On a Clear Day You Can See the Pyrénées
“On a clear day, rise and look around you,
and you’ll see who you are.
On a clear day, how it will astound you that the glow of your being outshines every star.”
—Alan Jay Lerner
~~~~~~~~~~
I arrived in a blustery rainstorm.
“Your tent’s underwater, but don’t worry. Get some dinner and a cup of tea in the dining hall. We may have to put you up in the infirmary tonight.”
It was a friendly and frank enough greeting from a Californian swathed in a black hooded rain slicker who was doing his utmost in the howling downpour to welcome students for Rigpa’s 1992 international three-month retreat, the first such gathering at Sogyal Rinpoche’s then fledging dharma center, Lerab Ling.
Distant view of greenery from atop Lerab Ling, France, Summer ‘92 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)
Infirmary was a misnomer. I lucked out and stayed that night in a newly built chalet reserved for medical exams. It was a late hour when I was dropped off at the chalet; my bladder was bursting and I had no idea where the outdoor toilet was located. There was no working lamp in the room and my flashlight was buried in my luggage. Wobbly with jetlag after flying to Paris from New York, catching an airbus to Montpelier, a train to Lodeve, and then a car up the mountainous road leading to the retreat center, I fumbled around in the pitch dark and came upon my brand-new thermos—a novel port-a-potty! I filled up the thermos several times, offering the contents to the grounds outside, and then conked out on the makeshift mattress. I slept well past noon the following day—the official first day of retreat.
Banner of the Dharmachakra, symbol of the Buddha’s teachings, Lerab Ling, France 1992
“I can’t count mantra.” I confess this out loud in the shrine tent amid the gathering of three hundred of Sogyal Rinpoche’s senior and most devoted students from around the world. I didn’t know how to use a mala—Buddhist beads for counting sacred syllables, a method to pacify discursive thoughts. Nor did I particularly want to use the mala. For this Jewish girl, the string of beads, or rosary, was “too churchy.”
“It’s okay,” Rinpoche says, “I don’t know how to ride a bicycle.”
“I can teach you,” I reply in mock flirtatiousness. My words revealed me as a beginner in Tibetan Buddhist studies and an unsuspecting newcomer to Vajrayana practice. (I was also unaware of an inner circle of Rinpoche’s female students and its sexual politics, but I doubt that rumor of this would have deterred me from going on retreat.) Sogyal Rinpoche knows I know nothing and says, “I’ll count for you—Now! ” This remark scrambles my mind.
Rinpoche takes the mala off his wrist, holds it up for everyone to see and starts to count out loud, moving each bead with exaggerated slowness. The shrine tent fills with the laughter of my fellow retreatants. But I am so green and so earnest in wanting to understand that I am beyond embarrassment, just totally confused. At the end of the teaching session, several students descended on me, some with kind advice and others with scolding and dire tales.
“How did you get permission to attend this retreat?” one student snorted. Another dharma student, however, graciously offered me a lotus seed mala that had been languishing in the retreat center’s stash of lost and found items; I was sporting a mala of fifty-five large rudraksha beads (knotted fast into the string) that my boyfriend gave me as a parting gift for the summer. I accepted the unclaimed “bracelet” with its 108 moveable beads and was dressed for success.
The next day I went to sit on the hilltop of Lerab Ling, where on a clear day you can see forever. I did not come to France for vacation, but to learn something I could not learn on my own. I stared hard at the mala in my hand. I had to get beyond my reluctance to using it. The lush landscape and wide sky served as a cradle in which I could empty my mind and relax. Reflecting on Sogyal Rinpoche’s kindness and razor-sharp humor, I thought, “Oh, why not count? When in Rome do as the Romans do!”—and with firm resolve, I took hold of the mala between my left thumb and forefinger and began to recite, “Om ah hung vajra guru pema siddhi hung.” (First bead) “Om ah hung vajra guru pema siddhi hung.” (Second bead) “Om ah hung vajra guru pema siddhi hung.” (Third bead). It was slow-going at first and felt contrived, but soon enough I developed a rhythm, immersing myself in the mantra.
What a surprise it was during that session on the hill to feel the presence of HH Dilgo Khyentse, one of Sogyal Rinpoche’s main teachers. Sogyal Rinpoche’s presence was palpable too, as if his hand was guiding my own; at one point, the sense of my hand being “mine” just fell away. Aversion to counting mantras evaporated and enthusiastic diligence kicked in. (This freed me of a slightly cynical attitude toward counting mantras and upped my receptivity to the teachings in general.) I still had a newcomer’s skepticism and that was okay. In fact, intelligent questioning and analysis of the Buddhist tenets was encouraged.
