Do you like gospel music? I have spent many Sunday mornings flipping pancakes to the wailing rhythms of the Gospel Hour broadcast on our local NPR station. And it always makes me think, why can’t Buddhists express their spirituality in such a lively, upbeat, appealing and optimistic mode? Must we just sit in silence and stare grimly at our suffering? Buddhism has often been mischaracterized as a “life-denying, pessimistic” religion because of an over-emphasis on the first noble truth—that all unenlightened beings are subject to suffering and dissatisfaction. But Lama Surya Das has often asked the question, What about the third noble truth! Liberation! Awakening! Innate Buddha-nature within every single being! Rigpa! Glory hallelujah emaho!

In fact, the Dzogchen tradition points out that this glorious state of self-perfected peace is the true nature of every sentient being. Now that is good news! Something to celebrate. But unlike the joyful spirit unleashed by a gospel choir, Buddhist practice often remains quiet, sedentary, contemplative, solitary and inner-directed. Of course, we need to cultivate mindfulness, interiority and concentration, the laser-like mental tool we apply to penetrating wisdom, which cuts out ignorance at the root. But rigpa, the innate awakened mind, is not enclosed in a box of single-pointed concentration. It does not need to sit cross-legged. It does not need to be quiet. Sometimes pristine awareness may like to sing and dance, to shout hallelujah! But where in Buddhist practice today can we find such expressions of joyous celebration?

Right here, at the Dzogchen Center, where Lama Surya Das, continuing to trail-blaze innovative forms and modes of practice, has been introducing new and exciting elements of music and movement into our retreat experience. Rockin’ mantra-chanting sessions to cap off a silent day of sitting has always been one of our trademarks.

But Lama Surya is about to bring new and exciting sounds of awakening to a retreat near you. On March 25-26 Lama Surya Das will reunite with his old friend and dharma brother Krishna Das for a Reunion and Celebration in Pittsburgh, PA. They met in India in 1972, in the early days of their spiritual careers, at the ashram of Neem Karoli Baba, also known as Maharaj-ji, “The Dharma King.” Both received their Sanskrit names from Maharaj-ji and—together with Ram Das—both went on to become pioneers in bringing Indian and Tibetan spiritual experience to the U.S.A.

Those fortunate ones who attended our Winter Awakening Retreat at Garrison in January experienced the magic of Krishna Das chanting the Tara mantra, accompanied by our own young guitar virtuoso Ben Biers. The spirit of Tara was standing and dancing and chanting and clapping hands in a unique Hindu-Buddhist union of music, mantra and mudra. You can register for the March Reunion in Pittsburgh right on our website.

And if you feel like dancing your suffering away on the west coast, Lama Surya has invited Rose Taylor to teach the Tara Dance of Mahamudra at our Spring Retreat: View, Meditation and Action of the Great Perfection, in Joshua Tree, California, March 12-20, 2011. Rose is a close disciple of the great Kagyu master Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and she has agreed to bring this rarely taught Tara Deity dance practice to our desert retreat.

So stand up, clap your hands, sing emaho! Glory hallelujah the good news of liberation pours down like dharma rain. Sing om tare tutare ture svaha! Liberation is in the palm of your hands—all you have to do is Register!

David Patt,
Executive Director

With Lama Surya Das

Some time ago, my youngest child’s acute illness sent me searching for answers and some form of spiritual succor. Like so many Westerners, I entered the Dharma through the bookstore. After working my way through the lives of the Christian saints and the world of shamanism, my husband gave me Thich Naht Hahn’s Living Buddha, Living Christ. After I had read it a third time, he bought me Lama Surya Das’ Awakening the Buddha Within. Those two books set me on the journey that brought me most recently to Dzogchen Ösel Ling for my third Advanced Dzogchen Retreat, and my 10th retreat overall.

In retrospect, my timing was immaculate. After a weeklong summer retreat at Omega in Rhinebeck with Lama Surya Das in the months just before 9/11, I finally had a framework, a practice, and an inspiring guide for my interior journey. In early October, I took refuge and Bodhisattva vows with Lama Surya, and the following Spring I attended my first silent retreat at Joshua Tree in California. From the first day, I knew it was the crucible I had been seeking, the safe vessel to contain the pyrotechnics of my interior struggles, including the yawning existential questions concerning my daughter’s illness, and later, the aftermath of 9/11. Through the many twists and turns that followed, the deep love I am privileged to share with my family, and the profound nurturing of my Dharma practice, have been my guiding stars, my traveling companions on the way.

Roger Walsh, one of Lama Surya’s associate teachers, gave a talk on that first day of my first silent retreat that has shaped every retreat that followed. He talked about the different levels of silence, of withdrawal. Hindu yogis talk of pratyahara, or withdrawal of the senses, one of the eight limbs of classical yoga practice. I had read of it, even longed for it, but it seemed out of reach to my hyperactive monkey mind. Roger suggested that in addition to giving up communicating orally for the week, as requested by the retreat guidelines, we further consider avoiding reading and writing, other than taking notes during Dharma talks. He offered that we might withdraw further still by casting the eyes just below eye-level as we walked along, avoiding this endlessly expressive form of non-verbal communication as well.

