10. Transformation

The turning points of our lives are sometimes vivid and sometimes muted. On occasion we don’t even know, at the time, that a particular day is significant. If we have been living for years in a rut of negative thinking, then it is hard to believe that any day is different from the others. I know from experience that change is a process, not an event, and I always insist on this to people who are hoping for a miracle in their own life. Outside of Hollywood films, change usually happens in fits and starts over years, not with dramatic gestures that alter everything in ten seconds flat. I have also observed that change rarely takes place on a smooth upward curve. It’s messier, more circular; we must slide back before we go forward, or we stall and drift, sometimes for years, as was the case in my own life. So it’s fair to say that I don’t have much faith in epiphanies, but, even so, I vividly recall the impact of that hungover morning in Colorado in the spring of 1980. I felt disgust. I saw that I had lost control and lost my dignity. I had a strong sensation that I absolutely did not want that life any more. I returned to New York feeling chastened and concerned. What should I do with this feeling that I could not go on as I was? What could I do differently?

I was too busy to focus on the matter for long. His Holiness the Karmapa was coming in a few months’ time to inaugurate KTD and I had work to do. But my mind was restless. I spent every possible spare moment in Central Park, which was my favourite place in the city. It felt like an oasis of nature. I would sit on a park bench and just try to let my mind calm so that I might understand what to do next with my life. Akong had sent word that after the inauguration he wanted me to return to Samye Ling to help him with the running of the centre. Now that I had acquitted myself well, he wanted me back. Perhaps he was also concerned about me going off the rails in the big city and with Trungpa relatively close by. I think he wanted to have me back under his wing.

The problem was, I had absolutely no desire to do more administrative work. It would have felt as if my life were moving backwards, returning to Scotland and that world where Akong ruled. But what could I do instead? Time seemed to be running out for me. Where were the freedom and purpose I sought? I had thought I would find them in the States, but here I was, thirty-seven years old, five years after I arrived, and still so confused.

I would try to get my thoughts in order as I watched people come and go. Central Park might have been beautiful on a sunny afternoon, but in those days it was regarded as dangerous and there were always a lot of policemen (mostly white), stopping and searching mostly young African American and Puerto Rican men. If they didn’t have the right papers, the unspoken rule was that they would have to slip the cops some money. The police just ignored me. I was an Asian man in a smart three-piece suit. I think they couldn’t work out which category to put me in.

The whole city was far edgier then than it is these days. There was a lot of crime, violence, racial tension and poverty. I began to see this side of New York more and more clearly. One day when I was walking up Broadway I saw a massive guy hit an innocent woman in the eye. She lay on the pavement screaming for help but nobody came. I could not understand it. I rushed to her side and asked people in the street why they were not helping. They told me that if I got involved, the police would question me for hours. I felt that my better instincts, like everyone else’s, were shrivelling up. We were all – black, white, Asian, Latino – prisoners of this mentality in which compassion had been sacrificed to self-interest. We were only half alive.

I had spent years living among the elites around Manhattan, Long Island, Washington, Boulder and Los Angeles. For a long time I’d believed in the idea of America as an optimistic and equitable place, built on aspirations for a better life. Now I felt that my eyes had been opened to the poverty of this materialistic viewpoint. For millions of people life was tough in the heart of the Western world. Even among the white middle classes whom I met at our centre and Trungpa’s, I saw how unhappy people were. They were so attached to everything they had acquired, but on some level they knew it was worthless. I was lost, and I was waking up to the fact that almost everyone around me was lost too.

There was an obvious exception in those who had stepped onto a spiritual path. Many of them were my Tibetan companions, others were new to Buddhism, but all were sincere and humble. I had never been either of those things, especially not in my relationship with Dharma, but sitting in Central Park I felt my mind settle down. Its waters were clearing and I began to think I could make out my next step.

