Listen or subscribe in your favorite player:

The ancient word yogi, or yogini in its female form, refers to someone who has dedicated their life to inner transformation through meditation. They often spend years or even decades in solitary retreat. My teacher and friend Paula Chichester is one of the vanishingly few modern people who has chosen to live such a life of isolation and inner adventure. It was my honor recently to speak with her about her life’s journey.

In our conversation, Paula talks about balancing the inner development fostered by meditation with the outer transformation of social action, the joys and challenges of long-term retreat and the practicalities of how to pay for it, how to find support, and how to cheer yourself up with a “one person party” when things get tough.

Before the interview: Explore Yogini Meaning

In Sanskrit, “yogini” (or the male version, “yogi”) refers to a female practitioner of yoga or tantra. Rooted in India and Hinduism, the word encompasses far more than physical yoga asana; it taps into deep spiritual practices like sadhana, which often invoke the feminine divine, such as Durga, Devi, or Parvati. In tantric tradition, the yogini embodies both the cosmic energies of Shakti and the grounding forces of Shiva, as seen in the yogini temples scattered across India, such as the famous Hirapur temple. Yoginis are often associated with supernatural powers and transcendental wisdom, or “vidya,” and are key figures in both Hindu and Buddhist tantric lineages. In these traditions, they may also be referred to as dakinis or bhairavis, mystical figures sometimes likened to sorceresses in their ability to bridge the material and spiritual realms.

The concept of the yogini, however, extends beyond its South Asian origins and has intrigued spiritual seekers in the West. In tantric Buddhism, particularly in Tibet, yoginis like Vajrayogini play a central role, representing the enlightened feminine and embodying wisdom and compassion. The yogic and tantric traditions that describe the yogini also intersect with Vedic and Puranic texts, where yoginis are often depicted in relation to deities like Bhairava. In these narratives, the yogini is not just a yoga practitioner but a guide through the chakras, employing mudras and mantras to unlock spiritual power. As the term has traveled to the West, it has been translated into English and Hindi, but the essence remains the same—a yogini means more than a female practitioner; she is a vessel for ancient wisdom and spiritual evolution, one who navigates both the material world and the higher states of consciousness cultivated through yoga practice.

Introduction to Paula Chichester

[00:01:52] Scott Snibbe: Paula, thank you so much for joining me on How to Train a Happy Mind. I first met you at a retreat in 2006. I took a Vajrasattva retreat that you led at Vajrapani when I was getting divorced, which was a good time to do purification. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us.

[00:02:12] Paula Chichester: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. I really thank you for asking me, it’s always nice to see you. You’re a good guy, I like to talk to you.

[00:02:25] Scott Snibbe: Thank you for saying that. Paula, you’re one of the few people I know who’s dedicated the majority of your life to meditation practice. In our lineage, we call this type of person a yogi, or in your case, a yogini. I’d love if you could start out by talking about what led you to what for most of us would seem a very unconventional lifestyle.

[00:02:49] Paula Chichester: I’m a product of my environment, really. My parents were from the South, very racist, deep South, Macon, Georgia. And my father moved his family to Berkeley, California, the most opposite place you could imagine, when I was almost six. He went to graduate school, and then they were, I would almost say students, followers of Martin Luther King. Then we went back to the South for three more years where my parents were activists. Of course, that really influenced me as a child, and I think I was really influenced by Martin Luther King, myself, as my parents were.

I’ve always been a person that’s more interested in experience and experiential learning. I learned through experience. When I was 14 at West Campus at Berkeley High School, we had a class where there were like 20 of us and it was we sat around in a circle and we read two books out loud. We read the Bhagavad Gita and we read The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha. You have to remember this is 1968, The Beatles had gone to India and this whole culture of looking for alternative realities. I hadn’t taken psychedelics or anything, but it was around, and so that really influenced me as well. The teacher was an Indian Sikh named Mr. Dillon.

Then one of those weekends, it might’ve been Easter weekend, we went down to Big Sur and I decided I would try and meditate. I didn’t know what it was, but I just decided I would try. I had this really profound experience, I really felt like I was one with everything, and when we came back, something had really changed. I went to every adult I knew to try to explain to me what it was, and nobody could explain it to me.

But at the same time, I wanted to move into the closet because I wanted to have a cave. We had one of these closets at our house on Parker Street under the staircase, and it was big enough that I could live in it, so I wanted to move into this closet because I wanted to live in a cave.