Students in the courtyard by the tent where daily teachings and practice were held during the 1992 three-month retreat and years thereafter. Lerab Ling, Roquerdonde, France, July 1993 (Photo by N L Drolma)
Less than five weeks into the retreat, I compose an unabashed love letter to Sogyal Rinpoche. As I’m editing the words of my heart, a huge streak of unearthly, brilliant blue light descends from the sky, hitting the ground near the teaching tent, only meters away from where I’m seated at a white plastic lawn table in the courtyard. “Wow…what was thhhaat?” And then another wide band of blue light, like a comet, struck a similar trajectory.
“Om Ah Hung Vajra Guru Pema Siddhi Hung…!”
It rained every day for the first six weeks of the retreat. Torrential downpours were so frequent that most of us found it pointless to try and stay clean and dry. Everyone on retreat was assigned a job and mine was managing the two washers and one dryer that served the needs of the entire community. The same few people would bring their blue jeans, pajamas, sweatshirts, and socks to be laundered, spun and dried, but I was free to spend most of the time on the job in meditation.
Sogyal Rinpoche subdued with great aplomb the mutinous emotions of the wet, bedraggled, mud-sloshed dharma campers. His spot-on humor had us roaring with laughter and I marveled at his giving grandmotherly advice down to the smallest detail, such as how we should dress warmly in vests and turtlenecks and eat chocolate bars to ward off the cold and damp. Knee-high rubber boots were on rush order.
Storm clouds and fierce wind whipping through prayer flags during the first international three-month summer retreat at Lerab Ling, Roquerdonde, France 1992 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)
I was not unhappy about the weather. The unrelenting storms were dramatic, and inspiring for practice. I felt as if I had won the lottery to be on retreat with Rinpoche and to receive teachings daily! I had no great expectations. My mind was the beginner’s mind that’s open and ready for anything—an attitude ideal for learning the dharma. On one occasion while sitting on duty in the laundry room and waiting for the washing machine to complete its cycle, my vision suddenly went all wavy. The stone walls of the room were morphing, sort of “breathing”— disintegrating, then reassembling, simultaneously moving and not moving. It was beyond description, but not at all upsetting. My laundry task that day more resembled a recreational drug trip, one that engendered no fear and no after-effect, only sheer amazement.
The retreat itself was high voltage, a “laundering” that roundly doused and bleached my sense of identity. I laughed a lot, cried openly, and slept soundly—a soothing departure from my usual night owl routine. I was intrigued, distracted, and occasionally spooked by potent dreams and visions of luminous webs of pulsating, wingèd lotuses, jeweled orbs in the trees, rainbows, deities, and golden hieroglyphs in the sky. Beginner’s luck! The retreat yielded practical and mundane victories too. I was particularly pleased to have conquered a long-held fear of spiders; they entered my tent innocently enough on a daily basis.
Tents of my fellow retreatants near the hilltop of Lerab Ling, France 1992 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)
For the onslaught of visions, lights, and sounds that summer, I had no reference point. Such experiences, it was said, were merely the sport of the mind, neither good nor bad and fodder for realization if a practitioner could remain without attachment or aversion to any experience. But all this was new to me and I was somewhat like a child who sits wide-eyed watching the fairydust characters in a Disney movie.
Tinkerbell of Disney’s 1953 film classic, Peter Pan.
I was in awe of Sogyal Rinpoche and hesitant to approach him with questions about this Fourth-of-July mind stuff. My gut sense was that Rinpoche would never get around to teaching us what we needed to know if everyone went to him with questions about their visions. But an older student knew it would be helpful for me to meet with Rinpoche, and she bullied me into approaching him. Rinpoche was standing alone, several yards away, and he opened his umbrella as a slight rain began to fall. I walked toward my lama, this Cambridge-educated Tibetan mystic—emblematic in that moment of Mary Poppins—and then I froze in my tracks. I had not put myself on the “list of desperadoes” requesting to speak with him. Rinpoche remarked on this fact. His overture broke the ice and was all the invitation I needed to stroll the courtyard with him. I was relieved by the few questions Rinpoche put to me, which indicated he (somehow) already knew about my visual fireworks, and I was encouraged to meet with him again in two weeks if I needed to.
