We're In This Together

I started out forty-four years ago as a solitary practitioner, going on long retreats and sesshin, plunging deep into practice. My daily life was business as usual, and my practice was a kind of medicine for the craziness of it. I had no real sangha. Moving to Boulder seven years later, I found myself in Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's large spiritual community, and it was a shock. I had little in common with many of his students, and community life felt claustrophobic, like an assault on my personal privacy. But Rinpoche emphasized the need to serve as mirrors for each other, and I found all kinds of pockets—indeed, caverns—of self-deception in my life and practice.