Facing the Question: An Interview with Myoshin Kelley on “Retreat”

Myoshin Kelley attended her first meditation retreat in 1975 at the age of 20.  Through the ensuing years she has received dharma instruction from several renowned Buddhist meditation masters in the Theravada, Zen and Vajrayana traditions.  Myoshin is a long time student of Mingyur Rinpoche and a senior instructor in the Tergar Meditation Community. Jim Wagner interviewed her in July, 2011.

What was your first retreat was like?

I don’t remember that much of my very first retreat—it was so many years ago [laughs]—other than that it helped me get a better understanding of what meditation was. Up to that time I’d been reading books and was part of a group that met one day a month. Meditation had felt haphazard. During the retreat, though, I was getting guidance and instruction and actually had time to meditate.

Was it a longer retreat?

No, it was a weekend.

Did you have anticipation or expectations about it that turned out to be different than you were imagining?

Retreat is always different than I expect—even now. You can have any kind of anticipation or expectation, and can be met with something so totally different, whether it’s in the external conditions or whether it’s what happens in the mind. So I feel like it’s always an adventure, always an unknown what will unfold on any retreat.

I’ve only done one retreat myself and it was at St. John’s last year. What was interesting for me were the emotions coming up.

It's not uncommon to have strong emotions come up. Retreat provides a supportive environment to touch into some aspects of our lives we may be unknowingly keeping at bay. It gives us the opportunity to learn to be with these emotions and not have to be ruled by them.

Yeah, it’s funny. I talked to someone who, when she was going on her first retreat, I think it was for two weeks, was worried that she would run out of the retreat center screaming because of what would come up in her mind. That didn’t ultimately happen.

[Laughing] Yes.

Have you encountered that kind of fear in people coming to retreat for the first time?

People often have a lot of fear because it’s something they've not done before. We don’t know what's going to happen. I think that retreat actually begins when we first face the question, "Do I want to do this?" Even if we don’t do it, facing the question is a way that we start to examine something that's happening in the mind. So, yes, it's not uncommon for to have fear. Mostly, though, I think people find that it's not at all what they were afraid of.

That's really interesting what you said about facing the question. How did that question surface for you?

For me it was a case of doing some meditation, seeing it was beneficial, and realizing I’d like to explore it more. Meditation became a priority. I was willing to take a certain period of time—whether it was a weekend or time that I’d normally use for vacation—to really explore it in a different way.

What benefits can we see from retreat?

It helps us to explore our inner terrain, to let go of fixating our image of ourselves in the world, to venture into "Who are we?" "What are we?" We become intimate with ourselves in a way that we don't get a chance to in our lives with all of the demands that we have. Just out of the simplicity of going into retreat, we don’t have the same levels of input. It allows us to be with ourselves in a whole new way.

Retreat differs from a holiday in that after a holiday we are generally refreshed and then sometime later we're left with just the memories. After a retreat we may find that we have been moved in a way that affects the very way we live our lives and how we relate to life.