Feel some hesitiation to post this, however may give insight
into Vajrayana practices... please note that Chod is based on the
Prajnaparamita sutras and emptiness, it shd only be practised with
prior preparation practices already accomplished and with the
teachings, transmission and blessings of an authentic lineage
holder.
May all beings reach Buddhahood swiftly!
(copyright Mandala Magazine of the FPMT organisation)
Julia: How did you become
interested to do Chöd retreat?
Ven. Paula: Chöd is a chanting sadhana
that was created by a great female yogini of Tibet, Machig Labdron,
who lived in the eleventh century around Milarepa’s time. And so
it’s an indigenous Tibetan practice although she was a student of
Padampa Sangye who was a famous mahasiddha from India. It comes
through Machig Labdron from Padampa Sangye. She wandered around
Tibet doing this practice. I was fortunate last year to go to her
cave where she meditated for 30 years doing Chöd.
Ven. Roger: The cutting [Chöd] lineage
came from Padampa Sangye, but she developed it into its present
form, which is quite different from what Padampa Sangye taught.
It’s a prajñaparamita practice of cutting the ego, and she
developed it into where you go to the scary places.
Ven. Paula: What we like about it is
that it’s very powerful for developing wisdom and compassion and
renunciation. And, after doing it this summer, I just want to do
more of it. When Geshe Khenrab told us it was so powerful for
developing compassion to do it, he was right – it really does.
Gelugpas had to do it in secret. It wasn’t something they were
allowed to do in the monasteries.
Ven. Roger: It was a Gelugpa practice.
It came through Machig Labdron and through the Chöd lineages to
Lama Tsongkhapa. You probably could say it came through the Kagyu
lineage to Lama Tsongkhapa. He, with the help of Manjushri,
revitalized it by inserting his correct view of emptiness into it.
The practice was more Cittamatra and Lama Tsongkhapa transformed it
into Madhyamaka.
Lama Tsongkhapa reclarified how sutra and tantra are
inseparable. His main job was to reunify sutra and tantra. Lama
Atisha did the same thing. Sutra practitioners then didn’t think
tantra was necessary, and vice versa.
Ven. Paula: All the schools practice
Chöd. It’s really popular in the Nyingma and Kagyu [traditions]. In
Gelugpa it’s not done so much – it was more secret. Jan Willis’
book Enlightened Beings tells how all the great lamas of
our mahamudra lineage practiced Chöd. Gyalwa Ensapa was one of
them, and we do the Ensa lineage of Chöd. It’s [called] the Ganden
Chöd or the Ensa Chöd because it comes through Gyalwa Ensapa, who
was a great Madyamika. The other thing I found very interesting
when I went to Tibet is that Olka, which is the place where Lama
Tsongkhapa did all his ngöndro and was in retreat for years, is
just up the valley from Machig Labdron’s monastery.
Ven. Roger: Although it’s not common
in the Gelugpa monasteries, it’s very cherished in the
ear-whispered lineage. That’s Lama Tsongkhapa’s lineage that Gyalwa
Ensapa propagated.
Julia: What is the ear-whispered lineage in
contrast to the regular Gelugpa teachings?
Ven. Roger: It’s the actual practice
lineage that includes all the practices that Lama Tsongkhapa
received from Manjushri directly on how to become enlightened in
one lifetime in these degenerate times. When Lama Tsongkhapa was
first practicing Dharma in Tibet, when he had learned everything,
he looked around and he didn’t think it was possible to still
become enlightened particularly because the emptiness teachings had
become slightly unclear. And also the morality was changing at the
time. He was skeptical and when he finally got to talk to Manjushri
directly, he asked if it’s still possible to attain enlightenment
in one lifetime like we hear in the great texts. Lama Manjushri
said, “Yes.” And Lama Tsongkhapa asked, “How is that?”
Lama Manjushri outlined a whole series of teachings of
which the Lama Chöpa practice is the embodiment of all. It contains
them all. But it also includes the three deities, extensive sadhana
practice, Chöd practice, ngöndro practices – this is really what
you call Lama Tsongkhapa’s practice lineage. It was originally
called the Ganden Kagyu lineage, meaning this is the Ganden
practice lineage. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche explained that some of
the lineages that Lama Tsongkhapa incorporated into his practice
lineage came through the Kagyu lineages, but not all of them. They
also came from the Sakya and even from the Nyingma. It’s called the
Ganden Kagyu lineage because it’s the Ganden practice lineage –
this is how you get enlightened in one lifetime or in several
lifetimes, in the quickest way possible.
