Summer Idyll
by Richard Denner
Richard is a regular volunteer during the summers at Tara Mandala and an invaluable asset to us.

Lightning flashes and thunder rolls very near town, so the management at The Springs asks us to leave because of the risk of lightning striking us in the hot pools. The man at the desk gives us a rain check and says we may have to wait more than an hour, so we decide to go to dinner. Jack, Marta, Susan, Horse, Tommy, and I meet at the Hunan Chinese Restaurant. We have just finished the ten-day Family Retreat, and we are trying to integrate back into the life of Pagosa Springs.

Four Corners. Pagosa Springs. Tara Mandala. My friends. My faith.

Until a few years ago, Pagosa Springs was a one-horse town. These days Pagosa Springs, Colorado is one of the fastest growing communities in the United States. Nestled in the mountains near Wolf Creek Pass, this is where east meets west. The headwaters of the Colorado River run west towards the Gulf of California, and the Arkansas River runs east to join the Mississippi, which eventually empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The area south of the San Juan Mountains is geographically a part of the Southwest. Here are high mountain valleys covered with wildflowers and more wildflowers. This is where all the wildflowers go when they die-a heaven for wildflowers.

Pagosa Springs was settled around a deep, sulfur hot spring next to the San Juan River. The name comes from "pagoosh," a Ute word some of the locals say means healing water and others, stinky water. I've overheard a teenager refer to Pagosa as "Rotteneggville." This stinky, healing water does smell a little weird until you get used to the odor.

This was a health spa long before recorded history. An Anasazi kiva can be found at nearby Chimney Rock. In the 1880's, the ownership of the springs was contested by the Utes and the Navajo. The Utes chose an U.S. Calvary Scout to challenge a Navajo warrior. The Navajo was defeated in a knife fight, and the Ute tribe became the nominal custodians for Uncle Sam. Today, there is a postmodern bath house being built at The Springs, an eclectic blend of Frontier Saloon, Mexican Adobe, and Roman Villa with a touch of neon-a style architect Julia Donaho calls "Southwest Renaissance."

Mountain meadows were an incentive for cattle drives, and a settlement around the springs was inevitable. With snowcapped mountains to the north and east and 14,000 foot pyramidal Pagosa Peak rising above town, with the effulgence of sunsets on the massive granite wall of the Continental Divide, this is one of the most scenically beautiful spots in the world.

Tara Mandala is 15 miles from town, our land wedged between the San Juan Forest and the Ute Reservation. We awake each morning by the conch being blown. The staff holds a Green Tara practice in the yurt, and everyone is invited to attend. Breakfast is at 8:00, and there is just enough time after practice to do a set of the Five Tibetians exercises on the dance platform before the breakfast conch sounds.

We meet for breakfast beneath the mother tree, a giant box elder that shelters the kitchen. The kitchen evolves. This year there is a bar across the refrigerators and a double set of hooks on the cabinet doors to prevent raccoons from ransacking the foodstuffs. Each year there is a special animal that makes its presence felt. Last year it was a badger, the year before, a wildcat. The chipmunks, however, are perennial. They get so fat from eating dropped food that their bellies drag on the ground. I suspect Tara Mandala is a prestigious place to be reborn in the animal realm.

The family retreat has several parts. The adults receive teachings by Carol Fitzpatrick on Green Tara and by Lorain Fox Davis on the medicine wheel. White Horse Hubble is to lead a vision quest, and the teens will be led on an overnight hike by Lorain's daughter, Chris, who is an experienced Outreach leader. Also, there is a plan to build a cob oven.

Robert Francis Johnson has a metaphysical approach to building a cob oven. Clay, sand and straw are the essential ingredients. Wisdom, strength and beauty are the metaphorical supports. A firm foundation is essential to erect any edifice. On this foundation is placed a mound of wet sand, called the "void." Loving hands mould layers of cob to create the oven around this void. There is no smokestack on a cob oven. The proportion of the door size to the chamber after the void has been removed allows for the fire to kindle and the smoke to escape. Cob ovens are used throughout the world to bake bread. At the highest temperature, the cook can bake pizza, and at lower temperatures, start yogurt. The cob is prepared in a similar manner to pressing grapes. Cob people, young and old, remove their shoes, join hands and mix the ingredients with their feet. In the process of building this oven, a chain of friendship beams outward to heaven and inward to the central abyss.

Men and women, boys and girls, all with legends. In the marrow of our lives our dreams fly, while overhead the clouds in a larger current move across the sky.

