Rosita Boland writes that driving into the steeply-sloped car-park at the Dzogchen Beara Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Centre near Allihies in west Cork, the first thing I notice is that the car next to mine has a bumper sticker that proclaims, "Commit Random Acts of Kindness".
The Dzogchen Beara Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Centre was established as a charitable trust in 1992, under the spiritual direction of Tibetan Sogyal Rinpoche, who visits from time to time. It has a very beautiful location: a collection of buildings cling like barnacles to a cliff-face that overlooks the Atlantic. The centre employs 10 full-time staff, and it offers a series of year-round retreats of varying lengths. Autumn courses on offer include: Loving Kindness, healing ourselves through love; Finding Peace, an introduction to meditation; and Speaking About Death and Supporting Families. It now runs twice as many courses as it did even five years ago, such is the increase in demand. Prices start at €130 for weekend retreats, which includes meals but not accommodation.
In addition to the weekend and week-long courses, you can come to Dzogchen Beara for up to two years on retreat, as Matt Padwick, the centre's general manager, did six years ago. There are rooms on site for up to 11 people seeking retreat, for periods of between three months and two years. Their meals are provided and they do not leave the premises or mix with anyone other than themselves. Welsh-born Padwick opted to drop out of his old life as an international travel adventure guide and live in silence and retreat at Beara for two years.
"It's an experience not open to all," he admits. "Not everyone is free to do it. But at the end, I had a better understanding of myself and a clearer idea of my own confusion."
There are also three cottages and a small independent hostel on site, with plans to fundraise (they are currently seeking donations) and build a €3.5 million spiritual care centre by 2007. This will be a place where up to four people who have recently been diagnosed as terminally ill, will be able to come with their carers for a period of adjustment. It will not be a medical centre, such as a hospice. The centre already offers courses to people working with those who are terminally ill, either professionally or in a voluntary capacity.
"We see it as a facility that will complement the courses already on offer here," says Ally Cassidy, the spiritual care manager. They are anxious to stress that while the centre is Buddhist, people of any religious faith can attend.
People can self-cater at Dzogchen Beara, or find accommodation locally, while availing of either the longer, formal courses the centre runs, or the free, twice-daily, guided meditation practices that go on all year round at times when no longer courses are running.
I've come to stay in one of the cottages for a day and a night, taking both the morning and afternoon guided meditation practice. Padwick shows me to a classic holiday-house cottage, the door surrounded by mombrethia and the interior smelling of wood. It has a magnificent view: vistas out over Dursey Island and far beyond. Fishing boats look as small as birds. I haven't come well-prepared to self-cater: I had planned on going back into Castletownbere later that evening to eat. But once I see the view, I don't want to stir from the place for a minute.
I go off for a walk before the afternoon meditation and when I come back, someone is walking quietly down the path to my cottage, carrying a plate covered in tinfoil. I follow him into the cottage, where he silently places it on the counter top and silently leaves. Under the tinfoil is salad, humus and delicious-looking veggie-burgers, all home-made and home-grown. Now there's no need to leave until tomorrow morning, after the second meditation.
At 3pm, I head up to the shrine room. This is where all the meditation practices take place: a large room with picture windows on two sides, where sea-birds hover far above the ocean. There are some dozen people in the room. There are lots of framed pictures on the walls of Tibetan Buddhist teachers and one corner is entirely taken up by a simple Buddhist shrine, but the overall impression is that everything is understated. So far, this is all good. The place is beautiful, the sun makes it possible for the view to be vast and generous, and it feels calm and untroubled. I'm ready for my first meditation practice.
The Loving Kindness session is taken by instructor Andrew Warr. My short-term memory is sometimes unreliable and I'm a bit worried that I'll have forgotten everything by the end of the session, as clearly it would be inappropriate to take notes throughout the session. Warr leads the session with the well-judged calm assurance of the total professional, tapping a bowl at intervals.
It goes something like this. We are invited to think of someone we care for and focus on them. "I wish they were happy, I wish they were well," Warr repeats at intervals. Then to think of someone we have "some small difficulty with". Then to think of the wider world and then yourself, all the time wishing happiness and wellness. It's a guided meditation, the purpose of which is not to empty the mind, but to focus and alert it.
The hour goes on forever. I love the view out the windows (we are told to keep our eyes open), but I realise as the minutes pass that I am really disliking being in a communal formal religious session. I'm perfectly comfortable sitting on the floor, but I'm more and more uncomfortable about trying to focus my mind in the direction we are being guided in. At the end of the session, I simply feel cross, and claustrophobic.
The following morning, Mary Moore, project manager of the spiritual care programme takes the Introduction to Meditation session. There are about 16 people present in the shrine room for this. Moore has the same professionalism and stillness about her as Warr. It's raining hard this morning and the view is fore-shortened. "We sit on the floor for grounded sturdiness," she says at the beginning. "We sit like mountains."
Most of this session is in silence. We are invited to mediate by turn on the sound of our breathing, an object and words.
The idea is to explore spaciousness, mindfulness and awareness. I try hard to follow all the instruction and to focus on the rhythm of my breath. But so what, I can't help thinking? What's the point?
I look at the rain on the window and realise, that while meditation has an ever-bigger following in Ireland these days, it is definitely not for me.
Dzogchen Beara can be contacted at tel 027-73032 or by email: info@dzogchenbeara.org; see also www.dzogchenbeara.org
Next Wednesday: Arminta Wallace at Glenstal