Ven. Paula: Where you hear about it is
in the Ganden Kagyu mahamudra teachings, which Lama Yeshe requested
His Holiness the Dalai Lama to teach at the first Dharma
Celebration teaching [Enlightened Experience Celebration, 1982] and
he wanted all of his students to come. He wrote personal letters to
people all over the world and for that particular teaching there
were 500 of Lama Yeshe’s students in the Dalai Lama’s palace, up
front. It was a really big deal because it was a teaching Lama
Yeshe wanted us to have. Lama Zopa taught it the summer before at
Vajrapani, and the summer before that at Chenrezig Institute in
preparation for these teachings, and that was when I heard about
the ear-whispered lineage. Lama Zopa would talk about it all the
time. Of course, when he taught it, he taught about guru devotion
the whole time. The emptiness teaching came at the airport for the
few people who were there!
Venerable Rene Feusi requested Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche
to come teach it at Vajrapani in 2005 and it was the last teaching
he gave there. So we got it again from Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche.
There is also a book they made from His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s
teachings, The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra, edited
by Alex Berzin.
Ven. Roger: That book was based on the
text by Losang Chokyi Gyeltsen, who was the first in the lineage of
mahamudra teachings to write down the teachings Lama Tsongkhapa
received from Manjushri and to codify it into a body of written
knowledge. Up till then, from Lama Tsongkhapa to Losang Chokyi
Gyeltsen – and this is the most quintessential meaning of
ear-whispered lineage – it had been passed from one lama to
another. By the time it reached Losang Chokyi Gyeltsen, I think he
was in fear it would disappear if he didn’t spread it widely, and
it was also karmically time. There were beings at that time, and
from then till now, who have the karma to hear that teaching. He
wrote the mahamudra root text. He wrote the Lama Chöpa,
and many other texts, sadhanas and many things to reveal Lama
Tsongkhapa’s ear-whispered lineage to a wider audience.
There are stories that at first the monastic lineage was skeptical
about this lineage – the Lama Chöpa, the associated
practices of Chöd, because in the monasteries, the emphasis is on
studying the five great treatises. That’s what the monasteries
brought from the lamas in India to Tibet, and it’s important to
study those to understand emptiness properly. Then you have a
foundation for moving into tantra and higher esoteric practices
after that. I think the reason it’s so secret is that the great
lamas, in their wisdom, don’t want to interrupt the studies of the
monks. They don’t want to distract them with Chöd or tantric
practice.
Ven. Paula: Or if the monks are very
inspired, they have to do them at night. Lama Yeshe had this all
set up for his students. After that first Dharma Celebration, after
we received the mahamudra teachings from His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, Lama Yeshe requested Kyabje Song Rinpoche to give a series of
teachings. First we received Guhyasamaja, then Chöd, and then we
received Heruka Body Mandala. Then we had Yamantaka initiation,
although we didn’t get teachings on them. We received teachings on
that from Ling Rinpoche, and Vajrapani initiation from Serkong
Tsenshab Rinpoche. You can infer from this list that those were the
teachings Lama Yeshe really wanted us to have.
I loved Chöd. I think it has to do with the compassion
aspect of it, and the sadhana itself is so beautiful.
What we were interested in was studying, learning and
propagating Lama Tsongkhapa’s ear-whispered lineage. So then we
found out years later, when we were in the Great Retreat and Jan
Willis sent us a manuscript of Enlightened Beings, and
that’s when we saw that all of the first ear-whispered lineage
lamas all did Chöd. You don’t hear about that much. It’s like Chöd
is a supplement to whatever your main deity is. All these lamas
also did Chöd.
Ven. Roger: It’s like an extensive
package deal that Lama Tsongkhapa put together for his students to
practice, and the transmission of that has come to us. That’s what
we’ve been following and slowly, since I first met Rinpoche in
1979, Rinpoche’s been revealing the possibility of the
ear-whispered lineage and the possibility of gaining actual
realizations from this practice. For this, we are profoundly
grateful.
Ven. Paula: I felt lots and lots of
bliss on this retreat – I don’t know if it’s just because I have
some connection with this practice. One thing I experienced doing
this retreat is that Machig Labdron is still here. I invoke her and
she’s right there – she comes! I don’t know if it’s just me, or
because it’s a close lineage, but I think she was a really powerful
yogini. I think of her and – BAM! – she’s there. Her compassion for
sentient beings is just huge! She’s an emanation of Tara and
Prajñaparamita.
