Sitting With Determination, Part 1: The Rhythm of Life
I've been here before.
As I put together what will be my modest accommodations for the next ten days, I take a look around with a slight sense of deja vu. Here I am again, on Tim and Annie's Sticks and Stones Organic Farm, surrounded by the beautiful nothingness and green spaciousness that constitutes this charming little slice of the Big Island. It is rustic, to say the least. And while the island itself may be big as far as these Hawaiian islands are concerned, my own world is about to get very, very small.
I set up my two-person tent, give silent thanks to my friend Joseph for gifting me this mini-Taj Mahal with the knowledge of my--to put it nicely--inability to handle such projects with grace, and smile proudly to myself after it's all assembled. A mere ten minutes is all it takes to create my new home sweet tent. Relieved to have this important formality taken care of, my mind turns to other things, namely to revisiting my first experience on these hallowed grounds nearly two years ago to the day.
I recall the silence. The daily rigors of doing absolutely nothing except for sitting with myself in total observation. The pain, both emotional and physical. The memory of what it feels like to live like a monk, relying on the charity of others to be fed and preserved, and all the while not uttering a word. The camaraderie that develops amongst the students gathered there without the benefit (or curse) of getting to tell your tall tales to one another. And of course, I recall the surrounding landscape and the vital role it plays as a refuge, a soothing balm to take the edge off when the going starts to get too rough, too boring, or too intense. Nature has its own way of providing comfort, and the nature here is like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night.
We gather under the lights, all two strands of LED Christmas lights, on that first night to be apprised of the rules. There are Five Precepts to follow during our time here. No killing (whew), no stealing, no sexual activity (alone or otherwise), no telling lies, and no use of any intoxicants. Got it. Done and done. All of this was very familiar to me.
But then it was announced that there were three more precepts added just for old students (that meant myself and any other student already having completed a ten-day course). And these were:
6. To abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decoration. I have no clue what this means, but it sounds doable.
7. To abstain from using high or luxurious beds. Let's see. I have my tent, with tarp flooring and two-inch thick sleeping pad, and no real pillow to speak of. Luxury? Hardly.
8. To abstain from eating after midday.
Screeecchhhhh. Someone just slammed on the brakes in my mind.
So let me get this straight. There are only two meals per day, at 7am and 11am. Now I am being asked to give up my beloved fruit and tea time at 5pm? That last little bit of nourishment to get me through the night and fuel me through the early morning meditation the next day? This was perplexing to say the least.
I could just see it all unfolding in my imagination. The new students sitting around every evening, enjoying every last sweet bite of that day's fruitful harvest. Me sitting there, salivating. Fruitless. Silent. Starving. Fighting to stay balanced. For as minor a curveball as this truly was, at that moment it seemed like a gargantuan blow to my preparedness.
But wait! There would be something for the old students, too. I wouldn't have to sit there empty-handed. They didn't completely forget about us old-timers after all.
We would be allowed lemon water. Yep. That's it. I said it. Lemon water. Like lemon tea, only without the tea. I think if they told me I would get to eat the scraps off the rinds left behind by the new students, I would have felt happier.
But that was it. Lemon water. Deal with it, Paul. In fact, deal with all of your expectations, and start loosening your death grip on them. This is only the beginning.
It was then that I realized something very important. For weeks leading up to this retreat, I knew inside that it would be a totally different experience for me. At least I tried to convince myself (and others) of this concept. But it was time to get truthful. That is, after all, the main reason one comes to these kinds of things. To get to the truth.
And the truth was, the brutally honest truth was, I was holding on to my previous experience here the way a toddler clings to the legs of a parent when he is scared, arms wrapped around tightly, hanging on for dear life. But he can only hang on for so long. Eventually, he will walk alone once again, and march his way into new adventures. Like that toddler, it was time for me to have a new adventure, time to take my first steps into a brand new episode in the unraveling life of Paul.
For as much as I thought I knew about what was coming, I really knew nothing. It's funny how life works. No matter how much of a stranglehold we think we have on it, eventually everything has to change. Yet all the while, the human mind continues its grasping and reaching for the familiar, the comfortable, the known. Perhaps this explains why it is so easy to get caught in a rut, to feel that our routines are outdated and no longer fit who we are.
Life is in a constant flow, but try telling that to the mind, right? Ultimately, all that is required to get back into that flow is a little willingness to see things differently. Just a little bit of letting go is all it takes.
By the second morning, something shifted. My own willingness had arrived.
