Where and when did you do your first meditation retreat? What inspired you to do a retreat?

My first intensive vipassana retreat was at an old monastery in Bucksport, Maine, in 1975. At the time I was living in a rural community in northern Maine with family and friends, living a way of life that I profoundly believed in. We lived intimately with nature, growing our food, and I taught at the local elementary school (as well as environmental education elsewhere).  I went to the retreat because I had done everything to be free, experienced the contentment of living a simple and meaningful life, and it wasn’t enough. Since my mother died when I was quite young, I felt determined to find something deeper than life and death. I also knew I needed to come to terms with the visible and hidden layers of suffering in my life and finally there was something I could do about it.

After that retreat, I attended a work retreat in l977 at IMS and left my teaching job in Maine to work there on staff in 1978. I was fortunate to receive an amazing range of teachings from various teachers from Asia (Mahasi Sayadaw, Tungpulu Sayadaw, Ajahn Chaah, Dipa Ma, and Bhante Seevali,) as well as from the wonderful western teachers that continue to teach there and around the world today. In those early years of meditation practice, I was willing to stretch to do whatever needed to be done, there was such desperation and yearning for freedom.

Was that coming from knowing that there was something deeper you could connect with, or from a sense of lack, of suffering in your life?  What was the motivation for more intensive practice?

For me that sense of lack, of suffering in my life, had come from the moments in my life when I wasn’t in touch with something deeper. The truth of that became clearer with more intensive practice. The motivation for more practice came with increasing ability to access something deeper.  I learned as a child to immerse myself in nature as a way to be still, heal, to touch the interconnectedness of life, and to find the inspiration to keep going.  That was a wonderful practice for me. Yet attempting to learn to live with my family, friends and neighbors in northern Maine, I noticed whenever I came out of nature to be in the human world, I wasn’t free at all. Going back and forth between the peace of nature and the inability to hold the joys and sorrows of the human world with balance was getting more  painful; I just didn’t know how to work with it. 

The moment I began the retreat in Bucksport, I found what I was looking for, it was that feeling of recognition—that I’d done the practice before.  But I think I had forgotten how extensive the practice was!

Right (laughing). Had you known how long and how hard it would be, would you have signed up?

I would have. Developing wisdom and compassion is worth coming back for, life after life. It’s that important.

When did you begin to teach?

In 1981, during a three-month retreat at IMS, I trained formally to be a spiritual friend. The next year I was  teaching the three-month retreat.  It’s been my life since then, it’s a privilege and I love it.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

I appreciate the willingness of students to share with me the ups and downs of awakening. It’s like being on a great treasure hunt—finding a way with each person to access the wisdom and compassion within through the process of mindfulness. Part of the treasure hunt entails understanding the deeper obstacles to freedom that are unique for each person. I enjoy the challenge of listening for how the practice will flower for each person from the inside in it’s own time.

Teaching is interesting because there’s such a wide range of where people are in their practice.  I enjoy the process of guiding someone as far as they can go from conceptual/nonconceptual to unconditioned.  Over the course of a lifetime, the practice will touch all aspects of our lives. I love working with so many dimensions. If someone is willing to soften emotionally, I enjoy combining a classical approach with the healing process.   I love all of it. It’s a privilege, such a deep responsibility and privilege. 

So how do you stay fresh and inspired for teaching?   

The freshness in teaching comes from keeping my own practice alive. After years of formal sitting practice I have sat numerous self-retreats.  Both ways of practicing provide deep inspiration. Teaching in Burma the last few years I see nuns, monks and lay people doing their inner work with humility, sincerity and renunciation.  This really inspires me.  I feel renunciation is required  to teach in an authentic way.  

Dipa Ma, who was an extraordinary teacher of mine in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition, implored me to relinquish excessive socializing because it robs one of precious energy. That has become more of a challenge recently as Steven and I birth a meditation center on Hawai’i Island.  It’s been challenging to discover more creative ways of renewal within the context of a very full daily life.

I have experienced an unexpected, great source of energy and inspiration directly from the commitment to create this center and protect the land there.

Could you talk a little about the retreat you sat with U Pandita where your practice opened up to this whole place that you hadn’t touched before?