His Holiness the Karmapa arrived in New York and as usual I was his official driver. Jamgön Kongtrül, one of his four Heart Sons, was travelling with His Holiness. One day when just the two of us were in the car, Jamgön Kongtrül said to me, ‘You don’t realize how well His Holiness treats you. Not even other high lamas are treated like you. But you have no gratitude. You just take it all for granted.’ This really affected me. It touched my heart. I reflected that I was no longer young and I was just wasting my life. I made a decision. It was time to renounce my old ways.

Within days of this conversation I’d resolved to ask the Karmapa to ordain me as a Buddhist monk. I didn’t want to take getsul, or novice ordination, which is the traditional provisional step on the path to taking full vows. I was determined to move straight to gelong, or life ordination, which entails taking more than 250 precepts that date back to the time of the historical Buddha. I knew with absolute certainty that I needed to become a monk, to go into long retreat and give myself over to contemplation and meditation, in order to tame my mind so that I might eventually be able to help others. This certainty flowered in me over the course of a few days. It was as if this joyful commitment had been waiting only for the auspicious moment to burst into full bloom.

I went to His Holiness and asked him to bestow upon me full ordination. I promised that if he gave me these vows I would not break them. He was overjoyed. He looked at me with that radiant expression of his that seemed to encompass the whole world.

I felt a tremendous relief when His Holiness accepted my request. Once I had decided that I wanted to be ordained, I never wavered. I had a serene conviction that none of my time had been wasted. Those years spent drifting in a cloud of muddled thinking and rancour had allowed me to accumulate the life experiences I needed, in just the right balance, so that I would be fully prepared for this moment.

Many people at the time were sceptical. Some in the Tibetan community, including Akong, were horrified. He said to me, ‘How do you expect to keep the vows when both Trungpa and I (who are recognized tulkus) could not keep our monastic vows in the West? If you break this vow you will go straight to the hell realm in your next life.’

It didn’t upset me, because I knew I had earned this reaction. I had never shown any serious interest in or sincere devotion to the Three Jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. True, I was absolutely devoted to His Holiness the Karmapa and I respected Trungpa greatly, but I think many observers attributed that to the fact that the two of them had always been supportive of me personally. While that was certainly the case, I had learned so much from Trungpa and been profoundly touched by the Karmapa. They had been readying me, almost without my knowing. When I realized I needed to abandon the life I was living there was only one place for me to go.

Still, the transition from selfish waster to monk was quite extreme and I can understand that it might look to some people as if it all happened mysteriously quickly. Even now, when I’m telling my story and I come to this part some people look at me quizzically, as if to say, ‘How did you change so fast? What was the process?’

I think there are a number of explanations. One is that I had in fact been preparing for this moment all my life. It was a question of the timing needing to be right. Secondly, I am a person of extremes. In this I am typical of Khampas, people from my native region of Kham, who tend to have the mindset that if you’re going to do something you should do it in a big way or not at all! So, for example, I never drank alcohol again after that morning in Boulder, Colorado. Moderation is simply not my way. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person. That’s why I never took drugs. I feared I would be a junkie if I went down that route. I am simply grateful that I had sufficient self-knowledge to recognize this about myself and eventually, after years of false starts, to put it to good use.

The third explanation is that such transformations are ultimately a bit mysterious. Can any of us truly say that we know why we do what we do? Why do we fall in love? Why do we choose the person we marry? In each case there will be many reasons but there is also mystery. What I can say is that my decision to become a monk felt both easy and absolutely right. That is not to say that it was easy to learn to live as a monk, or to purify my mind. That process was arduous; in fact it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I am fortunate, though, that despite the challenges I have never wavered in my commitment. At the time the fact that His Holiness the Karmapa supported me was the ultimate confirmation that I was doing the right thing. I was terribly in awe of His Holiness. I felt he could see into my mind. If he was happy to ordain me, it must be the correct decision. Gradually everyone else came to see it in the same way: His Holiness had agreed, and his was the ultimate stamp of approval.

By far the most significant voice of support was my brother’s. From the moment His Holiness agreed to my request, Akong was supportive. He came to the States to be at my ordination ceremony, and I felt that the dynamic between us was different. The old mistrust and resentment had softened. I think he was still a little sceptical, and I had not yet spent years in retreat purifying my negative thoughts, so they lingered, but we were glad to see each other after more than five years apart.