Julia: Will you tell me some of
the history of how you learned about Chöd, and how you came to do
this retreat?
Ven. Roger: …[A]fter doing Heruka retreat, I
decided to take the “Dedicating the Illusory Body” (Chöd) text, and
make it into a chantable English version. I’d already received
permission from Lama Zopa Rinpoche to do that. It’s the common
Ganden Chöd lineage. (The one we practiced in the retreat we just
finished is the uncommon Ganden Chöd lineage. The sadhanas are
different and the initiations you receive and the deities you
practice while you do them are a little different in the uncommon
lineage.)
I didn’t know about the uncommon lineage at the first
Dharma Celebration because Song Rinpoche taught us about the common
lineage. Just after we finished the Great Retreat, we
serendipitously encountered David Molk who was willing to translate
the common text for us into a chantable version.
David encouraged us to come to Toronto for teachings
from Khalkha Jetsun Dampa Rinpoche, who is said to be like the
Dalai Lama of Mongolia. He was in Toronto at Zasep Tulku Rinpoche’s
center giving the initiations and transmissions for the uncommon
Ganden Chöd, which is the 108 Springs retreat. As the title
implies, that involves going to one hundred and eight different
springs consecutively and performing the Chöd practice at those
sites. You have to be in a different place every night without
interruption. Preferably it’s a spring, but it can also be a river,
a lake or an ocean – somewhere there is water around.
The empowerment that enables one to do this retreat
takes seven days of teachings and seven nights of going to scary
places. Khalkha Jetsun Dampa Rinpoche would give initiations and
teachings all day long, and then at night he would send us off to a
different graveyard where we were supposed to do the Chöd practice
every night. Because it was twenty degrees below zero in Toronto
winter, we went instead to a different student’s house every night
and did Chöd as a group all night. That’s the prerequisite and
commitment to 108 Springs Retreat.
Ven. Paula: It was a very intense seven-day long
retreat. There were exactly thirty-eight people, like in
Vajrayogini’s body mandala (thirty seven, plus the teacher in this
case). We were given teachings and initiations all morning. At
sunset we would do the practice together, and from the time we left
him until we saw him the next morning, we couldn’t speak. We
traveled with David and Minoshi Gould. We did the practice four
times in the night, the last time just before dawn. We would drive
back to the center in the morning after sleeping an hour or so, and
then go back to receive teachings. We slept a little in the middle
of the night, but not much.
Towards the end of it, I had a burning desire to do
this practice. Khalkha Jestun Dampa said at the end, “I don’t know
if any of you will carry this lineage on, but I hope one of you in
this room will carry it on.” I felt inspired to do it! I know one
other group has done it in India with him. They did half of it and
were supposed to finish the second half this year.
That was 1995 and Chöd was to be our next project. We
moved to Land of Medicine Buddha where we met Ribur Rinpoche, who
asked us to do a Yamantaka Great Retreat to benefit the FPMT. That
took eight years from the time he asked us to do it until the time
we finished.
Julia: Do you still feel like
Yamantaka retreat was a diversion?
Ven. Paula: No, it was necessary. In
fact it was another prerequisite and we probably couldn’t have done
this Chöd retreat without having done the Yamantaka retreat.
I was going to do it by myself but people warned me not
to do it alone, and Roger had the commitment as well. After leading
a Vajrayogini retreat at Vajrapani Institute, I used those
offerings to take Roger and me on a reconnaissance mission to the
Scottish Highlands. Angie had introduced me to wonderful people who
were willing to help us.
Julia: What kinds of things did you
check?
I had the opportunity to speak with Lama Zopa Rinpoche
who did a mo that came out “excellent” to live, teach and
retreat in Scotland.
Julia: What about where you would
stay in Scotland?
Ven. Paula: We found out that you can
camp anywhere in Scotland. There is a “right of access” law on the
books that allows you to put up a tent pretty much anywhere in
Scotland. You can’t drive a car anywhere, but you can walk and camp
in most places. That’s one of the reasons we picked Scotland: we
had access almost everywhere. There are tons of creeks and springs
– lots of water.
