June 4, 2003

great retreat

I’ve never met him. I’ve seen video footage, I have two very nice pictures of him, and I’ve listened to hours upon hours of teachings, but we’ve never been formally introduced.

I was a radio nut. It was the medium of choice and I worked hard to learn everything I could about it. Had a little ‘zine talking about the micropower radio movement, wrote up a business plan to start my own station, had my own internet station for awhile and worked as a DJ for about six years. Talk radio was okay, but what I was really interested in was music. Many of the bands I had been listening to for years suddenly fell into a nice little category and you could hear some good music when you flipped on the boom box. Then Britney and the Backstreet Boys came along and all of the stations jumped on that bandwagon. I hit the internet in search of some relief.

My interest in this thing called “Buddhism” was, at this point, purely fascination. I had no interest in being a meditator, keeping any vows, listening to teachings or learning Tibetan. I thought it was a bummer that the Tibetans were kicked out of their land. I thought that every time the Dalai Lama spoke he said something brilliant, but I wasn’t interested in being called Buddhist.

One day back in 1999 instead of going out and looking for a job, like I probably should have been doing, I decided to find a radio station to listen to on the internet. I came across something called Lam Rim and they were playing this scratchy recording of a man who sounded like he was an American, but could speak Tibetan and would explain certain words to his audience. He told this story of a Tibetan lama who could go to the dentist and not feel any pain when they drilled his teeth. I thought, “that sounds nice, impossible, but nice.” Then without hesitation this American began explaining how it was very possible for two people to have a completely different perspective of the same event. How this event isn’t happening ‘out there’ it happens in the mind of person perceiving it. How it may be possible to change our own reality.

‘Shocked and hooked’ is the only way to accurately describe what I was feeling at this point. As it turns out, I had stepped back in time, into the classroom at Vajrapani Institute around August of 1996. I was a few days late so I was catching the course mid-way through. I had the great fortune of hearing Geshe Michael Roach teaching his favorite subject, The Diamond Cutter Sutra.

When I talk about being a Buddhist, but not by choice — this is why. This course blew me away and changed my whole world. As I did more investigating to see if I could learn more from this amazing teacher, I found out that he was about to go into three year retreat. His last teaching before retreat would be given in California in February of 2000. I was not going to be able to attend, but fifteen courses were available to study.

Friday marks the three year, three month and three day anniversary of the “great retreat” and will be Geshe-la’s last day. The folks in New York will be doing a nice ceremony where they formally request teachings and offer the long mandala. I am quite ecstatic that we will once again have a great master guiding us on the stages of the path — whether in New York, Arizona, California or (keep dreaming) Montana.

[This is my formal request that Geshe Michael Roach continuing teaching the Dharma.]

posted @ 8:33 AM

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