Reflection

Ah, it is good to be back. Walking in my door last night and being greeted by the excited meows from Reese was priceless. I put my bags down, looked around my place, and a happy feeling washed over me. Later, John and Daisy came over and we all sat around the kitchen table talking and enjoying beer and sushi. It was the perfect end to a lovely weekend.

In Calgary, I had lots of time to visit with both Jen and Nina. The two of them are such incredible friends. We get excited for each other's successes, we sympathize with each other's disappointments, and we laugh a lot together. We spent lots of time eating all of the yummy foods that I had been craving while I was at my retreat and talked and talked and talked some more. We also went shopping for wedding dresses for Jen (!) and I was surprised by how touched I felt seeing her in various gowns. She seems so happy these days and I couldn't be more thrilled for her.

My head has been filled with so many thoughts since returning from the meditation retreat. I definitely feel like I've gained a lot of perspective, but at times it almost feels overwhelming to try to apply everything to the day-to-day happenings of life. It is easy to feel forgiving, calm, and detached while sitting in silence in the middle of nowhere. It is easy to be kind when everyone else is in that mind frame too. It is so much more challenging to remember all of those things in the "real world" where strangers can be nasty and everything feels personal. But…I am up for the challenge : )

Since returning from my retreat, I have been devouring the experiences of others who have spent time meditating in monasteries or retreats or simply on their own. After Leonard Cohen completed touring for his "The Future" album, he took up residence in a Zen monastery in California. I recently came across an interview that he did talking about his meditation experience and it has made for some captivating reading. After battling depression for the majority of his life, he finally felt a sense of peace after spending time in the monastery. He remarked, "There was just a certain sweetness to daily life that began asserting itself. I remember sitting in the corner of my kitchen, which has a window overlooking the street. I saw the sunlight that shines on the chrome fenders of the cars, and thought, "Gee, that's pretty. I said to myself, "Wow, this must be like everybody feels." Life became not easier but simpler. The backdrop of self-analysis I had lived with disappeared. It's like that joke: "When you're hitting your head against a brick wall, it feels good when it stops".

One of the biggest epiphanies for me was realizing that letting all of the difficult feelings come to the surface made them lose their strength and power. I had been fighting depression and negative feelings but that was precisely what was making those feelings stick around. As soon as I stopped fighting and resigned myself to feeling despair, the bad feelings passed with such brevity that it felt like an actual shock to my system. It was like being so afraid of the metaphorical monster under the bed that I refused to even lift up the covers. However, when I finally gained the courage to take a peek, I noticed that there really wasn't a monster there -- just a lost pair of socks and some cat toys.

I'll try to paint a picture of what the days were like at the retreat. Each day I was woken up by a gong at 4am. After rousing myself from the depths of sleep I would shuffle over to the Dhamma Hall (meditation hall) and slide into my assigned meditation spot. The sun wouldn't be up yet and the birds would just be starting to chirp. The lights were dim and it was usually freezing so I would gather my blanket around me, settle into a comfortable position, and begin. There were people all around me meditating, but there was a distinctive feeling of being alone. There I would sit and work for 2 hours.

At 6:30am, another gong would ring which signified breakfast. I would go to the dining hall and consume the same breakfast each day (two slices of toast with natural peanut butter and a bowl of oatmeal mixed with granola and sunflower seeds.) During breakfast there was no talking or eye contact so although I would be sitting at a table with others, I was pretty much just focused on the food in front of me and was often lost in my own thoughts. It sounds like that would be awkward but it was actually really enjoyable to have no pressure to converse with anyone. After breakfast there was a break until 8am and I would take the opportunity to go back to bed. Oh, the bliss of crawling back under my covers for an hour of precious dreaming. Sleep became an escape from thinking and it was absolutely savoured.

At 8am, another gong would sound indicating group meditation time. 8am was a "Sit of Strong Determination" which translates into a sit where we weren't allowed to move at all. One hour of absolute silence and stillness with no stirring whatsoever. It was amazing to be in a room of approximately 50 people and be able to hear stomachs gurgling because it was that quiet. There were three Sits of Strong Determination per day. Those sits were difficult but they often resulted in the best meditations of the day.

At 9am, we were give the choice to remain in the Dhamma hall or we could go to our rooms to meditate. I would often go back to my room as it was much more comfortable to sit on my mattress than the cushion in the hall. I was sleeping in the top of a bunk bed and I found the perfect meditation spot was perched at the top of the bunk bed leaning against the wall. I often felt like a monkey sitting up there, but it suited me just fine. We would meditate until the gong was struck again at 11am for lunch. Again, I would walk over to the dining hall and would help myself to a nutritious, vegetarian lunch. After lunch I would go have a shower and then I would often have a nap until the gong rang again at 1pm.

