What the Heck I’m Doing Here

I’m currently and temporarily residing at Deer Park Monastery (DP), where my husband Mike and I have been visiting annually for the past 10-years for varying lengths of time. We arrived just before Thanksgiving this time around, and we plan to depart and head home in mid-March. Every visit here is a little different. I’m different; the monastery is different; the world is different. Did I mention everything is of the nature to change? 

I find it helpful to spend a little time reflecting on why it is I continue to feel drawn to coming here, and what it is I’m doing when I’m here. It’s important to me to understand why I do what I do, if for no other reason than to check in with myself to make sure my actions are in line with the direction I want to travel in.

Here are a few specific things I’m practicing here at DP, which I find especially nourishing & beneficial:

Simplifying. As you might surmise, monastery living is simple living. The small rooms we stay in meet our basic needs but are nothing fancy. Some might even say the indoor accommodations are in desperate need of attention and upgrading. Our meals are nutritious, filling, and mostly pallet pleasing but vary little in their content. When we stay at the monastery, we stay at the monastery. It’s not like a hotel where we come and go and take day trips around the area. When we’re here, we’re invested in following the schedule, being part of the community, and engaging with the practices that are part of our spiritual tradition. DP is a rich fertile learning environment for practicing simplification. This is a place that offers limited distractions, promotes wholesome usages of time, and centers on acting in accordance with mindful conduct, thoughts, and speech. DP is good training ground on how to cut out the chaff and connect with the heart of what really matters.

On Concentration

 

Shine the light & steady the beam.
Look deeply, in order to see things 
more clearly. 

Mike & I are gearing up to head back home to Montana soon. We arrived here to Deer Park Monastery in late October. In a little over a week, we’ll take to the road in our 1989 Chevy conversion van and head north.

When I reflect on why it is I prioritize coming here to spend time every year, what comes up for me centers around developing the quality of concentration in my practice. I come here to Shine the light & steady the beam. By “shine the light,” I’m referring to the light of mindfulness, or present moment awareness. By “steady the beam,” I’m referring to the act of concentration; of holding that light of mindfulness in one place, for a longer period of time than I am typically able to. It helps me to think about this in terms of navigating a dark cave with a flashlight. To explore the cave, I could wave my flashlight around, illuminating any number of things in different directions, or I could hold the flashlight still, in order to investigate one particular spot up close and in more detail. There’s value, of course, in waving the light around. But there’s value also in learning how to steady the beam. 

I consider myself as being someone who has a strong mindfulness practice in my daily life, but I don’t feel as though my quality of concentration is particularly strong. When I come here, the conditions, community, and container are such that I am able to develop and strengthen this aspect of practice. 

Inscribed on the large & lovely stained glass window situated above the main alter in the Big Meditation Hall here at Deer Park (DP), are the Sanskrit words Smrti Samadhi Prajna, which means: Mindfulness Concentration Insight. Mindfulness is a component of concentration; concentration is a component of insight; and insight is a necessary component of transformation. To be clear, insight is not the same thing as knowledge. Insight isn’t something that comes from reading or studying or collecting information or developing intellectual understanding. Insight is born from embodied experience. In the context of the spiritual tradition I practice in, insight is what develops through the process of watering the seed of mindfulness and developing the art of concentration. 

In my way of thinking, in order to go further and deeper on one’s spiritual practice path, it’s essential to hone and cultivate the quality of concentration. Without the element of concentration, one can only travel so far. If we are someone who has a strong desire to continuously develop & prioritize the spiritual dimension of our life, practicing concentration is not just a good idea; it’s a necessary part of the process. 

Long, Hard Day at the Office

This post is an effort to deliver an important PSA: Stress is real and part of life and there’s no such thing as being “above” the sway of it. Thinking that it’s some kind of personal moral or spiritual failure when we feel maxed out or stressed out, is a sign that we have more work to do in the personal growth department. 

I find it continuously disappointing that when I attempt to share honestly with someone that I’ve had a hard day, I am then in the position of needing to do one of two things: 1) put up with unsolicited, unwelcome, unneeded, and typically unhelpful advice or 2) muster up the energy it takes (and don’t currently have) to qualify that I’m not broken and therefore not in need of fixing.

