we agreed to come and stay at their place from January to March this year, to do a trial retreat to see how things worked out.
How did that trial retreat go?
Very well. Christiane and Michael turned out to be very kind, generous and open-hearted. Their place is very quiet, down a farm track, with only a very occasional tractor or walker passing by. We got together with them for a little while after supper most evenings to get to know one another, sharing bits of our life stories and talking about how our practice was going, and then doing an Avalokiteshvara puja together.
So as the trial retreat was a success, when will you start your long retreat?
We’ll leave the UK at the end of June, and spend a couple of weeks or so getting settled in. Then we’ll find an auspicious date to start. (The 18th of July is Full Moon…)
What will your retreat facilities be like?
Michael used to be an actor and circus performer (he specialised in tightrope walking). For many years he lived in an old circus wagon, and there are now two of them at the top of his field, far enough from the house to be completely out of the way. Vijayamala and I will have one of these each. They’re made of wood, better insulated than a modern caravan, with wood-burning stoves. From my wagon there is a view out over rolling hills, with bits of forest.
How will you pay for it?
I can partially support myself. I have some money left me by my parents from which I shall receive some interest. I shall also receive a bit in royalties from Windhorse Publications (please keep buying and recommending the books!). But I shall need to raise some money, probably about 40 or 50 pounds sterling a week.
How long are you planning to do?
Lama Lhundrup says that in the time-limited three-year group retreats that he guides, people often spend a year getting into it, a year deeply immersed, and then a year anticipating the end of the retreat. So he advised me to leave the finishing date of the retreat open. In that way it becomes just how you are living your life. So I’m telling people that I’m planning to do ‘at least three years’.
How will you spend your time?
On the trial retreat we got up at 5am and did ten or eleven hours’ meditation a day in four sessions, as well as a small amount of Dharma study. I also did some Hatha Yoga and went running every second day.
What practices will you be doing?
I’ll carry on with the same practices that I do now. I’ll focus mainly on visualization, particularly some of what I have received from Dagyab Rinpoche, who will guide my retreat overall. On the trial retreat I concentrated on Vajrasattva purification practice, which felt like a good preparation for a long retreat.
How’s your health?
I’m still having problems with my liver. I had some tests earlier in the year, which looked okay, but then western allopathic liver function tests really only show up problems when your liver function is below 25%. I was violently sick on three days during our trial retreat. There were also quite a few mornings when I woke up feeling very liverish and had to miss the first meditation session. But at least I wasn’t under any pressure to be well enough to give a Dharma talk or lead a retreat. I could just practise with the illness in a relaxed way.
Will you leave the retreat at all?
Apart from going for walks or runs in the local area, I don’t plan to leave the place at all. Christiane and Michael will do all the shopping. As my parents both died in the early 1990s, I’m in the fortunate position of not having any dependents. I have two brothers, but if anything happened to them there are others who can look after them. If one of them died I wouldn’t come back for the funeral. I would stay in retreat and dedicate practice for their benefit.
If I’m ill, then Lama Lhundrup is also a qualified western doctor; Christiane is a naturopath, and homeopath with some Chinese medical training. So I should be well cared for. I’m most likely to have to go out to see a dentist, as I’m a bit long in the tooth these days and I don’t expect they will happily last three years without giving me any trouble.
Are you excited?
No, I don’t feel excited, just deeply contented at the prospect of being able to devote myself to the Dharma undistractedly.
What do you hope to get from it?
I don’t like that question very much. I don’t like to anticipate what will happen, and I’m not doing the retreat in order to gain anything. I hope to strengthen the foundations of my practice, to come closer to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and to become more of a resource for other people. Years ago I gave a short talk on ‘Solitary Retreat’ at Padmaloka Retreat Centre as part of a symposium chaired by my teacher Sangharakshita. At the end he got up and said “That was a very good talk by Vessantara. There was only one thing that he didn’t say, and that is that one goes away on retreat in order to come back.” That was a very strong teaching for me. I had given a talk about retreat without setting it in the whole context of the Bodhisattva ideal - of gaining Enlightenment so as to be able to help others to do so. These days, thankfully, I am rather more in touch with the Bodhisattva spirit. So I hope that from the retreat I will gain experience of meditation and long retreats that I can come back and share with other people.
Can I write to you?
No, sorry. On a retreat as intensive as this correspondence and news of the outside world very easily become a distraction. Lhundrup particularly counselled me against keeping in contact with people for whom I fulfilled a particular role – such as preceptor or kalyana mitra (spiritual friend). In a way the whole purpose of the retreat is to let go of being ‘someone’, having a particular identity. Correspondence with people in relation to whom I have a particular position can easily interfere with that process. Of course I shall be thinking of all the men I’ve ordained into the Western Buddhist Order, as well as all my friends. (I currently make a practice of calling to mind in meditation all the men I’ve ordained and reciting mantras for them.) I won’t be reading Shabda - the Western Buddhist Order newsletter - but people have kindly agreed to let me and Vijayamala know if members of the sanghas with which we have connections are seriously ill or die, so we can dedicate some practice to them. I will also probably write something from time to time that a friend can post on this website, to let you know how I’m getting on.
My experience of doing solitary retreats is that I feel very close to people - strongly linked to them on a mental level. So I shall be thinking every day of my teachers, relatives and friends, and wishing you all well with your lives and Dharma practice.