My ordination ceremony was just one small part of a much bigger concern: the Karmapa’s visit to see his newly finished seat at KTD. I have never felt prouder than on the day I stood with Akong, Trungpa, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, who was abbot of KTD, and so many other revered masters of Tibetan Buddhism as His Holiness blessed the centre that I had been instrumental in helping to establish. I was leaving behind that layperson’s role and stepping into a different, sacred space. My plan was to go into solitary retreat for five years as soon as His Holiness’s visit came to a close. His Holiness had advised me to spend twenty years in retreat, but I thought that was a bit of a tall order! I was a novice Buddhist practitioner about to embark on many years of solitary practice. Sometimes I think I must have been a little crazy. But I had the feeling, shortly to be proved correct, that I needed to spend time in retreat before I would be ready to live as a monk in the world.

The ordination ceremony took place in the centre’s main shrine room, which had been the ballroom in the original house. It had been painted and fitted out with thangkas (religious paintings), statues and other beautiful artworks. There were two of us taking ordination: me and another man, a European. I wasn’t nervous at all. The ceremony took all day and required ten masters of the Kagyu lineage to officiate, but I was guided through the words and I felt a deep feeling of peace and rightness. The warmth of the community was wonderful. I felt the total support of everybody who was there. Above all I was immensely grateful to His Holiness. I felt deeply privileged. After the ceremony I was no longer Jamdrak, Akong’s little brother, scoundrel and waster. I was now Yeshe Losal. This filled me with happiness.

I spent the night after the ceremony in a tent in the grounds of KTD. I had offered my bungalow, where I was planning to live in retreat, to Akong, so that he would be comfortable. Just as I was preparing to go to sleep I heard someone unzipping my tent. A very attractive woman from the community popped her head through the opening and clambered in. She had been flirting with me for days but I couldn’t believe she had come to pay me a visit.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked her and for answer she tried to kiss me. I was totally shocked. I was a monk now. I was a different person. But apparently not that different, because I felt the familiar pull of desire.

I didn’t hesitate. I scrambled out of the tent and ran away from her as fast as I could. It is difficult to become a different person overnight, or, in this case, during just one day, even if it is the day of one’s ordination! I had spent years indulging myself with no thought for the consequences. Those habits had not yet been purified by vigilant practice.

I did not blame the woman. I regarded her actions as an expression of mara, which is the Sanskrit word for ‘obstacle’. Buddhism teaches that when we embark on something positive we attract negative opposing forces, which can take a variety of forms. This is not to say that attractive women are maras in themselves; it refers more to the context – if you are a man with a strong sexual drive who has renounced sexual activity and then an attractive woman pursues you then this is a mara. The teachings suggest that it is best to avoid any situation that might give rise to maras, as much as we can, until we have enough inner strength and stability not to be affected by them. Then we can adopt them onto the path, which means working with them by not avoiding or indulging them. This incident simply confirmed to me that I must enter retreat as soon as possible, otherwise I was at risk of breaking my vow of celibacy. I was not prepared to let that happen. In fact I had taken a personal vow that if I broke my ordination vows I would kill myself. I was still the same old creature of extremes!

The Karmapa was going on a visit to Washington DC before he returned to India and he asked me to accompany him, along with Trungpa and a number of other monks. The time I spent with His Holiness on this trip was infinitely precious to me, as it was already apparent that he was not in good health. It was probable that once he returned to India and I went into retreat, I would not see him again in his current incarnation.

This trip also provided my introduction to participating in Buddhist rituals as a monastic, for which I was woefully unprepared. On one occasion His Holiness was conducting a puja, a ritual of chanting, mantras and visualizations that invokes a tantric deity. The idea is that we learn to see reality through the eyes of the deity, leaving behind our mundane dualistic way of looking at things. Instead of believing that we are an individual who is separate from other people and external objects, we see everything and all beings as interconnected and sacred. It is a way of getting in touch with our own innate Buddha Nature.

