At the Edge of Ireland (14 page)

“Where is this Dzogchen? And how do we get there?” I said.

“With great difficulty,” Jim said, chuckling, “particularly if you've never been there before. There's a sign about the size of a small menu and it's on a bend, so if you blink or get distracted by the view, which at that point is fabulous, then you'll miss it…And even when you've found it, you'll wish you hadn't. The track up into the hills is a real shock-smasher.”

 

J
IM WAS RIGHT ON
both counts. First try—we missed the sign. By a good mile. We were almost down at the rocky beaches near Caher-more before we realized we'd overshot. So—back up the hill between burly boulders and twisted strata to the sign, which was actually smaller than a menu. More like a
Reader's Digest
magazine. And the track—well, at least it was a rental car we were driving, and quite frankly, considering those rip-off rates and obligatory “extra insurance fees”—we didn't feel too guilty about the shock-smashing. After a mile or two of grinding metal and creaking rivets as we switch backed higher and higher across the moors and between scrub-covered rock humps, we arrived in a small parking area surrounded by a thick profusion of trees and bushes. Suddenly and serenely there was silence. Utter silence.

“So where is everything—and everybody?” asked Anne.

“There's a small sign over there,” I said, wondering if we'd arrived at the correct destination. Apparently we had. The sign confirmed that this was the Dzogchen Beara. But where was it?

We followed a winding pebbly path and then coyly, little by little, the complex revealed itself. First a tiny store selling an enticing mix of Buddhist trinkets, music CDs, and books on meditation, mantras, and “spiritual medicine.” Then came a small administration building, followed by the bright white stucco walls of the meditation space and the shrine room. Beyond that were dormitories and other meeting spaces, and lower down, where the land ended in jagged two-hundred-foot-high cliffs, was a series of small rental cottages. And that was about it. We'd been told there were sacred sites hidden away on the hilltops and in the dense scrub, but we saw none of these. What we did see, though, was almost enough to make us instant converts—at least in terms of the aesthetics of the site. A great green curl of pyramidal hills spun southward, chiseled by deeply eroded black cliffs. Even on this relatively calm day, surf crashed against their bases, spuming fifty or more feet into the air. Farther south, in a blue haze, were the long graceful fingers of the Sheep's Head and Mizen Head peninsulas. And then, as we slowly turned ourselves westward, there was the Atlantic Ocean, striated with purple and turquoise, edging out toward North America in a sheen of burnished silver under a delicate scrim of puffball clouds.

“Next stop, Newfoundland and Labrador! Three thousand miles of uninterrupted brine…” I said.

“Beautiful—just beautiful!” said Anne.

Here indeed was a place serenely wrapped in peace and solitude.

Against such terrestrial purity one experiences a sense of cerebral self-erasure, a vanishing into an atmosphere of mirage and mist as you're being gently demoted to the status of a fading shadow…

“It is beautiful, isn't it—really!” said somebody else. Behind us.

We turned. A young man with a lean, open face and unusually bright eyes stood smiling at us. “Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt…Matt Padwick. Very pleased you could both make it.”

We all shook hands in a welter of grins and “so are we”s.

“You okay out here for a while? My office is a real mess—and it's a great day to be outside anyway.”

We strolled slowly down to a low stone wall set unnervingly close to the cliff edge and sat together on the warm grass. Layer upon layer of cliffs shimmered in the soft amber tones of a late-afternoon sun, gradually fading into a purple haze to the south. Matt was immediately honest with us. In fact he seemed to be one of those individuals for whom dishonesty would be impossible. “Thanks for calling, but listen, if you've come to hear a long lecture on Buddhism, I'm not the right chap. I organize things—keep things flowing—reasonably efficiently! I'm not officially qualif—”

Dzogchen Beara

“That's fine with us,” I said. “We prefer to do without the indoctrination anyway.”

Matt explained that since his arrival here in 1998, his aim had been to encourage open access to anyone and everyone. “To me, some of the most important elements of any belief system are to avoid harming anyone, to increase our connectedness, and to find contentment and meaning within our own selves and not through the pursuit of elusive external things. I've known people—many—who've gone decades without experiencing a truly silent meditative moment. They seem to be driven by some self-created internal ‘race.' So I suppose you could say we exist to help slow down—maybe even eliminate—that kind of rather pointless and often damaging race. And that's really what it's all about here. I must admit, though, to being very impressed by Sogyal Rinpoche. I've met him quite a few times now. He really does possess some kind of aura—very peaceful, very focused, and very perceptive. He's not one of those hide-in-a-cave guys—he's right out there, all the time. I love to watch him in action. At some of our workshops, we'll always get people coming in with loaded questions—some that would stump your average theology philosopher. But he responds in such a natural, commonsense kind of way that the questions—the crafty semantics—just seem to flutter away. They don't seem relevant. He disarms people. Totally. Not through clever rhetoric or esoteric learning, but by being completely straightforward and honest. He's a great guy! I get great thoughts when I listen to him, but sometimes, when I try to explain them, my words can vanish into a neurological Bermuda Triangle!”

The three of us sat chatting together for half an hour or more, wafted by cool breezes. The sun was warm, the sea haze had intensified. The land became more mystical, merging seamlessly with the sky and the ocean. It was a most enticing interlude. We felt bathed in peace and the pleasure of quiet conversation. Then, without any hint of proselytizing, Matt explained more about the center and how it had added value and depth to his own life.