I wanted to move into this closet because I wanted to live in a cave.

I ended up going to UC Berkeley. They had an extraordinary environmental studies program that was actually run by Pacifica Radio activists. It was training young people to be environmental warriors. My freshman year we had this class where they introduced us to the systems approach and thinking in systems, and it was this extraordinary man named Arnold Schultz, who was one of the first scientists, biologists, to work in the world of ecology.

I got very interested in that because I loved nature. Basically what he taught was that everything is dependent upon everything else. Where does the tree start and where does the sky begin and that trees are merely labeled on the fact that we see it as a tree, but where is the tree? That was happening for me before I met Buddhism.

My generation and my friends, we’re all part of this movement to try to do something. But Arnold Schultz, made it really clear that the way we think, our epistemological system, isn’t going to answer the questions. He said that he could teach engineers, he would ask them if they could build a pipe that would take blood from Israel to England, they would do it, without thinking about what it was. People get stuck in their little disciplines and don’t discuss with each other, don’t see the big picture, and don’t think about the outcomes. It’s sort of like just big boys with their toys.

People get stuck in their little disciplines and don’t discuss with each other, don’t see the big picture, and don’t think about the outcomes.

A few years later I meet Lama Yeshe, and he was the perfect person who was teaching us how to think outside the box and how to integrate intuitive learning and intuitive understanding with intellectual understanding. Here was a system that used both. He was also pointing to the idea that we can learn to be intuitive.

We can learn skills that get us to think in ways that aren’t just intellectual understanding, and that we can use our intellectual understanding to launch us into another realm of gnosis, of knowing, which now I would call three dimensional learning. Whereas what we learn in school is two dimensional, or even one dimensional. We learn a bunch of information, we take a test, we spit it out, we learn it all really well, and suddenly we have a Ph.D., and we know it all.

Buddhism’s not like that at all. With Buddhism, you have to do that first or along the way, but at the same time, you’re incorporating it deeply into your understanding where it transforms your whole outlook and your whole being and even your body and that you use your body and you use your mind too. It’s a different approach to learning and understanding. That’s what excited me about the Dharma.

Why did you do solitary retreat for so long?

[00:08:24] Scott Snibbe: You could have easily become an outward environmental activist and then you also had this choice to go inward to become some kind of an inward activist through buddhist practice, and you went so deeply even into many years, decades of solitary retreat.

Could you unpack a little that decision for people who might be wondering about those choices?

[00:08:46] Paula Chichester: I ended up going to India a couple of years after I met Lama Yeshe, and he set up these three incredible programs with his teachers. At this time, they told you, You can get enlightened in three years if you do a three year retreat. At the time, I was still working with this professor I was telling you about, Arnold Schultz, who I just loved. He had convinced me to get into a PhD interdisciplinary program at Berkeley, work in all the different disciplines.

I was going to try to come up with a way to actually teach emptiness, to teach meditation to scientists. But when I learned what I learned for those six months in India, I felt that to really explore this other way of being and thinking and learning, that I couldn’t do it in a university. I really needed to get out and to just explore this completely.

Doing solitary retreat was the method that they recommended. I didn’t come to it from a religious thing at all. I came to it from someone who wanted to understand how the mind works and how we could change the world. Because this was the time of Stuart Brand and the alternative paradigm and how we need to find a new paradigm shift to create a different world. I was completely signed up for that.

The other thing was that because they told us you can get enlightened in three years, I thought that I could go off and do retreat for maybe 10 years and then come back. But the thing was it turned out I was gone for more like 25 years, because I did one retreat and they said do another retreat and then and finally in 2005, Lama Zopa Rinpoche finally looked at me and he said, “Oh, you finished, now you need to go benefit sentient beings.”

But by then I was in my fifties and I had no idea how I could get back into the world that I had left. I didn’t have any traction anymore. I couldn’t really navigate that world without feeling like I was losing what I had gained. Also, I found out later that, back in the 70s, when I was a biologist and an ecologist, I worked out in the desert surveying plants and soils in southern Utah, and I got uranium poisoning. Thank you very much, U. S. government, because there’s uranium poisoning all over that part of the world.

In fact, I was just in Arizona and there were signs everywhere for the Navajo, “Have you had your uranium testing, yet?” Well, I didn’t know, it took me years to find out what was wrong with me. But because of that, I’m really sensitive to electronics. For me, to enter back into the world, where I had to be in front of a computer, or talking on telephones, I couldn’t do it. In some ways, that made me stay on the outside even longer than I thought.

