Reflections on the 8 day retreat

I recently attended the 8-day silent retreat at Wat Buddha Dhamma.  I arrived at the Wat the day before, exhausted from work and city life in general. Also, I hadn’t been sleeping well and knew it was going to take a few days for me to wind down.  My last long retreat was a few years previous and I remembered how relaxed I was just half way through, so had pretty high expectations of a similar blissful experience this time around.

The retreat began formally in the sala with 10 or so retreatants requesting the 3 refuges and 8 precepts from the senior monk, Ajahn Khemavaro.  As with most retreats at the Wat, the days in Noble Silence consisted of meditation & chanting, eating, service, more meditation and chanting, a Dhamma talk and sleeping.

Day two I started crying near the end of morning meditation and cried again at an interview with the monks. I cried because I was tired and frustrated and upset that things were not going my way; just let me have my way!

Susan Browne in her poem, buddha’s dogs, recalls a day long retreat: ‘eight hours of the mind watching the mind …. and the thoughts so far they are wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, judgement, sadness’.

By day four I am winding down and very much appreciating the peace and spaciousness, beauty and ease around me and amongst my fellow retreatants. Stopping on the way to the shower, I watch a family of tiny fairy wrens popping around the green foliage of a fallen gum tree, trilling their sweet barely audible trill. They seem so happy together. There is also water babbling along the creek, a sound I haven’t heard for such a long time.  Across the large field near the showers I spot a wombat munching on grass. As I approach, she notices me and races off at a speed that belies her squat, plump physique. With each choice to stop and pay attention to the present moment, my heart rests a little more.

At the last session in the Sala on day 8, Ajahn guides us through a Metta meditation with a beautiful image at the end of us all pooling our goodness and radiating it out to the forest and world outside the Wat, this place ‘enclosed by grace’*. I leave, not blissful but with what seems a more grounded feeling of trust in this path of peace and a great appreciation for the gift of the Dhamma and the Wat.

Marie

July 2011

* from Patrick Lane’s ‘What the Stones Remember: A life Rediscovered’.

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