Paula and Roger Munro are into their fourth and final year of a Great Close Retreat at Milarepa Center in the mountains of Vermont in the United States. In letters to their benefactors they describe their unremitting but utterly rewarding mental and physical hard work. “We feel you with us every day,” Paula writes. “We take refuge with you, send enlightened energy to you, ask the protectors to protect you from obstacles … We do it all with you, so we never feel very far away.”

Roger

We are each doing an extensive Great Close Retreat emphasizing the self generation as our personal deity. We have to recite ten million of the deity mantras plus one million of the wisdom showering mantra. After that we do an intensive fire offering practice of another one million mantras. After that we do another two months of practice of what’s called “Accomplishing the Mandala emphasizing the in-front generation and actualizing the effect.”

We finished the main part – eleven million mantras – in March this year and start the fire puja, which lasts approximately 100 days. The concluding practice will take us up to August or September. Then finished.

We have a very strong foundation to base this retreat on: It took us nine years to complete the preliminaries, and eight months to build our retreat cabins.

The preliminaries involved many shorter retreats, including a one year Vajrasattva retreat, a close retreat of actions relating to our personal deity, the nine distant preliminaries, several other retreats, and many years of study and oral commentaries under our kind lamas: Lama Thubten Yeshe, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, Song Rinpoche, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geshe Dempa Dargye, His Holiness Sakya Trizin, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, ex-Abbot of Sera Je Monastery Geshe Legden, His Holiness Ganden Tri Rinpoche and many, many, many other wonderful, kind, holy lamas.

Under them we studied a vast array of sutra and tantra texts, received all necessary initiations and have been blessed with the very pith of Lama Tzong Khapa’s Uncommon Ear Whispered Instructions and Vajrayana mahamudra. This covers our life’s work.

As for the actual nuts and bolts, hands-on application of all this preparation, that brings us to this retreat (which from the point of view of the Vajrayana mahamudra is still yet another preliminary!).

The best thing for this retreat would be to be independently wealthy: that is, be able to pay to have a retreat house built, pay an attendant to cook, wash clothes, look after the money business, shop for food, buy clothing, chop wood, carry water. Maybe we would need two attendants!

Due to the kindness of our lamas and you generous benefactors, we have the following conditions. Having done all the above preliminaries, we were directed to this center, Milarepa Center. The then new director, Martha Tack, had the faith and generosity to agree to our building the retreat place here in the thick forest halfway up on the side of Milarepa Mountain. She is also our shopper and helper in emergencies.

We have been raising the funds as we go. This involves writing letters, which Shri, Paula’s mom, then types up for us and sends to you. We write our retreat doctors, Dr. Don Brown, MD, and Dr. Christine Adkins, L.Ac., Dr. Deb DeGraff, L.Ac. (who also comes to check on us a few times each year, our only official visitor besides Lama Zopa Rinpoche).

We write out all our bi-monthly shopping lists and do our banking by mail. Any major item we need, a new wool coat, a splitting maul, a carry cart, etc., we buy through mail order. We cook lunch for each other alternate days. After lunch we take care of any business. We wash most of our clothes by hand with creek water; we carry water from our creek to the teeny kitchen, about 100 yards. We chop wood and tend our fires when it’s cold. We keep a full retreat schedule of four sessions a day as well as our other sadhanas and mantra commitments. Spare time is very scarce. Sleep is always welcomed. Paula calls it Buddha’s Boot Camp!

A less than ideal situation? Sure. Are we grateful for and happy with our situation? You bet! We could not be doing this any other way. If we had waited for “the perfect conditions” to manifest, death would have beaten them here. We have such faith in Lama Zopa that we know that whatever comes our way is the very best thing for our inner development. Whether or not it looks perfect from the outside is not our goal. We are so grateful and honored to be doing what we do.

Paula

What is retreat like? The seeds that Lama planted are sprouting and we are very busy growing them. Our work is nine hours of intense concentration seven days a week. I never worked so hard in my life! We constantly strive to keep abreast of the exhaustion by seeking methods to make our bodies stronger and stronger.

