When my wife returned from the Western Zen retreat in 2002 she was very happy. I had been filling my days with my job in mid-town Manhattan, putting the children on the bus and tucking them in at night. I was happy to hear her talk of the retreat, but it sounded very strange and I remember feeling that I wanted her to stop talking about it. It was like hearing about a summer vacation from one’s classmates in the fall. Enough already.
Master Sheng Yen has transmitted Chan to only a few Westerners. One of them, Master John Crook, has a retreat center in England, where he is the leader of the Western Chan Fellowship. He led a retreat in Pine Bush in 2002 and again this spring.
When March came and the retreat was weeks away, I began to get nervous. I have a 10-12 hour a day management position for a Wall Street firm. Much of my day is spent planning and actively managing multiple teams and projects. It is always engaging, frequently interesting but sometimes exhausting. I spend some time each day meditating, but I know that my practice is not as constant and diligent as it should be.
The last thing that I felt I needed was to arise at the crack of dawn, abandon reading, writing or talking – with complete strangers. On the other hand, I still wanted to find out what the retreat was all about – what had made my wife so excited? As the day approached, I latched onto one thought: Desert Island. I would treat the retreat as if I had washed up on a foreign shore.
We escaped New York on Friday afternoon, and although we had left with plenty of time, we thought that we were late. We threaded our way across the Tappan Zee Bridge and made our way to the retreat center. It was a beautiful spring day, just before the leaves started to emerge.
After parking and getting setup in our rooms, we awaited the beginning. The daily schedule and a task rotation were posted on the wall – sweep floors, clean windows…. what had I gotten myself into?
When we had gathered that evening, in a large square, looking around at each other and the place, we met John. Seeming very academic, with bristling black eyebrows, he looked quizzically at all of us. We all took a turn telling the group who we were and what we hoped to achieve in the retreat – why we were there.
“Chan practice was truly a journey towards the truth about our buddha-nature, an inquisitive process that required courage, patience and guidance.”
John then gave one of his first talks on the retreat. He started each talk somewhat slowly,
at times digressing into anecdotes to make his point. Once or twice in his talks he would
use faces and voices to act out the story that he used to illustrate his point. I had heard
some of the stories before, but when John told them, I felt as though I were hearing them
fresh.
His first talks started us on a journey. I can’t recall if it was the first night, but I remember that he spoke of the inquisitive nature of Chan practice. He noted that Western psychotherapy had a common goal with Chan in that they both involved looking into ourselves and attempting to find our place within the world. Chan practice was truly a journey towards the truth about our buddha-nature, an inquisitive process that required courage, patience and guidance.
The next morning, in the dark: a sound. The morning clapping of boards woke us and we
sprung up, quickly dressed, and crossed to the meditation hall for some much needed tea.
In the dark we huddled outside the hall. John led us, silently, through some exercises. At
first, I though this pretty strange, but over the days I looked forward to the day’s routine. The stars still shone down on us as we twisted and huffed through some stretching. The air was crisp and the countryside was waking up with us.
That first day we became more familiar with the routine. There was a relaxing combination of structure and freedom. One could say that the day was divided into different kinds of meditation. Besides sitting, we practiced chanting and walking meditation. One could also say that we had working and eating meditation, for each of these activities was carried out in mindful silence. I found that while working and eating, I could set aside some of the concentration on my internal questions and gather my thoughts around one task – paring away extraneous thoughts as one might trim a bush.
The different meditations of the retreat were the background for the main activity. As I mentioned above, John emphasized the primary thrust of Chan practice as an inquiry into our self-nature. After the second day of the retreat, John introduced an exercise that became the most dynamic of the Western Zen Retreat. It is called the “communication exercise.” Without going into detail, it is a way that each of us could explore a question, not always the same one, but one of a progression of questions that would provide a focal point for our meditation.
The beginners, as I certainly was, started with the difficult question: Who am I? Several of our meditation periods were devoted to exploring these questions verbally, but without conversation. We each had a period of time to express, to a single listening individual, the answer to our particular question. Of course, it was an exploration, a challenge to put into words what progress we had made towards the answer. This exercise, for anyone who has been in therapy, particularly with a very passive therapist, will have a familiar feel to it. The experience of having a non-participatory listener helped to coalesce my thoughts about the question.
“As Buddhists, we have to engage the world and not live apart from it. Events in the world outside the retreat center are more serious than ever, requiring each of us to be actively involved in changing the world for the better whether through social activism, protest or voting.”
I developed a sense of kinship with the people that were with me on the retreat. Although I had not had a direct conversation with any of them, I felt as though we were all in this together. I knew that many of the other people were working as hard as I was on their particular questions. Most of us had profound experiences in our journey. While working on our communication exercises, I could peripherally hear others talking, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. I felt completely present – there was no other place to be, mentally or physically.
When the fifth morning came, we had a brief closing ceremony and John addressed the
group. We had to take our questions with us. We had a lot to be thankful for and he
congratulated the group on its hard work. He urged us to take with us an active approach.
As Buddhists, we have to engage the world and not live apart from it. Events in the world outside the retreat center are more serious than ever, requiring each of us to be actively involved in changing the world for the better whether through social activism, protest or voting.
As we drove away from the retreat center, my wife and I had a lot to talk about. I was happy that we both went to the retreat. None of the other participants had been there with a spouse (so far as I knew). From experience, I knew that the partner of a retreat participant couldn’t understand what we had been through. I got to ask her about her experience, and in turn, I told her about mine. I listened with a changed attitude: more mindful and aware. It wasn’t long before we were talking about coming back next year.
This retreat report was published in the Autumn 2007 issue of Chan Magazine.
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