I listen in prayer and look up through the branches of the box elder. The camp is stirred with frantic search plans for a boy lost returning from the overnight hike. David and Damchü have ridden out to look for him on horseback. The voices of those searching on foot crisscross on walky-talkies. While we are in the prayer circle, Carol envisions the boy seated under a tree along the trail. Later, David tells us that he followed footprints he spotted along a dirt road and found the boy exactly where Carol had seen him in her mind's eye. The boy said he was not really lost. He had overshot the trail he was looking for and was backtracking his way to camp when he was found. So much can happen to us in a minute.

Horse and Lorain are both trained in the Lokota tradition but by different teachers. Their styles of teaching being different, they have to work out their routine. At the sweat lodge, Lorain leads the pipe ceremony, and Horse drums during the sweat. Before the sweat, Horse brings out a Tanka, a buffalo skull with the horns wrapped in red cloth, one side painted with red and white stripes and the other side of the skull painted yellow with white dots. Horse holds the Tanka above his head, and he psychically transforms himself into the whole beast. Lorain tells us about having recently attended a gathering of the pipe holders where the bundle with the pipe from the time of White Buffalo Woman was opened, an event that hadn't happen for many, many years, and that all the pipes were touched to the original pipe to rejuvenate the lineage. Tommy, Horse's assistant, holds Lorain's pipe for each of us to smoke, and then we enter the lodge. I can feel the power of tradition in my cells.

There are four rounds to the sweat, one for those being born, one for the young, one for adults, and one for the aged. We are all invited to pray and partake in song. Lorain adds a lot of water at the end of each round, which raises the humidity considerably, and Horse drums with passion. Sometimes, I feel like I'm the victim of a sweat, that the red man wants to give the white man the "full treatment." The ceremony this afternoon, however, is nothing if not inviting, even when Horse jokes that Grandma Lorain will throw the whole bucket of water on the hot stones to "cool us off."

Water was a teacher this year. The season started off fine, but by the end of the family retreat, the well seemed to have dried up. We added more solar panels to increase the flow of electricity to the pump. We added another ten feet of hose and lowered the pump. We bought a new pump. Finally, it was discovered that the well had been incorrectly cased and that we would have to drill a new well. As the well diggers were backed up with projects, we solved our problem for the summer by filling a large storage tank with water hauled from town, and then we poured the water into the well so it could be pumped up the hill to the holding tank. With gravity flow, we had pressure in the pipes. It was a long way around in order to get back a short distance correctly and many climbs up the hill to see if the tank was full. "Fire is water falling upwards," says sage Hereclitus.

Water? What water? The water isn't a problem for the seasoned veterans of Adzom Rinpoche's Intensive Longchen Nyinthig Retreat. These people get so deep into practice that they become one with the elements. "Sometimes I don't know what is going on," says Steve, "but I just relax and let it happen, figuring, what the heck, everything is everywhere."

As below, so above. The night sky is fine, and the conjunction of Mars in Scorpius is intense, Mars being the esoteric ruler of Scorpius. This summer, Mars is closer to Earth than it has been in years, and it is also in proximity to Antares, a red star in the tail of the Scorpion, which is sometimes referred to as Mars's rival. All in all, a powerful visual and symbolic configuration portending great spiritual accomplishment.

It does get intense-looking for a way through this buddhadrama, an exit out, an exit in. Instress. Inscape. From the head by way of the ear. From the heart by way of the breath. Keeping faith that every blade of grass will attain liberation and the grasshoppers jump for joy.

Everything arises from emptiness. Early morning-the dew on the grass is singing. Robert Olander wears his baseball cap and Mac MacCarthy has on his battered straw cowboy hat, a short-stop for Buddha and a cowboy yogi having a quiet talk.

The light filters down on a standing Tara, light on Susan standing in a green t-shirt with a bucket and a broom. A high lama, a low lama, she wears the hat of assistant retreat coordinator and that of chief latrine supervisor. She is compassion in action.

I watch Robert Petit waltz with a board. Shifting a sheet of half-inch plywood, his hands move gracefully, touching the corners, edging the board into place. He uses a cordless screw gun, which has an entirely different rhythm than a hammer. I'm nostalgic for the rap rap rap of a hammer, although screws do hold the wood firmly. Today, the process is to screw and glue-anything to prevent the erosion of barbarous time! Robert stands back and scrutinizes his project, pulls out his tape measure, looks for his square, picks up his pencil, makes another measurement, takes another step in his carpenter's dance.

We have not one head cook but two. James and Brian are the two-headed cook. Their assistants are Vanessa and Roy. They rise with the sun to stir up something delicious, always reaching far enough to find their joy. Breakfast over, lunches are packed, and the retreatants leave in a caravan for Hidden Valley to do their practices. The day is poised in exultation.

