Wild Spaces Wild Places.
In 2010, in the context of travelling round the world for about twenty months, I took the opportunity to spend some time at Sudarshanaloka; our retreat land in New Zealand. The last time I was there was early 2001 when I led a women's Order Study retreat on the 51 Mental Events, and then did a one month solitary in one of the several solitary retreat facilities there.
Living for over five weeks on the land as I did back in 2001 had a big impact on me ; I responded deeply to the land and stupa wherein lie some of Dhardo Rimpoches' ashes. Chetul Hut where I was on solitary is buried deep in the bush. Indeed the whole 240 acre [80 hectare] site is pretty much entirely composed of regenerating bush. The land has in the past been ravaged and scarred as a consequence of both the timber and the mining industry;gold was once mined in this area and there are several old mine shafts along the Ohio Stream which marks the boundary on the south side of the property. Now the entire Tararu valley is healing and the dense bush so typical of New Zealand is growing back in all its glory. So much so that coming back to the land after an absence of some nine years I barely recognised the road I had journeyed on to reach Chetul Hut. Now the trees and pungas [native tree ferns] towered above me as I walked up the unsealed single track road from the community house. The vegetation has grown back considerably in the intervening years no doubt helped by the high annual rainfall on the peninsular.
If you have never been to New Zealand, never been to Sudarshanaloka, I'd love to be able to transport you there imaginatively so you could see what the bush is like . I lack the skill with words to evoke it. Instead I would like to direct you to the lovely ning site Tejopala created on the web where you will find an excellent slide-show of the 'Land of Beautiful Vision'. This will give you a taste of the natural beauties and splendour of this wondrous piece of land as well as a glimpse of the people who frequent the land. The site as a whole will also give you a sense of what the place offers by way of solitary and other retreats. Here is the link ; http://sudarshanaloka.ning.com/.
On this recent trip I was told that some people in our sangha find the energy of the place 'too wild' to want to go on solitaries there. It is wild and nature reigns with luxuriant abundance but for me this is a wonderful occurrence.
This bush !
A riot of green.
In such a place I feel my smallness. I am humbled in the face of the forces of nature which are beyond my control. At the same time I feel more connected with life in its raw beauty and simplicity. Taranatha who was raised on a farm in NZ is one of the founder members of the Trust that purchased the land in August 1993. He is quoted in the book Sally McAra wrote about Sudarshanaloka [1], as saying of his involvement in the project ; “It is not the home of my childhood consciousness, responding animal-like to the beauty of sight,sound and smell, and hardening itself to the birth, exploitation and death that is the battle for human survival in the bush. The home I come to is the Stupa and the Sacred Puriri; the land of transformation of abundant, wild energy and beauty into devotion, love and understanding.”
It is not an easy piece of land to live on or to manage. The weather makes it challenging as does the terrain; it is a wedge-shaped piece of land, straddling a large steep-sided spur, with few naturally level spots. To give just one example of what the weather can do ; back in Jan 2002 a flood that a government geologist described as a once-in-a-thousand years event swept through the Tararu Valley. Heavy rainfall in the large catchment area in the hills above turned the Tararu Creek [which borders the north side of the property] into a raging torrent, scouring out the creek bed and completely wiping out a small creekside glade on the property where two caravans had stood as temporary accommodation. Throughout the valley, the torrent gouged massive chunks out of its banks, causing landslides that cut up the shingle road winding up the valley. The flood took with it a NZ$30,000 bridge that the sangha had installed across the creek only three years prior , leaving only broken concrete slabs and twisted metal girders. The intention had been that it would provide all weather access to the land ! Ratnaketu wrote of the occurrence in the Sudarshanaloka Newsletter. I'll quote some of what he says because it gives a sense of the mythic power of this place at least as felt by one individual [although he was by no means the only member of the sangha to feel this mythic dimension there] ; “The Tararu Valley reminds me strongly of the Himalayan foothills...all on a different scale ofcourse. Yet at Sudarshanaloka one finds the same Himalayan stillness, the same silence and solitude, the same atmosphere of awesome natural and supernatural forces...It's true the two creeks match not the Ganges or Brahmaputra, nor the Firth of Thames the Bay of Bengal, but mock not the Tararu dear friend-a naga swims there that the Teesta [a tributary to the Brahmaputra running through Sikkim] would be proud to harbour. Twice this year our little creek flexed her muscles, twice reminded us that water rules rock....” He continues ;”Still it's an ill naga that brings no good and, along with the reminder of impermanence, down in the stream among the debris, the bhuta has deposited semi-precious stones :quartz, jasper, iron-pyrites, peacock ore and some say even gold and silver, so that as one walks along the riverbed a sparkling stream of stars bewitches the eye. Three huge rimu logs have been salvaged – perhaps they will be used on the retreat centre shrine. If so the beautiful colors of rimu and the sparkles of the stream will long remind us of 2002, long remind us of the power of nature and of the naga that lies slumbering amongst the gold in Tararu's freshly made bed. “
When I visited just last year torrential rain triggered a land-slide that temporarily closed the single track road that winds up the valley. Satyananda told me that whenever it begins to rain, whatever the time of night it is, he gets up and leaves the retreat land, driving down out of the valley whilst he can, to ensure 'business as usual' next morning down in Thames where he and others run a retail business ;Lotus Realm.
