Tushita Meditation Retreat

My one-night stay in McLeod Ganj was a great break from traveling, as well as an awesome sight. McLeod Ganj wraps around steep mountains and there are spectacular views all around. Despite its mountainous terrain, the area has many great places to eat as well bakeries and internet cafes etc. The population comes from all around, constituted of Indians, Tibetans, and many backpack-laden tourists. My guest house owner and I spent a good amount of time together, sharing Kashmiri tea and a homemade dinner of rice, dal, salad, and mixed veg curry over stories of beautiful places he would take tourists through Kashmir, as well as other places in India that he had owned guest houses.

The next day I was eager to settle into the mediation center. Giving myself about an hour, I packed up all my bags and headed in the direction of Dharamkot, the town where Tushita is located. I had quite the setup going, my waterproof bag with my clothes on my back, my backpack around my shoulders but in my front, one hand under the backpack to support it from squishing my stomach, and the other hand holding the umbrella covering up everything over my head. Not knowing how far up the road Dharamkot was from McLeod Ganj, I kept at a slow but steady pace up the windy road. Up and up and up and up. That’s been the general direction of travel since leaving Delhi…always higher and higher and higher. No cars and traffic on this road to Dharamkot. Every once in a while a rickshaw would putter past, slow going up this slope. To my left was a steep slope up; to my right, a steep slope down…“steep” meaning anything from a quickly rolling hill to a drop-off extending about 50 feet down. And trees all around, as well as mist.

Tushita was clearly marked by a sign once I had reached the first shops of Dharamkot. Check-in included us deciding what kind of room we wanted, paying, locking our electronics in a safe, getting the room key, and getting our “karma yoga” job. Room: 4-person as opposed to 8-person dormitory style; payment: 5500 rs. (about 12 dollars a day); karma yoga job: operating the recording/sound equipment during mediations and lectures. I was pleased at this random selection, we all had a job to keep things running, I much preferred turning on and off the sound system as opposed to dish-washing and toilet-cleaning. After moving in and a tea break, we had a practicality meeting about keeping silence, refraining from drugs, sex, and leaving the center’s grounds etc, how to treat the monkeys everywhere, and how to use the laundry service.

From my first moments at Tushita, I was captivated; quite difficult to wipe the smile off my face for the first day or so. The area as a few dorms and bathroom houses, a dining hall and kitchen, above which is a small meditation hall, patios overlooking the mountains, a main gompa (mediation hall) and offices, another retreat building, and a stupa (holy pyramid-wedding cake-like structure symbolizing the enlightened mind of the Buddha). The main gompa was where we spent most of our time; on the wooden floors we each had a mat, a few cushions to sit on, and a small table to keep our books and notebooks. At the front sat a massive golden statue of someone meditating, other auspicious objects like statues and lights and offering bowls, and pictures of prominent lamas.

Just about every day it would rain, although not incredibly hard. Because of how high up we were, clouds frequently would envelop the area. When this happened (sometimes for entire days at a time), Everything would be misty and the view that normally displayed vast mountains and rolling flatlands in the distance would be opaque white. You would see a few trees near you growing on the steep slope downward, but past them, just thick white. “Tushita” means heaven; sometimes it certainly felt that way, with clouds all around it was as if we were in the sky. Sometimes the clouds would be so thick that I remember my first day I was having a conversation with someone from Holland outside, and I literally noticed the mist drifting between us.

There were about 40 of us, ranging in age from about 22 to maybe 40s; a few were much older too. We came from all around including the US, Holland, England, Ireland, Austria, India, Australia, Spain, China, and Switzerland to name a few. Few people I met had a strict plan in place; most were staying in the Dharamsala area for weeks without having a definite idea of when they’d leave. Buses to many areas leave regularly, no need to book in advance, the area affords itself the ability to assume a fluid schedule. Not many had too much experience with Buddhism, although a handful had participated in retreats before, such as the intensive 10-day Vipassana retreat (9 hours of mediation daily, with strict silence). This course was a nice combination of the mediation and contemplative silence with discussion and a relaxed atmosphere. Perhaps total silence or the intensive all day mediation would have been too much for a beginner like me, so a perfect balance was struck for my introduction into things. Silence was to be observed outside the gompa (in the dorms, walking around, in the dining area), especially to protect the concentration and atmosphere for the 3-month retreat running at the same time. This retreat was a special tantric purifying retreat that is reserved for experienced individuals, and it would have been a distraction to have chatter in the background outside. However, during lectures we were free to ask questions (I certainly had a few!) and have personal convsersations with the teachers; additionally daily we had an hour long discussion group of about 7 people, where we would compare and contrast ideas and responses we had from the lecture.