There I was in the front row, chanting in Tibetan, doing various hand gestures – mudras – and invoking elaborate visualizations as many hundreds of people watched, when I suddenly realized how little I knew about the daily activities of a monk. For as long as I could remember I had been rebelling against the monastic lifestyle. I had no idea what I was doing! Jamgön Kongtrül even had to turn the pages of the text for me because I could not follow them. I had everything to learn.

After the Washington DC trip ended, His Holiness went on to Trungpa’s centre in Vermont. As we said goodbye he told me, ‘Now go back to Woodstock and start your retreat.’ I admitted that I did not think I was capable of simply sitting in meditation for years as he had previously recommended. He suggested I do the Karma Pakshi practice, which combines Guru Yoga, protector and deity practice all in one. Guru Yoga opens our heart to the grace of our teacher and his lineage, through fervent prayer. Protector practice invokes the blessing of a Dharma protector, which helps clear obstacles to our spiritual practice. Deity practice awakens our innate potential, our Buddha Nature. His Holiness knew that I was not that well versed in all the elaborate Tibetan practices, and felt this one would cover all bases.

On my return to Woodstock I set about building a small extension to my bungalow. Akong and I worked together for almost a week, passing tools from one to another, chatting about practicalities or labouring in companionable silence. I was deeply grateful for his help. I found the task very calming and I think this period helped to prepare my mind to relinquish the old resentment I felt towards him. Then I said goodbye to him and to a small group that had gathered to wish me well, and I went inside the cabin that would be my home for the next five years.

It was very basic. In the extension was a shrine and my meditation box, which was where I slept in a seated position, as was traditional for those on retreat in Tibet. The box was half bed, half meditation seat, with a ledge for prayer texts. It was beautifully decorated and one of my most valued possessions. The cabin’s main room was a simple square with a small kitchen, a toilet and a bathtub as well as an attic space. It was cold in winter, but it was light and bright and looked out onto the woods. There was a Western nun on retreat not far away and Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s cabin was also close by, though since I had opted for solitary retreat I would see nobody except those masters who came to give me instruction. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche checked in on me once a month and I had a substantial meal delivered once a day, though I had no interaction with the person who brought it to me. So I was very much alone apart from the badger and the snakes that lived beneath the cabin, the squirrels in the wall cavities and the deer that appeared outside my window looking for the scraps of food I sometimes tossed out.

I had swapped my comfortable and highly social life for one of confinement and solitude. Instead of travel, flirtation, rich food, meeting new people in meditation centres and in nightclubs, and general gadding about, I was going to spend years in this small space with little company but my own thoughts. I was not exactly worried but I knew that I needed to be disciplined in my approach. I did try to follow His Holiness’s injunction to do Karma Pakshi practice, but I quickly realized that although my body was content to be contained within my cabin, my mind wanted to be anywhere else in the world but there! It was jumping about like a wild monkey. I spoke to Khenpo Karthar about this and he advised me to do thousands of prostrations every day. I was back to doing prostration practice, as I had in Rumtek, but this time I threw every ounce of my being into it.

Prostration practice is physically arduous and very rigorous. It involves doing full-length prostrations while reciting a devotional prayer and imagining taking refuge in all the masters of our spiritual lineage. You can’t really daydream or ruminate while you’re doing prostration practice, because it engages your body, your speech and your mind so fully. I found it exhausting but effective. Gradually, over weeks and months, it helped tame my mind and bring me into the present moment. Even so my mind still jumped around a lot. So Khenpo Karthar then instructed me to do shinay, or calm-abiding meditation, as well as prostrations. Modern mindfulness meditation derives from shinay meditation. The idea is to tether the mind to a focal support in the present moment such as breathing or a mantra, and each time the mind wanders we bring it back to the focal support, again and again and again.