Years of solitary retreat: the highs and lows

[00:12:17] Scott Snibbe: Could you share any specific moments of insight during your years of solitary retreat? Specific moments of insight and also any specifically difficult moments. Most people I know who’ve gone through solitary retreat have very dark, difficult moments. What are a couple of the highs and lows of that experience?

[00:12:39] Paula Chichester: I didn’t really have such difficult moments. I think it was because for one, I traveled this journey with a partner. Although we didn’t really live together or stay in the same houses, his name’s Roger Munro, and he’s still in retreat, by the way. It’s pretty amazing. He’s been in retreat now for 10 years.

We met in India and we both wanted to do this and we didn’t know anybody else that wanted to go into long retreat. So, we said, Well, let’s help each other because it was very difficult back then to try to figure out how you’re gonna do this. I had a little money and he had a little money and then in the end we ended up asking people to support us, which is something else I’d like to talk to you about, I think it’s important to support meditators, and not expect them to support themselves because that’s impossible.

But because I had the background that I had, and all through those years in Berkeley, studying dance, qigong, and yoga, I really believed very deeply that so much of what goes on in meditation is physical. So much of being alone by yourself if you’re just sitting and meditating if you don’t circulate your qi, if you don’t work with your organs, your energy, and everything, then that makes you stagnant and depressed.

I would have four meditation sessions every day, but I also had four exercise sessions every day. I did prostrations one session, I did qigong one session, I went for a walk one session, I did yoga in the evenings. The other thing was I was introduced to an author called John Bradshaw. He’s a psychologist who was very popular in the eighties on PBS, on KQED in San Francisco. He was one of the earlier psychologists that taught about healing your inner child and trauma and how you go about working with those issues.

I took his books into my retreat with me. A lot of my retreat, it wasn’t just strict Buddhism, but I did a lot of inner child healing work and his book called Homecoming and Healing the Shame That Binds You that were written in the eighties. They’re still really good books. Because a lot of the issues that come up for people in retreat is because the physical energy isn’t balanced, and you have all these psychological issues that haven’t been addressed.

Another thing that was really beneficial for me was the fact that I’d studied systems thinking. Also, that when I was in graduate school, I was actually training or studying or working, what I wanted to do was be of service in third world countries. I had another really wonderful professor and what we studied was how it went wrong. When USAID would go into countries and say, Now we’re going to give you this, it always came down to the fact that they didn’t look at the culture.

They would take the technology and put it in a culture where the technology didn’t fit. So I turned that around. You take the technology—because it is technology it’s a form of intellectual technology that you’re putting into our culture. And it doesn’t really work in our culture.

[00:16:32] Scott Snibbe: Robert Thurman calls it spiritual technology.

[00:16:35] Paula Chichester: I think it is spiritual technology, but it’s also it’s more than spiritual. I think it’s very scientific as well. It’s psychological, spiritual, scientific, and physical. I looked at the Tibetan world and it’s like, Wow, they didn’t have poisonous houses. They didn’t drive cars. They didn’t even have clocks. I just could try to kind of adopt my life to make it fit more to their situation.

Also, Lama Yeshe was such a great teacher. I was so blessed to have him as a teacher because he taught me the essence, but he also said over and over and over again, Forget Tibetan culture. You must take it into your own self and create Western Dharma. I didn’t feel like I needed to become a Tibetan. I didn’t feel like I needed to get ordained. I didn’t feel like I needed to try to be like them at all. I do all my stuff in English. There are many factors: the body, the psychology, looking at the environment, the outer environment that I was in.

Forget Tibetan culture. You must take it into your own self and create Western Dharma.

Also, I gave myself something fun to do. It’s really important to have fun and retreat. Roger coined the term, the one person party, you have to perfect the art of the one person party. I have to say when we did the first long retreat, we didn’t do it together and we were separated and we didn’t speak, but just knowing there was somebody else doing it helped. They say in the Tibetan text that when you do solitary retreat, it should be a group of yogis. It shouldn’t be just one person off by themselves. They can meet from time to time and just kind of help each other that way.

I have to say when we did the first long retreat—we didn’t do it together, we were separated ,and didn’t speak—but just knowing there was somebody else doing it helped.