In the beginning I couldn’t understand the benefit of saying eleven million mantras in three years, three months if I have to push so hard and be exhausted while I do it. But I finally realized why the pace is so intense – because it is teaching me to relax in all my activity. My habit is to work hard until exhausted, then relax, work, relax, work, relax. But there is little relax time, so the point is to do everything in a state of relaxation and joy! We’re slowly learning … It is only a relaxed mind that can hope to become aware of thoughts, modify behavior, motivate and dedicate actions.

To describe the actual experience: It’s rather like swimming under water, only it’s more like swimming in clarity. The objective of all retreats is to recognize and stabilize what is called mahamudra. The mahamudra experience of being, for me, is like my consciousness is a multifaceted, clear crystal and all thoughts and sensory experience are like rainbows reflected in that crystal – even the crystal itself is of rainbow nature. The facets of the crystal are the great love, compassion, humor, space, humility, impartiality and satisfaction that arise with mahamudra. The practice is to experience this in meditation, and then maintain this experience when not meditating. The Great Retreat is a preliminary to Vajrayana mahamudra practice, and its focus is to accumulate the necessary positive energy and to purify all obstacles to experiencing this mahamudra.

Mahamudra is a very subtle state of mind. It’s rather like lighting a candle and keeping it lit in a big storm. The training takes a long time, and I can see why great bodhisattvas spend whole lifetimes in retreat. The quality of mind depends on the state of subtle energies in our bodies. These energies are constantly shifting due to outer influences like weather, moon cycles, inner influences like delusions and emotions, and the purifying effects of meditation practice. Our job is to keep these energies balances in order to maintain a calm, alert mind that is a prerequisite for mahamudra – concentration on the selfless nature of our mind.

Like prospecting for gold, we use all our resources to keep digging away at everything that stands between us and the gold. I read in Padmasambhava’s teaching that what is meant by enduring the hardships to practicing Dharma refers to the great mental and physical fatigue and ups and downs that result from the retreat schedule and the afflictive emotions, plus negative karma that hides our gold inside. But the dirt doesn’t just disappear. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche told us once, the dirt has to come out, like when you put dirty white cloth in water, the water turns brown. So a lot of what we experience here is that dirt coming out. It’s an amazing process – so deep, multifaceted and wholly transformative. The foundation is bodhicitta, the wish to become enlightened for all sentient beings. The main tool is faith and effort at generating actual experience of lam-rim and tantra. The lam-rim, contemplating the lam-rim – concepts like death, karma, suffering, compassion, and then really feeling them – digs deeper and deeper into that goldmine. Every week or so, a big explosion happens in the meditation session or a strong dream will reveal an unconscious wrong belief that is blocking our development.

And then there is lo-jong – the mind training part of the lam-rim. I have come to love The Seven Verses for Training the Mind by Geshe Chekawa as much as I love Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa and all that is truly precious to me – like you.

Roger inspired me to memorize The Seven Verses last fall, and they are a true life boat. It teaches me what is to be accepted in my behavior and what is to be rejected so clearly. I can relax into the natural state of my mind and let lo-jong be the cruise control. It feels so good to recognize and transform delusions.

The whole process is simple: eradicate negative selfish minds, generate positive unselfish minds. Why? Because we all want happiness. And what is the final goal? To become a totally pure being, no longer subject to birth and death, whose omniscient emanations work effortlessly for all eons of time until every sentient being is free from all misery. Wow!

In closing I want to tell you what true friends Roger and I have become. It is such a deep pleasure to watch his compassion, wisdom and joy grow. Throughout this process we have helped each other so much. We couldn’t have survived without our inspiring, caring friendship.

Dharma is truly such a special, special gift to humanity. It would also like to tell you again what an intrinsic element your benefaction is to this whole process. Doing the works for all sentient beings is very real this way, and leaves little space for discouragement. I don’t think we could have persevered any other way.

Thank you from the very depths of our hearts for all you are doing for us and for propagating Tibetan Buddhism in such a crucial time in human history. I am sure that in the next century Dharma practitioners will empirically document their experiences of death and rebirth, and show that fortunate rebirths depend on virtuous activity in the life. Wow! Scientific basis for morality. Oh how I wish to train my mind so well that I will die with awareness! I don’t want to be blown by my ignorance into the life of a mouse or a mosquito or a louse! And I wish this for all beings, especially you!

Thank you again very, very much.

May you and all beings experience the bliss of mahamudra in this very lifetime!

Big, big love to you,

Paula and Roger XXX