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By Root 992 0

own doubts—and almost everyone has doubts—you will wonder what to do and where you go with your questioning. In my own spiritual practice, I have several times struggled with doubts about what I was doing, and I would like to share some of my experiences. Doubt presented itself to me as a major challenge when I was in the middle of my second cloistered three-year retreat in the forest hermitage started for Westerners in the South of France and guided by Khyentse Rinpoche. In 1980, this was a newly built intensive meditation retreat center, and more than a dozen Westerners committed themselves to the traditional three years, three months, and three days in this monastery. Spiritual masters like Dudjom Rinpoche, Gyalwa Karmapa, and Kalu Rinpoche gave teachings, and it was the first time that Dzogchen was taught and practiced thoroughly in the West.

As exciting as the prospect of studying with these many extraordinary lamas was, three years in a cloistered monastery, spending most of one’s time in solitary meditation, was a huge commitment, and I worried that I might have doubts about the validity of what I was doing. I certainly did not go into the first three years intending to stay on for another four, yet that’s what happened.

During the first three-year retreat my crisis was primarily physical because I hurt my back doing strenuous Tibetan yoga jumps. I ended up lying on my back in my small, square cell for about a month looking at the ceiling with no distractions nor much modern medical attention. Once my slipped disk healed, my other problems were also physical. Each of us had been assigned a cell with a meditation box, in which, in the Tibetan tradition, we spent most of the day in solitary meditation, interspersed with several hours of daily group meditation, chanting, and prayers.

Tibetan monks in three-year retreats usually sleep sitting up in the same tiny box in which they meditate. This is part of the traditional lama-training discipline, and serves as excellent preparation for Dream Yoga, lucid dreaming, and other yogic and psychic transformations. I admit there were times when it was too much for me, and I occasionally found myself stretched out on the floor, blissfully asleep. Nonetheless, the experience of retreat life was so filled with vitality and blessings, so enriching and fulfilling that as soon as the first retreat ended, I committed myself to another three years.

About one year into this second retreat, I became overwhelmed with feelings of doubt and confusion: What, I asked myself, was I doing cut off from the world for more than half a decade? How was that helping anyone? Is this what I was born into this world for? This became a genuine spiritual crisis. I felt as though nothing was happening, and I was stuck, stagnant, and depressed. I began questioning everything. My head buzzed with obsessive thoughts, which made meditating a challenge as I kept losing focus and motivation. My Tibetan teacher pointed out how helpful this would be later when counseling someone with similar difficulties, but at the time that thought was not very comforting. He lovingly advised me to relax a little and go easier on myself, which was very helpful.

Wise lamas encouraged me to meditate on the difficulties themselves—just to be present with the difficulty, as it were, instead of trying to get over it as quickly as possible. To face the doubt rather than try to avoid or suppress it. In this process I learned something that millions of seekers had also learned before me and millions will after me: You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. This may sound like a cliché, but it’s true nonetheless. Often the greatest doubts occur just before a breakthrough. My lamas encouraged me to view doubt as a great teacher. I encourage you to do the same and to trust your inquisitive, skeptical, postmodern inquiring mind and find out for yourself the answers to all your questions. Things are not really as difficult or complicated as they sometimes seem. To remember that truth can be extraordinarily helpful in