At 1pm, we could meditate in our rooms or in the Dhamma Hall. At 2:30pm the gong would ring for another Sit of Strong Determination. Then, from 3:30pm - 5pm we would again meditate on our own. That afternoon stretch was the most difficult and was often when I felt like I was beginning to lose my mind. It tended to be the time that I would begin having obsessive thoughts about anything and everything that I didn't want to think about. I usually had tears streaming down my cheeks at some point during the afternoon and became adept at crying silently and not being afraid of feeling upset.

At 5pm, we had a tea break where we were allowed to have a piece of fruit and some herbal teas. No dinner! I was usually really hungry by this point and it always left me feeling slightly depressed to look at the bowl of fruit and choose from an apple, orange, or banana and know that there was no further food until breakfast the next day. I've never been really obsessed about food but I found myself fantasizing about different foods that I wanted. It made me realize what it must be like to have an eating disorder and have your thoughts dominated by food. It made me appreciate that I've never had that particular challenge in my life.
At 6pm, we would have our third and final Sit of Strong Determination. At 7pm, we would have a video discourse where the meditation technique was explained and where Buddhist practices, stories, and wisdom were discussed. Those evening discourses were amazing, both because it allowed me to hear someone speaking for an hour, and because the content of the discourses was so good. At around 8:30pm we would have our final meditation of the evening for a half hour or so.

At 9pm, there was an opportunity for questions and then we went to our rooms to retire for the night. That was usually when the torture would begin. I was never tired at 9:30pm and would lie in my bed tossing and turning for hours upon hours. Try as I might, I could never get to sleep easily. My thoughts would begin racing again to things that I didn't want to think about and I was often filled with anxiety, sadness, and a mixture of the two. During those sleepless hours I would compose mental letters to various people (we weren't allowed pens or paper.) My letters were filled with all of the things that I've wanted to say to various people that I've never said (and probably never will). After my mental letters were completed, I would lie staring at the ceiling and dream of food. As each hour went by, I would realize that I was an hour closer to the 4am gong. Oh, those evenings were incredibly tough. Finally, at around 1am or so I would often drift off to sleep for a few hours and then the whole day would start again.

When Leonard Cohen talked about the strict schedule in the monastery he said, "I was interested in surrendering to that kind of routine. If you surrender to the schedule, and get used to its demands, it is a great luxury not to have to think about what you are doing next." I found that as well. As difficult as the routine was, there was a certain joy in letting someone else figure out my whole day.

He also went on to say, "It's an existence where the emphasis is on the ordinary. But it's the least-easy place to lose track of time in. During the day, you hear bells and they tell you to go somewhere - that's the nature of those places. They are kind of hospitals for the broken-hearted and for people who have forgotten how to walk and talk. It wasn't just touring that left me feeling this way. I often do. In one of these dreary meditation halls, it is a Zen practice to invite you to sit motionless for long hours. If you sit there long enough, you run through all the alternative ways the events in your life could have turned out. After a while, the activity of thinking, that interior chatter, begins to subside from time to time. And what rushes in, in the same way that light rushes into a room when you switch on the light, is another kind of mood that overtakes you." That is such an eloquent way of describing what happens. The first few days, my mind wouldn't shut off. It was whirring and zooming and jumping from one thought to another and sometimes it was like a broken record getting stuck on the same thought for hours at a time. Those first days I just wanted my mind to shut the ^&%$#@# up. I was tired of the inane chatter going on in my head that seemed like it was never going to quiet down. But, after enough hours of sitting still, the interior monologue did manage to turn itself down to a lower volume. Sometimes I could sit for an hour and just focus on my breath without having my mind wander at all. Sometimes I was able to truly feel a sense of peace and tranquility. Those moments were rare, but they did happen and that gave me hope that with practice it could happen more and more often.

I don't want to imply that this 10-day course changed my life and that I will no longer feel anything but peaceful and happy. More accurately, it gave me a lot of food for thought and gave me short glimpses of what inner harmony could feel like. I don't want to sound like some sort of religious zealot who believes that this is the answer to all of life's problems and that everyone should experience this. On the contrary, I don't think this sort of thing would be for everyone. The whole process involves seeing things as they ACTUALLY are, not as you would like them to be, and that stark reality can be a little daunting. It involves swallowing a whole lot of pride and realizing that you're not as wonderful of a person as you might like to think that you are. It exposes the negative sides to one's personality -- the anger, the sadness, the hurt, and the ill-will. It involves acknowledging the wrongs that you've done to others, forgiving yourself for them, and then forgiving anyone who's ever hurt you. It is a process that doesn't allow you to blame anyone else for the things you feel.

At the end of each meditation session there was chanting that translated to "may all beings be happy." Such a simple sentiment, bordering on trite, but those words always gave me a tiny shiver each time I heard them.