And night time is a time for song and dance. After the Riwo Sangchod Retreat, we party at Tsultrim's and David's new house. Tulku Sangak feels expansive and dances the Warrior Dance of King Gesar, jabbing at the air with an African spear. Ani Tersing tries to translate one of the tulku's poems. Although her English falters, the beauty of her voice is star-flecked. She knows more than she knows she knows. "Red bird...big bird...a vulture...eating dead people on the mountain." We are inspired to sing 'Blackbird Singing' and, much to David's chagrin, 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and, then, 'Om Tare Tutare' to flute and drum. Given the right rhythm, even the dead can dance.
So many decisions, so much chance for derision-the deadly wind of praise and blame. Birget's luscious Tara statue stands before the throne, but Tulku Sangak says he would prefer it stood on the altar with the mandala offering placed in a lower position. However, he does not mention which direction the Tara statue should stand on the altar. Should it face the lama when he's teaching or should it face the entrance? We opt for Tara facing the throne, and Rinpoche laughs uproariously when he enters the yurt and finds he must prostrate to Tara's posterior.

Tulku Sangak meets life with humor and forbearing. He was incarcerated in Chinese prisons for ten years, and while he was there he received many teachings from great lamas. He relates how happy he was when he discovered the blissful state of samadhi and could enter it while he was working at cutting logs, but how this got him into trouble with the guards and the beatings he received. He teaches us how to enter this state with the breathing exercise called chölen, but while he is teaching this practice, a pickup arrives, and the port-a-potty man begins pumping out the honey box. Tulku Sangak is explaining how the seed syllable in the crown chakra melts into nectar when the odor of excrement wafts through the meditation yurt. Eyes roll, noses lift, but everyone seems determined to maintain their composure as they realize the essential unity of the relative and the absolute. Then, Tulku Sangak laughs, and we join him in our appreciation of the irony in this occurrence.

I drift in infinite space, or no space, an illusion of myself in an obscure place, a floating reflection. Emptiness holds me up. And so, what is the next thing to see?

Marta and I are driving along Trujillo Road and see big drops of rain spaced a foot apart turning to hail. Next, a fat, jagged lightning bolt appears to shoot right into town. "Wow, look at that," exclaims Marta. When we get to the Tara Mandala office, Jack is standing in the doorway waving a newsletter, airing the acrid smell of burned electrical wiring from the room. He says, "Sparks flew out of the postage machine and the fax. The computers are down, and the lights are out. The lightning must have struck pretty close." La Plata Electric Co. is soon on the scene, working on a pole up the street, and after the lights come on, the main computer starts up but can't boot its programs and won't shut off, which doesn't bode well for getting any work done in the office today.

Back on the land, everything is peace. I enter the quiet where flies buzz and leaves rustle in their immortality. The silence ends at a yellow bird, a Western Tanager - I looked him up - atop a stalk of last year's mullein. Each moment has its own climax.

Tsultrim is in a year-long personal retreat, but she makes a brief appearance to attend Lama Rinpoche's teachings. We are instructed to avoid eye contact and not to ask for interviews, but near the end of the teaching cycle, the situation loosens up, and I get a chance to relay a few messages from the sangha in California. Tsultrim says I must take the Sky-like Nature of Mind Retreat, that it will be good for my practice. I tell her I have to keep working on the layout of A Brief Biography of Golchen Tulku, but she insists, and I know by the way she looks at me, a look from the molecular level, that she knows best. I'm afraid of shamata practice because I don't think I can sit for lengthy periods in one-pointed meditation, but what I find is that I enjoy these sessions, that my years of tantric training have served me well. My body has been trained to sit. A teacher is the source of all accomplishments. I am blessed by having Tsultrim for my teacher.

During pointing out instructions by Tsok Nyi Rinpoche, a fly flies in my mouth, and I wonder if I will ever get it. Stabilize in rigpa, that is. I'm sitting, and then the fly flies in, and I sit with this fly in my mouth, all revved up, but I'm sitting still, and the fly walks out of my mouth and along my upper lip and onto my nose and then buzzes off into space, and I am left feeling empty and a trifle confused. During the question and answer period, I ask Rinpoche, "If I am sitting in rigpa and the fly is inside me, is the fly in rigpa?" Rinpoche says, "We'll have to ask the fly."

Samsara is an airport surrounding a delayed flight. I'm stretched out with my eyes closed listening to the travelers and the intercom in the Phoenix Airport. "...want my money back…" "...want to be in San Francisco, now…" " ...really no reason for this…" "...is it really raining there?…" "will my luggage arrive?…" "...will the pilots for flight 2807 please report to Gate A6?..." All this inside me.

Now, standing in the family room of my house near Sebastopol, looking into the middle distance, a newspaper at my feet, I'm conscious of the upside down headlines, of the world going topsy-turvy, and things getting desperate, as I reflect on the limpid, blue sky of a summer idyll.

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