Back from the Dzogchen Retreat
I just got back from the Dzogchen retreat that I was attending with Younge Khachab Rinpoche in Madison this last week. The last couple of days were very busy with a focus on Trekchod and Thogyal teachings. Most of the retreat was drawing from the Khandro Nyingtik, the “Heartdrop of the Dakinis” cycle of texts.
Our normal process was to arrive in the morning, do teachings for a couple of hours with some meditation, take a break for lunch, come back for more teachings followed by more meditation. We usually ended around 4:30 or so on most days. We did a couple of tsok feasts as well as some of the more specific items related to the Thogyal instructions, which I won’t go into for relatively obvious reasons.
On Sunday, after we finished the last tsok, my friend Bill and I, along with Elisabeth, with whom we had been sharing a car and most meals, quickly went back to our rooms, grabbed our bags and headed to Madison’s airport. Even though it is the state capitol, Madison’s airport is relatively small so the security process there isn’t too bad. After something like six hours of travel, I arrived back in Seattle at 11:00 PM with R picking me up.
I didn’t plan this with Memorial Day being a recovery day but I’m quite glad it is so. I need an R&R day to recover. During the last two days, I somehow got a nasty cold (no one else did so I blame the air travel). This had the side effect, other than making me feel like shit during the last day of teachings, of causing my right ear to quit popping in response to air pressure. There’s nothing like feeling the pressure build and build in your ear during the landing of a plan and wondering if your ear drum will pop… I managed to relieve enough pressure to keep it from getting too painful. Today, I still can’t really hear well out of the ear nor pop it but there is no painful pressure…
I took some pictures at the retreat on the first couple of days. We were outdoors the entire time in a tent on the 15 acre spread that one of Khachab Rinpoche’s students has. Other than a light thunderstorm one day and a sprinkle or two, the weather was perfect the entire week. It was very windy at times but it was consistently around 72 or 75 until the last day when things cooled off quite a bit. (The chairs in back were for people who couldn’t sit on cushions for physical reasons, most of us were on cushions in front.) There were roughly 25 people on the retreat.
