Take an Inside Journey into a Three-Year Retreat – Part II

By Lama Ani Thupten Pelma

In 2003, Lama Pelma completed a silent three-year retreat in the high desert of Arizona. In December 2010, she entered her second three-year retreat near Bowie, Arizona. We’re happy to present Part II of this three-part series that she composed about preparing for her second brave journey into silence.

Projecting Fears – Dog Eat Dog
After living among the wild animals for a short period of time in retreat, we learn about our own fears. For example, is a snake waiting to bite us, or is it merely minding its own business? We soon learn that it’s just minding its own business and we’re simply projecting our fears about being hurt. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t remain aware. Many animals can sense if we are afraid of them because of the negative energy we are projecting into them.

One thing that crushed my heart daily, while living in the desert, was seeing how animals ate other animals to survive. The lizard eating the flies, the frogs baiting whatever they could. When we’re not interacting with people in retreat, animals become our world. We become much more sensitive to their actions. During retreat, I started thinking about how we eat other animals to live, and how we have little to no problem with that concept at all. Thinking about this daily helped soften my heart and made me become a little more compassionate. It also helped me to broaden my scope of how I see the world; that “all beings” includes everything that lives and breathes, human and animals. Honestly, I did not have this view before my retreat.

Awareness of Self-Existence
I think the day that we meet our Lama, we become aware of how we see ourselves as self-existent. I feel that it is their job to show us how we are relating to our reality and how we can change it. Sometimes, it is not easy being around a Lama. But I truly believe that being around our Lama is actually very easy. It’s dealing with who we really are that’s painful, no matter how many hundreds of times we try in retreat. When I saw just the slightest magnitude of my mind, I cried and cried and cried during retreat. I think that half of my first retreat was a purification process, where I got a glimpse of the inner workings of my mind.

It is only when we are aware of something that we can fix it. When the Lama brings our awareness to our thoughts of self-existence, then we can truly become better people. Once we start to take the focus off of ourselves, then we can develop compassion in our hearts. Without this awareness, it would be very difficult for us to see that we are actually projecting our reality.

When we venture into retreat, we take a big eraser with us. We get to wipe out our bad karma because the mind goes back to our childhood and all the things that we’ve previously refused to deal with. Our karma forces us to look at it. Fortunately, we’ve learned through the teachings what we need to do to resolve it.

For me, my problems dealt with authority in my adult life. I traced them back to an image of me as a little girl, looking up at my 6’3” grandfather bossing me around and yelling at me. I always felt helpless in those moments. I created the seeds to fight back in my mind against anyone who I perceived as giving me any kind of instructions. I fought him even after he was dead and gone, and didn’t shed one tear at his funeral. A part of me was really happy that he was gone; a part of me could then live and not hide in a corner. This is the kind of deep purification that we go through during a three-year retreat. We come to grips with all of our issues and need to learn to resolve them skillfully.

I found that journaling helped me to process things and get them out of my system. I didn’t want to contact a therapist. Burning the journal also became a ritual of letting go. I did the four powers purification practice as well. Along with the purification process, I focused a lot on emptiness during each meditation session. This really helped me to see whom I was projecting in my world and that there was indeed another reality that could be reached, which was obtainable. This gave me the strength to continue with my retreat.

What is motivation for retreat?
We need to know ourselves and why we have decided to do a three-year retreat. Is it for name and fame? Although we tell ourselves it’s not for name and fame, we should factor in a little bit of grasping to these elements. I caught myself boasting about doing a three-year retreat two times, when I was trying to make an impression on some of my projections.  Then I saw that I still had an element of “name and fame” intertwined in my belief that I was doing it for the benefit of others.

But I also see that I have the good karma of getting a cabin built for my retreat because of some people who believe that it’s a worthwhile, spiritual venture. This is a very crucial element of why I am doing retreat. If I had the money, I don’t think that I would have had the karma to do long retreats, because I probably would not push myself if I paid for my own cabin. I would probably get up when I wanted to and not follow the schedule. It is a big blessing in disguise that I feel I have a karmic debt to pay because I’ll be receiving food and a free place to live. This kept me on my toes for my last retreat. I am proud of myself for keeping an excellent schedule all by myself, without a partner, during my last three-year retreat.

I have learned over the years that there is some benefit that we get when we think that we are helping others, even if it’s just feeling good about helping. This is why it’s so important for us to collect a massive amount of virtue to help us start retreat and finish it.

To be concluded in Part III.

Lama Thubten Pelma is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun who founded the Three Jewels Dharma Center in NYC. For the past 10 years, Lama Pelma has been a student of the masters at Sera Mey Monastery in southern India. To support Lama Pelma's 3-year retreat, please visit www.retreat4peace.org/blogs/lama-pelma.