I was sitting on my blue cushion in the meditation hall, which was actually a huge white tent with flooring (quite comfortable as these things go). We were nearing the end of the early morning meditation, which ran from 4:30am to 6:30am. Given the option of meditating in my own tent or the hall for this particular period, I choose the hall knowing full well that I did not have the discipline to sit in my tent, hidden from view, and actually do anything except escape back to dreamland.
In addition to the ungodly morning hours, there was one more thing about this block of time that always seemed to agitate me something fierce. For the last twenty minutes or so, there was chanting. Some might find it soothing, sort of like background music. Me? Most days, I found it unbearable, preferring the screech of nails on a chalkboard to the sound of this man's voice, chanting some indecipherable words of support and peace to encourage us on. The only thing it encouraged me to do was to get up and run for the hills.
But on this second morning of silence, I calmed my resistance. I listened. This chanting wasn't so bad, especially against the backdrop of crickets, frogs, and birds awakening to a new day. In this moment, for whatever reason, it all came together. I sat there smilingly. Quiet reverence took over. Now, instead of irritation, I felt enormous gratitude swelling up inside of me. And rather than being excited when it was over, I felt resistance to it ending. I had been enveloped by something much bigger than me.
There was chanting going on, but it wasn't limited to inside the tent. There was a rhythm happening here.
Emerging from my cushion, I step out into the music. I see the pre-dawn orange sky turning bluer and bluer as the sun comes out of its hiding spot behind the trees. I hear the birds singing ever-louder. I hear the gentle rustle of the nearby palms, the crunch and slosh of the dewy wet grass beneath my feet, and feel the brush of morning coolness against my skin.
This is the rhythm of life, I decide. And what an honor it is to be a part of it.
I sense my place in it all, just as my senses themselves are overpowered by nature's orchestra being conducted all around me. With this, the first of many tears to be shed during my time on the farm stream down my face, and keep trickling on and off through breakfast like a leaky faucet with a stubbornly persistent drip....drip...drip.
From that point forward, a new retreat was born. Time to leave the past behind. Memories have no place here, no meaning now.
I felt the rhythm, and I am a part of it. We all are. No sense in fighting it any longer. Nothing to fear. Just time to groove to the beat, learn some new moves and leave some old ones behind.
This was going to be a whole new dance.
As I put together what will be my modest accommodations for the next ten days, I take a look around with a slight sense of deja vu. Here I am again, on Tim and Annie's Sticks and Stones Organic Farm, surrounded by the beautiful nothingness and green spaciousness that constitutes this charming little slice of the Big Island. It is rustic, to say the least. And while the island itself may be big as far as these Hawaiian islands are concerned, my own world is about to get very, very small.
I set up my two-person tent, give silent thanks to my friend Joseph for gifting me this mini-Taj Mahal with the knowledge of my--to put it nicely--inability to handle such projects with grace, and smile proudly to myself after it's all assembled. A mere ten minutes is all it takes to create my new home sweet tent. Relieved to have this important formality taken care of, my mind turns to other things, namely to revisiting my first experience on these hallowed grounds nearly two years ago to the day.
I recall the silence. The daily rigors of doing absolutely nothing except for sitting with myself in total observation. The pain, both emotional and physical. The memory of what it feels like to live like a monk, relying on the charity of others to be fed and preserved, and all the while not uttering a word. The camaraderie that develops amongst the students gathered there without the benefit (or curse) of getting to tell your tall tales to one another. And of course, I recall the surrounding landscape and the vital role it plays as a refuge, a soothing balm to take the edge off when the going starts to get too rough, too boring, or too intense. Nature has its own way of providing comfort, and the nature here is like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night.
We gather under the lights, all two strands of LED Christmas lights, on that first night to be apprised of the rules. There are Five Precepts to follow during our time here. No killing (whew), no stealing, no sexual activity (alone or otherwise), no telling lies, and no use of any intoxicants. Got it. Done and done. All of this was very familiar to me.
But then it was announced that there were three more precepts added just for old students (that meant myself and any other student already having completed a ten-day course). And these were:
6. To abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decoration. I have no clue what this means, but it sounds doable.
7. To abstain from using high or luxurious beds. Let's see. I have my tent, with tarp flooring and two-inch thick sleeping pad, and no real pillow to speak of. Luxury? Hardly.
8. To abstain from eating after midday.
Screeecchhhhh. Someone just slammed on the brakes in my mind.
