At the end of February of 2018 I boarded a plane, and then another plane, spent a night in a hotel, and took a shuttle bus to get to Gampo Abbey. This journey was a long time coming as I’d wanted to visit the Abbey for many years—since first learning about the annual 49-day-retreat I was finally going to attend. The retreat, called Yarne, is a time when the residents of the Abbey, along with a selected few lay practitioner guests, cloister themselves for the winter for a time of deep study and practice.
I knew of the retreat from a handful of the dozens of recorded talks I have of Ani Pema Chödrön given during this time. Each year offered guidance on a particular Buddhist text, such as the Bodhicharyavatara or Lojong slogans, or particular vows such as the Pratimoksha vow, Bodhisattva vow, and Tantric vow. In 2018 the chosen area of study and practice was the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which included a transmission of the wisdom of the Five Buddha Families. During one of the talks that Ani-la gave on these five embodiments of wisdom, she proposed The Noble Experiment: What if you committed, for just five years, to learn to see the wisdom in even the most uncomfortable and intense emotions that arise?
Several of us perked up at this idea, discussed it, and agreed we would all engage in the Noble Experiment. Over the next five years we would stay in touch as we could while individually working with the intensity of fear, anger, rage, grief, sadness—whatever might arise—as a means to wake up.
The timing of the commitment to be present with difficult, challenging, unwanted emotions couldn’t have been better. 2018 was a year of great personal challenges and immense change both within my life and in the broader social and cultural context. Indeed, since 2016, many of us were reeling with fear as fascism started to arise around the world at an alarming rate. By 2018 I was more aware than ever of the systems of oppression at play all over the globe.
Choosing to depict the Five Buddha families in a contemporary way, applicable to our current context, was as much a support for the Noble Experiment as my meditation practice. As I lay down the grid and sketched out each Buddha’s form, I went deep into what they represent within myself and within the world.
As the years have ticked by, the pandemic began, and I felt gratitude that I had cultivated this practice of being present to what is most uncomfortable with curiosity and gentleness. I would even say that gentleness is not so much an aspect of being able to do the practice as it is an outcome. Being there fully with the terror I feel at our uncertain future shows me how to recognize the wisdom of every Buddha family in different ways—the love and care of Amitabha, the generosity and abundance of Ratnasambhavha, the protective wrath of Akshobya, the joyous momentum of Amoghasiddhi, and the spacious ease of Vairocana. Each of these aspects create a container of compassion in which to rest.
January 16th, 2022 marks the opening day of Yarne1 and this year is the beginning of the fifth and final year of The Noble Experiment. This is not to say I will not continue to work with the strongest, most uncomfortable emotions when this year ends. As with every practice integrated into my life, it has become a habit and even, in some moments, a joy.
I do not know what this year will bring, nor the coming years. I do not know how long society as it is will last before finally crumbling under the unsustainable weight of Capitalist greed and self-interest. I do not know when the reality of irreversible climate change created by colonialist white supremacist capitalism will force us to radically change, or accept extinction.
In Buddhism we are taught that the future is unwritten. The past cannot be changed. The only time we have is right now, right here, in the present moment. The past can inform us about how the choices we make right now will inform the future that is constantly coming into being.
In this, the fifth year of The Noble Experiment, I am partaking in Yarne from afar. The topic of study at Yarne are the Lojong Slogans, as they once were years ago. It is fitting, again, that I completed my commentaries on these slogans this past year, and I now have an oppotunity to revisit the original talk of Ani-la’s that encouraged me to practice with them in the first place.
The Lojong slogans were one of the first Buddhist texts I encountered and one of the ones I’ve been practicing with the longest. The Noble Experiment was one of the most recent formal practice commitments I’ve made. Both of them are dear to me. They are with me in any given moment, along with the Bodhisattva vow, the Heart Sutra, and the Dakini.
Whatever arises in the uncertainty of an unwritten future co-created by the choices of every living being, I trust in the ground of my practice, informed as it is by so much wisdom. My hope (without attachment) is that these teachings continue to be of benefit, to help me meet my edges and expand them. To inform my commitment to anti-racism and decolonialism. To sustain my capacity for service and support the need for rest.
May it be so.
FOOTNOTE: The dates of Yarne change each according to moon cycles, as it is based on the lunar calendar, not the Gregorian calendar.
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Some posts from my time at Gampo Abbey….