Karme Choling IS the Real World

by Jacquelyn Renée Schneider, Karme Choling

It’s 6:37am on a Sunday. I am in bed and I do not hear the conch sounding out the call to practice for the third day of a 28 day retreat. I get up and while still in my pajamas, walk down the stairs and wonder, “How can I help?” “Am I needed?”

Living at Karme Choling, there is no place to hide and no place to run away to.

People often tell me that living at Karme Choling is not living in the real world. They say things like, “Oh, what are you going to do when you go back to the real world?” Or, “You living up there in Vermont, it is not really the real world.” “I could never give up my career to work at Karme Choling, that is not living in the real world.” For some people, it seems, there is territory declared as real and territory marked as not real, a juxtaposition delineated by a boundary between Karme Choling and out there.

Being at Karme Choling is, however, very real. Reality, in fact, is inescapable. I have lived here for nine months, and most days I relate to work in some way. Retreats keep occurring and the magic keeps us moving along. There are some weeks when I am in 20 hours of meetings, and I also relate to meditation practice and community. It is not uncommon to work a 15 hour day or 12 days in a row. Being here is not simply about the work – everything takes time. There is no boundary between work and life.

The people we oversee, manage or relate to, are also the people we live with. When I have a disagreement with someone here I do not have the option I might have had back home to say “well go %@*& yourself” and walk away. Out there I have choices. Here, I do not choose who works or lives here. I do not choose who comes here on retreat. Retreatants show up! Being at Karme Choling is about family, and about having a choiceless attitude, which, it turns out, is the ultimate surrender.

Basic mundane situations become incredibly heightened at Karme Choling. There is no privacy, even for our own thoughts. Everything is felt in a very real way. We also host people on retreats that are very real. Retreatants come from very real places and have very real upheaval here while doing real intensive practices. I could not imagine a more real place in this world where people work with their minds. Being here is such a precious opportunity to feel and see our rough edges. I have begun to experience myself as a real human being and also feel called not to give up on anybody else.

Realizing that everything I do here impacts someone else is part of living in the challenge. If I do not put my dish away, that affects someone. Everything I relate to becomes practice – whether I am making coffee, working in the Programs Department managing retreats, or living in a shared dorm. How I relate to my shoes affects somebody else’s life. Likewise, other’s behaviors affect me too. We live in this microcosm, each of our electrons flying around, feeling each other directly.

Back home, when the going gets tough, it is really easy to say, “That’s somebody else’s problem.” I double-parked and I am walking away. I am just not going to show up for work, etc. There is the option to close the door to others and say, “That’s not my problem.”

At Karme Choling, however, we share the experience, and the teachings on the phenomenal world let us know that there is no problem at all. We are inter-related; we are inter-dependent; we need each other, and everything is workable. There is no way to survive here if we do not work together. Compassion for ourselves and others is a real cultural value that we desperately need in our world – whether living at a retreat center or not.

Even out in that world, we still need each other. We are not alone. But out there it feels easier to check out, to go home after a day of work, tune out, and do anything to escape having those difficult conversations at work, or any conversation at all.

Embodying the lesson that checking out is not an option, I cannot practice and choose to not relate to my life. And the truth is, that when I go home out there, there is the same choiclessness. This is what it means to be awake in the world. This is not a fantasy, it is my life. Places like Karme Choling need to exist in the world and people need to run these sacred places.

Living in a meditation retreat center is a unique opportunity to get real.

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Jacquelyn Renée Schneider is a Mindfulness Coach for her start up Aigu Consulting LLC, and works and lives at Karme Choling in Barnet, Vermont. Jacquelyn Renée can be reached at info@aiguconsulting.com.