In Relation to Place: June's Solstice Window

I've seen some wonderful blogs that highlight photos of one spot (such as "out my back door"), anywhere from 365 days of the year to once-a-month captures. I'm going to give it a try myself now too, with a monthly shot of a favorite spot nearby as I work out my relationship to this new place ~Boston~. In that spirit, here's a snapshot of my street-view, right from my couch.

You'll remember last month I posted on this lovely, lusty tree that lives across the street... it is so inspiring to me, and was one of the first things I fell in love with in this new home of ours. Well? Today, on the solstice ironically, a man with a bright orange ladder began to saw limb after limb. My friend and I feared the worst, but happily-- a complete chop-down was not in this tree's cards today. The result is a funky haircut (though I won't say that aloud nearby. Don't want to hurt her feelings...), but we are very relieved that the tree remains, and that the birds returned much later in the day.

Season Turning

I had an essay brewing in my mind for a long time after my retreat. I spent many evenings biting my pencil, but not writing anything. In the end I decided I was being too defensive.

Mama's got a brand new bag... sewn with love, and lots of buttons

Somehow I kept running into-- quite by kismet-- articles by boys telling me, indirectly, my Home Retreat was not the real thing. So I got defensive. But in the end, what is to defend?

A spontaneous koan popped up for me: What is real zen?

When I was a girl of 19, I spent one anguished night wrestling with the demon of my childhood religion. I won. And as a reward, I received my first koan. What is the nature of the world? Magic, came the answer.

A much-anticipated, yet still surprising "hello", whale watching off Cape Cod

A few years later, I yearned to understand more deeply. If magic is the true nature of the world, then what is the nature of magic? Zen, came the answer.

My bike, which is seeing action again after 3 years in hiding, and a lovely rock wall beside the house

Now, after 17 years of practice on my own, and in training temples, and in neighborhood zen centers, I wonder, is zen just all this sitting still? Can it only be found in a monastery? Can it only be delivered by serious men? Is it governed by any rule of man? Can it be governed even by Buddha?

New growth of concord grapes in our back yard

What about this existence that is beyond any name we can give it? Its singing is so loud, it keeps me up at night.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense.
--Rumi

Reflecting on my Home Retreat

Well, just as I figured, it's over.

My retreat presented itself in the beginning and dictated itself--its form-- all the way to the end, which was very precisely timed at our vacation (...retreat?) to the seashore for the holiday weekend.

When I began this experience, I was desperate for a change-- desperate for a getaway, a retreat. But then I remembered: a "retreat" very rarely is a getting-away-from, and more of a getting-more-deeply-into. For example, one does not retreat-from work at a retreat; work itself becomes the retreat, because of one's orientation to practice. We must work to live, and finding joy and equilibrium in work is part of the Buddhist path.

And there too, while on retreat you'll find a practice-orientation to all the basics of life, of eating and sleeping and sitting and even relating to people. So while there are many hours spent in concentrated meditation, retreats are equally full of hours spent tending to our most basic functions with an eye toward practice. For me, this centers on one simple concept: How am I relating to my basic living?

And so, my basic living became my Retreat. No going-away-from, but landing-directly-into. I aspired to turn my every moment toward practice, to orient my very daily living to a direct expression of my faith and belief. I relied heavily on intuition-- that remembrance of what it's like at a real retreat, that feeling you get in your gut and mind when you first arrive and set your intention as you set down your bags. I knew that so long as I could maintain that sensibility, I was on target, I was respecting the original energy of what I had set out to do. "Right focus," you may call it.

While on retreat in a monastic setting, this orientation is supported by the structure of a strict schedule, and a focus on sitting meditation throughout the course of a day. Given that my Retreat was at home with a family still to tend to, I didn't have the luxury of sitting for 8 hours, or even 12; but I did increase the time that I spent on my cushion, and these moments I placed at strategic points of the day, just as one might find at sesshin. For the rest of the day, my little son became my "awareness bell" and my sensei, and his needs became the heart of my practice. In many ways, the structure of my retreat was composed not by my formal teacher, but by the Teacher that my family is; and really, isn't that what retreat trains us to do-- to respond directly to what is needed in the moment?

It's not so different from the dictums of sesshin, I found, when it's your child crying in the middle of the night, frightened by a nightmare. You simply get up at the sound of that "bell". You walk with intention in that cold early-morning air, console him with your whole heart, and find yourself sitting for an extended period, simply loving him back to sleep. Then, his gentle snore is the bell that grants your reprieve and up you go to the next period, whatever that effort may bring.

Living in retreat mode reoriented me to abiding in the faith of the Bodhisattva vow: 1,000 eyes, 1,000 arms (as Dogen described Kannon/Avalokitesvara) all responding to exactly what's needed in the moment; no more, no less. In this practice environment, you find the vows breathe through you, and your intention brings the clarity that is the gift of sustained practice.

My retreat is over for now, made evident by other demands and new issues. I can tell it's "over" because my intention has been redirected; other things are requiring focus. My son still wakes me before the sun comes up; the dinner still needs making, the toilet still needs scrubbing. But my orientation has shifted. And, interestingly enough, I found I struggled as much with this "re-entry" to everyday life just as much as I have in the past when returning from a Temple retreat. It's an interesting, subtle shift, and it's got me to thinking about the energies that are required, the work that is required when living our practice. It brings me 'round again to see that it's not anything I can just think or decide; that my Zen is not a philosophy, but a verb that requires maintenance and careful attention. And oh, am I eager for that next bit of maintenance and attention!

Until then, there are some things that I will let settle and some things that I must carefully integrate... How do we create this Temple, in our very lives? How do we attend to this sacred, wonderful mystery of life? How do we breathe this intention into every cell, into every moment?