Pandora’s box (laughing).  That was in ‘84. U Pandita  encouraged me to intensify mindfulness beyond what I thought possible.  I had not realized that I was using concentration as a kind of control to keep a lot of old repressed memories and emotions hidden. Even though he was tough with me I really trusted him because he had such an aura of sila, which was extremely  important to me with a history of abuse. I also really trusted him because of his technical brilliance. I can be a warrior as a yogi, I really  want to be free. So I just did what he said.

At a certain point during the retreat very painful, repressed memories came to the surface. By Pandora’s box I mean that the karmic pain and knots from lifetimes appeared clearly from opening to the repressed pain. Lifetimes of work opened up.  It was breathtaking in a way but it wasn’t easy to know what to do with it all.  It took me two years to  learn how to relate to all the layers with mindfulness, patience and compassion. They were  pioneer days. 

I learned to be mindful of painful emotions and to witness in the present moment the pain of past experiences I had been unable to feel as a child.  In the early days of meditation in America it was difficult to find a competent and compassionate therapist to guide me in mindfulness of repressed emotions.   Until I found someone skilled, it was a rocky road. 

Because you’ve been through this process yourself, how do you work with people who come to you with issues like child abuse and extreme emotional suffering?

It depends on where they are in their process.  I was previously referring to the approach of softening toward  emotions versus the more classical spiritual journey of insight.  For some people the two processes happen side by side.  Working with someone with repressed emotions that explode in retreat is quite different than working with someone already grounded in a healing journey before intensive retreat practice.

This is unique for each person. Sometimes it’s not the time for an intensive retreat.  With extreme emotional suffering retreat conditions of isolation and silence could trigger repressed painful emotions from a childhood where no one was there for them.  An interview every other day for fifteen minutes may not be what’s appropriate for somebody who needs more contact. 

Working with a skilled therapist may be more appropriate  where one get the connection and skills that would heal those layers and make an intensive retreat possible.

But you definitely think it’s possible for someone to be working on these deep issues, or even have such issues come up for the first time, and be deepening in their meditation process?

No doubt about it. In fact, sometimes that kind of history for various reasons is very motivating.

Another area you’ve had to work with is challenging health issues. You have allergies. Is that the main thing?

Well, I was born dead and have had a weak immune system as well as allergies since birth.  Yet there has been a gradual lessening of illness. I feel that through this practice and by picking up the pieces emotionally I’ve become healthier.

What are the challenges and benefits—if there are any-of practicing while the body is unhealthy?

There are benefits to the body breaking down. It can be a direct path to liberation.

You lose that illusion that this body is just going to carry you through and take care of you?

Yes, and it’s so motivating. When you have a chronic health issue or if one is dying, there’s a sense that the body is a strong and direct teacher. You surrender to that teaching. If you learn how to accept it, the teaching is a powerful transmission.

So again, it’s still possible to practice given the challenges of the body, to not use it as an excuse—“Oh, I can’t go do a retreat because I have this illness.�

I did almost five years of lying meditation because of chronic back pain before I worked with U Pandita. One of the teachers that I found the most helpful for body dukkha was Bhante Seevali. He was a monk from Sri Lanka. I was in excruciating back pain during an intensive retreat at the time. He looked at me with his beautiful brown mango eyes, so content and peaceful. I told him, “I don’t think I can do it. It’s too hard.â€?  He said, “You know, the body is hopeless.â€? There was something so important in that.  No matter whether or not we have “good healthâ€?, it’s hopeless. One has to come to terms with the fact that you’re not your body.

Michele, funny things often seem to happen to you, interesting adventures and experiences. When you give a talk, it’s often full of these weird things that have just happened to you. Why do you think that is?

I don’t know. I never thought about it.

What came to my mind is that you have a curiosity about things and a connectedness with life, a vitality that gets you involved in ways that perhaps other people might hold back from that experience.

I could share many stories, but I don’t know why these things happen.

You don’t have any sense of why?