In the beginning of my retreat I slept a lot. I think this was a form of avoidance. But you cannot sleep for five years, so I had no option but to find a way to deal with my unworkable mind. I persisted with the prostrations and the shinay as best I could, alternating between them day after day. I was absolutely unwavering. Even when my knees were lacerated from throwing myself on to my prostration board, I continued. After a while I no longer needed to use a mala and pebbles to keep track of how many I had done. I just counted in my head. I lost a lot of weight because I was only eating one full meal a day and a small breakfast, and the prostration practice was vigorous and energy-consuming. It was all very tough-going, but the physical discomfort was the least of my problems. I had spent my whole life running away from any boring or unpleasant situation, and refusing to face myself. Now I had an uphill battle overcoming these powerful habits.

To make matters even more challenging, about six months or so after I went into retreat, work started on building the centre’s temple. The site was right next to my cabin. Every day when I began a particular prayer the cement mixers would whirr into action. The noise of drilling and workmen shouting was constant and I grew so annoyed that eventually I spoke to Khenpo Karthar about it. I was convinced that the workmen were deliberately sabotaging my meditation practice! KK replied that the workers had noticed that I kept very regular hours. There was a particular series of loud and vigorous chants that accompanied yogic jumps called beps, in which I leaped up and then landed in full lotus on a mat. The labourers took them as their cue to fire up the cement mixers.

As well as the noise, I had been cut off from both electricity and running water. I didn’t actually mind this too much. I decided to use rainwater to wash my clothes and flush my toilet. For drinking I relied on a small quantity of water brought from the main centre with my food. The Western nun in the next cabin was in the same predicament and she demanded that people drag large containers of fresh water up for all her needs. She also wrote and received a lot of letters. I decided to write none. I could see how the Western lifestyle made it hard to find simplicity and renunciation.

Throughout my first year in retreat I was haunted by images of my escape from Tibet. I thought obsessively about the loss of my family. The nightmares I had suffered for years came with even more frequency and I spent my waking hours tormented by painful memories and imaginings of what might have become of my loved ones. I was grieving. I was processing the loss and the trauma that I had spent years evading. This is typical of what happens when we sit down to do meditation, especially as we go deeper into our practice. Prolonged meditation can unearth deeply buried thoughts and emotions. This is precisely what happened to me.

I knew I needed to address this problem, because if I did not it would become a big obstacle to my progress. So I cultivated the thought that those Chinese soldiers who had shot at us and still chased me in my dreams were not the enemy. They were not responsible for my suffering. In fact they too had suffered through that event. The only ones who were truly responsible were the leaders of the People’s Republic of China, Mao and Zhou Enlai. But they too were sentient beings and were labouring under the spell of ignorance and confusion. It occurred to me that by going to the root of my hatred and fear, I might be able to purify those feelings. So I decided to incorporate both Mao and Chou into my prostration practice. Typically we do prostrations while visualizing our father and all male sentient beings on our right-hand side and our mother and all female sentient beings on our left-hand side. I visualized Mao and Chou standing very close to me and imagined that they were doing the practice with me. I did this over and over again.

Then one night I had a very auspicious dream. I dreamed that I had opened up a grocery shop in New York. (So I had gone from a clothes boutique in Dumfries to a food store in New York!) Mao and Chou were my assistants. In my dream they bustled about with aprons on, stocking shelves and serving customers. After that I had no more nightmares and I found it much easier to turn my waking thoughts away from disturbing memories and imaginings. My mind began to settle and I felt more at peace.

I often tell this story to my students when they come to me with feelings of despondency about their practice. It is not unusual to run into obstacles once we get beyond the initial honeymoon phase of meditation. Some people lose heart and want to give up. I advise them to persevere, to be patient and to hold faith with their practice, because even our most deep-seated obstacles can hold the key to freedom. This is what I discovered with the story of Mao and Chou.

So good things were happening to me but it was still tough. Some days I felt like giving up. Then, in 1981, an opportunity presented itself for me to escape from retreat and I very nearly took it. Akong wrote to me with the news that the Chinese had relaxed their restrictions on visiting Tibet. He had managed to go back for the first time since our escape and discovered that our parents were still living in our homeland. I could do the same.

