Oftentimes, people associate a meditation retreat with relaxation.
This is usually my clue they’ve not been on one. It’s a fair assumption, though.
There are plenty of emotions I feel on retreat, but they tend to be on either side of the relaxing middle. There is a kind of homecoming that “relaxation” doesn’t begin to capture. And on the other side, there can be plenty of struggle and suffering.
So what happens on retreat?
This morning, I watched sunrise on the can. The compost toilet, to be precise. Yes, the door was open. The only things around me are bluebells, bees and beech trees.
The toilet is a few metres away from the Hermitage cabin where I’m staying. It’s made to support one solo lunatic. It’s the depth of a double bed and about 5 metres long.
It has a bed, sink, gas hob, cooking supplies, a woodburner and some meditation cushions. It’s been too warm to light the fire so far. I’m meditating (sitting) 3-5 hours a day and walking a lot too.
“Blessing, infinite in its modes and colours, often seems to me to be the very nature of all things, of all existence.”
—Rob Burbea, in one of his final emails
I arrived at The Barn yesterday for a 6-night solo retreat at the Hermitage. Walking along one of the garden trails, one of the coordinators asked when I was last on retreat.
“It must have been 10 years ago, at least”, I said, surprising myself. Had it been that long?
Today, I’m headed off on a silent meditation retreat for a week.
No news
No phone
No internet
No scrolling
No ChatGPT
No podcasts
No electricity
No light conversation
No popping to the shops
No AirPod Pro 2s with active noise cancellation
Just a journal, a pen and a cushion.
I originally planned to queue up 7 days of writing in advance of going away. I have since decided that’s ludicrous and not worth the effort.
Because we care, we choose to practice.
We yearn for peace, for genuine happiness. And so we come to the cushion and engage with the crux of our predicament: what does it mean to be here?
The feeling of being here is the gateway to all life’s vicissitudes, from the ever-shifting sensory landscape around us to our personal thoughts and emotions. It all arises right here.
We often neglect the fullness of presence in favour of a reliance on thought. But thought is only one small part of being here, and it tends to ride on the back of a lot of unconscious emotional conditioning that we pick up through parents, culture and complete accident.
On Sunday night I got back from a three week work retreat at the stunning Gaia House in Devon.
A month or so back I’d been looking for a job, and also wanting to go on retreat, so I decided that I could wallop two birds with one stone, whilst also lending a helping hand at a world-renowned retreat centre.
According to the Progress of Insight map which I’d found very useful since I started meditating, I’d been lurking in the equanimity phase of my first insight cycle since my first retreat in January. I’d experienced formations, tasted the formless realms, but now just seemed to be going round in circles. To make matters slightly more uncomfortable I’d also slipped back in the dukkha nanas a few times. Not fun, and a powerful incentive to go on retreat.
I’ve been back from Dhamma Dipa for two days now. Here is a report of how it worked out for me, for those interested.
The first 3 days were hell, and I don’t use the term lightly. Physical pain, mental judgements and overwhelming emotional attachments all quickly came to the surface thanks to prolonged meditation and the Noble Silence. The whole retreat experience is set-up so as to facilitate this kind of coming-to-terms: there’s no-one to speak to, nothing to distract yourself with. You just sit there in your own self-created misery, until you learn how to understand and work with it. All those fears, aversions, cravings, judgements, negativities are out in the open, and you can do little but sit back and watch them push and pull you around.