Scotland has a very powerful spiritual tradition from
the Celts. As much as some people tried to beat it out of the
place, it’s still there. I feel called to do spiritual practice
when I am in Scotland. Last year I went to Tibet for two weeks,
thanks to Ven. Robina. Afterwards I came back and went to Scotland,
and I felt more inclined to do retreat there than in Tibet.
Part of that might be my DNA connection with Scotland,
but it’s also an extraordinary place. Physically and energetically,
it’s beautiful. Despite the bad weather, I loved it. Roger has a
strong connection too – his family is from there.
Basically, when I was [at a clearance] the first time,
I could feel sadness there. You can also see deserted houses and
hear personal stories from people about the clearances. The stories
are basically about ghosts!
Basically, the Scottish and English had been fighting
over Scotland for a thousand years, with the Brits wanting to take
it over. They finally had a big battle – the Battle of Culloden in
1746. Afterwards, in order to prevent future Scottish uprisings,
they brutalized the Scots. It’s called the Highland Pacification
and was carried out by the Duke of Cumberland, also known as the
Butcher of Cumberland
Afterwards they went around and killed anyone who had
anything to do with the last uprising – it didn’t matter if they
were children or women. They burned the houses down, forbade them
to wear their clothes, play their music and speak their language.
The nobles couldn’t take care of their people – it was the end of
feudalism. With the breakdown of the lords and the peasants, the
whole society broke down.
There are stories of massacres starting in the last
half of the eighteenth century. Afterwards the British army went
all around the highlands and rooted out any able-bodied man and
killed them. Men were hiding in caves. In one house we visited, an
eighteen-man British garrison was massacred by a Scotsman who came
in the middle of the night.
Just about everywhere you go in Scotland there are
stories of brutality. It’s not just the English against the Scots,
but the Scots against the Scots – they fought with each other. In
the same house I mentioned, on the same farm, in the old days there
was a storehouse. If they had a good harvest the storehouse was
full of grain, but if they had a bad harvest in the next valley,
they would come over and try to steal all their food. There was a
horrible slaughter there too. The whole place is full of people
getting killed.
To make matters worse, in the early nineteenth century, the people
who owned the land encountered the age of capitalism and Adam
Smith, and so they wanted to get rid of the peasantry. The Scots
were largely subsistence farmers who lived off the land and had a
lot of spare time to play music and drink whisky. That’s why they
have such an incredible musical tradition in Scotland.
The rulers decided they couldn’t make money off the peasantry – it
was around the time of the potato famine – so they decided to move
people off the land. This happened estate by estate – it wasn’t a
centralized movement. They thought they could turn the land into
sheep farms and force the people into indentured laborers. They
created big fishing industries on the coasts and forced people to
move there.
The Scots had fished for salmon in streams, but few had experience
fishing in the ocean. Unless you were a sailor and working a
schooner, you didn’t go into the sea. Basically, the ruling class
created these huge fisheries, emptied the inner land (the glens) of
people and forced them to emigrate or work the fishing ships.
Village by village, they burned the people’s houses
down. This is a generalization – some stories were worse, some
better – there are many individual stories. In some cases the
landowners offered to pay people’s passage to Canada or Australia,
and some of them took it. They didn’t really want to leave – they’d
lived there for generations and they have a strong spiritual
connection to the land.
The houses were part stone with thatched roofs and huge
rafter beams. The rafters were burned down – these weren’t easily
replaced because most of Scotland’s forests had already been
cleared years ago. People would keep the rafters if they moved to
or built a new house. So the rafters were burned and the stone
walls were pushed inside so the people couldn’t go back inside and
seek shelter.
It was cold there – some people died of exposure, some took to
living in caves or churchyards. It was horrible. This went on for
about seventy years. Now you go to Scotland and it’s like going to
a national park. The whole highlands are uninhabited, except on the
coast where people live. It’s beautiful – there are sheep
everywhere – but the irony is that all the places where people
went, like Australia, started their own sheep farms and Australian
wool beat out Scottish wool. The price of Scottish wool dropped and
now it seems like they just have sheep to get taxes off of having
farms, but wool isn’t such a money maker anymore. The people who
lived on the coast were forced to change their lives.
This wasn’t that long ago – this is my grandparents’
time. I have a book where a guy took people’s stories down in the
eighties – some of them still remember it! Or they remember their
parents or grandparents telling them these stories. It’s very fresh
in people’s minds – when you go to Scotland you learn about it.
