For those who’ve experienced spiritual abuse or whose minds don’t fit the mould of dogmatic obedience, the quiet of the forest offers a different kind of refuge. My first instinct when I left Rigpa was to find refuge in the silence of the forest, and many others in the Beyond the Temple community also replaced the shrine room with nature.
These are the opening words of my latest video for the Beyond the Temple channel. Watch the video for the rest, or read the rest of the transcript ( with more added) below.
It was such a relief to simply sit in the forest without having to follow a form, read a text, or navigate the dynamics of a community that was more concerned with their own reputation than their students’ well-being. What I found was that immersing myself in nature didn’t only bring solace, it grounded my recovery from religious trauma and gave me a way to still honour my spiritual nature without the weight of obedience to something external from myself, specifically someone I could no longer trust.
After leaving the religion, I needed to come to something pure, uncomplicated and unburdened by dogma. And I had to take back agency over my own spiritual life. I had to learn to genuinely take refuge in my own true nature.
Bear with me here, while I compare the teachings on refuge to the reality of life in some sanghas. I’m going into this to show why – even within the Buddhist teachings themselves – it’s important for us to learn to trust our own inner wisdom.
Buddhism teaches us that we all have Buddha nature, and that this is our true nature, but we don’t realise our true nature because it’s obscured – by habits, emotions, concepts, and karma. Though Buddhists outwardly take refuge in the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of practitioners, our ultimate refuge is our own Buddha nature.
The Buddha taught this in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, “Dwell with yourself as your own island, with yourself as your own refuge, take no other refuge.”
The refuge practice of the Longchen Nyingtik Ngondro even says that our own wisdom nature is the ultimate refuge when it says we take refuge ‘in the maṇḍala of essence, nature, and compassion’ – meaning in our mind’s empty essence and awareness, the union of which brings compassion.
Added to that, in the actual vajrayana practices, the lama is a symbol for our own wisdom nature. When we invoke the lama, we’re invoking our own wisdom self.
That’s the teaching, however, when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, the teachings on devotion to the master – who is supposed to inspire your journey inwards – can very easily turn it into an outwardly focused journey of obedience to a teacher. When devotion is touted as the ultimate path, we can end up taking refuge in the outer teacher and not in our own inner wisdom/ Buddha nature/ true nature of mind. There are many words for it, but we don’t find it if we focus on the outer teacher, and the major cult dynamic that enables abuse is unconditional surrender to the personality of the teacher.
External authorities, such as cult leaders, demand conformity over authentic experience. Authentic experience was to some extent devalued in Rigpa. If insights were asked for, your genuine expression of your experience was either completely disregarded or belittled unless you used actual language from the scriptures. That made some of us second guess our genuine insights, so I felt I needed to offload all that baggage and see what was left, find what was real without any dogmatic overlay.
So when we leave a cult of devotion, we need to find our own autonomy again, for both psychological and spiritual health. But finding our way when we’ve been following a path that was all laid out for us isn’t easy. How do we know where to go with our spiritual life, when what we believed in and trusted has all fallen away? And how do we develop trust in ourselves, after having put our trust in a teacher and a community who proved ultimately unworthy of it?
I can’t answer those questions for anyone other than myself, but I found that practicing presence, just sitting quietly and simply being me, in natural spaces, where no one was watching or judging or demanding, was incredibly healing. It reaffirmed the validity of my own experience, and out of the stillness of the forest and the awareness it naturally invokes, I found my way forward.
And out of this came intense gratitude for the natural world, and particularly the forest. The forest teaches without words, without expectations or demands. It teaches by its very presence. All we have to do is visit a forest, as often as we can.
Has nature been a support for your spiritual path, particularly if you’re healing from spiritual abuse? If so, let me know in the comments how that happened for you.
And me, I’ve taken to dancing in the forest, dancing my gratitude and appreciation whilst singing a mantra that calls on the power of great awareness.
Thanks Tahlia, this resonates with my current experience. More than two years ago we started house hunting in south Devon a rural/agricultural area of south west England. Eventually we found our forever home on the outskirts of Teigngrace, a hamlet in the Teign valley. The roadside reads Teigngrace
Twinned with Naiads, Dryads and Napaeads. Water, tree and shy valley spirits. We live between two rivers and surrounded on all sides by forest. I still practice Vajrayana/Dzogchen but the moments of space between thought, peace and tranquility almost invariably happen in the forest.
That sounds perfect. And you have all that Celtic history of relating to nature that must be lovely to be around. Here there is long term relation to the land in Aboriginal culture only, so I find my own relationship with country and express it in my own way. I make offerings to the forest.
i was extremely badly abused in buddhism but never left. i found better places, & am just keeping my practise & all the time searching for genuine connections. i wrote & complained a lot. i am badly injured hurt damaged beyond highest violations. at this point the world leaders do not care i am now in an endless war.i found animals & horses equines the best except they are currently suffering extreme abuses into death so still not many have offered to help very few. i feel i should have been given more acknowledgment & a helper & the abusers should provide full healing . i am surpised this has not been given & the same silent war is worsening , more intense. surely there should be intervention. the infinite worlds . you can not leave your religion you must find a better representative.ideally the abuser should leave then we can stay.
That sounds painful. My heart aches for you. And yes, it is doubly painful because those in power don’t take any responsibility. One wonders where is the compassion they teach? This is why I practice alone. No sangha of people doing the same practice, no teacher apart from my own inner wisdom and the presence of the forest. An uncaring sangha is no sangha at all.