(This is Part 3 of the article. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here)
Our numbers are dwindling. Only 30 women and 30 men are left from the original hundred-something. The two sisters who I had heard speaking Spanish are gone. One of them was stung by a wasp, but I thought she looked fine yesterday. The mat on my right – who was previously occupied by a German girl – has been empty for a few days. The guy with the funny hat is missing. The guy with the red hair and hipster haircut left or was asked to leave. I haven’t seen the Eastern European girl who always carries a backpack around the last two days. The Asian guy who normally sits at the front of the hall was not there this morning.
They never tell you why people left; you just notice them gone. There are so much fewer people at meal times that the line for food has gotten noticeably shorter.
I mouthed to Grace: “Where is everyone?” gesturing at the empty hall.
“Three girls left my dorm last night with their backpacks,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged. “No clue.”
“But there is no way I would leave the retreat after 7 days,” she added. “Not after all these.”
I nodded in agreement. I understand her “not-after-all-these”. No one drops out of marathon after 20 miles unless they absolutely can’t finish. Although I wonder if this dogged refusal to give up is nothing but attachment to our ego as ‘survivors’ or ‘not quitters’.
Looking around the room (and observing everyone at the dorm), I would say that attendees are generally well-educated folks, who have some general idea of what mindfulness meditation is and believe the retreat can teach them something useful for their daily lives. The women are mostly twenty-something Europeans or Americans. The men are of similar demographics although they tend to be on the older side. Most people are first-time attendees with very little meditation experience. Some are here out of curiosity and wanting to learn more about meditation (like us), some came for a specific purpose like getting rid of a drug addiction, trying to figure out how to cope with retirement, or getting over a trauma or death in the family. Some are who I called ‘ashram-chasers’, i.e. those who move from ashram to ashram, monastery to monastery seeking spiritual enlightenment. A few look like the psychonaut or mind-hacker type, who believes that they can achieve greater clarity in their thinking through vipassana. Apparently, vipassana retreat is now a ‘thing’ for Silicon Valley techies. I wonder how Buddha would feel about this if he was still alive…
Regardless of why people came, we all struggled at some point during the retreat.
This retreat is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a comfortable, relaxing time off at a beachfront property where you get to sit pretty in an air-conditioned villa contemplating about life and existence and then take a break every 20 minutes to snack on fruits and take a refreshing sip of pina colada while occasionally checking your Instagram feed. No, ma’am. This is a meditation bootcamp designed to unmoor you from your comfort zone and ‘normal’ routine. Be it the 4am wake up call, the inability to speak to others (apparently this is especially difficult for some people), the ‘bland’ meal, the spartan accommodation, the bugs, the constant heat even at night, the sleep deprivation, the lack of ‘entertainment’ (or distraction?), the boredom, the frustration from being unable to achieve clarity during meditation. One of these things will eventually get to you.
I hit the wall on day 8. Perhaps it was the weird dream I had the night before or that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Either way, I snubbed my toe hard on a tree root on my way to the meditation hall in the morning and realized I had forgotten my water bottle and insect repellent in my room. I was clearly sleepy and just couldn’t seem to get myself to wake up, even after yoga. How many sun salutations does it take to shake this lethargy off?
My mood got worse throughout the day. During the morning dharma talk, I wanted to walk up to the CD player, rip the CD off the player, and break it into pieces, because – believe it or not – the dharma talk (original recording of Ajahn Buddhadasa’s lecture from the 1980s) contained roosters crowing non-stop in the background. At first, I found them funny. I figured there must be at least three roosters trying to outcrow each other. I named them Cocky, Pocky and Rocky. But after days and days of the annoying soundtrack, I had enough. I wanted to turn all of them into chicken soup.
