PREPARING FOR A LONG RETREAT
A personal experience

Ever since I was ordained in 1975, it has been my constant wish to do a three-year retreat. Although I never directly asked my lamas if I could do a long retreat, I prayed to the buddhas to be able to do so. One day Lama Zopa Rinpoche told me, “In four or five years you will do a three-year retreat.” I could not have been happier and, as Rinpoche’s words were spoken five years ago, I am now immersed in preliminary practices to accumulate merit for success and to purify karmic obstacles that may hinder this retreat.

More recently, Lama Zopa Rinpoche instructed me to ask Khensur Lobsang Thubten Rinpoche for advice on doing retreat. Khensur Rinpoche began with the story that when he was staying at Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre in Shantiniketan, New Delhi, his attendant complained many times that Western Dharma practitioners were utterly crazy. Agreeing with this sentiment and not put off, I persevered, and Rinpoche eventually explained to me the stages of mental development, the pitfalls, and how to avoid them.

As Khensur Rinpoche implied, our biggest problem is our unsubdued minds. Although we may have an intellectual understanding of Dharma, our minds follow the whims of anger and desire without control. Just as political extremists can only see things within their own narrow frame of reference, we are deeply accustomed to our samsaric view of the world so that we simply cannot see things within the perspective of renunciation, bodhichitta, and emptiness. When an impulse conditioned by ignorance arises, we follow it immediately. There is no space in our minds to modify our behavior according to Dharma wisdom. It is meditation that opens up such a space in our minds. Meditation allows us to learn to recognize samsaric urges for what they are and to respond skillfully.

“Three years? I couldn’t remain alone without speaking for two days” is a common reaction when I tell people my plans. They don’t know the half of it. The real challenge is to navigate the uncharted waters of one’s own mind. When people ask what scares me most about this retreat, I tell them, “My mind.” One has to be well prepared. When Mandala’s editor asked me to write something on how to prepare mentally, spiritually, and practically for retreat, I initially saw her request as an obstacle to my preparations. Then I thought, It may help others, and if I write quickly, I can go back to my tsa-tsa making without too much interruption.

As you all know, there are several prescribed preliminary practices, such as prostrations, Vajrasattva practice, mandala offerings, and so on, the purpose of which is to purify karmic obstacles and to accumulate the merit required for attaining realization. These should be done according to one’s own lama’s instructions. Many years ago, Kyabje Zong Rinpoche said that working to establish and maintain a Dharma center is equivalent to doing all the preliminary practices. The merit of creating the conditions by which people can meet and practice the Dharma is immeasurable.

One of my special preliminaries is to recite the Sanghatasutra 500 times …