How Mingyur Rinpoche Changed Our Lives with Just Three Words

A few years ago, when we were planning the years-long practice intensive we're currently in, we had a private interview with our teacher Mingyur Rinpoche.

Picture a short, bald, smiling Tibetan in his late 30s in red robes on a comfy couch in a dorm suite on a college campus in St. Paul, Minnesota. And then picture Devon and me getting rushed into the suite by his attendants for a quick conversation before said short, bald, smiling Tibetan is whisked off to a fundraising event.

We sat down in the chairs in front of him. He smiled at us and put his hands out as if to say, "What can I do for you?" And, because time was short, we told him in staccato bullet points our plan for a three-year retreat. We outlined some of the practices we'd be doing. We talked about the land we'd be doing it on. Etc.

After each bullet point, Rinpoche nodded, smiled, and said, "Good, very good."

When we were finished giving him the outline, we paused. "Anything else?" he asked.

Devon said, "Rinpoche, do you have any advice?"

"Advice?" he said.

"For the retreat," Devon said.

Mingyur Rinpoche, our beloved teacher, looked at each of us, then seemed to consider for a moment. I fully expected him to recommend a specific and possibly esoteric meditation practice: maybe a yidam from his lineage; or perhaps a special protector with many arms and lots of teeth.

Instead he said, "Save for retirement."

"Save for retirement?" I said, shocked.

"Yes," Rinpoche said. "Very important. Save for retirement."

"Even while we're in retreat."

"Even in retreat, yes."

"So we should work during the retreat?" I asked.

"Yes, work during the retreat."

"Won't that interfere with the practice?"

Rinpoche shook his head. "For you, I think not so much. Better even. Integrate practice and life."

"Save for retirement," Devon repeated.

Rinpoche nodded once more. Then he fluffed his robes and jumped up with his customary alacrity. The interview was over.

Devon and I walked out of the suite slightly shaken. Save for retirement? That was the advice of the lama who had just come back from living on the streets of India and the mountains of Nepal for four and a half years, who had been literally penniless, who had, in fact, almost died from the endeavor?

"Save for retirement," I said to Devon when we walked out into the hot summer air. And we both burst out laughing.

But the idea took hold. We restructured our retreat, and gradually found our way into work that would allow us to make our own hours for the duration. As a result the retreat has become a kind of hybrid. We spend some months up in the hills, in cabins, mostly meditating; then we come down to town and divide our time between meditation and work.

It's not always easy. Deep practice takes you apart from the inside, it deconstructs you, sometimes dramatically, and transitions into and out of practice are often the hardest times.

These days we're often transitioning by the hour: sit in meditation until eleven in the morning. Then jump on Zoom calls for some hours. Then meditate again from six o'clock onward.

There were moments this last spring when I felt myself coming apart at the seams.

And yet. We are saving for retirement. And we are learning things we wouldn't learn if we were cloistered in a more traditional context: like how sticky and weird I can get around money, and how to unstick; or the precursors to a marital communication breakdown, and how to cut it off at the pass.

So I'll take this opportunity to thank Mingyur Rinpoche, who set us on this difficult and edifying path: it feels like a blessing now. And I’m sure it will be double the blessing in 25 years or so, when we’re ready to ease into our older age and take things easy.