Sadness in Silence

Dukkha

Despite my best efforts to keep it straight, the back is stiff and bending. A roaring pain that dances between my hip flexor my thoracic spine is a black hole of attention. With gritted teeth, I stare into my eyelids and wonder why I’m here. There is space. Wide, open space. And silence.

The first truth of Buddhism is suffering. “Dukkha,” Jon tells us, smiling. “It’s a satisfying word, isn’t it? It sounds just like what it is.”

I wander the grounds. There is, simply, nothing else to do. There are only footsteps, one after the other, profoundly aimless. The way the dirt crunches under bare feet is surprising. It’s a strange thing to even pay attention to.

“Your mind is like a frog sitting in the center of a plate. The more time that passes, the more likely the frog is to jump off the plate and go anywhere else. Keep him there.”

At night the tent is dark and buffeted by the wind. Through a small gap in the canvas, I can see the stars dusting the blackness. A creak in the woods and the shuffle of branches are the only things appearing in the heavy, sprawling space. Besides my thoughts, of course. Those come tumbling like rain.

“It is better to travel well than arrive.”

I pace the courtyard. We were told to walk, but I pace. I move slowly and deliberately, ostensibly there, but I am not there, I am leaning to where I’m also not just a few steps ahead. I am impatient for patience to set in.

“The heart that is aware is the same heart that is kind” Janet tells us with a promising air of kindness, but there doesn’t seem to be anything kind about awareness.

I kneel on the cushion, putting to rest my cross-legged marathons of torture. Trooping through physical pain is a different practice, I was told. Now there is less pain but an acute nothing in its place; a new dimension of bore. I try to settle in.

“The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions.”

I rush back to my tent, eyes down, ready to submit the long afternoon break. Then, as it dawns on me, I slow, look up, and smile almost unbelieving at my mental posture. Time is soft, and open. What could I possibly be off to do?

“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.”

Awash in the familiar, restless shuffles of the practice hall, I peek through my drawn lids to see if I can glean any sign of transcendent practice from my fellow retreaters. If they are experiencing something I’m not, it’s hard to tell. Only the instructors sit in a deeper repose — comfortable in posture and self. My self is just as recursively central as it has ever been. I wriggle on the cushion.

“Try to wander aimlessly. With no goal, no direction. Just be.”

The greenhouse door is open. In its humid and strikingly green innards, there is nothing but buzzing bees, postured plants, and, to my surprise, a highly strung hammock. It’s as good a plan as any other. I climb in and settle into the cocoon. I wait for something, anything profound. Instead, I drift off to sleep.

“Do not confuse pain for suffering.”

Freezing droplets of water pelt my back and legs. I stand in the shower and try to rest attention in each point of contact. No one has told me to go to cold, but the added pain seems appropriate; and it’s interesting, after all. I notice that while your breath and body’s tremors yield to the mind’s control, the discomfort never does — it is essentially there.

Stillness

The character of the moment sharpens. The breath is lighter, the mind tidier. The seconds drip by like teardrops of molasses. I breathe myself in from the room and send it back out to its shapes and edges. I’m not sure what’s being cycled.

“Nowhere can one find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”

My hand looks strange on the bark. I am crouched down, inspecting a birch trunk. I run a finger over its scars and for the first time think about our similarities. The clump of cells under my hand is like the gnarled limb of a long lost relative.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; it is the source of all true art and science.”

I sit on the porch, listening to the scattering of playful chipmunks, buzzing insects, and chirping birds. With eyes closed, I try to recreate the world without vision. Sound provides a vague outline; smell is next to useless. I am surprised at my surprise at the fidelity of my senses.

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”

I lay in my tent, hands cupped behind my head and the sense of urgency gone, finally, from my chest. There is no hiding from my mind any longer. It is less insistent now; more gentle with its presentations. It knows I am a captive audience.

Space

Smooth and easy breaths set the tone of practice. The moments meld together into a buzzing whirl of sense and sensation. Finally still, I am not quite one but also no longer quite dual. I scan my body and observe every prick and ache. Those are dull now, and uniform within the wide, yawning room.

“May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be free.”

In the weightless space bursts forth a sadness. It was loving kindness meditation that did it, in the end. I saw the people in my life — past and present — in front of me, one after another, and then myself. I looked into their eyes and saw the pain and wept. It’s the first time in a while. Just to admit that the pain is there and I wish it weren’t, for all of us, is something I could never do in everyday contraction.

Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm.

I sit on a rock, bare feet caked in dirt and dust, and gaze out over the sprawling Shambala valley. The silence seems to emanate from the gentle contours of the green and brown bowl on whose edge I perch; it accentuates the ethereal beauty of the scene, but also its indifference. The sadness is no longer merely personal, but fundamental. The gaiety of waves disguises the true nature of the ocean, which is solemn and frigid for miles below the gregarious surface. There is beauty in the deep, but also crushing weight. It is not anything. It simply is.

“Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.”

We sit in a circle and clear our throats. Our voices, raspy from their respite, mingle tentatively together as they regain their use. Smiling with relief, we speak, finally, about felt experience.

The ten days are up; the silence is gone. You can see the sadness in our eyes. And still, we are gladder for it.

Context

I did this retreat at a six-hundred-acre mountain valley in the Colorado Rockies of the Shambala (Tibetan) Buddhist tradition with Janet Solyntjes and Jon Aaron. The center is called Drala MountainCenter, and I very much recommend it and them if you are consdering a retreat. Drala is a non-profit run mostly by volunteers, and wildfires and the pandemic have created operational difficulty in the last few years.

I did not have enough time in this short post to do the experience justice, but I would like to return someday with the space to capture the felt sense of what it’s like to do a retreat.

Experiences like this are rare, and worth preserving. I’m looking forward to the next one.