Discovering the land that became Lerab Ling
Odile and Maxime De Simone
It was French sangha members Maxime and Odile de Simone who discovered the land that would become Lerab Ling. Maxime and Odile share their account of the circumstances that led to Rigpa purchasing this rundown farmhouse which, thanks to Rinpoche’s vision for the Dharma in the West, would become the glorious retreat centre we have today.
Part 1 - A Living Treasure
by Odile De Simone
“We should create a retreat centre, to always practice in the same place.”
Sogyal Rinpoche repeated this since 1985, during our retreats. It seemed unrealistic to us at the time, with so few students and no financial means. Just acquiring a place and maintaining it, compared to temporarily renting a site for a two-week retreat, seemed very difficult to achieve.
Yet Sogyal Rinpoche kept saying, “We should create a retreat centre, to practice always in the same place.”
That was it.
First in 1986, during the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Dignes, in homage to Alexandra David Neel, Maxime and I presented Rinpoche with a place for sale on the Larzac plateau, but the time had not yet come.
Then, in 1990, the Easter retreat took place in France, in Maubuisson, on the Atlantic coast. During that retreat Rinpoche called some students to come and see him, including the my husband Maxime and I, because we had invited him to come and teach in Montpellier for the first time in the Autumn—he had liked the city and the region very much.
He asked us to look for a place for the next Summer retreat during which Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche would come to teach. He repeated his idea of a retreat centre, but for the first time he added seven specific qualities: "In the mountains, with a beautiful view, not far from the sea, 140 hectares, not too many buildings on the land, lots of water, a waterfall.”
"In the mountains, with a beautiful view, not far from the sea, 140 hectares, not too many buildings on the land, lots of water, a waterfall.”
A month later, I opened the shutters of the Town Hall where I had been working for a number of years in a small village near Lodève, and the first person who entered a few minutes later was a friend who was a Real Estate agent. I asked him: "Say, don't you have something to sell in the mountains, with a beautiful view, not far from the sea, 140 hectares, not too many buildings on the land, lots of water, a waterfall?” To my great surprise, he answered that yes, he had a property that had just become available for sale that was a bit like that. I called Maxime and suggested we go and visit the land.
On our first visit, we walked around the domain of Engayresque with Mr Tsakonas the owner. A farmhouse, cows, chickens, geese, ducks, a dairy, a mushroom farm in the cellar, tractors and ruins.... He sold raw milk and yoghurt, ice-cream and bread for nearby camping sites. It had precisely… 140 hectares, few buildings, lots of water, a waterfall, and the view..…
The first thing I had to do, working with the mayors of the region, was to meet with the mayor of this small rural town and see how he reacted to the idea of a meditation centre being built there. Nothing could be done without him.
So we met Yves Fabreguettes, Mayor of Roqueredonde, one Spring morning. We explained to him what we did for a living, and that we had been following the teachings of a Tibetan lama for years, who wanted to create a retreat centre. What did he think of the idea that this could be done in the farm of Engayresque, in his village?
Mr. Fabreguettes, a man of almost eighty years, had these words that still resonate in my heart after all these years:
"I am a Christian, and in 1960, I welcomed Lanza del Vasto, and his non-violent Community of the Ark, against the advice of my entire City Council. I have never regretted it. And if today my municipality became the most spiritual of the Department, I would be proud of it".
There, it was said.
It was surreal to hear a mayor talk like that. As someone who has worked with 23 mayors in my profession, it was the complete opposite of what we expected!
He added, with a touch of humor in his voice: "You know what the weather is like up there?”
A document presenting the Engayresque farm was sent to Sogyal Rinpoche and then passed on and presented to several masters, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Dodrupchen Rinpoche and others, for divinations.
So it was that the Engayresque farm was bought by Rigpa on July 31, 1991.
But Yves Fabreguettes' story with Engayresque does not end there.....
In 2006, in order to bless the newly built temple and especially the beginning of the Three Year Retreat, Sogyal Rinpoche invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama to what had become ‘Lerab Ling, Sanctuary of Enlightened Action’, ‘Zangdokpalri, the palace of Guru Rinpoche’. The Dalai Lama, who was unwell, had sent Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile, to replace him. During his stay, Samdhong Rinpoche decided that the moment to inaugurate the temple had arrived, he asked all the students to make a circumambulation around the temple, by throwing seeds of corn, wheat, petals of flowers....
Mr. Fabreguettes had passed away three days earlier. His funeral took place at the exact moment of the blessing of the temple. While all the students circumambulated the temple in a blessed and moving procession of jubilation, we followed the horse-drawn cart in which his coffin lay, crossing the peaceful and generous countryside, to bring him to his final resting place, the cemetery, situated in the valley, in the middle of nature.
He was the first Bodhisattva who manifested himself in this place, very discreetly, humbly, but very concretely, allowing Lerab Ling to emerge. And he left, very discreetly, humbly, this hidden jewel, this living treasure that he was.
There, I said it.
Images: Lerab Ling land - before and after the first renovations in 1991
Part 2 - First visit to the Engayresque farm
by Maxime De Simone
July 1990
On the day of our first visit to the Engayresque farm, the Real Estate agent who proposed welook at the property led me on the many small road leading to the farm. We met Mr. and Mrs. Tsakonas, the owners who have been forced, against their will, to abandon the farm which had been struggling for years. They could no longer live from selling their fresh milk, cow's cheese and ice cream.
We began our tour of the land at the cowshed (now the dining room) where the cows tied to their racks ate their feed while waiting to be milked. The hay is stored above (in the place that is now the Gonkhang), directly accessible so it be unloaded from the trailer. The dairy, fitted out rather summarily and probably not up to standard, housed a cold room of impressive dimensions, where they produced their ice cream and stored cheeses (this is the current kitchen).
We walked around the buildings passing by a dump of out-of-use agricultural equipment that gradually fills the descent towards the woods. The fenced yard contains a large quantity of poultry wading in the mud. The owner proudly showed us his oyster mushroom culture which grew on straw bales in what is now the carpenters workshop. The buildings have two boilers, one oil-fired, the other wood-fired, which required exhausting woodcutting work every winter.
The living quarters (now Mayumla's house and the holy shrine room) were in dire need of renovation, except for the double-glazed windows, which were new. An imposing chimney occupied a large part of the western wall.
The tour continued to a very pure spring below, which fed the house. The overflow from the spring is used to water the vegetable gardens in the valley.
Later on another visit, we toured the property in a four-wheel drive allowing us to pass through the nearby villages of Romiguières and Autignaguet, after studying the maps for a long time to locate the limits of the property.
Sogyal Rinpoche’s first visit to Lerab Ling
Sogyal Rinpoche visited the site on his way to Prapoutel, in the Alps, where a great retreat with many masters was to take place, presided over by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. The site was presented to Rinpoche in its best light, on a mild morning, blue sky, no wind, flowers in the fields…
We pointed out “You know Rinpoche, it is not always like this. This is one of the coldest places in the region, where fog and snow stay the most, according to the hunters who froze there for hours. That's because of the northern orientation, from which the wind blows in winter."
Rinpoche replied, "That's fine, that way the students won't fall asleep!"
Around this time an alternative site was also proposed to host the Rigpa retreat centre in the Southern Alps. Yes after several divinations, including two by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, it was clear that the Engayresque site was favoured—and would become Lerab Ling.
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