– why is it so difficult?

Photo by Artur Zolkowski

Dear Friends,

We are happy to hear that retreat in Poland was a big success. At this point the Polish sangha would like to share some of the joy, some of the facts and some of the experience which came with this event.

The Warsaw retreat in 2015 will be long remembered as the first retreat after 17 years of expectations and waiting for another visit by Chögyal Namhkai Norbu to Poland. Why did it take so long? Was it the weather? Or prices of airplane tickets? Probably not. We have a strong feeling that since 1998 until this year our sangha was “internally” not ready for holding this retreat.

Photo by Kasia Skura

In recent years Vajra brothers and sisters from Poland had invited Rinpoche to almost every retreat where they managed to form a group of more than two people. This was quite easy to do – organise a gift and come to Rinpoche after the teachings with an invitation. We repeated this many times. With every invitation we were more desperate and slowly starting to discover what the point was.

The point was that for many years our sangha was holding many tensions. We were focusing too much on our own ideas and didn’t really know each other very well. Something had to change. We laugh about that now saying that by then probably someone would get hurt during collaboration.

During the General Assembly of the Sangha in 2013 the major part of the meeting was devoted to “getting to know each other” – everyone introduced themselves and told a bit of their story. Afterwards – a big party. On the second day of the assembly we even arranged a group process to speak openly about the tensions that we have about general and particular matters in our community. We learned a lot about the value of communication and trust. It did us well. In 2014 our invitation was finally accepted and during the fall we saw Poland on the worldwide schedule.

The retreat. The sports hall where the retreat was held was almost full. Over 1200 people attended the retreat and 2000 followed in webcast. There were 1000 registrations online before the retreat started. It seems that everyone was well informed, happy and relaxed – Rinpoche in the first place. Until now organisers keep receiving positive feedback from kind participants from different places.

The retreat place in Warsaw. Photo by Artur Zolkowski

The retreat was organised according to the principle of generosity, free entrance for everyone. People could offer as much as they wanted and spend the rest of their money on books, shirts etc or invest in short term items – in delicious food available at the local buffet and food trucks invited for this event.

Khaita dances with Rinpoche during the retreat. Photo Małgorzata Lewińska

Khaita singing and dancing was widely announced as a practice that should be actively participated in but we did not expect that so many people would join the dances. Luckily the local sangha was reinforced by wonderful Vajra siblings from Chile, Slovakia, Argentina, Italy, France and other countries who helped to lead the dances in four circles. This was a beautiful fusion of joy and presence.

Collaboration with other sanghas. A big part of success of this retreat is owed to the generosity of members of the Karma Kagyu in Warsaw who shared much of their organisational experience, made many contacts available and participated in the retreat in person. This collaboration really facilitated our work throughout the months of preparation. Thank you so much! Rinpoche was happy to attend a meeting at the Karma Kagyu centre during the retreat and after the retreat was finished he expressed that this kind of collaboration is very good.

Rinpoche wearing a traditional hat from Krakow and practitioners from there. Photo Artur Zolkowski

In order to summarise we can look at what really made this retreat a success.

The PM of the retreat manifested instantly – Monika declared to undertake the project management which gave a good, quick starting point. From this point other people started taking responsibilities themselves. The PM and Gakyil took care to communicate and stayed open. In the end the whole project team and karmayogis were just like a family while preparing and especially during the retreat.

We hope to continue this way.

The Gakyil of the Dzogchen Community in Poland