I was overjoyed to hear that they were still alive and immediately hatched a plan to see them. I had some money in the bank. I was determined to go. It seemed perfectly justifiable to me because there was no knowing how much longer they would live, and in Buddhism it is important to revere and respect one’s parents. Though I had to admit to myself that part of my motivation, a large part in fact, was to get out of retreat since it was so much tougher than I possibly could have imagined.

I told Khenpo Karthar my intention the next time he visited me. I thought he would agree that I could pop over to Tibet and then come back and just carry on. Instead he looked at me with a very stern expression and said quite calmly, ‘If you try to leave this retreat cabin I will break both your legs.’ I just stared at him in shock. He didn’t so much as blink.

That was the moment I realized that KK was as uncompromising as the great Tibetan masters of old. His words put a stop to any thought of escape and I resolved never to bring the issue up again. Not that he gave me the opportunity. He didn’t visit me for six months after that conversation. He just left me to stew in my own juices!

I felt terribly ashamed after this because it was clear to me that, though I did of course long to see my family, the visit would have been a pretext to run away from retreat, as I had run away from every challenge I’d ever faced. I had pandered to my mind’s whims all my life and this was the source of my difficulties. Being in retreat was not the problem. The problem was that I had not yet tamed my mind. This realization was a great blessing because things then became very clear. There was a direct link between how I related to my mind and how much happiness or unhappiness I experienced. If I went along with my old habits – if I had left the retreat, for example – it would be gratifying in the short term but over the long term I would not be happy and I would not find any authentic meaning in my life.

This was a hugely significant moment for me. I felt I had understood the cause of my unhappiness for the first time. Even more crucially I could see the way out. This was the realization that the Buddha came to when he left his life of luxury as a prince and wandered alone into the wilderness to meditate. Once he attained Enlightenment his profound realization was encapsulated in his very first teaching, called the Four Noble Truths. He described the first truth as the truth of suffering. The second is the truth of the cause of suffering. The third is the truth of the end of suffering. And the fourth is the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. To put this teaching simply, painful events are unavoidable in life. We fall ill, fall out of love, are hurt, hurt others and eventually die. The suffering we experience as a result of these events is typically compounded by our mind’s treatment of these events. It is always painful to be betrayed in love, say, but once the initial shock has passed, our reaction to the event is what determines how much we suffer. Our mind is the true source of our suffering, and if we can turn to face it, and observe how it is enslaved to habits of attachment and aversion, we have the opportunity to free ourselves from suffering. This is not the work of an instant for any of us but it is perfectly possible. We accomplish it by perfecting the essentials of Buddhist training: ethical conduct, meditation practice and wisdom, all of which are contained in the early Buddhist teaching the Noble Eightfold Path.

Buddha’s core teaching landed like a blow in my heart. I felt profoundly touched and my commitment to retreat was redoubled. Now was the time to take things seriously and make proper use of this precious human life. I asked Akong to pass on my heartfelt message to our parents, and then returned all my focus to my practice. There was no more time to mess around. Even today, I still feel infinitely grateful to Khenpo Karthar for his intervention and for all the instruction he subsequently gave me. My first long retreat was the making of me. I have no doubt that my life would have turned out very differently if I had left it early.

At about this time His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa returned to the United States to receive treatment for the cancer that had spread throughout his body. As a gesture of renunciation I sent him $15,000, which was all the money in my bank account; the money that I’d planned to spend on the trip to Tibet. I also sent him some valuable silver offering bowls and a big thangka (painting), which were some of my most prized possessions. When he received the money and the gifts he did not thank me. The message he sent back read, ‘If you are so intent on giving up all your wealth and possessions then why have you not sent me your fancy bed?’

I was stunned. How could His Holiness have known that the only object of value I had retained was the traditional meditation box that doubled as my bed? His powers of clairvoyance were legendary and always served to increase my faith in him.