 I suppose one could call it not holding back. For me it just seems to be how life is. Take yesterday for example.  I decided I’d like to go on a bike ride after a morning of meetings with students.  I sit so much and didn’t want to miss such an exquisite autumn day. I didn’t have much time because I had a meeting with the IMS staff.  I started biking but tired easily because I was out of shape. I decided to walk to a nearby swamp and rest. I walked for awhile on a path through a dark ancient pine forest and emerged at the edge of a extraordinarily vast swamp.  I saw the quintessential beauty of thousands of geese, resting in the swamp, as well as flying overhead on their way south. Even as a child growing up in New England I’d never seen anything like this. It was an awesome, majestic, once-in-a-lifetime view of the geese in the blue sky and red foliage.

But as I stepped into this magnificent scene I managed to step in a hidden pile of fresh dung and I thought, “how did this happen?â€?  I had to immediately go to the staff meeting and it was impossible to clean off the smell. I kept wondering, “What kind of being produced this?â€?  It was an unusually unpleasant smell. The contrast between the smell and all the painful aspects of life with the vividness of appreciation and joy I experience on this beautiful earth has been the story of my life. The mindfulness practice has been the only tool I’ve found to develop equanimity within this wide range of joy and sorrow on this planet.

I’m the type that wanders off, I tend to like to explore in a way that maybe other people hold back from. But I can’t imagine not living like that.

We wouldn’t want you to, either.  Would you talk a little bit about your relationship to nature, because I know it’s very important to you. It’s such a grounding thing, and it manifests in your talks and your teaching. How has it affected your practice, your teaching, and you?

From a very young age, nature was my refuge. I sought out the sacred spots that saved my life, that were my lifeline. Whenever I was suffering, if I went there for as long as I needed to, being still, I would find the courage to go on. During my teens, connection with nature became a doorway to a greater responsibility to other humans and to the world.  Initially nature was a protection and a form of parenting.  Nature was my spiritual practice until I started Vipassana meditation. The mindfulness practice was overlaid onto that connection. In the past 10 years I’ve been working hard to integrate these two different roots of my spiritual practice.

What do you mean, consciously worked hard at it?

It takes time to cultivate an inside-the-room quiet sitting or walking practice with certain levels of quiet within, and it takes time to cultivate relationships with various aspects of nature (such as sitting out by the ocean with Hawaiian Green Sea turtles--or acting to protect an endangered species). Both require cultivation, and I felt that I had put the cultivation of my connection with nature on the back burner. Life has its cycles. After four months of intensive silent Brahma Vihara practice in 1990-91, I felt called to re-cultivate my connection with nature, but from a deeper place.  I felt I had a responsibility to do that, as a daughter of the earth. When I’m not in touch with being a child of the earth in this way, and relinquish responsibility for cultivating that relationship, I feel out of balance.

You recently purchased some land on the Big Island to build a retreat center. Do you want to talk about what your vision is for that center, and what your role will be in its development?

Retreat centers ultimately reflect the depth of understanding of the teachers and staff and students who connect with the place. The land we purchased-as well as the streams, the gulches, the ocean, the rocks are all sacred and a great refuge. That’s very important to me. I felt called to protect this place.  It’s an opportunity for people to be invited into a very healing, powerful connection with a sacred space. Steven and I, and our Board of Advisors are completely committed to creating a physical space where people are offered the Vipassana and Brahma Vihara teachings--so they can go as deep as possible in their practice--for full liberation.

And so will there be the whole range of retreats there, from weekend to three months?

Yes-the whole range. We will also have Western teachers as well as Asian teachers. It’s very important for us to have a young adult retreats there as well as Steven and Mirabai Bush’s teaching for Contemplative Mind--with the business and philanthropy world.

So I’d like to just finish with this question: What is the essential thing you try to convey to people on retreat? What do you hope that they go away with, that they hear?

I mostly want people to feel that it’s in their capability, their potential, to develop wisdom and compassion, that they can do it anywhere, anytime, in their life, on retreat, that they can do it. I want people to understand what they’re doing, spiritually, on this planet. I want people to feel encouraged and committed to go as deep as they possibly can--totally free from greed, hatred, and delusion, this lifetime, with the greatest patience. May we aspire to the deepest peace and happiness for all beings.