Friday was a long, hard day in the office. Without going into too many details that no one will find interesting, I’ll just say that the phone kept ringing, the emails kept coming, problems kept presenting, tech glitches kept happening, and the struggle to keep all the balls in the air was real.

Upon discovering that I work as a paid employee in the registration office of a Buddhist monastery, some people seem to be wildly confused about how there could possibly be such stress involved in the work that we do. People also seem to have strange notions centered around “if you’re a good practitioner, then stress should no longer be a thing.” So this is me wanting to share with you that despite the setting, office work is still office work. Computer work is still computer work. And customer service still means interacting with lots of humans, who are not calling or emailing to tell you how good of a job you’re doing. 

Additional important PSA: Anyone who works in a job field that involves interfacing with the daily demands of the public all day are unsung heroes, many of whom are over-worked and under-paid. May we all up our game and be nicer.

I don’t think it’s common knowledge that there’s a way to recognize & interact with stress without catastrophizing the situation. That there’s a way to be present with stress when it arises in a way that does’t involve falling into the depths of its current. That feeling stressed out is NOT a moral failure, but simply part of what it means to be human. I think the fact that I am able to experience stress without allowing it to reduce my self-worth, and not view it as an indicator that I’m doing something wrong, is a foreign concept to most people. Hence the need I see for this particular post. 

A Gal Amid Monks

It’s an interesting environment I find myself in when spending a few months dwelling inside of a Buddhist monastery. A place where the two hamlets are largely separate and organized by gender. 

In case you’re new here to my blog, I’ll set the scene a bit. 

When my husband and I come here to Deer Park Monastery, we stay together in Solidity Hamlet with the Brothers, which is where couples & lay men reside when they come here. Lay women stay with the Sisters in Clarity Hamlet. The hamlets are about a 10-min walk from one another and mostly operate independently. Both hamlets come together at certain times during the week, but in large part our meals and daily schedule are spent in the hamlet in which we reside. 

Pre-pandemic, Mike and I would come here annually and typically spend 3 or 4 weeks on retreat. But this is now our third year in a row spending a significantly longer period of time here. We’ve been here now for a little over 4-months, with about 5 more weeks to go until we return back home to Montana. 

For the first few years that we came here, I opted to stay with the Sisters in Clarity Hamlet. But now, and for the past number of years, I’ve opted to stay with Mike in Solidity Hamlet. So over these last few years, I’ve been either the only gal staying in Solidity long-term, or one amid a very small crew. And while eventually, when we stay here long enough, I find myself feeling super ready to return home to the lovely graces of my female friends, there are a number of things I have a very unique opportunity to engage with when I’m here as a minority gender, which I truly appreciate, and don’t experience anywhere else. 

1. Reprieve from female figure fatigue syndrome. Even though this is a term I just made up right now, I imagine most/all females know what I’m talking about. Now, I am someone who dresses very modestly and simply in my daily life outside of the monastery. I wear the same color shirt every day (green) and the same color of pants (brown). I own 4 pairs of shoes. I’ve never been a clothes-horse and in no one’s eyes would I ever be seen as a fashionista. Don’t get me wrong, I care about what I wear, just not very much. And despite all of that, I still feel the pull of thinking I need to flaunt – or at least flatter – my figure. How do these pants make my butt look? Is this shirt too frompy? The cultural messaging runs deep, people. But all of that fizzles & fades away here. And. It. Is. Glorious. I am acutely aware that I am a gal living amid monks and I place a high value of importance of being respectful of the environment I’m in. Thus, when I’m here, I kick my modest dress style up a notch. The monastery is a wholesome, unsexualized environment and I personally deeply enjoy that aspect of being here. It gives me permission to interact with myself in a very specific way, which I find incredibly liberating. 

2. Creative ways to connect with feminine energy. Only recently have I started realizing that some of the little things I do here, I do because it puts me in touch with the feminine energy I feel I’m lacking. I seek out reading more books & poetry authored by women; I listen to more music with female singers; I talk with & sing to the moon when I see her out & about; and I am drawn to making closer contact with nature in ways that feel more feminine by design. All of these acts, while not absent in my daily life back home, are much more pronounced & feel more necessary here. 

