The first thing I asked the 30 people gathered this August for the first How to Train a Happy Mind three-day retreat at Vajrapani Institute was, “How did you find out about it?” The answers ranged from a woman in Indiana who stumbled upon the How to Train a Happy Mind book in her local library, to a podcast fan from Florida on a cross-country pilgrimage, to a man jogging by who popped into Vajrapani to check it out and decided to sign up for the retreat! He’s the first “walk in” I ever heard of at this remote retreat center at the end of a 4-mile dirt road in the mountains above Boulder Creek, California. There was even a 14-year-old boy at the retreat, who I worried might not be ready for it. I’d never seen anyone under 18 at a retreat before, but during lunch on the last day, the young man said he had a moving experience that would likely help him through High School’s travails.
This was the first time I led the 12 topics of the book in such a compressed time, and both I and the retreatants found it quite moving. Advancing straightaway from topic-to-topic, you feel the beautiful, profound arc of the stages of the path as each builds upon the next, from the precious life and embracing impermanence, to love, compassion, and the ultimate nature of reality.
Since the meditation retreat was geared toward beginners, I mixed aspects of a silent meditation retreat with a more open, relaxed period from lunch through dinner where people could chat with one another to become “dharma friends.” This helped retreatants find support from others with a shared an interest in bringing ideas from Buddhism, like lovingkindness, into their daily life.
This thousand-year old sequence proved its impact at the retreat’s end, as many people expressed teary gratitude for the lineage of Atisha Dipamkara and Lama Tsonghkapa’s lamrim – a concise distillation of the Buddha’s teachings created to develop happy minds, fulfilling relationships, and a better world (not to mention enlightenment, if you believe that is possible!).
Even in its How to Train a Happy Mind secular form, adapted to modern people and non-Buddhists, the topics seemed to hit home and give people tools to go beyond the popular rejuvenation and wellness practices of mindfulness meditation to process past grief, guilt, and trauma, and move joyfully into a future of meaning, purpose, and joy for life.
Vajrapani Institute provided its exquisite retreat and meditation center for our daily meditation instructions. Though not as well known as Spirit Rock or New York’s Insight Meditation Society, Vajrapani was the first Tibetan Buddhist retreat center established in North America. Since the 1970’s, hit has offered a wide range of personal retreats, weekend retreats, group retreats, teacher training, and meditation classes like the one I led. Its programs typically go far beyond therapeutic mental health benefits to instill a lasting sense of well-being through Buddhist meditation techniques like equanimity, metta, vipassana meditation, and walking meditations.
Thank you Vajrapani Institute for the invitation to lead this retreat, and to all the people who took four days out of their life to be part of it. We are already planning to do it again next year!
Several of the retreatants have also joined our Train a Happy Mind community, where we all practice together on Sunday mornings, 9am Pacific Time. If you aren’t yet a member, signup is free or by donation at trainahappymind.org.
