Companionable Walking

Getting back to my room during sesshin entailed walking up a gravel driveway, rather treacherous near the top, and then walking on a paved public road for about 70 paces, and then down another rather treacherous gravel driveway. The walk took about six minutes and was done many times in the course of the five days. Near the front door of our house was a basket with orange safety vests, umbrellas, and nifty flashlights powered entirely by hand cranks. At night, those of us staying in this house walked together and often did the same even during the day, in companionable silence.

Rebecca and I very often walked together. In the morning, we usually left the house together, and during the day we often went back and forth together. Sometimes one of us would wait for the other after leaving the zendo, even though it was broad daylight, so we could walk as a pair. On one nature walk, we had to cross a little brook by stepping from rock to rock. Rebecca saw my look of hesitation when there was a larger step to take. Just as I was considering putting my foot on something with a little water flowing over it so as to take a smaller step, she reached out her hand to assist me. On the first day, I had a very cathartic cry about F. and walked from our house back to the zendo after lunch sobbing and gasping for breath, with Rebecca walking silently behind me. (There was a break after every meal.)

And then of course, we were sitting right next to each other in the zendo for four straight days, and we ate 12 oryoki meals side by side. At the end, there is a complicated process of cleaning bowls and wrapping them back up. Rebecca did this slowly, purposely letting me copy her. At the very end, if you do this right, one corner of your cloth napkin is sticking up at a jaunty angle.

During the one-day sits I did at SFZC, I found these meals excruciating and horrible, and the first two on the first day of sesshin similarly enraged me (while I was still in victim-and-oppressor mode). At lunch, I willfully tied my napkin up completely wrong, and the aforementioned tears came not long after that. After I finished crying about F. and felt cleansed, I decided to make a sincere effort in regard to oryoki, as well as everything else, and things steadily improved. After a day or two, I was able to get my napkin to stick up in the preferred manner and I felt great about it; I hoped the servers were noticing when they came to get our tables at end of the meal. They probably did notice, since every little detail looms much larger when everything is so still and quiet. Doing speed eating never got to be fun, but generally I did actually enjoy those meals, and of course eating itself was appreciated, since I was always starving at breakfast and lunch; a little less so at dinner, due to my afternoon snack.

I thought about how much nicer it is to go on retreat at Spirit Rock, where you can spend half the day napping if you feel like it and nothing bad happens if you arrive late for a sitting or leave early. At school, we were instructed to follow the schedule exactly. At Spirit Rock, people sometimes whip out their notebook and write something down while meditating. At school, we were asked not to blow our noses in the zendo or even to sniffle. If necessary, you can dab discreetly with a hankie or tissue so that snot doesn’t actually drip off your face, but that’s it. It was almost perfectly silent. Once or twice, one of our teachers gently said, “Please be still, and quiet.”

(Sam once grumbled to me that, “During sesshin, my nose sniffled, and someone told me to be quiet!” I thought it was cute that he attributed the action to his nose rather than to himself.)

Of course, the mind is the mind. Even at Spirit Rock, you can end up in a snit, as I have many, many times. You can learn by watching the mind in any circumstances. It doesn’t have to be dead silent, but I appreciated the silence, and it doesn’t have to be kind of uncomfortable, but I think maybe there’s something to be said for that, in that it may accelerate learning. There is a lot of chanting throughout the day. In the morning, we chanted about our “ancient, twisted karma”: “I now fully atone.” That gave a nice sense of purpose: I am doing this for a good reason. I don’t know that I think we are literally atoning for past karma, though maybe we are, but I do think it builds character, or at least understanding, to willingly encounter what is less pleasant.

And I was sitting on a chair! With my hands comfortably on my thighs, literally the only person in the zendo without her hands in the prescribed position. I had received permission to do this when I was there in March, so I just went ahead and did it in April, too. Nonetheless, I was in a certain amount of physical pain. I can’t imagine what the people around me, sitting on zafus and with their hands in mudra, were going through, though I can tell you the air was redolent of Tiger Balm, and I often saw people rocking forward on their cushions and then jerking awake.

And then day one was over! I assured myself that if I could do one day, I could do three more. On the second day, blaming and complaining were gone and instead I found myself welcoming the chance to learn about the mind. “This sucks and here is who is to blame,” gave way to, “I got this. I can do this. This is my life! Am I awake?” I was extremely sleepy during the first two-hour period of sitting and walking and service, and then it suddenly completely cleared up, like a wispy cloud blown away in a stiff breeze. I was getting nowhere near enough sleep any night, but after the second morning, I rarely felt tired again. (Though after I got home, I had to sleep for about a hundred extra hours over the course of two weeks, far more than the sleep I missed while on sesshin, so this was not actual extra energy being generated, just some sort of retreat phenomenon.)