So let me get this straight. There are only two meals per day, at 7am and 11am. Now I am being asked to give up my beloved fruit and tea time at 5pm? That last little bit of nourishment to get me through the night and fuel me through the early morning meditation the next day? This was perplexing to say the least.
I could just see it all unfolding in my imagination. The new students sitting around every evening, enjoying every last sweet bite of that day's fruitful harvest. Me sitting there, salivating. Fruitless. Silent. Starving. Fighting to stay balanced. For as minor a curveball as this truly was, at that moment it seemed like a gargantuan blow to my preparedness.
But wait! There would be something for the old students, too. I wouldn't have to sit there empty-handed. They didn't completely forget about us old-timers after all.
We would be allowed lemon water. Yep. That's it. I said it. Lemon water. Like lemon tea, only without the tea. I think if they told me I would get to eat the scraps off the rinds left behind by the new students, I would have felt happier.
But that was it. Lemon water. Deal with it, Paul. In fact, deal with all of your expectations, and start loosening your death grip on them. This is only the beginning.
It was then that I realized something very important. For weeks leading up to this retreat, I knew inside that it would be a totally different experience for me. At least I tried to convince myself (and others) of this concept. But it was time to get truthful. That is, after all, the main reason one comes to these kinds of things. To get to the truth.
And the truth was, the brutally honest truth was, I was holding on to my previous experience here the way a toddler clings to the legs of a parent when he is scared, arms wrapped around tightly, hanging on for dear life. But he can only hang on for so long. Eventually, he will walk alone once again, and march his way into new adventures. Like that toddler, it was time for me to have a new adventure, time to take my first steps into a brand new episode in the unraveling life of Paul.
For as much as I thought I knew about what was coming, I really knew nothing. It's funny how life works. No matter how much of a stranglehold we think we have on it, eventually everything has to change. Yet all the while, the human mind continues its grasping and reaching for the familiar, the comfortable, the known. Perhaps this explains why it is so easy to get caught in a rut, to feel that our routines are outdated and no longer fit who we are.
Life is in a constant flow, but try telling that to the mind, right? Ultimately, all that is required to get back into that flow is a little willingness to see things differently. Just a little bit of letting go is all it takes.
By the second morning, something shifted. My own willingness had arrived.
I was sitting on my blue cushion in the meditation hall, which was actually a huge white tent with flooring (quite comfortable as these things go). We were nearing the end of the early morning meditation, which ran from 4:30am to 6:30am. Given the option of meditating in my own tent or the hall for this particular period, I choose the hall knowing full well that I did not have the discipline to sit in my tent, hidden from view, and actually do anything except escape back to dreamland.
In addition to the ungodly morning hours, there was one more thing about this block of time that always seemed to agitate me something fierce. For the last twenty minutes or so, there was chanting. Some might find it soothing, sort of like background music. Me? Most days, I found it unbearable, preferring the screech of nails on a chalkboard to the sound of this man's voice, chanting some indecipherable words of support and peace to encourage us on. The only thing it encouraged me to do was to get up and run for the hills.
But on this second morning of silence, I calmed my resistance. I listened. This chanting wasn't so bad, especially against the backdrop of crickets, frogs, and birds awakening to a new day. In this moment, for whatever reason, it all came together. I sat there smilingly. Quiet reverence took over. Now, instead of irritation, I felt enormous gratitude swelling up inside of me. And rather than being excited when it was over, I felt resistance to it ending. I had been enveloped by something much bigger than me.
There was chanting going on, but it wasn't limited to inside the tent. There was a rhythm happening here.
Emerging from my cushion, I step out into the music. I see the pre-dawn orange sky turning bluer and bluer as the sun comes out of its hiding spot behind the trees. I hear the birds singing ever-louder. I hear the gentle rustle of the nearby palms, the crunch and slosh of the dewy wet grass beneath my feet, and feel the brush of morning coolness against my skin.
This is the rhythm of life, I decide. And what an honor it is to be a part of it.
I sense my place in it all, just as my senses themselves are overpowered by nature's orchestra being conducted all around me. With this, the first of many tears to be shed during my time on the farm stream down my face, and keep trickling on and off through breakfast like a leaky faucet with a stubbornly persistent drip....drip...drip.
From that point forward, a new retreat was born. Time to leave the past behind. Memories have no place here, no meaning now.
I felt the rhythm, and I am a part of it. We all are. No sense in fighting it any longer. Nothing to fear. Just time to groove to the beat, learn some new moves and leave some old ones behind.
This was going to be a whole new dance.
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