Diary Page: Departure 

‚Dissolving the mandala‘ happens smoothly. Everybody is attuned to the necessities of the moment and the needs of the others. The spirit hardly compares to how we all arrived, everybody was a well-behaved Buddhist then already, but now there seems to be way more flow in spontaneously helping or freely asking to be helped. Maybe after these few days of practice and friendship there is already a little bit less self-involvement in how we interact.

I get a lot of help with the things from the shrine room, which now looks as if nothing had happened, but packing our personal things takes me forever with the still tired child not springing to action.

When our car is finally all packed I come back towards the house to see that my daughter has taken place next to Rinpoché, she’s sitting cross-legged, no space on

the bench for me. I sit down by their feet and she starts braiding my hair.

The ground is a little wet, isn’t it?, he asks. It is a little wet, indeed, I answer. It feels like we’ve said more with what we said and definitely enough and it feels right just sitting there with Rinpoché in a natural way for a little while, gazing into the shades of green

in front of us. Before getting into the car, he does a short mandala offering overlooking the grounds for the last time.