His Holiness died shortly afterwards. I was briefly saddened but my overwhelming feeling was of gratitude for having known this remarkable man, and for the benevolence he always showed me. I never lost my feeling that he looks over me. Of course, I have in any case been privileged to meet him again, in his next incarnation as His Holiness the Seventeenth Gyalwa Karmapa, whose discovery and enthronement were two of the most joyful moments of my life.

During the months after my realization of the nature of suffering I continued to struggle. Kalu Rinpoche, the revered meditation master who had been one of the Sixteenth Karmapa’s foremost students, came to KTD and visited me in my retreat cabin. I had met him before in Samye Ling. He used to say of me during the Samye Ling years that I was the worst Tibetan he had ever met! Now he was immensely helpful to me. Once, when I complained about the noise of the construction site outside my window, Kalu Rinpoche said briskly, ‘That is not a problem. Just make the noise part of your practice.’ He said that I should be prepared to die in retreat if need be. That was the kind of attitude I needed to overcome the obstacles in my path.

After two years or so I had finally settled my mind sufficiently to feel that I was ready for more advanced practices. I was fortunate to receive teachings from the many great masters who visited KTD. I would get up at 3 a.m. and do 1,000 prostrations before a small breakfast, then carry on until it was time to eat lunch. In the afternoons I did various tantric practices, including Powa, White Tara (which Jamgön Kongtrül taught me), Six Yogas of Naropa and Vajrayogini. Like many of the deities, Vajrayogini is concerned with cutting through ego-fixation and awakening the wisdom energy of emotions that are normally tied up in afflictions or mind poisons. I also went back to the Four Foundations and practised them again. I spent a whole year just on Dorje Sempa, the purification practice, which I think of as like a solvent for the glue of grasping and clinging. I needed to practise it a great deal. It is a preliminary practice but also very profound and very important. Then in the evening I would do more prostrations, and when I grew tired I switched to calm-abiding meditation, which was a good way of calming my mind and readying myself for sleep. I would go to bed at 8 p.m.

I found the Six Yogas of Naropa particularly powerful. It is a very deep and profound practice that entails purifying the energies in one’s subtle energy body. It involves breathing exercises, intense visualization and strong yogic movements. My brother Akong asked Lama Ganga to teach it to me after they met at Samye Ling. Lama Ganga was a specialist retreat master and empowered to pass on ancient tantric practices to students in long retreats. He promised Akong that he would visit me and I was delighted to receive him. I found great inspiration in Dream Yoga, which is related to the practice of Lucid Dreaming, but far more advanced.

During Dream Yoga we train to maintain conscious awareness of our dreams. This enables us to see that the dream state is an illusion, even though it feels utterly real while we’re asleep. The idea is to apply this same awareness to daytime activity and so understand that waking life is just as illusory. During daily life we usually feel as if we are actively engaged with ‘reality’, but in fact we are sleepwalking through a world of our own mind’s creation. If we can hold this awareness we can gradually train ourselves to feel less attachment to events and emotions. I’ve heard people express the worry that this might make our experience feel empty or alarmingly unreal, but in my experience the opposite is true. Life feels more vital and vivid.

When we become accomplished in this practice we can direct our dreams in order to travel to places both earthly and heavenly. The modern secular term for this is astral travelling. I practised dream yoga very diligently, and one day I chose to go to the pure land, or spiritual abode, of the deity Vajrayogini. When I came into the presence of Vajrayogini she appeared in the form of a large black woman who hugged me so hard that she almost crushed the life out of me. On another occasion when I travelled in my dreams to meet her she sliced my head off with her curved dagger and told me that I had too much ego! After that I was not so keen to go back.

One of the most memorable Dream Yoga experiences I ever had turned out to be deeply prescient, though I didn’t work out why until much later. During this particular dream, which I had towards the end of my retreat, I flew somewhere I had never been before. It was an island off an island and I arrived there in the evening time. I vividly recall that there was a bay on the larger island that was lit up by the lights of houses and bars and restaurants. Across from this bay was a small island, shaped like a lion whose mighty paws came down to the sea. It was sparsely inhabited and there were very few lights. I recall landing there and looking across to the lighted bay. I had no clue where I had ended up and shortly afterwards I awoke to find myself back in my meditation box in my cabin in Woodstock. At the time of the dream it felt very auspicious and it certainly proved to be so later when I visited Holy Isle, off the Isle of Arran, in my flesh-and-blood body. I recognized it immediately as the place I had visited in my dreams all those years before. At the time, when I mentioned the dream to Khenpo Karthar he told me that I should give it no importance and forget about it. This is the traditional way for retreat masters to guide their retreatants, to ensure that they do not get too attached to what they might mistakenly regard as their own accomplishments.

