Reflection on the DCC in the 80s
Photograph by Nick Russell
Although I lived at the Dharma Centre most of the time from 1984 to 1989 I am not sure I can give you a definitive This Was The Dharma Centre report. Maybe instead I can tell you what has stayed with me thirty-five years on.
1. Nature
At the start of my first retreat in one of the more remote cabins I had a serious case of the urban heebiegeebies: What are those noises? What about bears? Snakes? Rogue hippos?
But after months and then years living at the Centre year round I came to a deep love and gratitude for the Land itself. Choirs singing in the streams, whispered messages from the forest. The daily cycle of animals passing by and the nightly revelation of the moon, planets and stars. Snow and ice ebbing and flowing like a long tide through the winter. Mosquitoes and black flies raging like a torrent at the beginning of summer. The joy of walking back to the cabin in total darkness – without a flashlight, guided by the wisdom of a body dissolving into the world.
2. Teachers
In the 1980s the unimaginably insightful being who was our Teacher was the force that motivated the Dharma Centre. We were there because the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche was there.
At the same time a new generation of truly wonderful teachers was emerging from his shadow. I learned a huge amount from conversations or chance encounters with (Lama) Sonam, Tarchin, Jeff (Lama Lodro), Cecilie Kwiat, Catherine Rathbun, (Lama) Mark Webber, Karma Chime and (Sonam) Senge. They were clearly working with the same questions as we were and had reflected on them deeply. Each of them had a different and interesting response to the Teaching. All were inspirational because they had been and still were students like the rest of us. Looking back I am truly grateful they all persevered with teaching, given our often mulish resistance to listening to them because they weren’t Rinpoche.
3. Friendships
When I was living in the Arctic, years after my departure from the DCC, I was part of a comprehensive health survey that covered psychological as well as physical health issues. One of the questions they asked was something like “If you are having a difficult time in your life, how many people can you talk to about it?” I had to think for a few seconds to count. Then I said, “I dunno – maybe forty?” Long pause on the other end of the line. Almost all of the people I could think of were “admirable Dharma friends” – Kalyāṇa-mitta.
In the long run it is the web of the Sangha that keeps the Teaching alive. For this reason I think the kitchen and dining room have always been the real heart of the Dharma Centre. Classes and empowerments in the Temple and time spent in retreat spaces are of course invaluable elements of practice. Encounters with actual people in the real circumstances of the Main House are where the Teaching is electric and in action. They are a constant and rigorous test of love, active caring, curiosity and equanimity.
Those are a few of my lasting impressions from the Dharma Centre thirty to forty years ago. In retrospect I can see now just how much Nature – the land itself at the DCC – was teaching us in infinite ways. And I now see that the success of the Centre lies more in the quality of our Dharma friendships, our love and support for each other, than in particular details of one school of thought or another. Maybe we put a little bit too much emphasis on Buddha and Dharma, and do not see clearly just how much the Sangha really carries us.
Brian McLeod