On 12/30/2010, forty meditators entered a three-year silent retreat in search of answers to life’s deep questions:
By following the advice of ancient and modern sages, they hope to learn firsthand whether enlightenment is possible and then share their discoveries.
| first snow | tahiyak |
| autumn | tahiyak |
| summer | tahiyak |
| Don't believe everything you read! | Elishab |
| January 23, getting ready for GRT. Anybody got a washing machine? | scottvacek |
One extraordinary feature of Diamond Mountain's Great Retreat is the Peace Shrine and Garden. Located in an area designated by a Tibetan lama, a Hindu swami and a local Apache medicine man as the most powerful site on the Diamond Mountain campus, the Peace Shrine and Garden will house statues of four very powerful deities to invoke world peace, and will offer a magical place for prayer, meditation and personal restoration.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RETREAT LAND
In the 1800’s, conflicts over land and water between the local Chiricahua Apaches and the settlers lead to more than 25 years of bloodshed. You may be familiar with the legendary stories of Cochise and Geronimo, all of which took place in this area. Much of the fighting was over the spring that still bubbles on what is now Diamond Mountain property, as it is one of the few water sources in the area for many miles. Manuel Medina, an Apache medicine man, gave us the idea to create this special Shrine and Garden near this spring.
SACRED SITE OF THE SHRINE
Placing the Shrine near the spring is significant not only for its power to heal the wound of a centuries-long conflict, but also for its spiritual resonance that has been noted by masters in three separate traditions.
Geshe Lothar, a Tibetan Lama from Sera Mey, our sister monastery in India, identified the site as the most powerful on the land, calling it “the place where the Nagas live!”.
A local Apache medicine man, Cranston Hoffman also confirmed the power of the site, with a very similar appraisal. He declared: “Here is where the Snake People live!”.
Most recently, Swami Swaroopananda and the Tantric priest Krishnan Namboodari from the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas confirmed the Peace Shrine’s site as one of exceptional power.
THE ANGELS OF THE SHRINE
The Shrine will house marble statues of three angels—Green Tara, Kali and Vajrayogini—and the Garden will hold a statue of Taok.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We are asking for your help with some of the building costs, as we still need to purchase materials to complete the Peace Shrine and Garden as well as the statue of one deity. This project has become in so many ways, a powerful offering to our world, created solely by the kindness and generosity of donations and volunteers.
$19,465 Subtotal Materials
$15,900 Subtotal Labor
$35,365 Total for all Materials and Labor
Please consider making a donation of any amount. To donate online, please go to http://retreat4peace.org/donate/one-time-donation. You can make a one time or recurring donation; please select “Peace Shrine & Garden” as the designated recipient in the drop-down menu.
We asked a teacher of ancient wisdom to give a teaching on the process for how to end war in our lifetime.
The teaching was held in New York City on February 4th, 2010 and sponsored by retreat4peace.org
The audio is now available free of charge so everyone can listen to this wisdom on how to create peace.
Written by Patrick James and originally published in GOOD, October 22, 2009
URL: http://www.good.is/post/three-years-of-silent-retreat/
In late 2010, in the sun scorched highlands of Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, some 50 Buddhist students will embark on a retreat. For three years, three months, and three days, they will have no contact with the outside world, and they will not speak a word. The retreat will be lead by Lama Christie McNally, one of the only women in the world to carry the title of “lama” (or teacher), and Geshe Michael Roach. (The Buddhist degree of geshe is comparable to a doctorate in the United States.) McNally and Roach are the founders of Diamond Mountain, a school some 100 miles from Tucson which is modeled after Buddhist monastic tradition, and which is not far from where the retreat will take place. Earlier this month, while Lama McNally was visiting the Asian Classics Institute of Los Angeles’s Mahasukha Center to teach from and talk about her book, The Tibetan Book of Meditation, she spoke to GOOD about what would move someone to take a vow of silence for three years, and what it’s like when those three years are up.
GOOD: A lot of people might be surprised to learn of retreats like this in the United States. You’ve spoken before about how, in this country, mastery of a craft or practice isn’t widely pursued. This sort of retreat seems, to me at least, like an attempt to achieve mastery of meditation. Could you speak to that?
CHRISTIE McNALLY: In cultures like India or in previous times, people had traditions of apprenticeship. They’d want to be a blacksmith, so they’d spend 12 years at the feet of a master. By the time they were done, they became a master themselves. That’s how people learned things in the old days, they would fully master them.