One of the fascinating facts about New Zealand is that it harbours no animals, reptiles, insects, or birds that are potentially harmful to human beings. This doesn't mean walking in the bush has no dangers. Whilst there is no risk of taking a bear by surprise the density of the vegetation is such that, should one wander off the tracks at Sudarshanaloka one is quite likely to get quickly disoriented and possibly lost. I find it a fascinating environment to walk in; to me it feels as though I should be seeing monkeys swinging through the trees, or snakes hanging down from branches, or large spiders emerging from entangling webs. But no, there is none of this. One is more likely to be accompanied by flittering fantails.
Clambering over tangles of knotted roots
On the steep bush track
A fantail comes to play.
Sitting once more in your towering presence
I am filled with appreciation and respect.
To reach Chetul Hut where I sojourned for those four week in 2001 involved a journey of more than a kilometer and a half up the comparitively steep ungraded track from the community house cum retreat centre below. I seem to recall I was driven up there by Guhyaratna on a red quad bike. The ochre coloured track ends just below the site where a 7 metre high pure white stupa containing a portion of Dhardo Rimpoches' ashes stands, looking out across the hills to the waters of the Firth of Thames glistening in the sunlight far below. From the Stupa site a grass track continued to climb up the spur and this we drove along until the time came to dismount and carry gear on our backs and in our arms for some distance down into the lush green bush, following a narrow track wending its way between tall fronded pungas [Tree ferns] the like of which I had never seen before.
Eventually we came to where Chetul Hut sat nestled on the side of the spur below the stupa. I found a simple one room wooden hut equipped with all one needs for a solitary ; bed, with bedding, desk,chair, shrine area and shrine gear, fully equipped cooking area, front deck and through a door at the back a compost toilet. I was in Chetul at the same time as Srisambhava commenced a four month retreat in Amida Hut, Varachitta was in her first year up at Zang-Ri and dear Aniketa had recently settled into her new abode at Mandaladvara.
Sitting in my hut
I realise I am not alone.
Four women in a five mile valley
Contemplate life.
Not since I had been on solitary retreat at Osel Ling [an FPMT retreat centre in Spain] had I had the luxury of not having to go out to purchase food at some stage during my retreat. For here at Sudarshanaloka all ones' needs are catered for, with fresh supplies being dropped off at a pre-arranged pick up point when one needs them. One also has access to a reasonably well stocked library of Dharma books kept in the main house below. And unlike at Osel Ling it is easy to go for a substantial walk and not catch sight of anyone. Moreover one is graced with Dhardo Rimpoches' prescence in the stupa close by.
