Articles About Shambhala Mountain Center
The Striver & The Seeker
Breathe Magazine - September 29, 2004
By Noah Robischon & Ted Rose
Noah: I envy your ability to escape all the responsibility I've assumed. But aren't you just avoiding your potential? You're an accomplished journalist. You had a rent-controlled $800 apartment in Manhattan. You gave it all up to clean shrines. What are you running away from?
Ted: I'm emphasizing different values these days: humility, discipline, compassion, and meditation, to name a few. These principals appealed to me long before I considered myself a Buddhist. The religion has given me efficient terminology and encouragement to live those values as opposed to thinking about them. My gut tells me that my choice to come out here is good for the world.
Noah: This isn't exactly the stereotypical navel-gazing experience though. I expected an austere, monastic setting. Sitting painfully on a hard floor while some robed guru strode past whipping me into wakefulness. Instead, it's a mix of summer camp and new age spa. My tush is planted on plump meditation pillows, And after a day of work and practice, the night is full of easy conversation, drinking, smoking, and sex. At one point you said: "This place is like New York, only clearer." But it looks more like an extended Manhattan bachelorhood to me.
Ted: I haven't severed my connection to the world. My home may not have running water, but my office has a phone and an Internet connection. My work routine is similar to the one I had when we worked together at that magazine in Midtown.
But there are some important differences. I rarely took an hour or two out of my day in New York to meditate - even after I recognized that the practice helped reduce my anxiety and increase my awareness. Here I meditate regularly. In New York, I wasn't surrounded by people studying contemplative discipline. Meditation, when you really get into it, becomes less of an idea and more of a craft. It's useful to compare notes with fellow craftspeople. And when I lived in New York, I never took 10 days to be completely alone: no phone, no TV, no newspapers, nothing. I did that recently in a retreat cabin up here. I spent every day meditating, cooking, and taking walks through nature.
Noah: I can see why you had difficulty meditating regularly while living in the city. When I open myself to the silence of my apartment, sitting cross-legged before the shrine of my home entertainment center, I'm struggling to ignore honking taxicabs and music from a neighbor's stereo. Plus, I keep looking at the clock on the VCR - it's just a habitual part of a hectic lifestyle. When I score 10 minutes of doing nothing at all, it seems like a major accomplishment.
Ted: Quality over quantity. One teacher told me that I could space out on a cushion for 100,000 years and accomplish less than if I spent 10 minutes meditating with a strong, clear intention. So, if you're interested in developing a contemplative practice in New York, take your hard-won 10 minutes and spend them following your breath. Just make sure you understand why you're doing it.
Then come out to a place like this for a few days or a week. Skip going to Fire Island once and spend your mini-break at a meditation center. There is no substitute for time in a setting that supports contemplation.
Meditation hasn't solved all my problems. It has made some of them clearer, though. Since I started meditating, I notice that I spend less rime avoiding my fears and doubts and more rime examining them.
Noah: It's like psychotherapy.
Ted: Only thousands of dollars cheaper.
Noah: Still, therapy is about solving problems and making people more effective. I fail to see how a Harvard graduate is best serving society, or himself, by being Buddha's janitor, cleaning dishes after dinner, and telling weekend retreaters how to find the bathroom.
Ted: I think most Americans would agree that we are lacking effective practices for living in our society. Especially since cellphones and email came along. Most of us are short-attention-span basket cases, looking for ways to stay sane.
I've found Buddhism extremely compelling. So I'm experimenting. One big lesson Buddhism has taught me is the value of maintaining the big picture. In New York I felt like I walked around constantly engaged in my own small drama. Would I succeed at this or that? It's a necessary exercise to a certain extent, but I don't need to take my own passion play so seriously. The world really is larger than my own little piece of it, and every day I wake up one of the most fortunate people on the earth. By living and working here, I've shaken up my own little drama. Like other staff members, I work fairly hard for little money to support people who I often never meet. Most days it's not much of a retreat working at a center like this, but it's good practice.
I certainly hope my actions will make the world a better place. I hope that the people who come here find some peace and clarity, and that by serving them I nurture my own kindness and generosity for everyone's benefit.
Noah: Let's talk about a few of the spiritual adherents I've met here. Many, though not all, seem to be taking refuge in a doctrine for reasons that they can't entirely explain without relying on scripture. One man said that he used to be a jerk, and that when he eventually re-integrates into society he won't be one. Another woman said that the work she does here is for her next life - as if this one was already written off. Sounds like a cop-out to me.
Ted: We all take refuge in something. You've taken refuge, too. You are betting your life on having a wife and raising a child with decency and humility. At some level you believe these actions are the best things you can do for this world. But what if you're wrong? What if you have a great novel in you that once written and published would change the world? I suspect you are following your inherent wisdom, what the Buddhists call prajna, but you could be acting out of delusion and fear. I could be, too. So it's all a giant crapshoot and the only hope each of us has is to listen to ourselves honestly.
Noah: Good point. I'm not writing the great American novel or radically changing the world. My refuge is in family, and the security that goes with it. Living life fully and honestly is enough for me these days. And although we're the same age, I'm not sure I could live like you do - in a mouse-infested trailer situated closer to a crematorium than to a bathroom. Don't you miss the swinging lifestyle you had in Manhattan?
Ted: Not really. I had all the trappings of a successful life and yet I was dissatisfied. My accomplishments never really sunk in. I was always restless. I envied people like you for making and keeping commitments. I couldn't imagine holding down a job, let alone getting married. So I jumped off the cliff and made a desperate escape. My existential angst isn't gone, but there's less of it.
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