Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Vajrayogini retreat, Institut Vajra Yogini, May 2019. Photo by Tsanka Petkova.

The five-week Vajrayogini retreat with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, hosted by Institut Vajra Vogini in the south of France, draws to a close on Saturday, June 15. FPMT students from around the world are attending the retreat. (Read a report from the first two weeks here.) Gordon McDougall, a long-time student of Rinpoche and frequent editor of Rinpoche’s books, is at Institut Vajra Yogini and shares this report:

Now we are into the final week of the five-week Vajrayogini retreat, it’s hard to know what to say about such a powerful event. Certainly the joy when it was announced that Lama Zopa would stay until the end of the retreat and give an Amitayus initiation was universal, but retreats are very personal affairs, meaning different things to each retreatant. There does seem to have been a fair mixture of ecstasy and agony, lots of colds, and even a few hospitalizations, but the overall atmosphere has been one of great joy and harmony.

So, how to sum it up? Perhaps it can be concentrated into four words:

amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing

Amazing is the place itself. Forty years of love and blessings have turned Institut Vajra Yogini into a wonderful space. The glorious chateau, the awe-inspiring stupa, the lovely walks through the wood to the ridge overlooking the quintessential French countryside—the superlatives can go on.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche being led by Institut Vajra Yogini director François Lecointre and Geshe Loden, resident geshe, Institut Vajra Yogini, France, May 2019. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Amazing too is the event provided by the staff of Vajra Yogini. Over forty volunteers made our job of meditating so much easier (but still not easy). It’s impossible to exaggerate the loving care they have taken with every tiny detail of the retreat. At every turn there is a reminder of how they have anticipated a retreatant’s needs and wishes, from qi gong sessions to tablet recharging areas to a nurse’s station to continuous free tea and coffee to the shuttle service for people living outside—even an exercise bike! And Rinpoche agrees, saying that Institut Vajra Yogini is the “best example of service in FPMT,” so good “even the birds are talking about it!”

The retreat itself has been amazing. Not just because Rinpoche has taught almost every night and not just for delicious French pastry that was our usual midnight tsog, but the session-by-session business of doing a retreat. The leader, Ven. Chantal Carrerot, was superb. Taking time off from creating the nearby Monastère Dorje Pamo, she was the perfect mixture of gentle and firm. Few were able to resist her quiet suggestions we all remain in silence, said so sweetly and so insistently. The technology of enlightenment also just gets better and better, with new downloads of prayers and images, if not daily, then quite often. And again, it’s little things like seeing the livestream of Rinpoche arriving and leaving projected on to the large screen in the teaching tent, rather than just hearing him giggle but invisible beyond a forest to retreatants. And of course, Rinpoche. He seems to be getting more entertaining each year (the “Solu Khumbo comedian” he calls himself), able to flip us from tears of compassion over the suffering of conveyor belt pigs to tears of laughter at some wonderfully observed absurdity of samsara. His message hasn’t changed, and it is one we all need so much.

Retreatants during Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching, Institut Vajra Yogini, France, May 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Amazing indeed were the fellow vajra brothers and sisters who shared the retreat—from the old guard who were there at the very beginning of FPMT, such as Ven. Karin Valham (who has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people in her more than three decades of teaching at Kopan Monastery in Nepal), to many newer students. And they come from all over the world, a greater diversity of countries than I’ve seen at any Rinpoche event. There was a big contingency from Australasia and North America as well as the usual Europeans, but also many Chinese from South East Asia, Taiwan, and Mainland China, and places such as Mexico, Mongolia, Russia, Latvia, and … the list goes on. Such a diverse group of people on one hand and so united in our love and devotion to Rinpoche on the other. It is truly inspiring to chat over a tea and discover the countless ways we are all working for Rinpoche and, because of that, for all beings.

Rinpoche told us at the beginning to not worry about counting mantras for the retreat because he wanted to give us a commentary on Vajrayogini. So far, he has not gone beyond the preliminaries, concentrating on lamrim, lamrim, and lamrim. However, there are those among us who feel he must finish the commentary and therefore must return to Institut Vajra Yogini to continue it next year, and the year after, and the year after. … And we’ll be there for another amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing retreat.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with ordained Sangha and lay students attending the Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini, France, May 2019. Photo by Tsanka Petkova.

Watch recorded video of Rinpoche’s teachings from the Vajrayogini retreat here:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/vajrayogini-retreat-2019/

FPMT Education Services has created a lamrim resource page where students may find advice and materials to support their practice:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/lam-rim/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition(FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.