As I experimented with deepening levels of withdrawal, I was entranced by the magnetic power of the gathering silence, the stillness, my first glimpse perhaps of the Great Perfection that is the majestic view of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism transmitted so powerfully in the West by Lama Surya Das. Even as my monkey mind continued to dance its usual dance, I found a different dimension, deeper than the chatter, deeper than the panic that ensued when all intellectual distractions were removed, and clearer and more nurturing than anything I had ever known – the glimpse of which Kabir writes that made him a seeker for life.

And so I returned year after year. In between retreats, I studied and practiced diligently. And yet, in the early years, by the time retreat rolled around, I felt like a dehydrated explorer, who having finally reached the oasis, and having gulped down the fresh cool water of the Dharma teachings, headed off into the wilderness once again. At Joshua Tree, St. Stephen’s Priory in Massachusetts, and the Garrison Institute on the banks of the Hudson in New York, the teachings I heard were deeply consistent from retreat to retreat: view, meditation and action, the diamond path of the Natural Great Perfection of Dzogchen. I took notes, lots of them. Between retreats I transcribed my notes. I noticed that many of the teachings were repeated over and over again. Until I started attempting to organize them, each retreat had seemed a new unfolding, just right for where I was right then in my practice and my life, just what I needed.

Looking through the eyes of a text book editor, I was taken aback at the repetition. Why had I never noticed? It seemed so simple. I went to my next retreat with my text-book editor mind in my pocket, watching, skeptical, wondering. Here they were again, the same words, the same teachings: swooping down from above with the view of the natural Great Perfection while climbing up the mountain from below with the relative practices of the Bodhisattva in accordance with our abilities and inspiration. But as ever, the new abounded: new understandings, new awakenings, new inklings, new insights, and new neural pathways. After another retreat or two, I forgot to pack my pocket text-book editor – rather than a tool for understanding it seemed just like another intellectual distraction. Instead , I prayed for the grace to open myself further to the impossible-to-describe process of gradual unfolding and self-revelation of the so-called self-secret teachings of the immaculate Longchen Nyinthig – the heart essence of Longchen Rabjam, and the lineage of saints and gurus who have passed them on, master to student, a continuous living flame, whispered on the warm breath of the dakinis into the ears of those fortunate enough to encounter the real thing, the ever-present transmission of Dzogchen. From time to time a new student asks – so what’s the big deal? What am I missing here? I can only smile and send them a quiet prayer to be patient, to keep turning up – you must be present to win, as our Lama so often reminds us.

As a mother of four, full-time investment banker, middle-school lacrosse coach and yogi, I am a householder, through and through. My non-retreat world is an energy-drenched kaleidoscope of family and work, family and life, family and Dharma. Perhaps my greatest struggle in understanding the Dharma has been how it fits in, where it fits within my apparently dense-packed schedule. Clearly my life is not that of the reclusive, hermetic saints whose lives and life’s works have so inspired me. Fortunately for me, on and off retreat, in his teachings and writings, Lama Surya gently reminds us again and again that our task as householders is not to pack it all in, to run away from our world and seek the quietude of the mountain caves, but rather to embody the Buddha’s teachings, to be Buddha’s feet on the street, in the schools, on the playing fields, in the offices, and, most importantly of all for those of us lucky enough to have them, in our families. Can you be Buddha when arguing with your spouse? When your teenager is screaming at you?

Eventually, and almost imperceptibly, the practice itself started reaching back, reaching out to me when I was not reaching out for it. I found that I could inhabit the great silence, the natural perfection, anytime, anywhere; that as long as I did not choose to be elsewhere, it was always right there; that I did not have to wait for the time on my cushion in the early morning at home, or the week I was able to retreat each year, but that I could take whatever time my life presented to me – many quickees rather than a few prolongees – to quote our beloved Lama. Slowly but surely, circumstances that would have aroused tremendous impatience and stress transformed alchemically into gifts of time in which to gather myself within and utterly de-stress instead: the railroad crossing interrupting the dash through town on weekend errands, the unexpected traffic jam during the morning commute, the air traffic control delays in Tallahassee or Sacramento, the New York City subway train suspended mid-tunnel, unmoving, waiting for traffic on the line ahead to clear. As these lucid moments became more frequent, they stitched themselves into a patch work continuity, a pattern of awareness – a priceless beacon of certainty in an uncertain world, a spacious luminosity, with room for everything.

Returning from retreat is always an interesting experience. Even a week of mundane activities away from our quotidian work and home life brings a great deal of perspective. How much more perspective is afforded by a week spelunking in the interior of the mind is hard to describe – it is not a geometric multiplier but an exponential one. And so, spiritual batteries recharged, perspective refreshed, I return again, carrying not only the great silence ever more immanent within me into my world, but also, with each passing year, the gifts of mindfulness, equanimity and compassion that seem to spring from the experience inexhaustibly, drenching and quenching my seeking heart, hydrating, infiltrating and permeating my life.

With love and gratitude to Lama Surya Das and the lineage of the Longchen Nyingthig, Sarva Mangalam – may it be auspicious!

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