Part One

I could barely contain my excitement as I thumbed my way up the length of England, from Oxford to the southern perimeter of the Lake District. Conishead Priory, the newly-acquired residence of the recently formed Manjusri Institute. The retreat with the Western Buddhists was still fresh in my mind. It had been so enjoyable, so fulfilling, so welcoming and all-round marvellous. Any expectations had been comprehensively exceeded. And now I was off to spend time with the Big Boys of BuddhaDharma, the true holders of great wisdom, the teachers of Tibetan Buddhism.

I arrived, the retreat began. And at last the weather broke. All of a sudden the world became dark, cold, dank. Everything I touched seemed to exude damp; in the morning I would put on my clothes and feel the chill moisture cling next to my skin. 

The cold clammy feeling seemed to echo the atmosphere of the priory itself. Dark and enormous, outsize for our spiritual endeavours, it was in urgent need of renovation after being left empty for a number of years.

This was, after all, a priory, where the ghosts of centuries-old god-fearing religion still stalked the corridors in dead of night. The rooms and corridors were drafty, unwelcoming.

Mirroring the atmosphere of the place was much of the communication between participants. The retreat with the Western Buddhists had been immeasurably enriched by the quality of the contact between people there. Joy, appreciation, openness were key ingredients in the mix; I had never experienced such connections among a group of people before. Here in the priory, despite the occasional exception, there was a general coolness in the communication. The feeling seemed to be that what happened between people on the retreat was unimportant. The important channels were with, or through, the gurus, the lamas. Everything was up, up, up, leaving the spiritual aspirant - well, this spiritual aspirant, at any rate - a bit isolated, and bereft of nourishing human contact.

The atmosphere was a come-down. OK. But maybe we'd do better on the teachings-and-practice front. 

Part Two

Two lamas were on site to provide the teachings, the words of Buddhist wisdom: Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Thubten Yeshe. Between them, they constituted a brilliant double act, a kind of spiritual Laurel and Hardy.    

Zopa, diminutive and ethereal, would turn up and, in his broken, difficult-to-comprehend English, punctuated by deep guttural sounds, deliver teachings on Buddhadharma. His discourses generally centred around impermanence and death, the vicious state of samsara, the painful nature of human existence, the perils of rebirth in the lower realms. You get the picture.

Then, just as we were all about to buy a one-way ticket into the Lake District and jump off the top of Scafell Pike, Lama Yeshe would make an entrance. Grinning, radiant, cracking jokes, he would immediately put us at ease. Life's not so bad, he would inform us: we have a fantastic chance to practice Dharma, don't get too hung up on silly games. Then he'd dance off out of the shrine room, and we'd live to fight another day. 

There was one time - and one time only - when Zopa found something really funny. He told a story about a poor Tibetan farmer. He lived an extraordinarily tough life atop the highland windswept plateau of Tibet. He worked his fingers to the bone simply to keep his family alive. Then, one day, he won something - the equivalent of the lottery, I think. He was overjoyed. No more struggles merely to subsist; he and his family could live comfortably now. He was so elated that he jumped up and down with excitement, hit his head on the wooden rafters above him, and dropped down dead.

Lama Zopa found the story hilarious. The rest of us looked on, in a mix of horror and shock, as he continued to laugh at his story. He hit deep and straight into our 'sacredness of life' belief systems, our nicey-nicey attitudes and assumptions, rather than grasping the bitter nettle of the story, about avoiding losing mindfulness in whatever circumstances. What a great teaching it was, pointing up the profound difference between Tibetan notions of real compassion, and our westernised lovey-dovey, full-of-pity fake version.

The lamas were great; their presence made a lasting impression, and I learned a lot. For the rest, though, I wasn't so sure. Not at all....

Part Three

One evening deep into the retreat, during meditation, a supercharged atmosphere manifested in the shrine room. Everyone felt it; unmistakeable. We were doing some visualisation of nadis, energy channels located on either side of the spine. Liquid silver rose up to the crown chakra at the top of my head, reminiscent of some of the do-it-yourself meditation I would practise in the commune of an evening. But this, being collective, was far more powerful.