One of the things which happened on this solitary was that I began to sketch my surroundings; mainly in charcoal and ink, although I did also use oil crayons once or twice. This was an entirely new activity for me. I became quite absorbed in doing this and it became a fruitful vehicle of reflection about the nature of experience. On the eve of my departure I had a dream which felt significant and also, at the time, somewhat mysterious. In the dream I was lying in bed in the hut when two black gods landed on the deck outside the window directly in front of the bed so I was visible to them and they to me. They were naked, handsome and their ebony 'skin' was radiant. They had a blue thread/chord with them and they tied this round the perimeter of the deck. When I woke I sensed the chord held a message ; it was to prevent the gods falling off the deck. I felt it was saying ; “when you return to your life in England, return to your life in the city [Birmingham at the time], don't forget us, the gods “ I felt the gods were nature gods. I didn't forget them inasmuch as I knew I wanted to paint them in some way. It took me another two years before I managed to produce a painting which honoured these gods. Eventually it dawned on me that I had met some of the nature gods that frequented Sudarshanaloka. It took more time for me to unpack their message further . It connected with the concluding lines of Sangharakshitas' poem Life is King ; 'we belong to Life, Life is King' .[2] I guess the message for me was to open up to life, to the way things are. To let life has its way with me. Let life live through me [for the good of all]
Reading Sally McAras' book about Sudarshanaloka and in particular her chapter entitled; Unsettling Place [1 p.80] conveys quite vividly how the sangha in New Zealand who were involved in developing the land as a spiritual home/retreat centre struggled in the early years after its purchase encountering one difficulty after another. Satyananda is quoted as saying; “ We arrived, there was a lot of difficulty. A very tough piece of land....It was very dark, in some ways, when we first bought it. There'd been a lot of killing....pig hunting...it was real NZ back country land. And then there'd been gold mining on it as well, forests cut down, for gold mining and stuff like that. And there was a bit of a strange energy, initially. So, we moved on, we started trying to build....and things went wrong....[1999b]
We found ourselves in one battle after another-local authorities, natural obstacles like slips or road washouts, accidents, and eventually the death of one of our community members [Denis] in a local road accident. [1997,2]”
Prajnalila is quoted as saying; “Denis....found the land very overwhelming, and he thought, “Well, I'll start at the gate.” he began to clear the pathway onto the land, through the gate. And around the river and the ford, he began to make little piles of stones, little stone stupas. It was about that time that Satyananda thought “A-ha! Perhaps the first thing we actually need to do is build a stupa.”
Denis decided to move from Wellington to Tararu so he could live on the land full time however in April 1995 he and his partner were involved in a car crash. She died immediately and Denis remained in a coma until his death some months later. His death had a big impact on people. As a result of his death and what had gone before it, Sally tells us in the aforementioned chapter that Satyananda realised that if they were to create “a real spiritual refuge, a place of harmony and of deep quietude” this “meant more than just moving to an isolated plot of land and putting some buildings up”. What they needed was a spiritual focus. The mini-stupas that Denis had built contributed the seed of an idea, ultimately contributing to the impetus to build the stupa itself. And there was a growing sense of a need to work with the energies of the land and suitably devised rituals became an integral part of working with the land.
I found it really fascinating to read this fourth chapter in Sallys' book and gain an understanding of why our sangha in NZ chose to invest time, money and energy in building a large stupa before buildings for retreats etc. As far as I am aware this was a unique decision which no other group of folk in our Triratna community have done to date; namely to invest a not inconsiderable sum of money and energy at an early stage of the project, to create something with no 'utilitarian' purpose whatsoever. A significant devotional focus was being created before attending to the practical necessities of accommodation or whatever.
I am reminded of when I visited Pema Chodron many years ago, 1992 to be exact, at the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center in North Colorado, USA [now called Shambhala Mountain Center]; a 600 acre valley of meadow and forest. The land had been purchased back in 1970 and activities had been held on it ever since. 22 years on, I was visiting whilst a retreat was on; there was just one modestly sized and simply constructed wooden building on the land which housed a kitchen, bookshop, office and some toilets and wash rooms. Everyone was housed in large khaki coloured army tents. It was very much Buddhafield style except the food was prepared under a proper roof and there were no hot tubs [as far as I could see] !The only other buildings on the land were a partially constructed stupa [which took 13 years to complete. Mind you, it is 108 ft high !] and a Shinto shrine dedicated to a female kami. Pema Chodron told me that Trungpa had actively discouraged the sangha from building on the land straightaway. He thought it best that they lived on the land, got to know it, made friends with it, and then slowly built on it. I was very struck by this. Pema Chodron also added that Trungpa thought living out more in the elements, as one is when one camps, was a support to meditation.
In February 1996 the Friends of Tararu Trust [the land was formally dedicated as Sudarshanaloka by Taranatha on 21st June 1997] which comprised at that time; Satyananda, Taranatha, Diane [who became Prajnalila], Sue [who became Akasamati], Punyasri and Guhyaprabha, began to 'warm' the chosen site for the stupa with suitable rituals. On Feb 24th the stupa site was dedicated and various stupa themed retreats happened over the course of the year. In June 1996 the Friends of Tararu launched the stupa project with a small procession from the river to the chosen stupa site high up on the land. At the river, participants selected a stone and made offerings of rice to the non-human inhabitants. The river was chosen as the starting point because it is the entrance to the property and the place where Denis had built mini stupas At the stupa site they made offerings to the local spirits and the five Jinas and circumambulated the site , then placed their stones at the center.
