Personal Retreat

        We had been offering up to 30-day private retreats at the temple and in March 2018 I decided I needed to take one myself. It had taken me over a month to recover from my last Asian trip and I wanted to reflect on what I was doing wrong. I had just received preliminary translations of both the Supreme and Unsurpassable Mahamudra of Liberation and Imparting the Absolute Truth Through the Heart Sutra. I had perfect and trustworthy students who came to the temple to feed me and take care of anything that would come up. I had three goals: strengthen my personal practice, which I never seemed to find enough time for, contemplate how I could better promote the correct Buddha Dharma to non-Chinese speakers, and to study those two preliminary translations. My intention was to cut all internet-phone contact and personal contact with the outside world.

        I can only report, I was only partially successful. I was very grateful to all who worked to give me this time. I know how difficult that can be for most of us to have thirty-days to just focus on practice and learning the correct Buddha Dharma and to not worry about worldly matters. I was very grateful. I was also very grateful to my two vajra brothers who enabled me to have the preliminary translations to study and all the other translators who helped make that possible. I hope that they will be available soon, but you can read them, too, if you do a retreat at the temple.

        There are a few recommendations I made to myself and anyone else wanting to do a private retreat:

1. Have a plan before you start your retreat. I wasn’t ready even though I deferred starting for a week. There were still things I needed (or thought I needed) to do that carried into the retreat and caused me to keep my computer and phone. And, I did not have a plan of what to do on the retreat itself.
   
   
2. Don’t allow yourself access to the outside world. Even though I greatly reduced my phone-internet contacts, I still kept some channels open. Everyone else cooperated beautifully and tried to support me, but I still persisted. DON’T DO IT! I came out a couple of times and had a hard time regaining the practice. Absolutely no phones, internet, or computers should be allowed. There is a reason you do these retreats with no possible outside contacts and not in your usual living space with all its comforts and distractions. We do have a Dharma Protector chapel and a special Dharma that the Buddha Master gave me to practice there (FIGURE 82). You cannot have any forms of electricity there—not even a match, candle or flashlight! Sonya, a nun who stays here at the temple, did a retreat and stayed there last month during the Covid-19 quarantine. The other nuns took her food. But I thought I could do it in my quarters. My support crew did leave food for me. I was wrong. DON’T DO IT. Find a way to be and stay isolated from distractions. The next time I try this I will use the chapel.
   
   
3. I reviewed and read (and posted) the translations that Benxin Chiren quickly provided on answers to critical questions from the virtuous ones at the World Buddhism Association Headquarters. There is a lot to be learned from these, especially on inner-tantric initiations. I wanted the other English-speaking disciples to have these teachings. Although I rationalized that I was doing “Dharma Work”, I should have completed that work before I started my retreat.
   
   
4. I also reread Jamgon Kongtrul’s Retreat Manual, written in the mid-nineteenth century on the Tibetan approach to their traditional three-year, three-month retreat with guidelines on how to prepare, life within, and life afterwards.
   
   
5. With all of the above, I was able to establish a daily schedule based on an increased understanding of what my practice should be and how all the pieces fit together. I have been most fortunate to receive many Dharma practices and initiations over the 18 years I have followed His Holiness, but I was not sure how to practice them in an integrated manner. Now, I feel I can.
   
   
6. Thirty-days is not enough time. I only really got started the last week.