The following morning, it was all that anyone could talk about. "The lamas must have been really beaming something down last night": such was the main takeaway for many retreatants. I was taken aback. There were sixty of us on the retreat, meditating wholeheartedly together for a fortnight. Was it not just possible that we generated the energy ourselves, without the saintly intercession of the lamas? I could not believe that people would give away their power so easily.

On another occasion a group of us was working in the garden. "The monks and nuns don't do gardening" volunteered one of the more experienced retreatants. "It's not allowed. They might kill worms and insects. Bad karma for them."

Once more, I was gobsmacked. What about us? What about me? If anyone needs a bit of decent karma at the moment, it's me. I'm not here as a second-class karma slave. I'm up for Enlightenment as much as anyone. I'm not playing this ecclesiastical hierarchy game. 

For the culminating period of the retreat we did the monkish food trip: one meal a day, and no eating after midday. The intention is to simplify the routine, remove distraction, and release energy for spiritual ends. In my case, the result was rather different. Constant, gnawing hunger, along with a preoccupation with nourishment, diverted most of my attention and energy away from the noble transcendental quest.

One afternoon I took a long, solitary walk through the grounds and down to the sands. It was imperative to try and sort my head out. En route, brazenly paraded on either side of the narrow path, were row upon row of magnificent blackberry bushes, all showing off their fully ripened fruit. Their succulent blackness glistened and glinted, the afternoon sun reflected by the sparkling moisture from the recent rains which hung tantalisingly from the voluptuous fruits.

It was the Garden of Eden re-enacted, except with soft fruits instead of apples. I looked around to ensure that nobody was spying on me, before grabbing handfuls and gobbling them down.

Ejected from paradise? I didn't know. The afternoon now descended into a psychological torment of doubt and unease, guilt even. The precepts were serious stuff; we were told this repeatedly. Failure to adhere to your promises brought serious consequences in its wake. Big-time karma awaits - was I going to be spending an aeon in those frozen hells that Zopa was so fond of talking about?

A voice in my head told me this was all bullshit, but the fear and guilt were undisputable. For all their undoubted wisdom and compassion, the lamas were unable to fathom the depth of the psychological mess that two thousand years of Christianity had landed we westerners in. They just didn't get the morbid fear and guilt which so easily twisted our practice of their wonderful Buddhadharma; they could not conceive of the ease with which we might give away our personal power to somebody who wasn't even asking for it. Despite my personal confusions and lack of experience of retreats, this much was crystal clear to me.   

On the final morning of the retreat, Lama Zopa conferred his blessings on us all. We filed in line with our little white scarves, which he would place over our bowed heads while quietly intoning some mantras and intoning blessings.

It came to my turn. He placed the scarf across the back of my neck before placing two fingers gently on either side of my head. As he did so, an electric charge passed from one side of my skull to another. I was surprised, a little amazed, even; it was a reminder that these guys were serious, and were genuinely able to tap into energies, or 'power'.

Part Four

It was nearly time to leave. I scanned the crowded room looking for the organisers of the retreat. Two friendly and approachable Englishmen who seemed, nevertheless, a far cry from the emissaries of Buddhist anarcho-freakdom that I truly might identify with. They looked like accountants more than budding crazy yogis. Rightly or wrongly, I sensed none of that fire, that vital energy and personal power that I had tuned into among a number of the Western Buddhists.

I finally tracked down the taller of the two. "I won't be moving in after all" I stammered uneasily. A cloud of confusion enveloped his face. I had, after all, expressed my clear intent, as well as donating a sizeable chunk of my commune savings to the project. "That's OK" I volunteered. "It's a gift. A gift is a gift. Good luck with the project."

The accountants gave me a lift south in their nice car. In our absence from the 'outside world' a miracle had taken place. The desert that was England in August had disappeared. Back had come the lushness, the green, the moist fertility that is England. For me, however, there was no real sense of returning home. I was a stranger in a strange land.....  

Images: Conishead Priory, Tibetan Buddhist centre, today.

             Lama Zopa.

             Green and pleasant land.