"You're going to be silent for five days?!"
Okay, in case you didn't figure it out, I'm a Buddhist. Not really, but sort of. I just returned from a 5-day Vipassana (a strand of Buddhism) silent meditation retreat through Tovana. This organization doesn't have a physical home-base, but offers retreats at different kibbutzim that offer to host them.
This particular kibbutz was little more than a kilometer from Gaza - an idea that sat with me no better after reading a Haaretz article that the Qassam rockets Islamic jihad folks were firing from Gaza had just doubled in range (9 kilometers). And that idea literally sat with me, 45-minute sit to 45-minute sit (and through many moments in the 45-minute meditative walks in between).
My sensitivity to noise led me to two experiences, in particular. The first night, I went to sleep at a reasonable hour anticipating the 6 am wake up bell - only to be woken up by a roaring sound that I was convinced came from an explosion just outside. Since I was supposed to be all inward-looking, I put the responsibility on other people to come running through the halls, screaming. No one did. The same thing happened the second night. I finally wrote a note to the retreat managers about this, and said I was waking up with a lot of anxiety, and wanted to move. Fortunately, on one of my walks, I was glide-touch-lift-shifting my feet, outside of a building, when a window rattled in the wind, signifying to me that the windows were just badly made, and I had nothing to worry about.
The second encounter I had was, again, while walking, I heard a soft, mechanical whirring sound overhead. Looking over the tree-tops in the direction of the disturbance, I waited for either Wilbur Wright to coast overhead in a bicycle-powered-biplane, or a Qassam missile to put a little "dent" in the relative peace of this silent retreat. Suddenly, breaking apart the solid, still blue of the sky, hundreds of birds in a perfectly symmetrical bow-like formation, whizzed through the air on their hundreds of wings.
It took me a while to get used to the light meals, that mostly consisted of tehina, bread, and some sort of grain or soup - and exploding glasses. It was remarkable to watch, and even more surprising that this happened day after day, without resolution: people would slowly assemble a delicious post-meal tea from the bowls of local, freshly gathered mint and lemongrass leaves, hibiscus petals and lemon, and fill up their glasses with hot water. At least a half-dozen times a day, this was followed by a pop and clatter as someone's glass shattered into a dozen pieces in their hand, or broke clean in half (like mine did) because of rapid heating after it sat in a freezing-cold kitchen.
And it took me even longer to even try to objectively approach the hundreds of flies, of which 6 lucky delegates tried to enter my nose during my sits. When they couldn't get up my nose, they found other ways of making their presences known, either by being busy sucking invisible salty goodness from my fingers and palms during walking meditation, or working their way towards my eardrum when I sat in meditation, or simply to inspect the food I was trying to use as an object of meditation, exploring its flavor and texture, imagining all the non-food elements the food was made of: wind, sun, rainfall, a farmer's care, some Israeli grocers, and the retreatants who volunteered to cut it so mindfully.
During the third evening, during meditation instruction, I heard feet patter into the meditation hall, late for the sit (as people almost always were), and didn't pay it any mind until people started laughing. Even then, I was holding myself to high standards, and stayed still, simply watching the feeling of curiosity arise in my consciousness, noting that it was triggered by the sound of laughter. Towards the end of the talk, I relaxed, slightly, and out of the corner of my eye saw a seemingly vagrant dog. It had sat in silence for almost the entire 45-minute talk, and proceeded to leave when we went out for walking meditation. It even returned for a second sit. Despite all the Buddhist intentions of sitting with what arises, one of the retreatants kicked it out after the second sit, without much consideration for the silence.
The retreat coincided with Chanukah, and the community that formed around candle-lighting was powerful. Many of us brought our own menorot to light, but over time, palm branches and rocks began to grace the table as other retreatants, moved by the beauty of this image of increasing light amidst the shortest days of the year, began to create their own Chanuka lamps. One woman sat with arms up during dinner, gently swaying back and forth, in front of the approximately a hundred candles that burned.
I came away, despite the peculiarly lax "container" of this retreat, with insight, a deeply abiding peace (that has been coming and going since retreat, though going more than coming), and a lot of questions about how this connects with God, but feeling this work of meditation was simply right, and knowing that it actively led me to act more compassionately with people and the world. Certainly Godly activity.
