Healing Into Simple Living

Healing Into Simple Living

 

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

img_8696These words were first published back in August 1973 by E.F. Schumacher, a British economist with a deep interest in Buddhism. They surely ring as true today as they did back then. Sadly, the world has not grown noticeably less violent nor less complex in the interim period, yet we can at least celebrate the fact that peaceful oases exist in our world where the spiritual values of simplicity and working to develop a good heart are put first. The deep healing that such places can facilitate and nurture has possibly never been more needed than now.

Elaine

Simple living, with all of its trials and tribulations, was an experience that the founding members of Vajrapani Institute, were destined to get to know intimately. Elaine Jackson, 70, one of the founding community members, recalls the circumstances that gave birth to the Institute back in the late Seventies. When Lama Yeshe, and his heart disciple, Lama Zopa Rinpoche led a Buddhist course at Yucca Valley out in the desert East of Los Angeles in March 1977, there was already a lot of buzz in the air about the idea. “There was a great momentum at that course to do something for the benefit of this country,” says Elaine. “We wanted to build a meditation center where people could actualize their highest human potential.” Carried by this wave of inspiration, two of the participants, Janet and Ross Brooke, asked their partners whether they would be willing to donate 30 acres of land they owned together out in the woods near Boulder Creek, California to the cause. The partners’ response came back as a yes. Vajrapani Institute was to become a reality.

Building GompaAt the time all this happened, Elaine was married with two kids. She remembers her husband, John, saying, “Why don’t we just sell everything, buy a teepee and live in the woods for a year and build a retreat center?” She laughs at the memory. “I didn’t see any reason why not!”

High spiritual ideals and an appreciation of the wisdom of letting go were a core part of the motivation that fueled the efforts of those that labored to build Vajrapani Institute. However other powerful cultural currents were also at play. In particular, the horrors of the war in Vietnam were a stark reminder that all was not well with ‘business as usual’ out in the world. “We were all disillusioned with the tenor of the country, with war, with lies. There was a ‘back to nature’ move and a move to a kinder, more peaceful life. At that time, there was real reporting on war. You were in the war, you could see what was happening. On television you saw people getting blown up… We were totally disgusted,” Elaine recalls.

Jackson Tipi and kitchen 77So it was that off-grid life in a teepee began for Elaine and family and those working alongside them to do the hard labor of constructing Vajrapani Institute. Soul-destroying television news bulletins were no longer a problem: there was no television. And although the living conditions were very primitive, Elaine recalls that there was a tremendous camaraderie and generosity of spirit among the community members. Their deep mutual interest in the spiritual path proved a powerful lifeline, even when external conditions stretched them to the limit. Elaine’s new lifestyle, with its routine carrying of water and carting of groceries uphill with a baby strapped to her front also brought about a seismic shift in terms of her understanding about ecology and resource management. “What happened to me was that I began to see where things come from and where they go… So when buying food, do you buy something in a glass bottle? Because if you do, you need to bring it back down the hill. And water doesn’t come from a tap and electricity doesn’t come when you flip a switch!”

What had started as one-year plan to live out in the wilds ended up as a five-year odyssey for Elaine and family. Floods and mudslides forced them back into town in 1982, but the simple-living, spiritually oriented trajectory they had embarked upon continues to this day.

Sean

“I knew that I wanted to be around like-minded people and I thought a community like this would help me grow my practice.”

One of the more recent additions to the Vajrapani Institute family, work study volunteer, Sean Brunelle, 32, started his ‘simple living’ intensive in June 2016, almost four decades after the founding community members took the plunge. Sean is quick to say that his story pales in comparison to theirs. Nevertheless, his current activities still represent a huge change from the life he was previously living as a civilian contractor working on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and then as a firefighter in Southern California.

For Sean, the big transition came two years ago when he first started meditating. At the time he was working for the Fire Department in the San Bernardino area, but just a few months into his exploration of meditation he realized that the group he worked and socialized with was not a good match for his new perspective. “When I started noticing that my way of thinking was changing I wanted to veer off the Fire Department,” he says. “In that community they don’t really talk about things like religion, consciousness, flotation tanks … spiritual things like that. I knew that I wanted to be around like-minded people and I thought a community like this would help me grow my practice.”

Like the first wave of Vajrapani community members back in the Seventies, Sean’s motivation to move more deeply into simple living and spiritual exploration was also partly fueled by a growing disillusionment with aspects of the established order. Prior to his five-year stint in Afghanistan and Iraq he was a firefighter in the military for four years. “While I was in the military my view was that we were doing positive things around the world,” he says. “But after getting out and being overseas, I realized that we’re not there for the right reasons … I was there in Afghanistan and Iraq for five years and I remember only one time, maybe twice, training with the local people. So I got the sense that we weren’t there to help anybody. What we’re always trying to project is that we’re helping people, but we’re just there for their natural resources and to make profit for big companies. That was my conclusion.”

For now, what Sean calls home is a simple tent just down the hillside from Vajrapani Institute’s ridge cabin retreat area. He’s made an effort to make it a pleasant living space and is reveling in the sweetness that living so close to nature is bringing him. “Yesterday when I was brushing my teeth in the morning, instead of going to the bathroom I brushed my teeth in front of my tent and looked at the landscape and thought that everyone should at least one time in their lives brush their teeth in the mountains, outdoors, instead of in front of a mirror!”

An element of Vajrapani Institute that Sean says he particularly values is that it provides a space where people can heal. “People learn about themselves here and are healed…” he says.

“It seems that you can fix yourself here and you can fix yourself forever, if you stay consistent. So I think that this place brings that consistency and it brings you the resources to help make you a better person… It’s the land, the people and the atmosphere: the fact that you are away from television and cell phones and the city… There is something that nature does to heal you naturally.”

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