We held our 6th annual “Heart of Practice” retreat last month and it was another wonderful event! The dedication of all the participants to be the guardians of their own practice was inspiring! We concluded this year’s retreat with songs of realization (poetry) from everyone! I’ll be posting these beautiful offerings in the coming days. But for now, here are some lovely offerings from our teacher and spiritual friend, Khaydroup!
Dear Bodhisattvas
My sisters and brothers,
meeting again all our fathers and mothers,
daily arriving in our zoom little squares,
from across many miles, yet alone in our chairs.
So many challenges to show up and share,
so even though hard, we continue to dare.
And why do we do it, we know very well,
we feel the connection, it makes us feel swell.
And so my dear friends, what I’ve come here to say,
From the depths of my heart, I thank you each and every day.
Experience
Simple, ordinary, fresh,
forgetting, grasping, feeling it, letting go
seeing, resting, relaxing
happening all by itself.
Much More
Thoughts, words, language,
all useful to explain.
So easy to be good at this relentless game.
There is so much more to explore,
look behind and beyond,
that which confines
so as not to ignore
or mistake
the description for what is described.
Let the spacious moment arise and subside
again and again infinite openness has ever been here.
Watched a beautiful documentary this weekend telling the story of Mingyur Rinpoche’s “Wandering Retreat”. I had read his memoir “In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying” and this is a wonderful companion. The film is beautifully shot with Rinpoche telling his own story. Highly recommend watching.
Under cover of darkness and with no word of his plans, much-beloved Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche walked away from his life on the international stage to live that of a wandering yogi. Unheard of among eminent teachers today, such a practice is rife with hardships. For Mingyur Rinpoche, these challenges—begging, finding food and shelter, illness, and all the attendant risks of wandering incognito from place to place with the barest of possessions—present fertile ground for deepening insight into the true nature of the mind.
Wandering . . . But Not Lost is an intimate account of Mingyur Rinpoche’s four-and-a-half-year retreat (June 2011 – November 2015) interspersed with Rinpoche’s own guidance in applying Buddhist wisdom to our daily modern lives that will touch—and inspire—audiences everywhere.
We are happy to announce that registration is now open for our annual June retreat practice intensive, meeting for the second year in a row online. We hope to meet in person again in Badger, California in 2022.
It is fortunate indeed to have the time to delve deeply into spiritual discovery. This is a rare opportunity to set aside our normal routines, unplug from distractions, and allow ourselves to experience the true relief that comes from cultivating a quiet mind and an open heart. Learning to be gentle with ourselves and “to relax in the doing” is liberating and transformative. Being at home in our own environments may prove supremely challenging. We may have to modify expectations, but at the same time it gives us more flexibility to participate fully or in a modified way to suit your individual needs.
We will still have the support of practicing together. The key is finding the balance between, “not too tight, and not too loose”, between relaxed discipline and awake relaxation. In doing so, we discover that peace and happiness are already present within our own mind, we only have to relax into our practice and let go of everything that obscures the innate qualities of wisdom and compassion.
We will provide various “Zoom Rooms” for the different practice sessions. The practice sessions will open and close together with traditional prayers. Which practice you do during the session can vary. Some of you will focus on sitting practice, others Ngondro, others on a particular visualization, generally called “deity” practice, and some will do combinations of the above. This is up to you. In addition we will offer morning Yoga sessions and evening Feldenkrais sessions as well as a daily Dharma talk.
We hope you will join us!
Registration is now open until June 1
Please follow the link for additional information and to registration:
2020 is in the books! And so are many, many, lovely poems! We concluded the year with offerings of poetry by our sangha members. Wishing you all a year of fruition in your practice! – Jampa
Prayer – Khalil Gibran
Then a priestess said, “Speak to us of Prayer.”
And he answered, saying:
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?
And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.
And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.
When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.
Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion.
For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive.
And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted:
Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.
It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.
I cannot teach you how to pray in words.
God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.
And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.
But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,
And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,
“Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.
It is thy desire in us that desireth.
It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.
We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all.”
The good news is published by us. We have a special edition every moment, and we need you to read it. The good news is that you are alive, and the linden tree is still there, standing firm in the harsh Winter. The good news is that you have wonderful eyes to touch the blue sky. The good news is that your child is there before you, and your arms are available: hugging is possible. They only print what is wrong. Look at each of our special editions. We always offer the things that are not wrong. We want you to benefit from them and help protect them. The dandelion is there by the sidewalk, smiling its wondrous smile, singing the song of eternity. Listen! You have ears that can hear it. Bow your head. Listen to it. Leave behind the world of sorrow and preoccupation and get free. The latest good news is that you can do it.
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
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