Dear All
Here is wishing you an auspicious Losar, the New Year of the Tibetan calendar, the year of the wood snake. The first month of the Tibetan New Year is regarded as very auspicious and all our Dharma practice is thought to be particularly energised by adhishtana, especially on the Full moon. Well- it's good to think that way because it galvanises us all to focus on practice at least for that month! The first day is Friday 28th February and as a Sangha we have a few events here at the Hermitage to mark the occasion, see Losar details here . As usual I will be sending an offering on the Sangha’s behalf to Khenpo Rinpoche’s nunnery Tekchok Ling in Nepal as a contribution to their pujas, prayers, light offerings and so on. I always get inspiring messages of thanks from the nuns for our support and especially for our practice. They like to hear about what we are doing and rejoice in our punya as we do in theirs.
2025 has started well with so many of you joining Lama Dashon, Katie and Younten in the January month retreat. That was quickly followed by a ten day retreat focusing on Khenpo Rinpoche’s Sadhana of Mahamudra. It was an opportunity for us to work with my new translation and for me to give six talks related to it. This retreat group will continue under Lama Dashon’s leadership for the rest of the year as part of the AHS Insight Stream. The post-DHB (LAH) streams have really taken off since December encouraging us to engage in practice together.
Five has been leading the Mandala of Sacred Space stream, with Rinchen Khandro, focused on the daily liturgy we recite mornings, and evenings on-line and here at the Hermitage. Since the theme for this year is very much on ritual, symbolism and the Mandala of Sacred Space, it is very apt that I have been giving a couple of talks at these weekly meetings and have agreed to teach on a retreat in April based on the Shakyamuni puja. See main website for details: ahs.org.uk
The Insight stream focuses mainly on formless meditation which of course we do daily online and at the Hermitage. Five’s stream is focusing on the ritual, pranidhana and vaster vision aspects of these practices. Each practice in fact includes elements from all six AHS areas – its just a matter of emphasis and level of understanding.
I think my last letter was just after storm Darragh which brought down so many trees including the huge sequoia next door and twenty or more trees at Tyn y Gors. There is still quite a bit of clearing up to do there. The Pagoda is due to be installed any day now, hopefully it will be up by Losar.
Monday 28th April will mark the second anniversary of Rigdzin Shikpo’s passing. Last year the Longchen Foundation honoured this with a gathering in Oxford. I am not sure what the plans are yet for this year. I hope to be able to celebrate it at Tyn Y Gors. There have been a series of solitary retreatants staying at TYG this year so far and one or two group retreats are planned over the course of the year.
I spent four days in retreat at Ty Pren in January and hope to visit there again before long. It is such an inspiring spot and the farmer and his wife are so welcoming and supportive. It touches me deeply.
I am very focused on finishing the Mandala Principle book with Liz Cochrane at the moment – it is focusing my mind on Mandala Principle and its importance and my own understanding seems to progress by leaps and bounds as the days go by. It would be fitting to be able to complete it this year since it is the LAH area of focus this year!
Here at the Hermitage we are still in a transition phase as we continue with the revisioning process. We had Julian here for three months till the end of January and Hildegard his partner in retreat for ten days over Christmas. Elliott King was with us for 4 weeks last year as a steward and has just arrived again for at least a 3-month stewardship. He and Lama Tamsin worked very well together last year, and we are looking forward to his being back to help. This place relies so much on volunteers and so we are aiming to have regular volunteer workdays, where the care for our sacred space is central. We had one at the beginning of February and a lot of work got done. Lama Tamsin comes in five days a week and is a lovely presence to have around – both in the office and keeping an eye on the grounds – bits of gardening gets done on a more or less daily basis as I look around me!
Mike, Mebar’s husband comes regularly to do jobs as and when needed. Mebar herself comes in four days a week to help me with whatever I need and carry on with her various other projects and meetings from here. So, there are always things going on here at the Hermitage and we are just about managing without Jayasiddhi and KTso. We heard from Jayasiddhi and KTso who sent us a bouquet of flowers and told us they were with us in spirit and hope to be here for the sadhana retreat at the end of the year.
Congratulations from all of us to Yeshe for reaching her 90th birthday in good health and spirits on February 18th.
Marpa Network (of which we are a significant part) will be gathering together monthly online to practice and celebrate our connection with Khenpo Rinpoche who passed away last June, with songs and Guru Yoga hosted by different sanghas. Our slot is 23rd March – I hope many of you will turn up online to support the event. Khenpo Rinpoche’s stupa at Yolmo will not be consecrated until 2026 but in the meantime, they are making a limited number of small stupas containing his relics of which I have heard that we will be receiving one in due course. We have also been given 60 + small pouches containing salt that encased his body after he passed away and a small piece of his robe. These relics can be used to connect us to his presence by having them on our shrines or placed in small stupas or Buddha images. They are due to arrive here any day now.
At the Hermitage we engage in various rituals such as filling Buddha images and performing smoke pujas which Lama Tamsin is involved in and is helping us sharpen up our skills. She is a close student of Khandro Rinpoche and so the details of the rituals she knows come from the Mindroling Nyingma tradition. However, all the traditions keep to the same rituals in principle. Ritual is not a speciality of mine – nor of Khenpo Rinpoche and Rigdzin Shikpo Rinpoche both of whom were inclined to come up with their own rituals spontaneously in response to the conditions of the moment. The problem with that is that nobody can then adopt those rituals with any kind of confidence and there is a danger the principles could get lost if we all just started making things up as we went along!
We were so lucky to have Lama Phuntsok and his Khenpo assistants to help us with the stupas here and at Tyn y Gors. Added to that we have Lama Tashi Mannox on hand to advise us on details of Karma Kagyu rituals and also Tulku Sherdor who both played such a vital role in the rituals at RS consecration last year.
Five started a three-month retreat in Lama Dashon’s retreat cabin last week and we have all been cheering him on. It is great that some people can keep focused on retreat style of practice. Khenpo Rinpoche told us that we should all practice retreat alternated with practising the hard way – dealing with our daily life challenges. Usually teachers call the hard way (austerities) practising in retreat so there is something quite arresting hearing Khenpo Rinpoche calling daily life practice the hard or austere way. He wasn’t playing down the importance of retreat (afterall his greatest heroes were yogins like Milarepa) but instead emphasising that Dharma practice continues both in the formal setting as well as in our lives as a whole. It’s for all situations. We practice meditation to train ourselves to be able to practice in all situations. We practice in all situations in order to be able to settle in meditation practice. It all feeds into itself as one practice mandala whether we are in retreat or struggling with difficult life situations. Whatever we do there will be difficulties sooner or later and we are practising in the good times to prepare for the difficult ones – so there is no more need for sessions of meditations and breaks because it's all meditation. I have never spent a lot of time emphasising the six paramitas,, although we mention them daily in the Shakyamuni puja. It is important to remember that when we say Mahayana we are talking about the Bodhisattva vow to practise the 6 paramitas. Practising generosity, discipline, forbearance, unwavering persistence, meditation and prajna are for all day long every day and even at night too if possible! So, whatever your life situation you can rejoice in the fact that there is no situation in which you are not able to practise Dharma. There is no such thing as not having time to practice Dharma. Once you know what Dharma is, it will accompany you everywhere – constantly reminding you now is the time for practice. Now is the time because you don’t know how much time is left in the lifetime to set yourself up firmly on the path!
With Love
Shenpen