Why do a three-year retreat? Happiness--plain and simple. Happiness that we can reside in eternally. How does that work? Buddhism and all of the other wisdom traditions of humanity teach that the world is what we make of it--we are creating our world. This is not some silly "think positive thoughts" idea, but the reality that we experience in every moment is literally being created by our mind and projected like a movie--a movie so intense, so real, that we are convinced that it is our very existence. And while this is true, in the sense that it IS our life, there is something else going on here.
The movie we experience is totally, completely, and without exception a refelction of how well we have taken care of others in the past. So, we change our world by living our lives differently--with more love, more compoassion, and more understanding.
But how do we unveil the illusion of the movie completely? We seek to uncover the "man behind the curtain." There is an unchanging force that allows this play to happen. In Buddhism it's called emptiness. Christianity calls it God, Islam Allah, Hinduism Atman. It is possible to go behind the screen to see how the projector works, to understand how to change the movie forever. This is why to do retreat.
Emptiness is so subtle, God whispers so quietly, that trying to hear, see, or understand how this works in the 21st century world is like trying to hear the wings of gnat in a thunderstorm. In retreat we begin the long process of quieting the storm of our minds in hope of hearing the gnat--the whispering voice of God, to understand how the world works, to stop the madness forever. To realize that the only reason we haven't' flow away on Angel's wings yet is because we don't remember that we had them all along.
René and Brian
