By Adele Hulse

I first did a proper retreat about ten years ago in New Zealand. I did all the right things, like close the curtains over the beautiful views, keep my cushion in one spot, sit bolt upright, attend to the schedule and the altar meticulously. Today I look back on it as the best holiday I had in my life. Innocently I remember saying: I’m going to do a retreat every two years!”

Well ha! Go tell the fairies. Because since that year it has been blindingly obvious that I have no time for retreats, with too many local duties to perform every week to make disappearing just impossible. So okay, I can’t do a traditional retreat. But what’s “traditional” in Tibetan Buddhism can often be examined more closely and found to be cultural. Authority gets added to it and it becomes some kind of “law”: you have to do things certain ways and if you don’t, well, maybe damnation will fall on your head in huge lumps or something.

Having been raised a Catholic I am very sensitive to being told damnation will rain on me unless I do this or that. I am also aware of the need some young Westerners have to create among the chaos of materialist culture some retro-Tibetan charter composed of “something someone once said,” “something read in a book,” a desire for ritual and a great fondness for superstition.

When I first met Lama Yeshe I said: “I don’t believe in any of this.” He said, “Fantastic! Good attitude! In Buddhism we don’t need belief and we don’t need faith. We need intelligence and understanding!” It is still my favorite description.

A couple of months ago I decided to go into retreat again, but opportunity was short. It had to be My Way or not at all. I rang Ven. Kaye Miner at Tara Institute. “I think I want to do Vajrayogini, it’s the debt I’ve carried the longest. Can you lend me a sadhana and can I get away with just one water bowl?” “Do two,” said Kaye. “One for the deity and one for you as the deity.” Well, that didn’t sound too hard so I went to see Geshe Doga and said: “I’m going to do this retreat, but my way, okay?” “Sure!” he laughed. “Very good idea.”

So I cleaned my room, dusted the altar, did two bowls, a vase of flowers and a chocolate bar (I figure Samantabhadra’s offerings came out much better as a visualization – I haven’t got time for all that shopping) and set the alarm for a very early hour. When it went off I leapt out of bed, washed my face, lit incense, made a cup of tea and propped up my pillows. I then got back into bed and with a fairly straight back and legs luxuriously out in front of me, I opened the sadhana. (What’s with this cross-legged bit – they didn’t have chairs, for crying out loud!)

I’m a lark not an owl and early morning suits me. An owl would do the reverse. I sat up there trying to visualize this crooked little red bam seed-syllable thing in my heart while one half of my brain said, “This is stupid. How can this red thing you don’t understand possibly be anything,” and the other said: “This is what all the great teachers you admire have done. Just shut up and stick to it, make motivation your glue, don’t worry about the little red thing you don’t understand.”

Shut up I did and finished the retreat, every day feeling my skin moving up my face, not down and sad and saggy, but up – young and firm and happy. Happier than I had been in years. Why? How? Not the little red thing, don’t tell me that. Was it just the mental rest and the association with “sacredness?” Even just the acknowledgement of Buddha-nature.

This year I have to write Lama Yeshe’s story. The archive of all that is known about him has taken five years and work is on schedule. I figure it will take one year to pull out the story and another to do the end notes, indexing and appendices the book should have for authority and shelf life. I always knew how I was going to have to live to do the story.

So on Tibetan New Year’s Day, February 8, I start retreat again, doing it exactly My Way, setting a pace I can live with in the world, something I can stick to. I always thought Lama would write this book himself if I just did the homework and made myself into some kind of workable receptacle, living a disciplined life. And waiting for the party at the end.