My six weeks of travel ended with a nine-day (Dec. 28-Jan. 6) silent Buddhist meditation retreat at the Insight Mediation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. My retreat got off to a slow start. I had only a day and a half at home after weeks of absence and scheduled myself too tightly. My last appointment—which was what made me miss registration and orientation—was to have my eyelashes dyed. John drove me the two hours from Boston. We got lost, as Massachusetts is a maze of paved over cow paths and even though it’s more confusing than Calcutta, they’ve sworn off street signs here.
Shortly after we arrived I somewhat regretfully watched John’s car drive off into the night. I milled around with all of the excited retreatants and then we all went into the meditation hall where we were greeted formally and the SILENCE began.
I had no idea what was going on, but went off to bed thinking I would figure it out in the morning. I heard a bell—kind of like a chime—going up and down the hallways. I went back to sleep, still being on California time, thinking I would catch some breakfast later on. When another bell woke me around 7 a.m. and I stumbled out of my room I whispered to a woman coming into the hall, “What does that bell mean?”
I learned then that I’d missed breakfast and that I couldn’t use the bathrooms because yogis were cleaning them, nor could I shower until lunch. The reason is that the pipes rattle and bother meditators, and so there are designated times when showers are allowed.
In the foyer of the main building (a former ship captain’s home, then a novitiate before being purchased by the IMS) I scribbled the schedule on a scrap of paper. 5:15 a.m. wake up bell, 5:45-6:30 a.m. meditation (referred to as “sitting”), 6:30 a.m. breakfast, and so on, ending with a Dharma talk at night. (Dharma is a Sanskrit word that means righteous duty or virtuous path.)
There were three instructors teaching at the retreat (bios borrowed from the IMS site):
Rodney Smith has been teaching insight meditation since 1984. He is a former Buddhist monk and worked in hospice care for 17 years. The author of Lessons From the Dying, he is the founding and guiding teacher for the Seattle Insight Meditation Society and an IMS guiding teacher.
My favorite talk of Rodney’s was about adapting to a Buddhist perspective.
From Adaptation To Surrender (Download, Stream)
Heather Martin has practiced meditation for over 30 years with Asian and Western teachers, and began teaching in 2000. A midwife for 20 years, she lives in B.C., Canada.
My favorite talk of Heather’s was about Metta mediation. Metta is the form of Buddhist mediation that I practice. Metta cultivates lovingkindness toward ourselves, people we love, even strangers and those who have hurt us. Heather’s talk on Metta is not available, however, you can listen to two guided Metta meditations on the IMS site:
Joseph Goldstein – Insight Meditation Instruction (Download)
Sharon Salzberg – Guided Metta (Lovingkindness) Meditation (Download)
Yanai Postelnik has been practicing insight meditation for 20 years. He has been teaching internationally since 1992, and is inspired by the Thai forest tradition and the natural world. He is the Dharma Director of Gaia House, England.
My favorite talk of Yanai’s was Contemplating Death and the Deathless. (Download, Stream)
I had come with no expectations, and was not very well prepared assuming that I would figure it all out when I got there. I had never attended a silent mediation retreat in the past. All I knew was that I wanted to have the most profound experience possible given my neophyte status and to that end one preparation I did make was to leave my cell phone and laptop at home. I was on my own. There is something about being silent, meditative, and contemplative that stirs the creative mind. The Buddhist call don’t call it “monkey mind” for nothing. And so my inner reactions and experiences at the silent meditation retreat ran the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Although not talking eliminates many social dynamics among a cloistered group of strangers, it does introduce several others. Inanimate expressions create puddles out of faces. It was a hurdle to overcome, as the inadvertent scowls were difficult not to take personally at first. Anthropologically speaking, there was also an eerie similarity to a prison experience with the 84 retreatants avoiding eye contact and staring into their plates or out of the window at meals, bells, structured time, work duties, and restrictions on showers, cell phones, and so forth. My yogi duty was chopping vegetables in the kitchen from 1:15 to 2 p.m. There, while mincing basil or slamming into sweet potatoes with a meat cleaver my monkey mind would wander into fantasies that my chopping partner and I were prisoners in a POW camp where we had to somehow curry favor from our captors.
About the fourth day into the retreat I found the following words running through my head:
Plumbing Awareness
Since our plumbing can only handle so much, please flush only human waste and toilet paper down our toilets. Everything else, including feminine hygiene products and wet wipes should be put into the trash. Thank you for caring.
After reciting this essay over and over in my head for a full 24 hours it occurred to me that four days was the longest I could remember going without reading. I was starved for the written word and reading this little plaque every time I went into the restroom. It had become my mantra.
To my surprise, I found that I felt the happiest during the mediations sessions. I am lucky to have had a solid foundation instilled in me by a wise and experienced teacher who taught me that meditation is not a competition and that just showing up is a good thing. I had a few deep episodes of meditative bliss, then there was the meandering into who I needed to email when I got home, episodes of screaming knees and sodden, paralyzed legs. It was all good.