The daily schedule ran like this. At 6 am there would be the ring of a gong to wake up, then at 6:35 there would another ring indicating that the first mediation would start in 10 minutes. Our mediation sessions would last 45 minutes and would be followed by a 15-or so minute break. Mediation sessions were guided by Richard from Holland. Richard was grown and very tall but had a boyish face. He would speak quietly but not seriously. His choice of words was slow and deliberate, as if carefully chosen. This probably was the case not only because of his contemplative nature but also because of a limited handle on English. The atmosphere of mediation sessions was deep and thought-provoking, but always lighthearted somehow; Richard would usually let out a giggle or two at us after we were finished, and would make jokes here and there that eventually had us erupting in laughter toward the end once we had figured out his subtle humor. I spent a good deal of time laughing internally as well during meditation sessions. With Richard’s Holland accent, every time he said “others” it sounded as if he was saying “otters.” “We are only here because of otters. Think, all the food you eat, the clothes you wear, comes from otters. Without otters…we would not be able to exist, if even for one day. When we look inside, we can actually find no self, only otters. May we continually cultivate loving-kindness…and everlasting compassion…for otters.” An otter pops up in my visualization, turns its head to look at me, and smiles as if to say… “you know, he’s right.”

After mediation from 6:45 to 7:30, therewas breakfast. Breakfast usually consisted of a vat of rice, wheat, or oat-based porridge, bananas, rolls, hard-boiled eggs, butter, honey, and homemade peanut butter. Yummm. Boy did my appetite return quickly. On antibiotics for the first half, I was feeling back to normal in no time too. After breakfast was a 2-hour lecture (w/ a break) led by Jimmy. Jimmy is in his mid-60s and is from the US. He spent much of his time traveling though and has lived in India for quite some time. His relationship with Buddhism is extensive, and he had been an ordained monk for 15 years. Despite his handle of the dharma (Buddhist teachings), the atmosphere of his lectures was never oppressive. He would often tell funny stories that his teachers and other lamas had said or been involved in. Many times he referenced his crazier past, which included all kinds of wild stories and interesting characters, usually prompting a loud, ruckus, belly laugher from the group . If you have a conversation with him, it feels as if you’re in the atmosphere of a bar. Jimmy has recently been suffering from liver/digestion issues; you could tell he was fatigued, sometimes pausing after a sentence with his eyes closed for a second or two before continuing.

After lecture on the dharma as an hour-long yoga session with Richard; we would do some simple stretching and gentle postures, most of which could be done right from the meditation mat. The 2 sunny days we had, yoga was held on the roof. Richard’s lightheartedness combined with our stumbling on a few balance postures meant a good deal of giggles from everyone involved. It’s funny how I mention laughter so often; it certainly doesn’t feel like we were laughing all the time, as silence was kept outside. My memories are calm and contemplative, having a good deal of time to think during meals and during personal time, time that we usually fill with conversation. After yoga was lunch, the largest meal of the day, consisting of a vat of rice, a vat of dal, a vat of mixed vegetables, cucumber/tomato salad, sometimes paneer, sometimes other dishes too. I usually took a nap after lunch, no need to set an alarm, the gong-ringers were prompt with their soothing strikes 10 minutes before every session.

From 2-3 was our discussion group. I think people in my group were mostly my age, 2 from the US, 2 from England, one from Ireland, one from Israel. We’d bring up questions or issues we took with the teachings, as well as point of agreement, referencing our past personal experiences. It was a great space to articulate our responses to the dharma, as well as get some perspective on how others were taking the teachings. From our group as a whole, you had a wide range of responses including skepticism to the teachings and anger at the difficulties and pains of mediation to complete captivation and even tears during some sessions. Most fell somewhere in the middle. For half an hour after discussion was a tea-break (always hard to return to silence after our group’s conversation), which was then followed by another lecture time where we’d hash out with Jimmy a few of our groups issues. After a break and a mediation session with Richard on the days topics, it was dinner time. Dinner was always a large vat of seaming soup and a large warm basket of rolls (fully accompanied by the butter, honey, and delicious peanut butter). The soup sometimes had beans, sometimes noodles, sometimes other vegetables. One time we had pumpkin soup; another, tomato. My appetite was completely restored compared to the sickly previous week; every meal at Tushita I would load up a whole plate and usually go back for seconds. Especially for that peanut butter and homemade bread.

