In a recent “Dharma Geek” session on Vajrayana Online, Cortland Dahl highlighted Mingyur Rinpoche’s method of alternating “looking” for the nature of mind and then just relaxing. It struck me that this alternating of looking and relaxing fits the narrative of my journey with the dharma.

I’ll start with my memory of being in Mrs. McClure’s preschool around 1955. I’m sitting on a platform built halfway up a stairway, staring out the window and wondering “What is all this? What’s really going on?”

My father and mother were confirmed atheists and seemed uninterested in such questions. But I knew that worship and God were important to some people. Some of my  playmates had prayer books, and I begged my parents for one. My mystified mother obliged. I can still see the picture of a little boy and his dog illustrating my favorite prayer: “I made a mistake, dear God, today. You know the one I mean. I’m sorry for the wrong I’ve done. Help me to be fair to everyone. Amen.” My imagination sparkled in these early years.

Then came what my father called the “wasteland years” of middle school. But when I was 14, after attending a camp in Maine, an older friend sent me Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which stirred something deep within me. And there were so many conversations, books and people who reignited my interest in looking “behind the curtain,” as the dog Toto did to expose the false appearances cast by the Wizard of Oz. 

I heard a stranger comment that “Unitarians believe that everyone has the light of Jesus within.” I collected Catholic holy cards, especially the Italian ones with their brilliant colors, gold etchings, and radiant saints. I read Evelyn Underhill’s book on the Christian mystics. In college, I found a teacher who agreed to sponsor my independent study: “Mysticism as an Alternative Lifestyle.” The search was on.

Typical for seekers of my cohort, I was fascinated by the Carlos Castaneda books and subscribed to Swami Rama’s “Himalayan News.” I felt electrified reading Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, and I was drawn to the photo of Paramahansa Yogananda on the cover of his Autobiography of a Yogi and connected deeply with Yogananda’s teachings.

One day, while browsing in the local bookstore, a paperback fell to the floor in front of me. It was Trungpa Rinpoche’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. I bought it and was intrigued — if also confused by his language.

Beginning in my 30s, I’d spend a week every fall at a Trappist Monastery in a small cabin in rural Dubuque, Iowa. Initially, it was a week to relax and release stress. Later, it became a time for focused practice. I’d read that praying to find a teacher could help that manifest, so I prayed for a teacher, sitting in the bare makeshift meditation room of the drafty farmhouse. Then I’d look out the window at dark fields and wonder what was really happening, what it all meant. Along with this searching came an intensity to quickly achieve some transcendent state, along with my doubt about being able to do it.

Life’s suffering unfolded during these years. Although today, I’m grateful to share my life with my husband and three living adult children and their families, along the way I experienced divorce and the deaths of two of my babies. Sam died from SIDS at 3 ½ months old and 11 years later, Greta was stillborn. My reading and persistent sense of something bigger helped me navigate these losses, but the process of each grief was long and bumpy.

In the grip of these numbing losses, I felt a deeper connection with others throughout time who have lost and suffered. As Tim Olmsted said in a recent Vajrayana Online Heart-to-Heart, anything can be an opening, and so it was for me. Through my grief and disorientation, predictability collapsed—and created a “gap experience.”

During those very difficult years, I took up Tibetan Buddhist practice with a vigour, and when it was suggested that I visit Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD), the Karmapa’s North American seat in upstate New York, I went. I flew to KTD for one of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s 10 Day Teachings. The shrine room was breath-taking, and Khenpo was teaching “The Aspiration Prayer of Mahamudra.” I remember feeling that my parents would think I’d joined a cult! I discovered very quickly that Khenpo’s traditional teaching style and his presence slowed my monkey mind. As many of us experience, being in the presence of realized teachers transmits something powerful beyond concepts.

In the following years, the dharma path took me to India to learn from HH Tai Situ Rinpoche. The last five years of the transmission took place at Sherabling, Tai Situ’s monastery in northern India. Though the teachings were clear, I often felt confused. But the power of the place and the power of the teacher were palpable. “Relax from within,” Rinpoche advised us.

In 2009, my husband and I met Mingyur Rinpoche at a weekend farm retreat, where an early version of “Nectar of a Yogi” was taught. I recall offering Rinpoche a kata and thanking him for bringing his teaching to the Midwest. After our brief interaction, I went outside on that overcast Kansas afternoon and had the distinct impression that brilliant sunlight had illuminated the room where he was.

Since joining Tergar, my understanding of the view and of practice has become clearer and more accessible. Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings, blending a Dzogchen view within a step-by-step Mahamudra approach, have been perfect for me. His four-step pointing out process is a precious map for the nature of mind practice. As Rinpoche writes in Turning Confusion into Clarity, any progress we as students experience along the way is due to the guru and to interdependence. It seems that the dharma has reached me through innumerable experiences and teachers. I am forever grateful.

As for searching, though I still find inspiration in studying and keep filling notebooks with pith teachings, I’m a little less intense, a little less prone to grasp onto “the view,” and more assured that there really isn’t anyone in charge. As Edwin Kelley has said “no one owns experience.”

Even though I trust Rinpoche when he assures us that we are Buddha, right here and now, I also realize that there is a path and that my habits and karma haven’t disappeared! So I follow his advice to be clear about my intention (to fully awaken) and about my motivation (to be able to benefit all beings), and then to just rest in natural presence.  I’m starting to relax and be more content to keep staring out the window – just being.