As I am a lapsed Catholic (bless me father for I have sinned, my last confession was 41 years ago . . . . ) I didn’t resonate with bowing to the Buddha statue as many did upon entering and exiting the mediation hall, as it felt too much like pagan ritualism. I thought about it quite a few times during the first few days there. It reminded me of my experience with Pattabhi Jois who was the head teacher of Ashtanga yoga until his death at 94 on May 18, 2009. I had had the honor of 
practicing with Guruji several times during his tours from India. I greeted him with a bow but didn’t kiss his feet like hundreds of others did. When he died it occurred to me that maybe I should have kissed his feet. But I’m OK that I didn’t. Likewise, I felt OK not bowing to the statute of the Buddha. In Buddhism it’s encouraged to follow one’s own inner guidance. That is the beauty of Buddhist philosophy.
I also didn’t participate this time in the walking mediation, which from the outside looking in appears be like zombies walking around in trances. Walking meditation is a way to focus with slow and mindful steps. I felt that I had bitten off enough with 9 days of sitting and took my stepping outside.
Nature has always provided me a centering calmness and I couldn’t stay inside for nine days. I walked every day outdoors from 2 to 3 hours, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. One morning I took off in a snowstorm not realizing what I was getting into. I intended to walk into town and return on Pleasant Street, which would have taken me an hour and a half. At the traffic circle in town though, in a state of mindful meditation, I unmindfully took the wrong road back. A three and a half hour epic trek for survival brought me back to IMS where I went immediately to my room to melt the icicles out of my hair.
This misstep was a microcosm of my total experience at IMS because I managed to adhere to my goal, which was to spend nine days without self-criticism. Even though I got lost because I wasn’t paying attention, I told myself I would make it back, get warm, have some lunch and peppermint tea and everything would be fine. Then I found a bucolic lane to cut through, saw a small herd of sheep with gigantic wooly coats, and the first cardinal I’ve seen on the east coast.
When the silence ended yesterday and everyone had a short time to chat, people dispersed without exchanging email addresses or pledging to see one another again. We all left to go back to our lives having had the most amazing adventure without having to learn more or to extend it any further than what we had gone through together.
Nine days is a long time to take away from our hectic lives. I was glad to go home, but happier still that I went and have already signed up for another retreat in the spring.
At this point in my life I look at all life experiences like a cookbook. Even though there may be a ton of good recipes inside, I usually find one to three that I love and that become part of my repertoire. This experience of silent meditation and learning more about Buddhist meditation served me well and was profoundly enriching and life changing. Primarily I learned that I can live without self-criticism—and that was truly illuminating. I learned other things, but this was the big lesson, the one that I will return to ponder.
As all creatures in the world wish to be free from pain and suffering, I wish for you to be free from pain and suffering. May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live your life with ease.
May you have an OM Shanti Shanti 2010.
Happy New Year.
My blog is dedicated to my Life Mission: Living a happy and fulfilled life, caring about body, mind, and spirit. I hope you come back and read how you can define, explore, and live your Life Mission.
METTA, SELF-CRITICISM, AND REVELATIONS
Shortly after we arrived I somewhat regretfully watched John’s car drive off into the night. I milled around with all of the excited retreatants and then we all went into the meditation hall where we were greeted formally and the SILENCE began.
I had no idea what was going on, but went off to bed thinking I would figure it out in the morning. I heard a bell—kind of like a chime—going up and down the hallways. I went back to sleep, still being on California time, thinking I would catch some breakfast later on. When another bell woke me around 7 a.m. and I stumbled out of my room I whispered to a woman coming into the hall, “What does that bell mean?”
I learned then that I’d missed breakfast and that I couldn’t use the bathrooms because yogis were cleaning them, nor could I shower until lunch. The reason is that the pipes rattle and bother meditators, and so there are designated times when showers are allowed.
In the foyer of the main building (a former ship captain’s home, then a novitiate before being purchased by the IMS) I scribbled the schedule on a scrap of paper. 5:15 a.m. wake up bell, 5:45-6:30 a.m. meditation (referred to as “sitting”), 6:30 a.m. breakfast, and so on, ending with a Dharma talk at night. (Dharma is a Sanskrit word that means righteous duty or virtuous path.)
There were three instructors teaching at the retreat (bios borrowed from the IMS site):
Rodney Smith has been teaching insight meditation since 1984. He is a former Buddhist monk and worked in hospice care for 17 years. The author of Lessons From the Dying, he is the founding and guiding teacher for the Seattle Insight Meditation Society and an IMS guiding teacher.
My favorite talk of Rodney’s was about adapting to a Buddhist perspective.
From Adaptation To Surrender (Download, Stream)
Heather Martin has practiced meditation for over 30 years with Asian and Western teachers, and began teaching in 2000. A midwife for 20 years, she lives in B.C., Canada.
My favorite talk of Heather’s was about Metta mediation. Metta is the form of Buddhist mediation that I practice. Metta cultivates lovingkindness toward ourselves, people we love, even strangers and those who have hurt us. Heather’s talk on Metta is not available, however, you can listen to two guided Metta meditations on the IMS site:
Joseph Goldstein – Insight Meditation Instruction (Download)
Sharon Salzberg – Guided Metta (Lovingkindness) Meditation (Download)
Yanai Postelnik has been practicing insight meditation for 20 years. He has been teaching internationally since 1992, and is inspired by the Thai forest tradition and the natural world. He is the Dharma Director of Gaia House, England.