3. The masculine/feminine interplay is important. Spending time here has shown me how much the masculine & feminine energies have to offer one another, and how beneficial each energy can be to the other one. While I am a big supporter of having gender-based affinity groups, where women have women-only spaces (which includes transgender women), men have men-only spaces (which includes transgender men), and non-binary folks have non-binary spaces, in my view, there is something detrimentally missing when the segregation of genders is prolonged. Please don’t get me wrong. I think in a monastery setting, the separation of genders makes a lot of sense. Nuns & monks have a specifically unique life aim, aspiration, and calling, which is supported, in part, by dwelling apart from one another. But as a lay practitioner, I feel there is something really important about the cross-pollination that happens when both energies mix & mingle. I’m not referring to our romantic or sexual drives here, I’m speaking about the nature of these energies as they operate together on an interactively higher human playing field. When I spend time here, I am able to get in touch with the true loveliness of masculine energy and the true loveliness of feminine energy.  How each one needs the other one to complete & express itself fully. The feminine yin to the masculine yang. 

How to Leave the Monastery

Okay. So, this post might not appeal to most folks but it’s alive for me to share so here it is anyway. Allow me to set the scene. My husband Mike and I are currently residing on retreat at Deer Park Monastery (DP) in southern California in the U.S. We arrived at the end of October, about halfway through what is known in our spiritual practice tradition as the 90-day Rains Retreat (RR). The RR ends on December 18, so we are heading into our final week. Mike and I are staying on here until early April, but those who arrived at the start of the RR in September will soon be departing, which amounts to around 30 people. Many folks have trepidation about leaving the monastery and returning back home, and understandably so. 

This is the third RR Mike and I have attended in a row. In 2020 we attended the whole RR and in 2021 we arrived a week after it started. We’ve been coming here annually to DP since 2014, though typically for much shorter periods of time, prior to 2020. In large part, the pandemic is what inspired us to start coming here for longer stays. 

Over the years, I’ve heard many people share about how nervous they are to leave this place. Whether they stayed at DP for two-weeks or three-months, it’s common for folks to feel sad, scared, worried, and/or anxious when confronted by their upcoming departure. This post is dedicated to them.

While it may seem like an odd way to begin, I’d like to say out loud that this place isn’t for everyone. I like to take any chance I get to help dispel the notion that monastery living is an idyllic place for anyone & everyone, or should be. I am a firm believer that nothing is for everyone. There is no one thing or place or person or experience or way to be in this world that will suit everyone’s fancy. End of PSA. 

For those that do take a liking to DP, communal living, meditating in a lovely hall, enjoying healthy food, connecting with the Dharma, and being located so closely to the wide expanse of wilderness surrounding the monastery can be a lot to give up. 

I penned this poem here last year, specifically as an offering for someone who wound up having to leave the RR early, suddenly & unexpectedly, much to his great dismay. Though really it’s a poem for all of us.

Onward Ho to Deer Park We Go

Soon soon, Mike and I will once again be heading back to Deer Park Monastery (DP), with plans to return home to Montana and our small-sprouting, rustic & humble practice center Empty Mountain (EM) in April. As we’ve been venturing to DP annually since 2014 – and for longer stints over the last 3-years – returning to DP feels very much like a homecoming. 

Since moving onto the land we purchased on July 1st, most of my energy for blogging has been routed towards EM weekly blog posts on our website (see here) and less so here on my personal practice blog. But since we’ll soon be on retreat at DP, with no EM updates for a little while, I anticipate jumping back into my site here a little more, perhaps posting twice a month. 

By happenstance and not direct intention – also fueled by the pandemic – Mike & I have become snow birds these last few years, wintering south like migratory birds. Personally, however, I’m not a big fan of people assuming I head south to get away from our north country winter. It’s just sorta worked out that way. Actually, I quite miss winter in Montana when we’re gone. The writer in me, especially the poet, thoroughly enjoys a good hibernation season. For me, a proper winter is fertile ground to help spark creative flow. 

Please don’t get me wrong, though. I super enjoy the near full-time sun of southern California, but it’s kinda like when I visit back home, the place of my birth & raising outside of Philly (go Eagles!). It’s perfectly nice and lovely, but it just doesn’t hold my heart in the same way as my home in Montana does. 