After dinner was a final meditation session with Richard, usually my favorite one, mostly because there was no upcoming meal to distract me, but also because sitting throughout the day meant I was sufficiently stretched out to tolerate my half-lotus posture. Or maybe I was calmed enough to direct my mind away from discomfort. If pain in the knee or back got too distracting, it was no problem to adjust the seating position, although I would stay in half-lotus as long as possible (usually the whole session) to maintain concentration. After the mediation, I would stay in the gompa to read before heading to bed. Evidently I was interested in the dharma enough to read a great deal; by the end of the 10 days I had burned through 4 books.

My favorite book I read was one I bought at Tushita’s library, called The Universe in a Single Atom by the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama discusses a great deal how collaboration between science and Buddhism has and will lead to extremely beneficial advancements in how we conceptualize and understand the mind and reality around us. His developed, but easily understood language goes through the epistemological differences of science and Buddhism (1st person account and experiences versus 3rd person experiments and objective intellectual concepts), but also the empirical similarities between the two; both are rooted in observable phenomena and bounded by the laws of cause and effect. The book resonated with me because it articulated my feelings of how the dharma compliments neuroscientific and physics advancements. One question that comes up in neuroscience is even if we knew all there was to know about the brain from a 3rd person perspective (all the neuronal workings and correlates of consciousness), would we know what there was to know about the mind? Would we be able to know the experience of what it was like to be a bat for instance if we knew all there was to know about the bat’s brain? Conceptually, it doesn’t seem like it. Developing the mind and getting to know the workings of the mind from an objective standpoint are priorities of the Buddhist Dharma. This subjective component to the mind/brain relationship is a piece of the puzzle that is sorely needed if we are to have a comprehensive understanding of the two. It seems that where science leaves off, meditation practices and Buddhist philosophy pick up, and vice versa. Additionally, with the introduction (or rather, complications) of quantum physics into scientific thought, questions arise as to the objectifiability of experimentation. Namely, we are becoming more and more aware of how the observation is as much a part of the observer as of what is observed. For instance, a photon or electron behaves at times like a wave, at times like a particle, it all depends on how it is observed. As the role of consciousness and challenges to objective measurements step forward in importance, again Buddhist thought has a great deal of useful perspective to comment on how we understand the world around us.

Our teachings outlined the basics of the dharma, the principle ideas being that suffering is caused by attachment and aversion to the outside world, but that everything is impermanent, relative, and empty. Emptiness is the claim that nothing exists inherently “from its own side,” that it is not independent from its own originations, its causes and conditions. Similarly, when we try to conceptualize or articulate a ‘self’ what arises are factors dependent on others and influences around us. Additionally, everyone is in the pursuit of happiness, and we should strive to cultivate endless compassion for all sentient beings. Other teachings like that of karma, rebirth, and timeless mind I had more difficulty grasping, but as the analogy goes, don’t eat the whole pizza in one sitting, you’ll throw it up. Take one piece at a time. There were plenty of teachings that really resonated with me and plenty of ideas to chew on for some time to come.

Tenzin Palmo also came to give a talk on our last day. Tenzin Palmo is a Buddhist nun who was one of the first female Westerners to be ordained. She was born in London in 1943, and after ordination spent 12 years in meditative retreat in a high-altitude cave. She is highly regarded in Buddhism and is pushing for the first motions of equal gender treatment in the Buddhist system (for instance, it is thought that women cannot reach enlightenment). Her lecture was on getting to know the mind. A few of her thoughtful analogies included the idea that the mind was the sky and thoughts are the clouds. Our mind, our pure awareness and consciousness, is easily covered by the clouds, but our mind is not the clouds. Similarly, our bodies are not our clothes. Fundamentally we are always naked, but it doesn’t seem that way because we cover up. The problem is when we identify ourselves with these thoughts, when we think that the sky is the clouds that cover it or that we are our clothes. Thoughts in reality are like bubbles, they are shiny and eye-catching, but if you look closely they are hollow and easily pop. In meditation, it was easy to see how this analogy relates to my thoughts, constantly surfacing and then receding, like bubbles popping. It takes some time and concentration to see past neuronal habits.