“I traveled for ages in my twenties. Around the world and whatnot. I suppose I was a kind of seeker, but I also had a great time just goofing off and adventuring. Going with the flow. I suppose living that kind of money-and-thing-free life, which is what I did for quite a while, you begin to see some of the key problems with modern-day antics—ultramaterialism, accumulation of ultimately meaningless toys, the affluenza contradiction—you know, the more you spend, the less you enjoy it! It's fun at first, I suppose, but then you realize you're in a spiritual cul-de-sac. Going nowhere.

“Who was that French philosopher? Was it Descartes? He said our biggest problem is that we often find it very hard to sit silently in a room by ourselves with no distractions. We're always going after the next thing—the next immediate gratification. Stupid, really. Like rats in cages always looking for the next bit of cheese. Anyway, so eventually I wised up and got a bit more serious. Signed up here for a short retreat. I didn't want to go through this life with a brain full of ‘if onlys' and ‘I
could
haves.' I told myself I'd give it a week or two, and if nothing happened then—shoot—I'd admit defeat and join the rat race! But then—well, I guess something
did
work, and I also met my wife, Andrea, here. Then my parents came to visit, fell in love with Beara, and stayed. My mum's a reflexologist. She's also become one of the Beara ‘healers,' although she'd never really call herself that. The place just seems to lure in people with special gifts—and people who need them! That's why Dzogchen Beara is so powerful, I suppose. It's very hidden away, as you found out, and quiet, but it's known literally around the world. I was very lucky to find a job here. I don't get too involved with the actual teaching and meditation side of things…I'm kind of like a lubricant, just keeping the machinery of management moving along quietly and hopefully without too many glitches. And it's a great life. I've met so many beautiful people here…”

Then suddenly Matt looked up at the sky. A cloud was passing overhead, quickly darkening. The rest of the sky was virtually cloudless, but above us was this ogreish form, visibly bulging and contorting, as if possessed by some demonic force.

“Oh, boy!” whispered Matt. “You've gotta watch this.”

“What? What's happening?” I asked.

Anne stared upward. “Wow, this looks interesting…”

“We'll go inside in a minute,” said Matt, “but just see what happens. We've got some weird microclimate quirks here. Something to do with the cliffs and the Gulf Stream currents, they say…”

“Or maybe the natural forces don't like all these humans here tapping into esoteric spiritual realms,” I suggested.

“Y'know I never thought of—” Matt started to respond with a chuckle but was abruptly drowned out in a flailing, crackling tumble of large (and painful) hailstones. “To the shrine!” he shouted, and we leapt up and scampered up the steep slope from the cliff edge past the altar for butter lamps and into the large unoccupied white room with its scores of red cushions scattered around the floor.

This was our first introduction to the Dzogchen's magnificent meditation space with its floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the cliffs, the bays, and the timeless infinities of the ocean. In the midst of the frantic hammering of hail on the roof and the blizzard-like miasma outside, which eliminated views of anything at all, Matt asked with a huge grin, “So whadya think of this?!”

“Amazing—it just came out of nowhere!” I gushed.

Anne was silent.

“You okay?” I asked.

No reply.

“Hello?”

“What's that phrase?” she finally responded. “If you don't like the Irish weather…”

“Just wait five minutes,” Matt said, rounding off the old chestnut. I remembered a similar and well-justified sentiment in the Hebrides of Scotland and also in Maine. And then, being English by birth, I couldn't resist throwing in another favorite chestnut—one of good old Dr. Johnson's: “When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is always of the weather.”

“So how did you know I was English?” asked Matt.

“Well, you certainly don't sound Irish! Oh—and I've just remembered an old Yorkshire saying:

‘It ain't no use to grumble and complain

It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice;

When God sorts out the weather and sends in rain,

Why then—rain's my choice.'

Ironically there was latent meaning in the words—a sense of benign, smiling receptivity—that seemed most appropriate for our Buddhist shrine room setting.

 

O
N OUR WAY OUT
into the now-bright day with a cloudless sky again, I spotted this handwritten message on an index card pinned to a notice board by the door. It seemed coincidentally (but of course, as we all know by now, there are no coincidences) to capture the essence of the string of little experiences since our arrival here a couple of hours earlier:

We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are often enslaved. And yet when you look deeply, you realize there is nothing that is permanent or constant, not even the tiniest hair on your body. Nothing is as it appears to be. Opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering. The sky is our absolute nature. It has no barriers and is boundless. And these great cliffs of Beara are a springboard for the spirit. So—Fly! Fly! Fly!

“Y
EAH—THERE IS A DEFINITE SENSE
of ‘flying' here—on many levels. The Karma quotient must be off the scales. A real Richter-buster! For me at the moment, I guess it feels like a kind of floating between two worlds—the Buddhist world of recycling and reincarnation and the Christian world of heavenly hosts and all that kind of thing…I don't really see any contradictions between them. I believe they're both intensely personal, enveloping courage, love, and compassion as key ingredients to life and whatever comes after.”

He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin—even slightly emaciated—and he walked slowly, with a distinct stoop. We never really introduced ourselves. I just found him sitting on the cliff edge at Dzogchen one late afternoon on my second spontaneous visit. He looked deep in thought—maybe even meditation—but then he turned, smiled a sort of wan smile, and invited me to join him. He was obviously troubled by something weighty. His brow was compressed in furrows and his eyes lacked any kind of life-sparkle. I soon found out why…

“The cancers hit me suddenly. It was like what Joan Didion wrote in that recent book of hers,
The Year of Magical Thinking
: ‘Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.'