Signlessness

Small Hall alter in Solidity Hamlet at Deer Park Monastery

Recently, while on retreat at Deer Park Monastery for an extended stay, I took to admiring the plethora of orchids that abound there in the Ocean of Peace Meditation Hall, aka: the Big Hall.

Big Hall alter at Deer Park Monastery

Orchids just thrive in the Big Hall and they are simply amazing. Captured by their beauty, I visited the blooms and buds up close when I would arrive early on certain mornings before the start of our group session of sitting meditation. I would lean in to smell them and gently edge my fingers over their soft petals. They were a marvel to behold.

In addition to the Big Hall at Deer Park, each hamlet has their own Small Hall as well. There is one in the Brother’s Solidity Hamlet and one in the Sister’s Clarity Hamlet. As I was staying in Solidity with my husband Mike, on the days when we would have what is called Lazy Mornings, I would often sit on my own in our Small Hall. (Lazy Mornings mean there is no wake up bell at 5am and also no group session of meditation before breakfast.) One Lazy Morning, after sitting on my own in the Small Hall, I approached the alter, drawn in by both the large and lovely Buddha statue and the orchids that flank it. I had been admiring the blooms from afar for weeks but up until then had not visited with them up close.

After standing near to them for a while, embracing them with my smile, I slowly placed my fingertips on their petals. But something was different.

Meeting Myself

Before I left Deer Park Monastery at the beginning of this month, I remember writing about how I was looking forward to meeting the new version of myself once I got back home. I am someone who regards the self to always be in a state of changing. Whether average, regular days happen or bigger moments happen, in my view, we cannot help but to be impacted, affected, and changed, if even only very slightly, by what’s going on inside and around us. Each day, I go to bed as someone different than I was when I woke up. So, I figured, after 3.5 months at a monastery, as the only girl among 35 Brothers, 5 male lay friends, and my husband – aka: a long string of bigger life moments – a new version of myself was surely awaiting me upon my return back home.

It has been almost 2-weeks now since I’ve landed back in my humble abode here in western Montana, and I feel as though a new me is starting to emerge. A me that is looking for how to start a new chapter in her life. A me that is feeling like perhaps some weight was lifted in having been away on retreat for so long. A me that feels like she has some healing still left to do around past hurts and loss. A me that is much less interested in upholding certain creature comforts and complexities than she was prior to having left town in early October. A me that is creaking slowly open the door of possibility to a very different way of living and loving and engaging. I am in an active state of percolation.

I am currently re-reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go, which is about the life and teachings of Master Linji, one of the founders of Zen Buddhism. Master Linji once asked his students: “What is it you need to turn towards in order to find liberation?”

Ah, yes. This is precisely this question that I am holding.

Monotasking

Walking meditation session at Deer Park Monastery

In the wake of returning home after spending 4-months away on retreat at Deer Park Monastery, I am finding that one of the things I am missing most is the supportive container and group energy around the practice of mono-tasking.

While on retreat, when I was walking, I was walking. That was it. When I ate my meals, I ate my meals. That was it. When I participated in working meditation around the monastery, I was working. That was it. There was no needing to do two things at once or to be involved in one task while actively thinking about the next task or a future activity. My mind and body were able to practice holding and resting into one thing at a time. Mono-tasking for me is incredibly restorative and grounding.

Now that I am back home, I am finding it challenging to create more of this kind of energy on my own, but I am trying. To help support a less dispersed mind, I am in the process of de-cluttering my living space; scaling back on my list of to-do’s; and investigating my time usages online. I am also looking into small ways I can keep the practice of mono-tasking alive in my daily life. One way that jumps straight to mind is something that I made a concerted effort to start doing a few years ago: to stay put while brushing my teeth. My habit energy was to bop around the house while brushing my teeth (I’m sure many of you reading this can relate). I started finding it comical to observe how many ridiculous things I would attempt to do with a toothbrush protruding from my mouth, from going outside to start the car in the winter to doing the dishes. I mean, really. The dishes?! It was bad. So staying put while brushing my teeth is an ongoing way I practice mono-tasking – and by practice I mean that sometimes I have to actively redirect myself back into the bathroom because I’ve wandered off and away from the sink, as I’ve not yet mastered the art of staying put. As I like to say: practice makes progress, it doesn’t make perfection.

It’s This And That

Deer Park Monastery, Ocean of Peace Meditation Hall

Those who live alone
would like to have someone
else around from time to time.
Those who live with others
would love to live alone
sometimes.

This is the way of things.

When I was there
I wanted to be here.
Now that I am here
I want to be there.

Oh how nice it is
to be back in my small
little house
in my own bed
with my own luxuries
of art and music
surrounding me
like Christmas Day
in a town I adore
filled with people I cherish
in the only state I can
picture myself staying in
forever.

Oh how I miss
the container of
Deer Park
having people close at hand
to sit with in meditation
to walk with in silence
through the chaparral
to eat with and enjoy a slowed
down breakfast each morning
to hold space in the
dwelling place
of having the practice of
close communion be my
full time occupation.

Home & Plugged Back In

I took this pic a few days ago on the CA coast en-route back home to Montana, after a 3.5-month stint away on retreat at Deer Park Monastery. It has nothing really to do with this post per se, I just find it incredibly delightful and thought I’d spread the good vibes.

While I was away, I wasn’t completely unplugged. I had wi-fi access two afternoons a week while on retreat and would check emails and scan the news during those times. But I took a pretty large break from social media and many other forms of online usage. I wrote while I was away – like, a lot. And I took loads of pictures – like, too many.

This podcast episode I recorded before I left Deer Park sums things up pretty good, if you wanna give it a listen.

4-months away (with road travel time there and back), as it turns out, is enough to make one feel like a stranger in a strange land when walking back through the door of their own dwelling place. Long enough even to make one forget where they keep their pajamas (true story). A 3.5-month retreat stay at a monastery is also apparently long enough to make one start to question why it is they have so much clutter junking up the place when they get back home. Stationary stuff just sittin around collecting dust.

My husband Mike and I got home late Sunday night. Today marks the start of day 2 of our reintegration back home. Back to our mountains and our winter and our sweet little town. Back to the land of peopled interactions and sensory overload. It was both a rough and lovely drive back home. We were nourished by epic beauty and inundated with massive amounts of people on differing stretches. It was a lot, on all levels, to take in and integrate into our mind/body system.

This is me, reminding myself that transitions take time. This is me, having a bumpy reentry, trying not to take on all the things that need doing all at once. This is me, taking great solace in the blanket of fresh snow outside and the call of winter to slow it all down.