I am for ever indebted to the many great masters who taught me so well. Those five years of my first long retreat allowed me to embed the changes that have slowly brought about the transformation of my mind. I owe a particular debt to Kalu Rinpoche, who on one of his visits told me to read the life of Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint from the eleventh century. He felt that I needed radical inspiration, and I found it in Milarepa’s story. From that day to this I have never concerned myself with any of the mundane pleasures of life. I was able to engage with the Dharma from the very bottom of my heart.

Milarepa is a beloved figure in Tibet, so I was already familiar with the outlines of his life story. He was born into a prosperous family and had an idyllic childhood until the death of his father, after which his uncle and aunt assumed responsibility for the family and took control of their wealth. Milarepa, his mother and siblings were all forced to work like slaves, but they pinned their hopes on everything being returned to Milarepa when he came of age. When that day came the uncle and aunt refused to honour their agreement and left the family destitute, whereupon Milarepa’s mother demanded that her son seek revenge. She urged him to visit a famous teacher of black magic, learn everything he could and then come back and destroy the uncle, aunt and all their children. This is exactly what happened. But Milarepa didn’t stop there. He caused the death of thirty-five people, and when the villagers threatened to kill his family in return, he summoned up a hailstorm to destroy all the crops except those in his mother’s field. The teacher of the magic was saddened by this and went to Milarepa to insist that he learn the ways of Dharma in order to mitigate all the bad karma he had generated for both of them. So Milarepa approached a teacher whose methods were said to guarantee liberation from samsara in one lifetime. But he didn’t even practise them. He was too lazy. This teacher told him he could not help, because Milarepa’s sins were too great and his efforts too small. ‘Only Marpa the Translator can help you,’ he told Milarepa. When Milarepa heard this name his heart was full of joy. But it was to take him many years of effort and self-sacrifice before eventually, after he had performed many trials, including building and tearing down three tall towers, Marpa agreed to give him the teachings that would allow him to purify his negative deeds. Marpa sent Milarepa off to meditate for years in a cave in the mountains and from then on, Milarepa was committed to the path of Enlightenment. When he ran out of food he ate nettles. He grew as thin as a skeleton and his body turned green from this diet, but he was not afraid of death and he eventually attained Enlightenment, within one lifetime.

Even though I had been told this story many times, when I read it for myself in retreat I connected with it in a profound way. It reminded me so forcefully of many incidents in my own life. Thankfully I had not killed thirty-five people, but I had been lazy, proud, resentful and self-indulgent. I had blamed others for my problems and made no effort to let go of rancour, fear and grievance. I now saw that big change is always possible, even if you have generated a great deal of bad karma, but you cannot be lazy and you cannot indulge in self-pity. It was plain to me that until I had made a commitment to sincere practice, I would never have attained real happiness or fulfilment. But, of course, for the first half of my life I was stuck in a vicious cycle of my own making. I could not commit, because my mind’s innate Buddha wisdom was obscured by negativity. Once the intention to shift from negative thoughts and emotions into positive ones had flowered in my heart, that downward spiral was reversed. It was very difficult to turn things around, but, once I had, my life began to flow in an upward spiral. We can all do this. I have seen it happen over and over again. Significant effort is required at the beginning, but the process becomes easier and the rewards are enormous.

It took me five years, but having established myself on the path to fulfilment I wished for nothing but to stay in retreat for the rest of my life. That was not to be. I was about to be wrenched into a new phase of life. As on so many previous occasions, the agent of this change was my brother, Akong.