What a treat and gift it is to structure our lives in such a way that enables Mike and I to spend swaths of time on retreat at DP. We are incredibly fortunate and deeply grateful for being practitioners on the path of practice; continuations of our beloved teacher Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh); and welcomed in by the four-fold community at DP. 

Onward ho to DP we go.

Coming & Going in Freedom

Deer Park Monastery

Our time here at Deer Park Monastery is coming to a close. Mike and I are planning to set out on the open road, bound for the north country of our homeland in Montana, in a little over a week from today. On the day of our departure, we’ll have spent 5-months and 7-days here this time around. Or, when measured in poems I’ve written since arriving in October, we’ve been here for over 200 poems(!).

Since we sold our home of 18-years just before coming here, we’ll be living the van life when we leave here. And as we are acutely aware that we will be returning to a very different kind of climate and season-scape, we’ve been doing some van prep to ready ourselves for weathering the cold. 

We’ll resume our search for land when we get home. And now with our house sold, we’re ready to rock-n-roll on the buying front, whereas before our purchase of land was contingent on the house sale. Our long-held vision of starting a small and rustic mindfulness practice center, which we have named Empty Mountain, is in slow and flowing motion. Here’s hoping we find land we can afford and that will meet some of our criteria. The Great Unknown awaits, which is both thrilling and terrifying. 

To check out our aspiring center’s website and/or follow our Empty Mountain blog, click here:  https://www.emptymountain.org/

Mike and I have been coming here to Deer Park annually since 2014, for varying lengths of time. And one of the things I so appreciate when leaving here is knowing that this place, too, is home. We can, and most likely will, return soon. When we arrive here each year, I feel so ready to be here and take refuge in this lovely practice place. And when we leave, I feel so ready to return back to our mountains of Montana; to my home sangha Be Here Now; to my beloved community of cherished friends.

When The Going Gets Tough

penned on Saturday February 26th, 2022

To help me process my own inner stress levels – and perhaps as a bonus help dispel the myth that you, dear reader, might have built up around every aspect of a monastery always being easy-going and serene – I’d like to share a little bit about working in the registration office (RO) here at Deer Park Monastery (DP), where I am currently residing.

Assisting in the RO here is what I would consider a “next-level practice,” by which I mean: advanced practice skills are required in order not to have a meltdown. In order to step into next-level practices, it’s necessary to have a strong proficiency in the foundational elements of the practice. It’s not a good idea to try to step into next-level environments or situations without developing a solid base from which to draw on and return back to when the going gets tough. 

We’re in crunch mode here in the DP RO. We have a sea of work to do and limited time in which to do it. Between DP’s one full-time and rockstar office employee and myself as a part-time volunteer assistant, we are just keeping our heads above water right now. For the next week or so, I imagine it will be similar to the week after Thay passed away and we hosted a full 7-days of ceremonies open to the public. I spent 40-hours in the RO that week. Normally the RO is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but I reckon I will opt to work those days because of the large volume of work there is to do. Have I mentioned this is a whole new experience for me? I’ve never worked in an office environment before. I’ve never spent hours-long shifts glued to the computer in work-mode. I’ve never had to bounce back and forth between answering phone calls and responding to emails and entering information into a database, while also routinely fielding requests from live humans coming in through the door. If you’re not an Olympic level multi-tasker, this work could eat a person alive. Mad skills of switching gears quickly and tending to eight different things simultaneously are needed. 

So very many jobs and career fields are like what I’ve just described. Translation: I’m appreciating learning firsthand of just how taxing and draining it is to 1) sit in front of a computer screen all day and 2) be in the business of what essentially equates to customer service. Interfacing with the public all day long, day in and day out, is the work of angels you guys. No joke. Be good to those whose livelihood involves talking with people on the phone and/or IRL: store clerks, restaurant staff, customer service phone operators, the list goes on and on. 

Taking Refuge In Our In-Breath

In the catch-all closet inside the tearoom – here in Solidity Hamlet at Deer Park Monastery – is a stack of past editions of the Mindfulness Bell magazine. I’ve been enjoying reading them. The most recent one I read was the summer edition of 2004. In it are two articles I especially enjoyed, one from Thay (aka Thich Nhat Hanh), entitled: Taking Refuge in Your In-Breath and one from Dharma teacher Larry Ward, entitled: Be a Real Human Being. 

