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Author: lmermelstein

Number of entries: 1
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://shambhalanetwork.org/members/lmermelstein

Jan 24
Monday

A Three-year Retreat for Our Mandala

Filed underRegions, Atlantic Canada, Featured Stories, International Programs

This is the first article in a series on Sopa Choling and the three-year retreat experience.

On July 15, 2010, Acharya Larry Mermelstein presided at the gate-opening ceremony celebrating the completion of a full retreat cycle at Sopa Choling, the three-year retreat center located at Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia. What follows is his address to the graduating retreatants, which includes the early history of the retreat, tales of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche and their youthful encounters with the legendary Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo. Click here for the second article in this series or click here to read the entire series.

I am honored to be here with all of you and to catch even a glimpse of life at Sopa Choling. I want to thank you, the retreatants, because in my line of work, it’s so nice when somebody uses our translations. And you retreatants have used a lot of them, a lot more than most of us. You have just thanked me—really the whole Nalanda Translation Committee—for providing you with the texts for your practice. I think I speak for all my colleagues when I say that we’re in the same boat — appreciating that these texts are in English. Maybe we would find practicing in Tibetan a little easier than you, but I don’t think any of us could practice properly that way. We really do need to practice in our native language—Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swahili—any language. Although English has become a kind of lingua franca and there has been a lot of dharma development of English, I hope that many other languages will also develop that way. It is very important.

I want to speak today about how the creation of the three-year retreat program began in our sangha prior to KhenchenThrangu Rinpoche himself establishing it fully in 1990. You all know how immensely kind Thrangu Rinpoche has been and how central he has been in making the retreat a reality. So with full homage to his contribution, I’d like to tell you about what happened before he became involved.

Sometime around the early 1980s, a few students of the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche became interested in pursuing a three-year retreat program. I would say they didn’t really know much about it, beyond the mystique of the three-year retreat, which suggested it was a great thing to do. Continue…

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