The second time I did a four year retreat, I was completely alone, and that was more challenging. I did go through lonely parts, but if it got really bad—one of the things I would allow myself to do is I had a radio. I’d let myself listen to music once a week and dance. In 1991, I thought, Maybe it’d be nice to have a guitar, because I used to play guitar when I was a teenager and sing folk songs. I wrote songs, and that creative process. It was just a delight to me because I didn’t write songs, I would just sit there and I’d be doing my session. At the end of the session, I said, Oh, I feel a song coming, I’d sit down and there’s a song would pour out of me. So I just found a way to keep myself delighted and happy.

I remember I cut my finger really bad in my first really long retreat. As I watched it heal, because it took months, I cut it with a knife, and I thought, The mind is just like my finger. It’s not like you can just learn five of these and memorize them and then you have them. You have to learn the five of these and memorize them but they have to become so much a part of you that that’s how you think and feel, and that’s how you respond. Also about patience, perseverance, and generosity, so you begin to apply these things yourself.

The other thing is, I had some great teachers, like Genla Rinpa, I had the good fortune to meet him because he was one of those great yogis that achieved completion stage in one lifetime and could do blazing and dripping and changes. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I thought I can do in three years. Can you believe that?

[00:20:28] Scott Snibbe: Well, we’re told we can, they didn’t say it’s easy, but they said it’s possible.

[00:20:34] Paula Chichester: Anyway, he taught me two things, that in retreat you don’t drink caffeine, and you sleep as much as you need to. He said that those retreats when you do them in the monastery or when you do them in a group at like Vajrapani Institute, you have a schedule you have to keep to and you’re in a group and you have to do it and you like cram to get it finished in three weeks.

In retreat you don’t drink caffeine, and you sleep as much as you need to.

I think a lot of people take that into a longer period of time and don’t realize that when you embark in the yogi’s life, you have to listen to your body and do what your body can do and not push yourself because you can’t push yourself with coffee or tea or chocolate or sugar for that amount of time.

When you embark in the yogi’s life, you have to listen to your body and do what your body can do and not push yourself because you can’t push yourself with coffee or tea or chocolate or sugar for that amount of time.

You really have to make friends with yourself. That means that you have to let all your demons out, which then means that you have to have a way to heal that, which is why I found John Bradshaw’s books good. Or now there’s so many healers, Gabor Mate and Sarah Page and all these people that help, but just the basic kind of thing of sitting and being with yourself and accepting, I made a mistake, but it’s okay. I’m not bad. I’m not a bad person.

Until you accept that you’re not a bad person on a deep, deep, deep, deep level, which in our Judeo Christian society, we really have to work at, at least for most people.

Positive transformation, activism, & the 100th monkey

[00:22:08] Scott Snibbe: What’s a way that you saw yourself change that you were really happy with, comparing yourself being in your teens or 20s to several decades later?

[00:22:25] Paula Chichester: I would just say what my really good long-term friends said, that I’m kinder, more flexible. I’m more patient. I’m happier. I’m content. I’m able to help people more. That’s about it, really.

[00:22:50] Scott Snibbe: What more can you ask for? You had this this activist motivation, to help the planet, to fight injustice. You’ve clearly helped one person at least, very much yourself, which is the most important, you have to start with that. Has that impacted your ability to help others in those dimensions that you really cared about from your whole life too?

[00:23:15] Paula Chichester: Well, I think that’s kind of a disappointment. For example, at Jamyang they had this climate change meeting recently and I wanted to go, maybe I will go to the next one, but because everything now demands so much time online and it just really makes me sick.

Also, I had hoped that maybe I could reach more people. But in about 2017, I’d sort of been teaching before, but Lama Zopa Rinpoche made it very clear that he wanted me out in the world. He wanted me to help his students. I do teach around the world, but it’s a really small group of people. Then I thought of the 100th Monkey, a story about a zoologist who was studying a small island in Japan of monkeys. When one monkey learned to use a tool to crack open the nuts, she would teach her children, and it would spread out. But once it got to be a hundred monkeys, the whole island knew it.

So, the idea is that even though I’m just teaching small groups, maybe those people who are activists and are out into the world, if I can help them to be more flexible, kind, and aware, with their own inner issues, and help them with their own inner practice that maybe that will filter out into the world.

[00:25:07] Scott Snibbe: In a lot of ways, there’s greater difficulties in the world now than ever before. One of the encouraging things is so many people seeing that at a young age and dedicating their lives to it. I see so many young people, my nieces and nephews and friends’ kids all want to go into social justice, activism, environmental activism.

