And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes
dropping slow*
“Are we all clear
about what we expect to get out of this?”
The accent is American and the tone starched, with
just a hint of boardroom efficiency to sharpen it. Five pairs of eyes regard
the speaker, who has snapped her iMac shut and is sliding it into her satchel.
“They’ll probably
confiscate that. In any case, there’s no signal.”
The voice is deadpan
“But I’ll need it …
to catch up with some work in the evenings. There are legal cases in London I have to prepare
for.”
Incertitude has begun to crinkle the starchiness.
A softly spoken dark-haired woman suggests that to find
a signal she should follow the nearby path over to a not-so-nearby field with
cows in it, where she might be lucky. Crucially, she adds,
“But it depends on which
way the wind is blowing.”
I’m sitting at a
picnic table in warm late afternoon sunshine on the recently mown lawn of Gaia
House Buddhist Retreat Centre. In a couple of hours the five day silent retreat
that I’ve come here for will commence. The young American woman is quiet now,
tapping her impeccably manicured nails on her brown leather satchel.
A couple of the
other retreatants recommend that she forget work as it will undermine the
potential to make this retreat into a life changing experience. She turns to
me,
“Well, why are you
here?”
Unable to think of a sufficiently profound reply that indicates
how futile it is to have a results-based approach to a Buddhist retreat, I
mumble ...
“Just to be here,
that’s all.”
A few seconds later
the American swings the satchel over her shoulder and strides purposefully across
the lawn in the direction of the field. As she recedes, one of my companions at
the table wonders how she’ll fare on this, her first ever retreat. Earlier she
had mentioned how stressed and angry she’d been for months, to the extent that
even the most trifling annoyance could provoke an outburst. A retreat in Gaia
House, she hoped, would be the antidote to the toll her fast-paced and
relentlessly driven lifestyle was taking on her. I reflect that it was brave to
commit to five days of silent meditation without having much, if any, prior
knowledge or preparation. This young woman did not appear to be the “typical”
retreatant, not even first-time retreatant.
A few
yards away from our picnic table I’m astonished to see a couple of rabbits,
wild rabbits, snacking on the lawn. One of them hops into the shade of a nearby
tree and proceeds to leisurely groom himself. I glance across at his mate, who
has fallen into a sudden snooze. Peace, I suspect, undoubtedly comes dropping
slow here.
Over the next five
days Munchkin and his mate constantly claim their space on the lawn. They seem
oblivious the mass of retreatants doing either Tai Chi, sun salutations or
silently pacing back and forth, engrossed in their walking meditation. I’m
intrigued by the rabbits’ apparent fearlessness, but I do notice they have
“boundary issues”. Should one of us come any closer than five paces, they break
into a bunny hop canter, putting a few metres between themselves and the
interloper. If rabbits can look miffed, then on these occasions Munchkin and
his mate look somewhat miffed.
This is
not my first time here and when I step into the meditation hall that afternoon a
sensation of peace fills me that whispers, “You’re home now”, dispelling the
residues of stress from my bus-plane-bus-train-taxi journey to Gaia House. It’s
a feeling that remains with me throughout the ensuing five days of silent
meditation. Its soothing presence is more powerful than any of the transient psychodramas
or aches and pains arising from sitting cross-legged hour after hour, and I’m
grateful for this. Previous retreat experiences have not been so benevolent.
In the silence I
discover that the guardedness I brought in with me still retains its hold on my
heart. On that first evening I eye my companions in the meditation hall with
some degree of circumspection, wondering about their motives for being here. And
then the woman on my left turns and smiles broadly at me as we rise from our
cushions. My heart softens and opens to her and to the rest of my companions,
to all eighty of them. At that moment a sense of connectedness takes root and
flourishes over the coming days. It needs no introductions, polite exchanges of
information or outpourings of the soul; none of this breaks the silence of Gaia
House but communication is ongoing at some level, a much deeper level. There’s
a shared sense of being among us which renders words unnecessary.
Inner peace and, if
I’m honest, basically having nothing to do except meditate, opens my mind more
fully to the beauty of the landscape around Gaia House. I meander through the gardens
and woods, lingering over the scent of a flower, over the subtleties of colour
as the evening fades into night, over the softness of the breeze as it moves
through the forest and I surrender to the cacophony stirred up by the vastly
extended family of crows nesting in the trees at the back of the centre. When a
goldfinch alights on the rock formation in the centre of the pond just a couple
of metres away from me, I remain motionless, indulging in the luxury of an unhurried
encounter with Nature. As I sip my first cup of tea, prior to early morning meditation,
a cuckoo calls in the distance; decades have passed since I last heard that
sound. Not even the crows are awake this early and I can’t resist asking
myself, “Why can’t it be like this all the time?”
In the
final days I find myself glancing frequently toward the back of the meditation
hall, to where the young American woman sits. Occasionally she’s not there, but
more often than not she is. Right now she’s sitting with her head buried in her
hands and her crumpled posture betrays her exhaustion. But she’s still with us
and I haven’t seen her head over once to that far off field with her iMac. I
wonder whether she’s pondering our teacher’s question, “What’s stopping me from
being happy?” and where the answer, if she finds one, will take her.