I heard about this after I’d gotten the message to do
Chöd there. Then it made total sense. This was the place to do it
because it’s far enough in the past that we won’t get bombed – it’s
not like going to Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq or Africa – but it’s
related to my ancestors and Roger’s ancestors. It’s our lineage.
There is a genetic connection there that made our Dharma practice
more real. I’m not Tibetan. I don’t relate to Tibetan culture that
much. I love the practices, but it’s not my ancestral
connection.
To be able to take a Tibetan practice and integrate it into a
Scottish culture, and do it in English all over Scotland, for me it
was the highlight of my Dharma career. It was the best thing I had
ever done.
My whole approach to the Dharma hasn’t been entirely faith-based. I
have a scientific interest in it, and I like to test things and see
if it works, if we can say it works. I was curious to see if by
taking a small place like Scotland rather than America you can have
an impact by doing something like Chöd. Chöd changes the spiritual
environment of the land where you do it. It pacifies the negative
minds of the beings you’re in contact with.
It’s a pacification process. If there are disturbed
spirits in a place, that is going to affect the minds of people
there. If we can’t work directly with the disturbed minds of the
people, we can work with the disturbed minds of the spirits – that
will help the people to have healthy minds, which makes everything
better. That’s the premise on which I went to do Chöd in
Scotland.
Some people still question the reality of spirits. Just
because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Think of what was considered real before the invention of
telescopes and microscopes. One day we may have a “subtle body
scope.”
From the people we’ve been around, the feedback we got
is that it was successful. We didn’t visit all of Scotland – we
picked specific places, mostly in the northwest highlands.
Our friend Lucy said she had more control over her farm and life
about a week after we’d done the Chöd practice at clearance sites
on her property. We have a friend there who said she hadn’t been
able to do certain practices until Chöd had been performed there.
There have been curses and witches there – it goes back a long way!
Other people told us about the positive changes in their lives. I
was very happy Roger came along, too, because he’s such a powerful
practitioner. I don’t think it would have been nearly as effective
if we hadn’t done that Yamantaka retreat first.
Ven. Roger: The practice has several
parts to it. The main things you’re dealing with are gods and
ghosts – the local gods and ghosts of the place, land and country.
There’s a whole hierarchy in those realms – the realms of the
hungry ghosts, the gods, the types of ghosts. There are different
levels of health and wealth and well-being. Some of them are
suffering quite a bit, and they are the ones that usually hang
around scary places. They are in terrible states of suffering and
don’t know they don’t have to be there.
The particular 108 Spring practices involves three
different practices a day: you take possession of the ground in the
name of Prajñaparamita, then you do the practices, then you satiate
them by making extensive offerings to them based on your own body
and the Dharma, which pacifies their delusions. With this
particular retreat, every place you go, you have a certain amount
of boundary stones you use for protection during the practice that
you bless. When the practice is over you gather them up and request
Mother Prajñaparamita to come and stay in that place in order to
continue to teach and care for the gods and spirits in that
place.
It’s similar to someone inviting His Holiness the Dalai
Lama to come to San Francisco. He comes, he does his work and
brings benefit. In the Chöd retreat you’re constantly asking
Prajñaparamita to come and be in that place to benefit sentient
beings and give teachings.
Ven. Paula: We have Mother
Prajñaparamitas in piles of stones – one hundred and eight of them
– all over Scotland.
Ven. Roger: Also, just by showing the
example of compassion and love by doing the practice, it benefits
the beings.
Ven. Paula: I think these spirits have
been neglected for so long – the people were forced to stop
practicing their pagan religions. A lot of the places we went –
springs and so on – were famous, important places for healing and
such. There are healing wells from the time where there was a more
animistic religion. People propitiated certain wells because it
would bring them certain qualities.
I think nobody paid attention to these spirits for so
long that it was beneficial just to pay attention to them. Not only
that, we were singing beautiful songs to them! They were beautiful
songs, with beautiful tunes and beautiful words – hopefully they
understand English! Just the practice itself soothes the spirits.
Then you leave Prajñaparamita there with them, to be there for them
in perpetuity. It’s so cool – it’s like planting a world peace
vase.
The coolest place (and we waited till the very end)
that we went to was the place where the Battle of Culloden was –
and we both had visions of ghosts and spirits there. We could feel
it – our hair stood up on end.
Julia: It’s so compassionate even
to care about this invisible realm that a lot of people might not
even believe in.