From your lessons, what would you say to those kind of people who are starting to be effective activists? What can they learn from these traditions that we practice on how to do that better, how to actually be effective, how not to burn out, and how not to be enraged?

[00:25:50] Paula Chichester: I used to have this fantasy that what I’d really love to do is teach a meditation course for activists, because there’s a few things I think you can learn from meditation. What kind of turned me off politics was, I think I was about 14, and I was involved in Robert Kennedy’s election, I was there when the assassination happened, but just that little foray into politics and activism. I just saw how the whole problem was people’s egos, they couldn’t agree on stuff and there were people there who it was all about them.

I just saw how the whole problem was people’s egos,

I really feel strongly that if activism is to work, we have to learn to work together. What Buddhism will teach people is to know how to get your own ego out of the way, how to learn to listen to people, how to learn to recognize when you’re just about yourself and you’ve forgotten that it’s about the group.

I really feel strongly that if activism is to work, we have to learn to work together.

[00:26:57] Scott Snibbe: Yeah, I’d like to see you make that course, it sounds amazing. The course to make compassionate activists or wise compassionate activists. That sounds very beneficial.

[00:27:09] Paula Chichester: Where could you do it? You’d have to have a venue that wasn’t Buddhist. That’s the thing, you’d have to figure out how you could do it.

Why did you become ordained?

[00:27:17] Scott Snibbe: I would want to go back to one personal thing, I don’t quite understand your level of ordination, because when I met you, you were a Venerable Nyinje. You were very unconventional though. You had hair and I remember seeing you at Vajrapani, just go and kind of lay down a yoga mat and just sort of sit there and sleep out looking up at the stars all night long. What were you or how were you ordained exactly? How did you become not ordained?

[00:27:51] Paula Chichester: Yeah, as you can see, I wasn’t really that into it. I very much respect those people who choose that, but you can hear from my life story, I wasn’t interested in religion, just look at what they do.

[00:28:11] Scott Snibbe: A lot of bad.

[00:28:14] Paula Chichester: I never really wanted to become a Buddhist, I just wanted to become a wise member of the world and bring Buddhism into more of a well accepted, unreligious place, because like the Dalai Lama said, it’s not really religious. It has religious aspects and that’s really great for people who want that, who want to belong to a club and have a church and whatever.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, my spiritual spiritual advisor and he’s been a wonderful advisor, although I’m not religious, I do have a teacher, a guru, but I also had advisors in graduate school. It was suggested that do a second retreat to help clear away the obstacles to realizations. Of course, why would you not do it? Of course you say yes.

But then Lama Zopa Rinpoche could see that there were obstacles coming to be able to do it. So he advised that we get ordained before we do the second retreat. It was kind of like an entrance fee. I wasn’t particularly interested in it, but I wanted to do the retreat, so I said, I’ll give it a try.

But to be honest, I didn’t really like wearing a uniform and being different and I especially didn’t like the special treatment, like you’re somebody holy and special, because you’re not. I didn’t really appreciate any of that. I would do it, when I would go to the Dharma centers and then when I didn’t, I’d just sort of be myself, even though I didn’t have much hair. Then everybody thought I was a lesbian. It’s like I had a choice. I could either have an identity as a lesbian or as a nun.

I didn’t really like wearing a uniform and being different and I especially didn’t like the special treatment, like you’re somebody holy and special, because you’re not.

But then after that retreat was over, and I was kind of shocked because I couldn’t really figure out how I could integrate back into the world. I didn’t want to go and get a job. What kind of a job would I have? I already created my job. I was doing this, so it just made more sense to stay ordained. But I got to the point where when I got to be 60—I’ve heard this from other people—I got to the point where I couldn’t do things for other people anymore.

I got to the point where when I got to be 60—I’ve heard this from other people—I got to the point where I couldn’t do things for other people anymore.

I was doing this because I thought it was what Lama Zopa Rinpoche had thought was better for me. So when I checked with him, he didn’t seem to care at all. He said, Oh, when I saw you play music, I wondered why you were still ordained. But part of what it was, was I have a lot of respect for my teachers. I really respect the Tibetans and what they’ve done and what they do. So after Geshe Zopa died, I felt like I would be happy to give my robes back because I really didn’t want to disappoint him and it didn’t make that much difference to me.