The original plans for the stupa envisaged a structure three metres high but to make it fit the site they had chosen, in keeping with Bhantes' recommendations, the spire had to project above the skyline when viewed from the approach, and it had to be seen from a distance. Because of the height of the ridge across the valley that forms its backdrop, it needed to be at least seven metres high to satisfy requirements. And this is what it is; seven metres of pure white beauty. My impression from looking through the photo albumns Prajnalila created which record the build up to its construction and then its actual construction is that the whole project from start to finish was a resounding success. Despite the elements having their fun; there were two cyclones, and some of the rituals that took place at each stage of the construction were in downpours, work carried on regardless with an international team of Order Members, as well as mitras working on the project. Records indicate it was one year in planning, ten weeks in construction and cost some NZ$50,000. The planning permit described it as “an accessory building for community use”; the local planners having no better means at their disposal to classify it.
There was a write up in the New Zealand Herald about the two day celebration which took place over the w/e of 15/16th Feb 1997. Bhante had arrived in NZ with Paramartha in November of the previous year. He had brought with him a portion of Dhardo Rimpoches' ashes. On the second day of celebrations, with the blessing of fine weather, a large gathering of the sangha from NZ, Australia as well as further afield processed up to the stupa with Bhante in the lead. Once at the stupa site Bhante led everyone in the recitation of the seven-fold puja, read his poem which rejoices in the merits of Dhardo Rimpoche and then oversaw the placing of the ashes inside the harmika of the stupa by Malini, and the subsequent sealing of it by Dharmamudra. After the ceremony Bhante told Satyananda that the stupa was now “Dhardo”. And it certainly seems that this is indeed what many people feel to be the case when they make the journey up to the stupa and spend time in its prescence. Satyananda is quoted as saying ;”I do feel that....the Stupa has in some sense been perfused with Dhardo Rimpoche's insight and has 'become' Dhardo Rimpoche....I am just trying to learn how to live not only with a stupa 'in my back yard', so to speak, but also with Dhardo Rimpoche present. “
Access to the stupa is open to anyone, not just those involved in the sangha. At the moment any member of the public is free to walk up the track from the entrance gate and visit the stupa. This can and does happen. Satyananda told me of a local man who went up there with some mates. Apparently this man walked around the stupa and made some 'prayers' before it ; intentions/aspirations for his life. Meanwhile his friends sat nearby chatting and smoking and not giving the stupa much attention. Some time later this same man bumped into Satyananda in town and told him that since the visit to the stupa his life had turned around for the better ; he was now happily married and had got himself a job. Meanwhile his mates were all back in jail again.
Being in the presence of the stupa again this last year I was struck affresh by its beauty and significance. Dhardo Rimpoches' prescence really is there on this land, in this country, in the southern hemisphere. How wonderful. In the midst of the beauties of nature and the vast open space of the sky, with the water element below and the fire element above this is indeed a place worth preserving for posterity. Here our highest aspirations are met and mirrored back to us by the stupa, whilst being grounded in the natural world. It matters not that we may live thousands of miles away in another part of the world. This place is there for us too. It is a place of refuge and retreat for us too. We don't know how the world is going to be in the future, how it is going to be for us in the future, how it is going to be for future generations. We need sanctuaries, places of sanity amidst the madness of the world, places where we are reminded of what we can become, what we are capable of.
Dhardo Rimpoche was a living Bodhisattva. Rimpoche means 'greatly precious one' but as Suvajra tells us in his biography of Rimpoche [3] he did not feel himself to be precious when he was recognised as a tulku when only a young child.. However he became a precious one . Moreover he told people that we can all do this. The world needs bodhisattvas. We need to become bodhisattvas and in order to do this we need constant reminders of those who have gone before, those who have become bodhisattvas.
Sudarshanaloka is a jewel in the ever-expanding, world embracing mandala of the Triratna community. Its' prescence enriches our whole community, and like all the other jewels of the mandala it is an offering to the world at large.
What I would like to do is help more people discover this jewel in Ratnasambhavas' southern realm and benefit from the healing transformative powers thereof. I want to do this in a very concrete and immediate way. I want to raise enough money to pay off one of the mortgages the Sudarshanaloka Trust services. This will enable the Trust to free up sufficient income to support a 'suitably qualified' member of the Order to live and work at Sudarshanaloka full time, both developing and playing a part in leading and supporting, a year round programme of retreats and events . At present the Trust does not have the funds to do this, so whilst some retreats do happen, they are of necessity somewhat limited in number and scope.