Ven. Paula: It is. Prajñaparamita is
so present, I would visualize ghosts going up and sitting in her
lap and being cared for her by her. The practice is so tangible
too. In the beginning we allowed people to come with us, and people
could always feel the difference. They would feel calm, sometimes
there were rainbows, or if it was cloudy the sun would come out, or
it would be windy and the air would calm down.
Julia: Did you get the sense you
could feel the spirits’ reactions somehow?
Ven. Roger: We could feel a lot of
joy. We felt love coming back.
Julia: And you don’t think it was
just you? If there are people out there learning how to be
sensitive to energy, how would you describe this?
Ven. Paula: You learn to feel with
another sense. You have to be quiet.
Ven. Roger: We felt joy very
directly.
Ven. Paula: That’s also our joy – but
here’s an example. If you walk into a room with someone who is
really angry, you know what that feels like. If you walk into a
room with someone who is happy and relaxed, you know what that
feels like. For us, it would be like walking into a room with a lot
of agitated people – like being on an airplane with a bunch of
people that have been flying for twenty hours and everyone wants to
get off. When we finished the practice it would feel like being in
a room with a bunch of relaxed, happy people.
Ven. Roger: Most of the time we were
alone doing the practice. There were times we had good friends come
along and they would do other virtuous activities while we did the
practice in the vicinity. They couldn’t hear it because they didn’t
have the initiation. From a scientific viewpoint the feedback was
always that it felt special – something changed in peoples’
minds.
One time we did it in Callanish on the west coast of
the Isle of Lewis, which is about as far out as you can get. It’s
an amazing, ancient place with energies of its own. We met there a
friend of a friend who is an archeologist who lived on Lewis and
was battling the government on this Callanish issue because the
government wants to make inroads onto this land that is ho ly and
ancient. He was on the conservation side. He and his friends
weren’t Buddhist.
He sat and turned my prayer wheel while we did the
practice, and later on when we finished, he came over and said, “I
have no idea what you people were doing in that practice, but my
mind feels so clear. The clarity of my thoughts and my ability to
focus on what I’m going through with the government – thank you so
much.” It seemed to clear obstacles for his mind.
We have the karmic seeds to be disturbed, but there are other
beings in the environment disturbing us. There is a yogi called
Segyu Rinpoche – he is a very high shamanic practitioner who deals
with spirits, and in his opinion, much of what we call mental
disease in the Western world is spirit influence.
When your sense of “I” is so solid and concrete that you feel
self-existent to the point that nothing can affect you, then you
can’t accept that there are other beings around and that you’re a
product of dependent arising. There are so many complex factors,
and one of those factors is whatever gods and spirits are in that
area and how they’re feeling.
It’s just like if you were to live in a place with a
really crabby landlord. What a bummer that would be to be in that
constant, crabby environment with that person – it would affect
you. It’s just like that with spirits, nagas, and different
low-level gods. If they’re not happy it’s not likely the humans in
that area are going to be happy or have peace of mind.
This is why, when we go to holy sites like those in India and
Tibet, or even now in the West where people have done retreat, you
go there and get a positive feeling – as well as positive places
from other spiritual traditions.
Those places are only that way because great beings
have been there and transformed not only their own minds, but the
minds of the beings in that place. You go into that environment and
experience a different kind of mind. Outwardly it looks like Chöd
practitioners were like outcasts and considered a little eccentric.
It was okay for Chöd practitioners to be eccentric in their
activities because they went to scary places and did unusual
practices. I don’t think it’s really possible to understand the
benefit of these practices on the wider, spiritual environment of
an area. In Tibet, where you had a lot of Chöd practitioners doing
these practices all over the place, this is what makes a holy
land.
Tibet wasn’t an inherently holy place, but became so through the
activities of the holy beings. The life stories of Padmasambhava
and other great yogis all included subduing the local beings with
compassion or wrath or whatever skillful means they had. It’s only
on the basis of that that a Dharma community could flourish. Chöd
practice is very important for purifying place. That place can
become more settled and people can turn their minds towards the
Dharma in a place like that.
Ven. Paula: People know that when
Padmasambhava went to Tibet the first thing he did was subdue the
local spirits. In an effort to make Scotland a Dharma land … and we
do not have the power of Padmasambhava, but there is power in the
lineage and the blessings of Prajñaparamita and all of our lineage
lamas. By our pure faith in that, I think it did bring blessings to
that part of the world.
