”Raise your hand if you wish for this…”
I am at a week-long retreat in a leafy tree-covered area in western California. It was just past our mealtime and as always I had gorged on a bit too much — Thin spicy daal, potato, breadsticks, rice, and a sweet dish. The idea that food will still be available come sundown is and will probably always be alien to me.
After each meal, we slowly amble back into the meditation hall. People had staked out the prime real estate, leaving a cap, a t-shirt, a pair of glasses, a folded blanket, on a favorite cushion so that they could return to the same spot. In the back row of cushions — with easy access to the door — I left my pen and book. The notebook was one I had picked up as a last-minute item before leaving to catch the flight.
I find my spot on a meditation cushion near the back of a vast semicircle of meditation cushions, as close to the door as possible. A couple of hundred people filled the vast hall: old, young, thin, fat, in tattered kurtas and trendy designer wear. Lots of tattoos — mandalas, oms, colorful fishes, indecipherable Chinese or Sanskrit words inscribed on biceps, ankles, necks. Bare feet with overgrown, fungus lined toenails, or perfect bright red pedicures. Most of the crowd looked like they had been to Rigpa — or to places like Rigpa — many times before.
And then there was me.
This is not something I had done before or even contemplated doing. Saints and mahatmas for me were usually equivalent to charlatans. People who peddle their fake experiences and so-called knowledge for money.
So why was I here — Sitting in this corner row, looking up at the podium where the bald, plump Tibetan man sat nodding spewing alien words, catching his breath to wait for it to be translated by a bony Asian woman sitting next to him in brown robes.
Breathe in. I tell myself. Breathe out. The act seems forced as if that was not part of my DNA. Why was I here again?
I felt like I had taken a wrong turn, gotten off at the wrong exit. I should have been at Mission Street — A couple of hours down, getting a cheap massage at some shady looking Asian joint. I needed to relax — and a hard-handed massage seemed a lot more relaxing than sitting straight on a meditation cushion with hundreds of sweaty people.
But I wasn’t here to unwind — at least not in that way. I needed some answers. I was practically waiting, inhaling in the dewy incense-filled air, waiting for the evening program to start. Instead of the world opening up to me, it had just felt like an utter disappointment. I could barely keep awake while I looked around seeing some alpha types making a real hard attempt at sitting straight and following the instructions.
Two upholstered chairs were set up at the front of the great hall, a table with two copper cups and a bottle of water between them. An easel stood next to the chairs, supporting a large dry-erase board, upon which a handwritten list was put on.
Rinpoche began by slowly gazing around the entire semicircle. He seemed to make eye contact with every single person in the room. He was a large sized man, perhaps in his early fifties, with a bald pate and an impish, should I say Buddha-like, face.
“Everyone suffers, everyone gets sick and everyone dies,” he says without any emotion. “Everyone is struggling. Life is difficult for everybody. Once you’re in, there’s no way out. You have to go forward. And we all die in the end. So how to deal with it?”
As I sat there, the words sliced through everything: through my dull yet seeking mind, my pulse slightly arose, my general state of alienation towards everything authoritative, everything rule-based pierced for a bit.
That was something, wasn’t it?
In a few simple sentences, he had addressed the root core of what I had usually felt. He knew about the roller coaster, the slow ascent, the rapid downward plunge.
I was here. I had reached the ascent of the curve of my life. I had built it by the decision and by accident — and there would be no other and now the rapid plunge felt terrifying in its own regard.
So how do I deal with it?
I raise my hand. This was so unlike me that I looked up at my own hand as if it belonged to someone else. I usually never engage in group discussions. It’s an anathema for me, built from a childhood laced with a lack of self-confidence, disdain towards most, and an inability to believe that my opinions really matter to anybody, even myself.
But I really did have a question. It had been bubbling up inside me and was banging against my rib cage, my heart, demanding an answer.
“Yes.” Anya, the translator pointed. Rinpoche turned to look in my direction struggling to gaze at the far end of the hall. I suddenly felt the spotlight of his eyes on me.
“I was raised in a very religious home,” I began, sounding shaky. “But I’m confused. I don’t believe in all of these different deities that you talk about nor do I feel any respect towards them. How do you expect me to perform these visualizations that you talk about?”
Rinpoche tilted his head to the side. A smile played at his lips, as if he had been expecting this question, and was delighted by it.
“I don’t think it has to be metaphysical,” he said. “It’s the expression of a wish, really.”
A wish.
The thought lingers in my head as if a seed is planted yet nothing comes out of it. The answer seems so — unsatisfactory, almost incorrect. An antithesis of what I had expected. Dazzling verbiage of vocabulary that would open worlds for me, unfold universes at my feet, enlighten me with a single piercing sentence.
The disappointment almost seems too much to bear.
After the evening session ended, I wandered the halls of the sanctum, lost in thought. I barely registered the dinnertime crowd of people carrying colorful trays piled high with bowls of salad and pulses. A wish — but that was something that children did. Naïve, unadulterated souls who did not have the worldly experience that I had. People who knew there was no such thing as wishing for and being fulfilled because of it.
As an adult, I had long since given up on wishing. It seemed the equivalent of sprinkling magic fairy dust. Even if I had a wish, I would never verbalize it — ever, lest it is unfulfilled just because of the act of wishing it. Instead, I usually would adopt an approach of hoping for the worst, fearing the most extreme and then being pleasantly surprised when the universe bestowed something better, at times the wish that I had never dared verbalized. Even the gratitude remained silent, lest the wish is taken away again.
But really, what did it mean to fervently, wholeheartedly name a desire?
To verbalize it out of a deep yearning — to set that yearning loose upon into the universe? Could a wish be a less fraught word for a prayer? Maybe it wasn’t about who, if anyone, was on the other end, listening. Maybe devotion had to do with holding up just the one end of the dialogue. Your end.
I look at the board where there are scribbled the eleven benefits of metta (Loving Kindness) according to the Buddha:
People who practice metta…
Sleep peacefully
Wake peacefully
Dream peaceful dreams
Gods love them
People love them
Gods will protect them
Poisons and weapons and fire won’t harm them
Their faces are clear
Their minds are serene
They die unconfused
And live in heavenly realms.
When Anya gave us the list of benefits, she asked us to think about which one most resonated with us the most.
Then, following a long meditation, she asked for a show of hands for each benefit.
Sleep peacefully was definitely a crowd favorite.
People love them — Were super popular too, especially among women.
And certainly, poisons and weapons and fire won’t harm them — It had its devoted fan base of the muscle and tattoo variety.
But there was one benefit that stood out for me — As if it were signed in neon.
It seemed to me to be holding within itself the key to all of the others.
As the choices are recited one by one, I was the only person in that vast room to raise his hand for the 10th choice -
To die unconfused.
