Lama Christie McNally Interview

Senior Teacher Lauren Benjamin of Los Angeles’ Mahasukha Center interviewed renowned author and professor of religious studies, Lama Christie McNally, shortly before she enters her second three-year silent retreat on December 30, 2010. Lama Christie discusses her spiritual path as a woman and its influence on her 3-year retreat experience, particularly with a spiritual partner.

Lama Christie McNally

Lauren: Do you think there are any special considerations for a woman going into and during retreat?

Lama Christie: I think it might be the case that it’s actually easier for women to go into retreat than men. Because energetically, women are more accustomed in general to being in a more listening mode as opposed to a more doing mode. I see the actions of the outside world as very male energetically. When I talk about acting in the world, producing books, traveling and doing teachings, all of that is male energy to me. It’s much more difficult for me to be out in the world promoting myself. It doesn’t come so naturally to me. But being in retreat is like being back inside water. It’s like I’m a fish back inside my home, the ocean. I’ve been outside of the water for awhile. I relax when I get into retreat in a way I never can in the outside world.

Lauren: So you think that’s more gender-related rather than personality-related?

Lama Christie: I think that energetically, people who have more female energy, whether they’re a woman or a man, will have a more favorable time in retreat. Energetically, people who have more male energy will have a difficult time settling themselves down into retreat. It might always feel foreign to them. I think in this way women have an advantage.

Lauren: With this being your second 3-year retreat, are you doing it for different reasons? Do you have different expectations for this retreat?

Lama Christie: I think my focus right now is not so much going into retreat for myself but actually leading all of the other people into retreat. I want to make sure they come out with as profound an experience as I had in my first retreat. My whole focus is about protecting the sangha so they’re able to have their realizations, making everything possible and accessible to them in terms of teachings, meditations and my own time. I’ve offered to read people’s journals during retreat. It’s going to be quite a different retreat for me. It’s going to be more of a retreat for everybody else. That said, it couldn’t not be a good retreat for me because my whole focus is on other people. So naturally it’s going to fall on me to have an amazing time.

The last retreat was really hard. I pushed very hard. I wanted to see emptiness. I was there every single day on the cushion, working as hard as I could. Working up realization to realization. It was a struggle. I came out dramatically changed and a dramatically different person. But I wouldn’t say that it was easy. Recently, I met with one of my Lamas, who has the ability to tell the future. He pronounced for me that this next retreat was going to be a joyful experience. I look forward to seeing that kind of aspect to the retreat. I feel like it’s going to be much more about opening my heart to every living being. It’s not solely focused on emptiness. It’s focused on reaching out and engaging in that ultimate kind of love for people and seeing how far we can take it. It’s about transforming my entire world into a mandala, which is not what I primarily focused on in the first retreat. Now that I know how to do that, I would like to go and actually do it.

Lauren: So the primary focus in the first retreat was more meditation and wisdom?

Lama Christie: It had emptiness, completion stage and guru yoga practices. My main focus off the cushion was guru yoga. It was total surrender to my Lama and trying to get rid of my ego. All of these things were incredibly hard for me as a prideful Westerner and incredibly beneficial to put myself through and put myself in the fire for. I benefited from it immensely. But it’s going to be a lot different experience now without that particular situation being my main focus.

Lauren: What insights or advices do you have for doing retreat with a partner? You did your first 3-year retreat with your Lama. Now you’re the Lama going into retreat with a layperson. What are the differences?

Lama Christie: In general, my advice for partners going into retreat is that they go on their own solitary retreats first so they get to a level of depth by themselves, where they’re actually in their own worlds in their minds. Then when they come together afterward, they can go into that same depth together. Because usually what happens when you’re with another person, if you don’t know where you’re going you will actually distract yourself from going there. My fear when students came to me and said they wanted to do their retreat with somebody else was that they would never get to that level of depth. The reason why is because they would maintain the relationship that they were used to in the outside world and they would constantly be distracting themselves from going any deeper.

Some partners are going into retreat by cycling through periods of the retreat in solitude and together. I think that’s a good option for some people in the partnership retreat. For others doing the 24/7 thing, they have all done their solitary retreats in preparation for their partnership retreat. I feel as though everyone is prepared because they have gotten to feel what it’s like to be deep inside of their own mind so now they know they can get there together.

Lama Christie McNally and Ian ThorsonIn terms of myself, I’m hoping to be able to practice seeing my personal partner as my angel who has come to save me as well as my partner practicing that towards me. I’m very excited to see how far we can get together in that practice. This is the first time that I’ve ever been able to fully go into that practice. Although Geshe Michael and I spoke about this in spiritual partner talks, it wasn’t the retreat practice that I did because I always felt as though he was the Lama and I was the student. I don’t think that’s in my current relationship so much, I think we have much more of a partnership.

Lauren: Many of the sacred texts were written by men and for men. What essential retreat practices or understandings have you found it necessary to adapt for women?

Lama Christie: Most of them I can’t talk about because many involve inner body practices that are secret in our tradition. But I’m encouraging other women who are initiated into the secret practices to keep a record of their own experiences so we can leave a legacy for women in the future. I feel that we’re very much lacking this in our world and I hope to rectify it. The last time I went into retreat, I didn’t have any students. Now when I go into retreat, a great part of my mind is thinking that I can share what I learn in retreat with my students and anything that I do there can be beneficial for them. It’s a very different feeling to go in with a mission to change the world rather than just to change one, single, solitary mind, which is actually quite small in scope when you think about it.

Lauren: You have spent a lot of your adulthood in retreat. We want to understand how you’ve accomplished this. How have you made your way as a woman on an openly, intense spiritual path as opposed to the paths of a professional career, marriage and/or motherhood?

Lama Christie: Through the grace of my Lama. Bottom line. I could never have dreamed to do any of things I’ve done without the blessing of my Teacher. It’s his vision that made me into a Lama. I am fully a product of my lineage. The only good thing that I did was I simply surrendered to the process. The degree to which I surrendered is the degree to which he could build me and make me perfect. The degree to which I didn’t surrender is the degree to which I still have to fix myself. I was ready to jump when my Lama said jump, over and over again. He led me to beautiful, magical places above and beyond my wildest dreams.

In terms of career, marriage and motherhood, who knows? But I hope that I can be some kind of a role model even for those positions because I don’t see myself as any different from any other normal woman of the world, who is struggling to find her spiritual path. I would hope to be accessible to everyone, not to say that everyone must take the intense spiritual path that I did in order to succeed in their path. You simply have to follow your heart and be willing to do whatever your spiritual path calls you to do. My spiritual path called me to do some crazy things but your path might not. Somebody’s spiritual path might call them to have a child. You have to be open and receptive to those callings.

Learn more about Lama Christie's second three year retreat at: www.retreat4peace.org