This particular kibbutz was little more than a kilometer from Gaza - an idea that sat with me no better after reading a Haaretz article that the Qassam rockets Islamic jihad folks were firing from Gaza had just doubled in range (9 kilometers). And that idea literally sat with me, 45-minute sit to 45-minute sit (and through many moments in the 45-minute meditative walks in between).
My sensitivity to noise led me to two experiences, in particular. The first night, I went to sleep at a reasonable hour anticipating the 6 am wake up bell - only to be woken up by a roaring sound that I was convinced came from an explosion just outside. Since I was supposed to be all inward-looking, I put the responsibility on other people to come running through the halls, screaming. No one did. The same thing happened the second night. I finally wrote a note to the retreat managers about this, and said I was waking up with a lot of anxiety, and wanted to move. Fortunately, on one of my walks, I was glide-touch-lift-shifting my feet, outside of a building, when a window rattled in the wind, signifying to me that the windows were just badly made, and I had nothing to worry about.
The second encounter I had was, again, while walking, I heard a soft, mechanical whirring sound overhead. Looking over the tree-tops in the direction of the disturbance, I waited for either Wilbur Wright to coast overhead in a bicycle-powered-biplane, or a Qassam missile to put a little "dent" in the relative peace of this silent retreat. Suddenly, breaking apart the solid, still blue of the sky, hundreds of birds in a perfectly symmetrical bow-like formation, whizzed through the air on their hundreds of wings.
It took me a while to get used to the light meals, that mostly consisted of tehina, bread, and some sort of grain or soup - and exploding glasses. It was remarkable to watch, and even more surprising that this happened day after day, without resolution: people would slowly assemble a delicious post-meal tea from the bowls of local, freshly gathered mint and lemongrass leaves, hibiscus petals and lemon, and fill up their glasses with hot water. At least a half-dozen times a day, this was followed by a pop and clatter as someone's glass shattered into a dozen pieces in their hand, or broke clean in half (like mine did) because of rapid heating after it sat in a freezing-cold kitchen.
And it took me even longer to even try to objectively approach the hundreds of flies, of which 6 lucky delegates tried to enter my nose during my sits. When they couldn't get up my nose, they found other ways of making their presences known, either by being busy sucking invisible salty goodness from my fingers and palms during walking meditation, or working their way towards my eardrum when I sat in meditation, or simply to inspect the food I was trying to use as an object of meditation, exploring its flavor and texture, imagining all the non-food elements the food was made of: wind, sun, rainfall, a farmer's care, some Israeli grocers, and the retreatants who volunteered to cut it so mindfully.
During the third evening, during meditation instruction, I heard feet patter into the meditation hall, late for the sit (as people almost always were), and didn't pay it any mind until people started laughing. Even then, I was holding myself to high standards, and stayed still, simply watching the feeling of curiosity arise in my consciousness, noting that it was triggered by the sound of laughter. Towards the end of the talk, I relaxed, slightly, and out of the corner of my eye saw a seemingly vagrant dog. It had sat in silence for almost the entire 45-minute talk, and proceeded to leave when we went out for walking meditation. It even returned for a second sit. Despite all the Buddhist intentions of sitting with what arises, one of the retreatants kicked it out after the second sit, without much consideration for the silence.
The retreat coincided with Chanukah, and the community that formed around candle-lighting was powerful. Many of us brought our own menorot to light, but over time, palm branches and rocks began to grace the table as other retreatants, moved by the beauty of this image of increasing light amidst the shortest days of the year, began to create their own Chanuka lamps. One woman sat with arms up during dinner, gently swaying back and forth, in front of the approximately a hundred candles that burned.
I came away, despite the peculiarly lax "container" of this retreat, with insight, a deeply abiding peace (that has been coming and going since retreat, though going more than coming), and a lot of questions about how this connects with God, but feeling this work of meditation was simply right, and knowing that it actively led me to act more compassionately with people and the world. Certainly Godly activity.
posted by Adam Lavitt at 12:37 PM
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