I was happy living by myself. I wasn’t really interested in having a sexual relationship or anything like that. So it suited me. I just wanted to be myself, I just wanted to wear the clothes I wear, and do what I wanted to do. I want to go dancing and play music. I didn’t expect to meet somebody, that came a few years later when I met Geoff.

He invited me to come up and help him develop a retreat center. I came up to Shetland and we just got on like a house on fire. I didn’t expect anything like that ever, because I kind of knew everybody and I wasn’t going to get involved with somebody, I wasn’t planning to. But all I can say is, it’s just karma. I don’t know what else to say other than we just fell in love. It’s this dependent arising thing, these causes and conditions come together in your life, and suddenly your life just shifts.

All I can say is, it’s just karma. I don’t know what else to say other than we just fell in love.

[00:32:45] Scott Snibbe: What’s it like sharing your life so intimately with another person after so much time alone?

[00:32:50] Paula Chichester: Well, we do have two different houses. I still need time by myself. Even when I wasn’t in retreat, there were years when I was like director at Land of Calm Abiding, I’m still used to having like four or five hours every day just to practice. When I’m with him or when we’re doing things, when I’m traveling, that doesn’t happen. I start to feel like I’m a flower that’s wilting and I have to get back to the garden. He likes time by himself too. So we spend a lot of time not together. I think that’s how it works.

We’re old, I was 64 when I met him and he was 69. It’s not like we have kids and when you’re older it’s just different. We get along really well, like we’ve never had an argument. I think it’s just a real testament to Buddhist practice because we’re just patient and just let go. I felt that my life has been really wonderful, if my life was like a chocolate cake, he’s the chocolate icing that I didn’t expect to be there. He just makes my life better and he’s helped me immensely, in all kinds of ways.

If my life was like a chocolate cake, he’s the chocolate icing that I didn’t expect to be there.

The barriers and privileges of deep retreat

[00:34:15] Scott Snibbe: You’ve talked to me before, and also other people I know who’ve done long retreat, how it’s an extraordinary privilege to take that time to yourself and not have a job and so on. But on the other hand, it’s very difficult. Set aside just the mental difficulties, but getting enough money and space and a place and all that.

Can you talk a little bit about the barriers and the privileges to a life of deep retreat? Also, how people could learn from that.

[00:34:54] Paula Chichester: Well, what I would really like to see within Buddhist organizations, is setting aside money to support people who want to do retreat. I know that our teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche had talked about setting up a retreat fund, not just a sangha fund, but a retreat fund. I don’t think that ever happened because when Lama Yeshe entreated us to create a Western Dharma culture, I think the biggest obstacle is this American idea that we can’t ask for help.

Because I know quite a few monks and people, not so much nuns, but monks who’ve lived at Land of Calm Abiding and they run out of money and they’re like, Oh, I’ll have to go back to work now. That’s such a fallacy, but they don’t have what I would call the courage or the training to be able to ask. You have to be able to ask.

It was Roger that got it because we used up all our money in the first eight years, preparing to do the retreat. We got to do the retreat doing all our ngundros and everything. He said, Oh, we’re going to have to beg. I’m like, What? Because I’m an American too.

It was terrifying to me, but I did it and I realized that’s one of the parts of Buddhism, that’s the eight freedoms and the 10 endowments. One of the 10 endowments is to live in a land where meditators are supported, where people are supported. I used the logic, Well, I’m making America a place where meditators are supported, and I still really believe in that.

All I did was I wrote letters to everybody I knew, asking them, would they send me 10 or 20 a month? There were people who weren’t Buddhists or anything, but they knew me. They said, well, sure, that’s not very much money. That’s how I did it. Then the most important part to say is that Geshe Yeshe Thubten, who is one of these great Yogis in, in Dharamsala, who later taught at Lama Tsong Khapa Institute and around, and his book on Shantideva is fantastic.

But when he found out that that’s how we lived and supported himself, he was overjoyed. He even hugged Roger. He said, You must continue to live this way for the rest of your life to prove to Western people that it’s possible, that it can be done. Because the biggest obstacle to people getting realizations is thinking that they have to have a job and they have to support themselves.

The biggest obstacle to people getting realizations is thinking that they have to have a job and they have to support themselves.

He said, In the West, you have places, you have books, you have teachers, but you don’t have yogis. You won’t have dharma until you have yogis, because dharma is not in the books. It’s in the hearts and minds of people who hold the realizations. That is something that the West doesn’t get, and I don’t know how to get that out there, but iif there’s anything I would want to broadcast around the world is that we need yogis.