My favorite talk of Yanai’s was Contemplating Death and the Deathless. (Download, Stream)
I had come with no expectations, and was not very well prepared assuming that I would figure it all out when I got there. I had never attended a silent mediation retreat in the past. All I knew was that I wanted to have the most profound experience possible given my neophyte status and to that end one preparation I did make was to leave my cell phone and laptop at home. I was on my own. There is something about being silent, meditative, and contemplative that stirs the creative mind. The Buddhist call don’t call it “monkey mind” for nothing. And so my inner reactions and experiences at the silent meditation retreat ran the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Although not talking eliminates many social dynamics among a cloistered group of strangers, it does introduce several others. Inanimate expressions create puddles out of faces. It was a hurdle to overcome, as the inadvertent scowls were difficult not to take personally at first. Anthropologically speaking, there was also an eerie similarity to a prison experience with the 84 retreatants avoiding eye contact and staring into their plates or out of the window at meals, bells, structured time, work duties, and restrictions on showers, cell phones, and so forth. My yogi duty was chopping vegetables in the kitchen from 1:15 to 2 p.m. There, while mincing basil or slamming into sweet potatoes with a meat cleaver my monkey mind would wander into fantasies that my chopping partner and I were prisoners in a POW camp where we had to somehow curry favor from our captors.
About the fourth day into the retreat I found the following words running through my head:
Plumbing Awareness
Since our plumbing can only handle so much, please flush only human waste and toilet paper down our toilets. Everything else, including feminine hygiene products and wet wipes should be put into the trash. Thank you for caring.
After reciting this essay over and over in my head for a full 24 hours it occurred to me that four days was the longest I could remember going without reading. I was starved for the written word and reading this little plaque every time I went into the restroom. It had become my mantra.
To my surprise, I found that I felt the happiest during the mediations sessions. I am lucky to have had a solid foundation instilled in me by a wise and experienced teacher who taught me that meditation is not a competition and that just showing up is a good thing. I had a few deep episodes of meditative bliss, then there was the meandering into who I needed to email when I got home, episodes of screaming knees and sodden, paralyzed legs. It was all good.
As I am a lapsed Catholic (bless me father for I have sinned, my last confession was 41 years ago . . . . ) I didn’t resonate with bowing to the Buddha statue as many did upon entering and exiting the mediation hall, as it felt too much like pagan ritualism. I thought about it quite a few times during the first few days there. It reminded me of my experience with Pattabhi Jois who was the head teacher of Ashtanga yoga until his death at 94 on May 18, 2009. I had had the honor of
practicing with Guruji several times during his tours from India. I greeted him with a bow but didn’t kiss his feet like hundreds of others did. When he died it occurred to me that maybe I should have kissed his feet. But I’m OK that I didn’t. Likewise, I felt OK not bowing to the statute of the Buddha. In Buddhism it’s encouraged to follow one’s own inner guidance. That is the beauty of Buddhist philosophy.
I also didn’t participate this time in the walking mediation, which from the outside looking in appears be like zombies walking around in trances. Walking meditation is a way to focus with slow and mindful steps. I felt that I had bitten off enough with 9 days of sitting and took my stepping outside.
Nature has always provided me a centering calmness and I couldn’t stay inside for nine days. I walked every day outdoors from 2 to 3 hours, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. One morning I took off in a snowstorm not realizing what I was getting into. I intended to walk into town and return on Pleasant Street, which would have taken me an hour and a half. At the traffic circle in town though, in a state of mindful meditation, I unmindfully took the wrong road back. A three and a half hour epic trek for survival brought me back to IMS where I went immediately to my room to melt the icicles out of my hair.
This misstep was a microcosm of my total experience at IMS because I managed to adhere to my goal, which was to spend nine days without self-criticism. Even though I got lost because I wasn’t paying attention, I told myself I would make it back, get warm, have some lunch and peppermint tea and everything would be fine. Then I found a bucolic lane to cut through, saw a small herd of sheep with gigantic wooly coats, and the first cardinal I’ve seen on the east coast.
When the silence ended yesterday and everyone had a short time to chat, people dispersed without exchanging email addresses or pledging to see one another again. We all left to go back to our lives having had the most amazing adventure without having to learn more or to extend it any further than what we had gone through together.
Nine days is a long time to take away from our hectic lives. I was glad to go home, but happier still that I went and have already signed up for another retreat in the spring.
At this point in my life I look at all life experiences like a cookbook. Even though there may be a ton of good recipes inside, I usually find one to three that I love and that become part of my repertoire. This experience of silent meditation and learning more about Buddhist meditation served me well and was profoundly enriching and life changing. Primarily I learned that I can live without self-criticism—and that was truly illuminating. I learned other things, but this was the big lesson, the one that I will return to ponder.
As all creatures in the world wish to be free from pain and suffering, I wish for you to be free from pain and suffering. May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live your life with ease.
May you have an OM Shanti Shanti 2010.
Happy New Year.