You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Reggie Ray. Reggie is a teacher and scholar in the Tibetan

Buddhist tradition with four decades of experience with the practice of meditation. He's the founder and spiritual director of

Darma Ocean and an author whose writings include Touching Enlightenment,

Indestructible Truth and Secret of the Vajra world, as well as several audio programs including

your breathing body and meditating with the body, and in the spirit of transparency with our listeners, Reggie is also a teacher with whom I've studied

closely for the past eight years.

In this episode, Reggie and I spoke about his recent experiences

in dark retreat, as well as the true goal of meditation and Reggie's view of the meaning of spiritual practice.

Here's my conversation with Reggie Ray.

So Reggie, you've just come back from being on a dark retreat and I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about it.

Really actually I'd like to know a lot about it, meaning the setup, what does it mean to be on a dark retreat?

So what's it like logistically? And also, why would anyone want to go on a dark retreat?

Well, that's true. I did just return and, uh, uh,

still, you know, sitting here with you, in some sense, I feel like I'm still in the darkness.

So it's an interesting experience being back in the light,

but seeing with some other eyes, seeing with eyes that are not physical and visual.

And so I'm still in an adjustment period,

so we'll see what happens today.

I think, you know know when talking about darkness practice which is something that is

taught in Tibetan Buddhism but it's also practice in other traditions for example in Chinese Taoism and some of the more

esoteric forest traditions of Buddhism, I think it sounds rather arcane and removed from our ordinary life and even our understanding

what meditation is.

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