Diary Page: On Food and Sleep being Totally Overrated

The day before last I wake up at 5 o’clock, wide awake, excited about the possibility to spend the day with practice. There’s a moment where I am telling myself it is too early to get up. I got to bed at 1 o’clock, after four hours of sleep, under any kind of normal circumstance I would not have enough sleep to get through the day without being a bit cranky and possibly taking it out on someone. So I would ordinarily reason with myself to stay in bed, just turn around and face the pillow for another hour or two.

But today is different. This is just too great an opportunity to be passing by, staying in bed presents itself as just a waste of time in this context. So I get up quietly, trying not to disturb the sleep of my daughter and our sweet new friend, do my three morning prostrations, and sneak out to start into the day, the habitual groundhog in me caught by surprise.

It seems that just like the sojong and my recent Nyungne experience in a subtle way changed something in how I feel about eating, I am now prepared to look at how overrated sleep can be…

Sandwich Culture for our Practice

Much as Rinpoché wants us to be well-informed on the traditional forms, he knows we will soon be going back to somewhat busy lives, most of us, and so the question is:

What can we take back home? He makes it quite clear that it is totally up to us to which extent we follow the traditional form, but he encourages us to figure out what the essence of a particular practice is, and then: To sandwich it. 

The first slice of bread would be refuge and bodhicitta, second slice the dedication. In-between we can fill our sandwich with essential parts of longer practices, like the 21 Praises that are part of every Tara practice, or a mantra phase for Chenresig. It could be more than one ingredient, too, maybe a slice of tomato on top of the cheese.

Of course it is great if we can make time for extended practice, but if we can’t have a gala dinner every night, it’s better to eat a sandwich than not to eat at all, he argues and who wouldn’t agree? This way fitting in several thüns even in the normal day of a householder starts to look entirely feasible.

Mahakala Tsog and Celebrating with Rinpoché

Ideally we’d be enlightened to actually really partake in a tsog practice. To put it quite bluntly, this is the ideal scenario: after gathering the tsog material, the meditation masters would sit in non-duality, offer without attachment, consume the tsog material without any idea of pure or impure and dedicate the last remainder of the tsog to beings in a non-dual understanding of samsara and nirvana.

Rinpoché gives detailed instructions on how the three portions for the three jewels, the lineage guru and the presiding master are to be offered. The remaining tsog offerings are shared and the remainder plate is started with a piece of the lha-tsog (the torma made of dough, honey, nuts etc. that was central to the offering), everyone contributes a piece of leftover, which is dedicated to the beings of the six realms and brought outdoors by the chöpen.

As sentient beings, we enjoy our Mahakala tsog with Rinpoché and continue our program outdoors. Rinpoché, we were told upon registration, would like us to perform something creative on our last night. Thanks to his request we get to see some very funny, some very touching and some plain amazing performances, the variety is amazing.

We contemplate the reading of a German text about the benefits of a silent day and its English translation. We are encouraged to partake in a folkloristic dance, which throws everybody for a loop. We make up for our lack in teachability by improvising and Rinpoché is thoroughly amused. We also join in with a Tibetan polular dance, the singing of an utterly beautiful version of the Mani mantra and of a song paying homage to the lamas of our Kagyu lineage that was written for this night. We are stunned and amused by a German popular love song, by a recitation of Dadaist poetry by both Italian and German authors and by the funniest ever dramatic rendition of an historic Indian king being taught the Hevajra tantra and happy he could practice the dharma without changing his oppulent lifestyle.

We have a surprising quota of opera singers, 2 out of 35. One touches us with the subtle lament of an Argentinean folk song, the other one performs the Despina aria from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, where she explains about the flirtatious tricks that women can use to get the men’s attention. We don’t need to understand the Italian, her theatrical performance is utterly convincing. Elevated by so much beauty we enjoy our last night special dinner, a cold and warm buffet, before our evening thün.

Head and Spine: A Thank You to the Organizers

It is on this last night of our retreat also, that our wonderful Geislingen sangha offer a mandala to thank Rinpoché. They also express their joy and wonder at how well everything worked and remark upon what a great community has formed in those few days.

Rinpoché tells us that many people have come to him to say how much they learned and since it is the role of the teacher to present the dharma, people remember to thank the teacher. But a dharma event is like any event an event. And the fact that it could happen is the result of the organizing people’s practice of generosity. If he is the head, as the one giving the teachings, the people carrying the organizational aspect and setting up this event are the spine or the body.

He is going to give these people a khata and asks us to lend our hands for a round of applause and not to stop until he is done. Laughing we follow our drupön’s and umze’s instructions. He requests the recipients not to take the khata off till the end of the thün. 

We celebrate the wonderful people who have made this event happen. There’s vibrant joy in the air. A sense of community encompasses us all. The main organizer has already made a super touching speech, too, thanking us all. We’ve become a great little community. Rinpoché points out the advantages of a group retreat. You have many mirrors everywhere reflecting your state of mind, he says. Being with others is not an obstacle to your practice, it is practice.

Diary Page: On the Mandala Dissolving

Rinpoché reminds us that the reason we are here and not some random people from the Black Forest is that we have the conditions to get to this situaiton. And we can make wishes, when dedicating, that many more people get into that kind of fortunate situation.

But tomorrow this set of circumstances will dissolve, he says, like a sand mandala after careful preparation with multi-colored sands, will be thrown into a river and the empty table will be just like before, as if nothing had happened. But he says we might notice a difference. We will have seeds in our consciousness and we will observe changes when we come back, we will see things differently.

And he took part just like us, he says, in this fortunate situation. He admits to having a sentimental moment himself. Is he really shedding some tears? I don’t have the mind to understand what is going on in him. He seems touched. Everybody is touched, why wouldn’t he, who has the mind to understand us all so well.

To some of us he is a fabulous, fascinating and eloquent teacher, to some of us he is an expression of the dharmakaya, but in that moment he comes across as a really wonderful person who loves relating to people and deeply understands the moment of sadness at the thought that something truly beautiful in terms of practice, but also between people, something that feels nearly like family, is dissolving to never be back in exactly that wonderful way again.

Be in sync with the impermanent nature of life is his final recommendation. This being said, he tells us that the second düntsam will take place in October 2018. When exactly it will be, we don’t know. Where it will be, we don’t know. Who will come, we don’t know. Will we be alive then? We don’t know. Still here I can feel a lot of people making a plan, inspite of impermanence, or wishing for impermanence to play into our hands.