It’s not the custom to speak openly about details of a restricted retreat such as the one I participated in at Lerab Ling. This is meant to safeguard the teachings; their profundity, power, and simplicity can be easily misinterpreted or watered down by speculation among the untutored who lack firsthand experience. Maintaining silence about one’s training is also prudent and kind because it minimizes the possibility of others developing a wrong view from hearing or reading about Buddhist practices out of context. But I can say overall that retreat for me signaled a time to come clean, to cut through habitual busyness and to look inward, not outward at phenomena for an experiential taste of pure being.
A request that visitors to Lerab Ling respect the silence and boundaries of the 1992 three-month retreat (Photo by N. L. Drolma)
I wanted release from the daily barrage of thoughts and emotions, which is truly exhausting and unproductive. Could I learn to cultivate imperturbability with all that arises—to just be—instead of getting caught up and swept away in a slew of activities? To sit in silence with Rinpoche and fellow practitioners was a powerful teaching too. (As my understanding of dharma progressively deepened, I became more and more at ease with transmission beyond the spoken word.)
I allude here to experiences that arose from the practice to make the point that experiences in themselves are not the point and can become an obstacle if a practitioner lacks understanding about the true nature of any experience. I needed to study more and be diligent in practice—that would surely clarify my morphing perceptions. Or so I thought. Back in New York City, I tried to convey to my boyfriend something of the richness and beauty of the summer retreat. He was more rattled than inspired by what I had to say, so I resolved to share little else after that.
My worldly life did not go WOOOMPh! all at once, but a career as an artist no longer seemed compelling and all I wanted to do was practice. If I had had any religion at all before discovering Buddhism, it was art — since early childhood. Dharma boot camp at Lerab Ling was an eye-opener; the teachings and practice addressed concepts about time and space, intimacy, perception, uncertainty and death— topics that fueled my creativity and passion for painting. Painterly exploration of those topics now seemed redundant.
Solo exhibition of paintings (oil on canvas) and mixed media, N. L. Drolma, Hunter Gallery, NYC 1986
Luckily for me, Sogyal Rinpoche arrived in New York City not long after the 1992 summer retreat. He gave a public teaching and met privately with a few students in the local Rigpa sangha. I confessed to Rinpoche that life after retreat was just not working. In fact, my life was a complete mess.
“Very good,” said Rinpoche.
“No, Rinpoche, you don’t understand… my life is falling apart!” My exasperation was anything but hidden.
“Excellent,” declared Rinpoche.
Later, I would come to understand how for some people it is best if their lives do fall apart, that such change is for the better. But I was new to the buddhadharma and I didn’t know what was going on. During the summer retreat at Lerab Ling, Rinpoche explained how “dharma teachings first disorient you, and then uproot you. They minimize your ego and give you the wisdom of discernment.” I heard the words but living them felt like death.
Sogyal Rinpoche teaching down by the waterfalls during Rigpa’s first three-month summer retreat at Lerab Ling, France 1992. (Photo by N. L. Drolma)
Some months later, at a retreat in California, I confided to a level-headed longtime practitioner that life made no sense anymore. The “stuff” of visions had not abated either; it was too much, particularly at moments when spontaneously my field of perception would morph into a churning, pulsating, all-encompassing kaleidoscopic jelly.
“You must talk to Rinpoche,” she said. “Or, at least put it in a letter to Rinpoche.” I brightened up at the idea of writing a letter, but let it slide.
The sangha gathered for a teaching in the shrine room.
“Some of us don’t have a choice, my dear,” Rinpoche said flat out. “There’s nothing for you in this life…Why hang around in New York...” Sogyal Rinpoche sparred with me at length and said he would ask for a master’s divination about where I should relocate to—perhaps Lerab Ling or a similar environment supportive of full-time dharma practice.
Waterfalls at Lerab Ling, summer '92 (Photo by N. L Drolma)
Portrait of Sogyal Rinpoche by N. L. Drolma (watercolor and pencil, 7” x 10”) March 1992
At the end of the teaching session, my dharma sister was amazed to learn I had not written to Rinpoche requesting his help; Rinpoche so clearly addressed matters which she knew were of concern to me. But I was unnerved by a senior student who warned that if I asked for the results of the divination and then didn’t heed them, I would be breaking “samaya”—the sacred bond or heart connection between student and vajra master. (Honoring samaya is essential to actualize the wisdom that abides within.) Feeling raw, I held off inquiring about the divination. Even though my life was falling apart, I was not ready to move out of the city. I needed time to rest and reflect.
Lama khyenno. Lama, you alone know.