In the West, you have places, books, and teachers, but you don’t have yogis. You won’t have dharma until you have yogis, because dharma is not in the books.

[00:38:12] Scott Snibbe: There’s one thing I’m very grateful to my mother for is she always quoted Jesus to me, Ask and you shall receive. But still, I find even with people who’ve been Buddhists for a long time, like with Colby, we’re quite good friends, I have to say very explicitly, tell me when you’re going on retreat, I want to help support it. Even those of us trained in that, who need the support, even then they’re shy to ask. It’s both sides.

I think we need to be less shy to ask, because you are giving people a gift and opportunity to be generous. But also those of us who learned the benefits of generosity and retreat to really proactively ask the people we know who want to be yogis and say like, Hey, listen, whenever you want to do this, come back to me. I have to tell people sometimes six times sometimes, even ordained people, I’m serious about this. When you’re doing your retreat, come, and I’m going to give you some money to do it. It is my benefit. But I find it’s not easy. It’s not easy actually to make it happen.

[00:39:26] Paula Chichester: Part of it is our ingrained low self-esteem that we have in our culture. I’m not good enough to ask. I can’t ask. I think in my case, I wanted to do the retreat so bad and I had no other way to do it. But it’s really a shame that people feel that way, but you’re right. It works it works from both sides.

Maybe if we could just have a slush fund that people could draw on where it wouldn’t be so personal, but in a way, it is one of the things that I’ve felt about being supported in retreat that I didn’t mention. One of the things you said, was one of the good things about it was being supported in retreat.

When I would have a down day, it was like I can’t give up because I’m doing this for these people. They’re real people that you’re doing it for and they have your picture and they think about you and you think about them. It really helps you in retreat if they’re actual people that you’re doing it for.

[00:40:39] Scott Snibbe: Paula, thank you so much for this interview. It’s very kind of you to share so much about your experience so honestly, and in ways that are really going to benefit people, people who may have never even heard about heard about a retreat or thought about it, to understand what the benefits are and how it could impact their lives practically. So, thank you for everything you’ve done and for living an extraordinarily beneficial, good, exemplary life.

[00:41:06] Paula Chichester: I think sometimes you don’t really have much choice about life. You make the best of it, however you can, but thank you, Scott, it’s always fun to chat with you. I hope it was helpful. There’s lots of causes and conditions that come together for things to manifest and so when you ask me things, I just think about all the different causes and conditions, so it gets a bit complicated, but I hope it was okay.

[00:41:36] Scott Snibbe: Yeah, it’s perfect. Thank you.

In the next episode, Paula leads a beautiful meditation. But before we hop off of this episode, Paula left me a voicemail the day after we spoke with a little bit she wanted to include that we didn’t get into the interview.

Paula’s voicemail

Hi, Scott. I just wanted to thank you again for the opportunity to do something like that. I guess I’m not used to talking about myself like that, so I realized later that I kind of left out the most important part about being in solitary retreat, which is that the practice itself nourishes you, and that when the practice is really working, you don’t feel lonely because you just feel connected to all of reality, the whole planet and the stars and the earth and the trees and the people.

I also didn’t say to tell people what an amazing dream life you have because the daily life is just the same day after day after day, your dreams become extremely vivid and alive and lucid, that in itself is just really exciting to be in a kind of a different state of mind.

That seemed like an important thing to say, and also the devotional aspect, how devotion is a very nourishing mind, but maybe that’s not important for your listeners. Because it was a secular group, I kind of just focused on the outer stuff, but maybe that wasn’t the point.

I just wanted to tell you that just to get it off my chest, but, yeah, it was interesting and I’m not used to doing things like that. It was a good experience and, thanks a lot and good luck with everything that you do. It’s important work and I just want you to know, I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

If you’d like to know more about Paula’s teachings and retreats, visit her website at braveview.org I’d also like to encourage people who want to support long term meditators to consider a donation to the Land of Calm Abiding, the retreat center where Paula spent many years in retreat, and where her friend and retreat partner Roger Monroe is still in retreat after 32 years.

If you’d like to deepen this conversation, you can find my book, How to Train a Happy Mind, featuring a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, anywhere they sell books or audiobooks. You can also subscribe to our newsletter through the links on our website at howtotrainahappymind.org and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. One of the best ways to connect with these practices is to join me in my weekly guided meditations at our train a happy mind community, which you can join for free or by donation at trainahappymind.org.

Credits