Ven. Roger: We got positive feedback from people
wherever we went. Whenever anyone with any level of clairvoyance
came around, they said they could see or feel what we were doing as
we were doing it. We did the practice in a very famous castle near
Loch Ness, and something definitely happened in the water. Our dear
friend Victoria who came with us said she could see the naga
spirits coming to us at that offering. I couldn’t see anything, but
I could see a big upwelling in the place she was talking about. You
can expect things like that to happen, but the most important thing
is how our minds felt.
Ven. Paula: In my personal experience,
one interesting thing is that last winter one of my friends in
Scotland sent maps so I could plan out what we would do. For some
reason, I could never make it happen. Even when we got there I
couldn’t make a solid plan, so there was an element of spontaneity
and uncertainty involved with it.
It’s unsettling to never know where you’re going to be
from day to day or what you’re going to do, and it was a level of
uncertainty I had to live with the whole retreat. It forced me to
meditate on emptiness all the time, because it forced me to be in
this state of not planning. Spontaneity could take us where we were
supposed to go. I wondered if this is how Rinpoche lives all the
time.
Usually when you’re in retreat, there is certainty.
You’re only going to be in one place and you know what you’re
doing. But this retreat adds a whole other level. That’s what monks
and nuns are supposed to be like!
Ven. Roger: Chöd holds a kernel of the
lifestyle monks, nuns and yogis are supposed to lead. Not that all
Chödpas are wandering around in wild places, but that is the
general lifestyle. There are disciplines in the practice, like if
you leave a place you’re not supposed to look back or go back. If
you forgot something at your camp, that’s too bad, you just leave
it. There’s a great deal of impermanence and detachment for worldly
concerns.
Ven. Paula: We had to do so much
planning on faith that things would happen. The money and texts
didn’t come together until the last minute.
Julia: How did you get the money
to do this?
Ven. Paula: Our wonderful friends gave
it to us. We did a small fundraising letter and friends and
supporters enabled us to do this. Our friends in Scotland were so
incredibly generous. We were even offered the use of a Land Rover,
and that was extremely helpful. We put two months of supplies in
the car. We were able to go all over Scotland and hit certain
places. We could reach certain clearance sites that we wouldn’t
have been able to otherwise.
Julia: What was the weather
like?
Ven. Roger: It’s hard to say they
really had a summer in Scotland. We hardly went a few days without
a storm coming. We had a few days of fine weather, but mostly it
was overcast, rainy and windy. We were in wild places like lochs,
glens and coastlines, but we sat through some monumental storms
where we were in the tent for 24 hours and the tent was doing a
dance around us. Physically it was very difficult.
Ven. Paula: There were times I
wondered if I could really do this. It was really hard. By the end
I didn’t want it to end. I’d figured out that when there was a big
storm you get inside your tent and just rest.
Ven. Roger: It’s called 108 Springs,
but the whole retreat was 126 days. We spent seven days at the
first spring, seven at the 54th spring, and seven at the last
spring. We started April 1 at Shambhala Retreat Center. It was
still snowing and sleeting there. The first seven days were in the
yard of the center.
From there we moved around during the day to springs all around and
we had to stay inside at night. It was j ust too cold at night.
Tibet is even lower latitude than Scotland. Scotland is way up
there, and the sun went down at 11 pm during the summer and came up
at 3 in the morning. It was like dusk all night because it never
really got dark. The opposite is true in the winter, where they
have long, dark nights.
What happened in Scotland was even more brutal than
what happened in Tibet. One hundred fifty years later and they’re
still reeling. You can just feel it in the people. It has a very
high suicide rate and alcoholism, and it has to do with the
country’s trauma. There are people all over the world who were
evicted. It was a Scottish holocaust, and was one of the greatest
ethnic cleansings the British ever did.
Post script from Ven. Paula: I’ve
noticed now that I’ve been back awhile that the main impact of the
Chöd retreat is that I have no desire for anything. It’s pretty
interesting. I usually have little desire for stuff, but now it is
really no desire for anything. In the Chöd, you spend a lot of time
satisfying all beings of all their desires by offering your body
and transforming it into total bliss that satisfies all beings’
wishes – and then, you offer them Dharma, which they can hear
because they are satisfied. You can see then that the result would
be that the practitioner becomes totally satisfied. So easy and so
profound.
I spoke to Roger the other day on the phone while
he was out winter food shopping and he said he is feeling the same
way. No desire, but plenty of bliss and void … a very good
retreat!