My mind could not calm down and I grew despondent as afternoon turned to dusk and the mosquitoes started rearing their heads. You could hear them buzzing all around you, non-stop. But since one of the precepts is “to not take away any lives,” you’re not supposed to kill them. You’re supposed to stay zen, maintain your meditation pose, observe feelings and thoughts that arise and let them be. “Open your heart to the mosquitos,” they had said in the orientation booklet.
It took a lot of self control to not swat them with my hands violently. I had showered myself with insect repellent from head to toe, but it didn’t seem to repel them away. The buzzing continued overhead. Those batting wings became the singular frequency I could hear, nothing else. I could feel them circling closer and closer around my head, surveying their landing zone. And then the buzzing would stop, which meant they had landed somewhere, on me. I winced at the thought of the mosquitoes finding a patch of my bare skin and sinking their proboscis and drawing blood. I tried thinking of the RadioTalk episode that talked about how mosquitoes that bite you are just good mommies: only female mosquitoes bite human because they are risking their lives (because they get heavy and slow and sluggish after drawing blood) because they are desperate – they need the protein in your blood to make sure their eggs survive. Knowing this, I still felt no compassion for them. I just wanted to kill them, and feel them getting squished between the palms of my hand. This murderous thought occupied me for hours.
The next day did not get better. In fact, they threw a new schedule on day 9. There was only 1 meal (i.e. 24-hour fast) and instead of talks, we had 3-5 hour continuous meditation session at dawn, in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. We can sit or walk during the meditation session, but no lying down.
Even if you were holding it together for the last week or so, day 9 brought everyone close to their breaking point. Some found hiding spots to lie down. Some walked around and around and around the perimeter of the compound with forlorn looks. I noticed a few people pacing back and forth to the dining hall to take a peek at the clock. 6 more hours to go.
I was more curious to see if someone would finally have a mental breakdown. Apparently a few years ago, one guy started masturbating in public after a week. So whenever I spotted someone touching the tree in a slow, sensual motion, I started wondering if this person would start humping the tree.
Luckily I found a meditation hall with a ceiling fan and sat there, half-sleeping and half-meditating. Occasionally I would take a break and walk around the large open field next to the hall. As I was walking to chase the sleepiness away, a branch on the ground caught my eyes.
I picked it up and noticed that it was a nice-looking about 30 centimeters long and 3 centimeter across. It had a graceful curve and must have held quite a few smaller branches somewhere high up on the canopy not long ago. It occurred to me that the branch never asked why it was a branch on this particular tree and not some other tree. It probably never asked why it was on the ground instead of on the tree. It was a good branch that served its purpose for the tree, and now it’s a branch on the ground, slowly being decomposed into soil, just like the rest of us. In my heart I said to the branch, “You were a good branch,” and I thought I heard it say, “And so it is.”
Day 10 came and went, and suddenly it was time to recollect our earthly belonging and return to civilization. Everyone was talking in the dining hall, though I was in no mood to talk.
I missed the silence already.
We quickly left the monastery after exchanging contacts with a few people. The babel of voices was too much after 10 days of silence.
I didn’t achieve spiritual enlightenment or answers to all of life’s questions, but I felt immense gratitude for all the lessons – big and small – that the 10 days taught me. For one, I have a new mantra that I will carry with me for a while.
Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No one to be.
What a perfect way to describe this year’s sabbatical. No set destination. No templates of who we need to be. No titles, possessions, activities or achievements that I can hang my self identity on. No storyline we’re supposed to follow. This is just life unfolding as it is.
Tathātā. Tathātā. Tathātā.
Hello, Selina! I listened you both telling us about the retreat, now I read the three pages you write. I follow you, imagine each step, the difficulties and the learning. The questions, nights and fastings. Touched by your experience. I feel that as time goes by and you continue meditating you will find the true treasure you lived, not the dirt, heat unconfort but the true learning about yourself. Hope to talk about it more next time. Thanks for sharing, I learned more about you between lines, beauty mainly! A hug!
Hug back! We’ll see you soon, hopefully in Villa de Leyva 🙂