My favorite lines from Thay’s article:

“If you want to show your kindness to Thay and the Sangha, take refuge in your in-breath and become fully yourself. Take refuge in your steps and right in that very moment you will have solidity and freedom, you will have the capacity of getting in touch with the wonders of life…

“...We know that the first expression of enlightenment by our ancestral teacher Linji was, “Oh I see, there is not much in the teaching of my teacher.” If you can tell that to Thay, you are a good student. Thay only teaches breathing in and breathing out.”

My favorite lines from Larry’s article:

“If you want to do something with your life, be a real human being. If you want to do something for your children, your grandchildren, be a real human being. If you want to do something for America, be a real human being. In everything you need to be a real human being. And it’s already inside of us; it’s in every cell of our body. However, we have to be trained to develop it, cultivate it, and to apply it. This is one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights - that one has to be trained to live deeply. Most of us assume you have to be trained to be a doctor or a nurse or a pianist or a schoolteacher or a cabdriver or a cook. The idea that we have to be trained to live profoundly, seems to have never crossed anybody’s mind! You have to be trained to live. It’s one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights, and that training is lifelong.”

For me, these two passages compliment each other very nicely. As a student who dearly loves and respects my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, his line prompting me to take refuge in my in-breath and to become fully myself as an act of kindness towards him and my sangha caught and held my attention. I’ve been reflecting on that line in particular for a couple of weeks now. And how is it that I can become fully myself? I can be a real human being. 

A Regular Ole Journal Entry

Deer Park Monastery

Signs of spring are appearing here at DP. The cooler temps at night and in the mornings are warming. When I went to sit in the Small Hall early this morning (a location like most others here which is not typically heated), the thermostat inside read 62, up from a common 52 over the winter months. I am also starting to notice the presence of more flowers in bloom around the monastery. There also seems to be more bird activity and chattering in greeting of the morning sun. This is me still – even after 8-years of coming here annually for varying lengths of time – adjusting to the unfamiliar landscape, seasonal shiftings, climate & weather patterns of southern California. What can I say, Montana runs in my bones. We won’t be experiencing signs of spring back home for another month or so, and even then it will be much less pronounced. 

Today, the Santa Ana winds are blowing warm air in from the nearby and inland desert country. The palm tree in front of our room is rattling against the eave of the roof, creating a ruckus that eventually also rattles my nerves. I spent the last two mornings from 8-12:30 helping in the office but not today. Thursdays I have off. Sundays and Mondays too. Last night I pitched the idea to Mike about maybe going to the beach. And ah! I used the local vernacular! Where I hale from on the East Coast outside of Philly, I grew up going “down the shore.” No one ever said: I’m going to the beach. Here they call it the beach. I rather like the idea of taking a blanket, towel, book, and easy lunch and heading “to the beach” (gosh it still feels strange and odd to call it that). To sit in the sun-warmed sand, stroll barefoot in the surf,  and enjoy the festival of sensory impressions stirred up by the sea. 

Standing Buddha in the Oak Grove at Deer Park Monastery

I am finding it particularly interesting as of late to notice just how fiercely ingrained & upheld the habit energy of fast-paced living is. It’s especially noticeable when coming here to the monastery, the land where everything slows down. Noticing my own propensity to do certain things as though I were in a high-speed race is an interesting observational exercise. To say that it is challenging to maintain a slower pace in the everyday world would be a great understatement. But here it is relatively easy (if you have the chance to be here long enough to settle in and stay awhile). As used to “Faster faster! Now, now! Go go go!” as we are, the act of slowing down takes time. It is particularly entertaining when new people arrive, whether for a Sunday day of mindfulness or a weekend or week-long stay. They move so haphazardly and erratically – so so quickly! And through watching them, I see my own self reflected. I see my own habits and patterns and tendencies. One of the things I deeply appreciate in spending time here is the ability I have to slow down. To have a different way of engaging with the world fostered and supported. To learn and practice the art of simpler, slower living.