About this time last year, I was the road for about a month and half and little did I know how different it would be from the pandemic days. I suspected that it would be my 'last' significant roadtrip given that my day job was finally returning with the pandemic subsiding. I felt pretty good on how much progress I made on the road trip in terms of interviews but I was pleasantly surprised how the rest of 2022 finished up.
In the past year, my karmic propensity has led to many encounters with Guru Rinpoche, aka, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. Just a few weeks ago when I was working on redoing the home page of this website, I was tempted to reuse the famous quote by Guru Rinpoche about when Buddhism would come to the west. The first iteration of the website had the quote so his influence was from the get go. As time progress and I learned more about his activities through books and movies such as this one, my appreciation and his influence continues to this day.
I was inspired to do a quick trip to upstate NY this fall to attend Nyungne retreat at the Padmasambhava Center. The center is one of the few in the Dudjom Tersar lineage and I was hoping to received teachings from the center's founders but alas, it was mostly a practice based retreat. Definitely one of the more physically challenging retreats due to the fasting aspects and I am glad to be in a formal retreat after so many years of not doing any retreats.
Without a doubt, this trip was motivated by my desire to leave the grey winters of Michigan. I hadn't done a winter migration before so I wasn't sure that the end of january was quite the best time given that I would be sleeping in my van for most of the trip. For the most part, it work out fine as the only snow storm was on my way into Great Smokey National Park and my time there was very brief.
I continue to be grateful for the time I've had in the 2021 to focus on this project and my personal practice. Despite have very little professional work, I was able to get by financially and continue refining this project have more clarity. I was made my goal of being about to interview 12-15 people per year and visit a few new cities that I hadn't been to before. In particular, I go the chance to make my way to Crestone, a epicenter of Buddhist retreat centers of a town of 500 residents. Although I only spent a few days there, I positive I will be back for one of Tysokyi Rinpoche's week long teachings.