RETREAT

Basically, there are two essential qualities that we require in Buddhist
practice. The first is that we are able to withdraw from society for a time, be
it a few hours, a few days, a few months or a few years. The other
requirement is being able to take whatever we have gained from our
experience of isolation and bring it back to the world – to our relationships
and into our everyday life. Like breathing in and breathing out, we need
both.
Sometimes people are very impressed by hearing about the merit of
retreats – three years, seven years, life-long retreats – and we have the idea
that maybe if we could do that too, then we could really get somewhere. But
we are ordinary people. We can’t do that, so we feel that there is not much
hope that our practice will become very profound.
But actually, it is not so much the quantity as the quality that counts.
Anyone can sit in a three- year retreat with a distracted mind and not gain
very much from it. Or anyone can sit for a three day retreat, very focused on
what one is doing in the practice, and even in three days can experience some
transformation. So I think it’s not a ma􀄴er of the length of time, or how many
mantras you do, how many prostrations you do, how many this, how many
that. It is not a spiritual bank account that we are trying to accumulate. The
important question we always have to ask is – fundamentally, has there been
any change?
The great pandita of the 11th century said that the critical issue of judging
any kind of retreat practice is whether at the end of it our negative emotions
– our anger, our greed, the basic delusions of our mind – has been lessed or
not. Even if we have been in retreat for 12 years, nothing has been a􀄴ained if
we still have the same internal problems, the same a􀄴achment and greed,
the same basic delusion of the mind.
It doesn’t ma􀄴er how many millions of mantras we have done, how many
inner tantras we have accomplished. This is very important. All these
practices are nothing if they do not transform the mind. If the mind is the
same as the one we went in with, we have not progressed. Even worse,
perhaps we are very proud because we feel we are great practitioners now.
We are very pleased with ourselves, and we say, “I have done that retreat
and I’m an expert in this practice”. In fact, that is adding defilements on top
of the ones which we have not managed to remove. We now have new ones!
Please understand that this is very, very important. Any practice that we
do is for aiding the mind, transforming the mind so that we can genuinely
help others. If this doesn’t happen and we just become kind of smart and
satisfied that we are such good Dharma practitioners because we do three
hours of meditation every day, always do our practice and let everyone
know how often we do our practice and how early we get up – then what is
the use? Do you understand?
Trích trong tập sách THREE TEACHINGS của TENZIN PALMO