The Cabin at the End of the Hall: On Retreat with Qapel

On my first retreat with Qapel, he told wild stories of his epic, grueling meditation retreats: staring at a wall for hours as lizards stared back (or maybe it was minutes, he wasn’t sure), meeting a giant black void, endless torment by his guru the late Namgyal Rinpoche. All this to become the funny, inspiring teacher I met that week, a man I sensed knew things I needed to know. Things about getting free. 

He tied that freedom to hard work and staying close to a relentless teacher. I managed to avoid both for years – I lived far away – but still, he casually gave me the keys to a kingdom of light. And I was lucky enough to be in the last cohort of students he yelled at before dying suddenly last October. Even his death served us – it was like he set off a depth charge, a surge of energy for us to ride. 

This February, I put his photo on my phone for strength and inspiration and started my first-ever month of solo meditation in a cabin at Clear Sky, the center he co-founded with Catherine Sensei, his partner. I was ready to work, bring on the lizards! Gimme the void! A lifetime of neurosis and neglect would be wiped away. I’d get ripped and healthy from thousands of prostrations, a clearing practice. And afterwards I’d move into community at Clear Sky and be an outdoorsman for the first time in my life. I was a middle-aged city boy looking to make up for lost time after caring for my mom until her death. But my body had other plans – a week in, I was taken to hospital and introduced to our new friend: a hernia. I got painkillers and a sexy support belt and went back into retreat…but things got dark. My hopes were being messed with. I couldn’t move a wheelbarrow of horseshit. Hernias need surgery. The makeover was on hold.

Qapel found me moping around the woods. “Shit happens, chief,” he said, walking beside me. “Why shouldn’t it happen to you?… Because you have ideas about what you want happening, and the rest happens to everyone else?” 

He was right. And I suspected my body was protesting a lifetime of being ignored, except for pleasure or pain. This was karma. But I kept struggling with it, and soon I got bored. “Boredom is God’s telephone call”, Qapel reminded me. The fantasies my mind produced to distract and soothe me weren’t working anymore, and I was approaching the ‘mat-rolling’ stage, where retreatants quit. “You won’t quit because your pride won’t let you.” he told me, gently pushing me off the fence. “But, you do need to ask yourself this question: What’s out there that you still need to do?… Are you in the room at the end of the hall or not?”

‘The room at the end of the hall’ was Namgyal Rinpoche’s term for when you’ve tried everything, and you finally give up and turn towards the spiritual path. I thought I had… but “What’s out there?” is a consideration when “in here” there’s old feelings of hopelessness and a death wish. This wasn’t the hernia’s fault, this wasn’t new. This retreat wasn’t what I’d wanted it to be, so I wanted out. Life wasn’t what I wanted it to be, so I wanted out. What I wanted was trying to kill me.

The next evening as I sulked towards dinner, Qapel turned to me, a little impatient. “Okay, I’ll tell you what you still need to do. You need to see through the illusion.”

Okay, interesting. What illusion? That word gets thrown around a lot. A few minutes later, he appeared outside the dining room window, theatrically waving his arms. “What’s this illusion everybody’s talking about? Who’s doing it?” He looked at me. “You’re doing it, Tony. You’re the Wizard of Oz. You decide everything.”

I felt a shift in the texture of reality. A space opened up between me and everything I saw. It was subtle. A feeling of clarity and simplicity. A plainness. I soon understood there was nothing there but infinite sensory data, and I was shaping it all into something. Every little thing. I decided what it was. Not a new idea, I know, but try really sitting with that.

I ate dinner peacefully and walked towards my cabin. The sun was setting; it was gorgeous. I thought of someone I wanted to share it with, and my heart opened. And I suddenly understood – this is what I do all the time: I induce heart openings with whatever’s at hand, or even not at hand. And there’s nothing in that experience but whatever I am. “What’s out there?” Sometimes other beings, but everything I do is to induce an internal experience. So we must all be doing this. We’re no different from kids playing, pretending, except we forget we’re making it up.

What’ve I been making up? Anything to ease loneliness. Anything for a beacon to walk towards. Anything that talks to me, like Qapel (even though I usually don’t know what he’ll say). Anything I think is happening. Anything I want. Problem is, I don’t know much – I weave it all from a tiny experience of the world. It’s the only way I can see, for now. But what if I hold it lightly and look a bit to the side of it, be curious, wonder what might really be happening. It feels like I’m in a much bigger room.

As the sun set, I stood crying in the dry grass and manure, and I thanked Qapel, over and over again…sobbing thank you, thank you. He introduced me to my heart. He pulled back the curtain and showed me, me – there I am, invisibly working the gears, trying to get home, to love, to God, all the time. And watching. I still don’t know what I am but I know I’m doing it. Qapel just smiled, saying nothing.