The monkeys at Tushita were quite a sight. They were everywhere and had no fear of you until you acted as if you would hit them. I guess they were used to having people around. They’d get into massive fights and shriek at each other sometimes, getting the dogs barking as well, and offering a challenge to some meditation sessions. They’d come right up and take your food too. One time I went outside to sit down outside with my dinner and enjoy the view, I had my warm roll all buttered with honey and peanut butter. As I glimpsed at a few monkeys in the corner of my eye, another came out of nowhere, maybe from a tree above and snatched my roll, practically turning the bowl of soup over onto me in the process. Another time during yoga on the roof, one stole someone’s bag of socks. Richard said “not to worry, they have tiny feet, your socks won’t fit. At some point, the bag will fall down from the trees, just keep an eye out.” Another yoga session one got a hold of a tea cup, and it soon shattered on the ground two stories below. Richard, calm as usual, “Oh, Tushita has one less tea cup. Lesson in impermanence.”

It’s funny how by the end of our 10 days together, I had the feeling that I knew all the students or that we were friends somehow, although I had only spoken with a few of them in discussion group. The last day it was nice to have some conversations with people, as well as get to know their names. Many people are staying in the area for some time, especially because the Dalai Lama is teaching for two days soon. My favorite quote from the Dalai Lama that we learned about in lecture was “If you can’t do anything about a problem, why worry? If you can do something about it, why worry?” I guess if you can change something then good and if you can’t, you can’t and there’s no need to worry about control over it. His teachings are very moving, I am going to see if my schedule will allow me to hear his lecture.

Our last day we all decided to meet for dinner at a restaurant called “Common Ground,” advocating for peaceful Tibetan-Chinese relations. Over great food and awesome company who I felt connected to but who I was finally getting to know on a conversational level, our dinner lasted a good 5 hours. That evening I stayed at an awesome place in Dharamkot, a town near McLeod Ganj. Tushita was so closeby, I figured it would be a perfect place to stay, and it’s much less crowded and noisy than McLeod Ganj. The room is only rs. 100, or about 2 dollars, and above on the second floor is a great restaurant with cushion floor seats and low tables. Both the patio of the room and the lookout of the restaurant have a spectacular view of massive mountain hillsides descending into a distant valley. Houses and temples scatter the nearby area, trickling out in density to nothing as the mountains ascend higher and higher.

The next morning I woke up at 6 am right as usual. After writing a bit, I headed out on the thin windy roads of Dharamkot to find an internet café to talk to the parents and to check the emails. I stopped back again at Tushita for a quick yoga class and to say goodbye to Richard, then hopped over to my place for a tasty veg thali for lunch. While I was there I also picked up a few clothes that I had given the day before to the guest house owner’s “auntie” a few houses away. After only a few weeks in India, already my pants had a few tears in them at the more worn parts. One of my collared shirts also had a massive rip down the back, from the neck all the way to the bottom, no idea how it got there. Perhaps the weight of the bags? Anyway, everything was patched up good as new, stitched heavily and reinforced with extra cloth for support when I picked them up.

Then in the afternoon I headed to McLeod Ganj to run some errands, including figuring out the bus timings to Amritsar, as well as visiting a Tibetan doctor for a check-up. I’ve heard sometimes they will give you some Tibetan medicine to maintain your health or to treat internal organ issues that they can detect by your pulse and a urine sample. Don’t be fooled, this stuff is really supposed to work. Jimmy is using Tibetan medicine for his liver treatment and claims that there are limited treatments for the liver in the West aside from a transplant. Tibetan medicine is strong for liver and kidney evidently. Anyway, I stepped inside, the energetic Tibetan woman doctor checked my pulse and asked a few quick questions. *Very good! No non-veg foods and no eggs. Also only cooked food. A little weak but you are fine.* “Oh good, thank you. Do you need a urine sample or something?” *No, not unless you are ill, you are in good heath.* She was right. I was. My urge to consume Tibetan culture and customs shrugged its shoulders. I giggled; of course I didn’t need any medicine, I was fine.

Anyway, I got some passport photos and a radio receiver for the Dalai Lama’s lectures at his temple the next day (it is delivered in Tibetan, and a translator transmits it in English over the radio), and waited in line to register to attend the lectures at his security office. The line was lengthy, about an hour wait, but I’ve heard it can be much longer! Filling out a form, and handing over ten rupees, the passport for a quick check, and two passport photos, I had my registration for tomorrow’s teachings. Most everyone from Tushita is going, should be quite the experience, of course I may not get a seat in order to see him, evidently his teachings are packed. While waiting in line for registration I spotted a sign for an afternoon yoga class and stopped by. Their afternoon Hatha yoga class was just starting. It was a great two hour class, and only for rs.200, just what I needed. The class actually was the conclusion of a month-long certification course, and the students were westerners, relieved that finally they had finished their 200 hours of training. This evening I’ll meet Tushita people again for dinner, then tomorrow the plan is operation Dalai Lama. What an awesome place this is :)