We arrived after an incredibly long journey from the north with scattered brain experiences and a chip shop repast. Was this my last meal as a normal human being? The farmhouse seemed a ridiculously long way from the road. And those gates! We seemed tobe travelling deeper and deeper into the mountain but perhaps I was entering more deeply into myself. Voices, torchlight. I recognised John immediately although I had never seen him. Oh well - this was it then!
Belongings were carried up ladders, bed spaces decided. Aloneness seeped into my being as I began the Zen of air-bed inflation. The same motion over and over again. The same eeeh-wah with every movement. Would I end up like Eeyore losing my tail and being alternately depressed and pompous? Perhaps there was something in the Tao of Pooh after all? Comfort creation exhausted I joined the throng downstairs, played spot the anxiety, looked at people, listened to them. Realisation dawned. They were all southerners! More depression, separation, isolation. Yet in the midst of this a wild Scottish voice was telling me that the previous year had been "orgasmic". I tucked this into the back of my skull for solace.
We played the "Let's pretend we know who we are game. I'm blah. I live in Blah. I carve vegetables for a hobby and the reason why I am here is . . . ." Why was I here? Why? I told my first disconsolate truth, "I don't really know why I have come." Rules explained; bells; hammers; knockings; wooden clappers. A sharp intake of breath at the 5am thing. An even sharper one at the idea that a cup of tea after morning exercises was a soft Western luxury. My first entry to the Chan hall. The recitation of the opening ceremony. A wrenching of my heart and throat. Of course I knew why I was there. The willingness to confront personal demons, go through the process in the trust that it would be alright. A hope that I might be more whole as a result. Bed; the skylight full of stars; an unrecognised glimpse of the eternal and little sleep.
I lay there waiting for the morning knock. It was a relief to getup. Lots of clothes. Where were those lavatories? Would it be OK to pee outside? Who would see me in the dark anyway? Exercises - soft Western ones in case we were not Zen enough to run up the hill! Tea. Zendo. "I put my trust in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha." Zazen. Forty minutes". What did he mean? Forty minutes? Did it mean fifty, sixty later in the day? Mental anguish. "Make your Minds Bright! "What a brilliant phrase. How do you do it? Forty minutes, not too much pain.
Breakfast. Sunlight. Refectory. Oh no - Chinese monks' gruel. But wait. Fruit and nuts in it. Sugar, honey, bread and jam. And blessed tea. I discovered I could eat porridge. Talk about things happening when you're ready! "At one with the food we eat..."
Work in the kitchen. How do you discover the way the Cook wants the onions chopped when communicating in silence? I thought I knew how to chop onions - to do it mindfully, watching the knife slicing through to the board - the Zen thing, cut onion, carry water. Actually chopping onions mindfully just meant getting them all done in time to the cook's specification without slicing my fingers. This realisation came later.
Rest period equating with a parabolic surge of panic about keeping my mind bright or at least my body still for the next three and a half hours. Stillness alternated with pain in the legs. My mind, bright enough certainly, observed itself - suffering. Emotional, physical and induced by an inability to talk and moan. By 11.30 I resolved to speak to the Guestmaster about postures. Pain and suffering settling in for the day.
Lunch. Onion soup of course. Polite and not eating much because my throat was all tight from not weeping. I was heaping coals on the fire of suffering.
More rest. The amazing comfort of a blanket around my legs. Even better another under my posterior. More zazen. An indignity of running up hill in wellingtons. The walk, a revelling in misery. Cold. Tired. Fed up. In pain. Want to leave. What an error to come at all! Struggling not to weep. Back for tea, the cake upping the blood sugar. More chopping. Onions by the metric tonne.
Chanting. Now this was OK! This touched something in the soul or was it the innards. More zazen. Was I becoming immune to zazen pain. No, it was just the Guestmaster muttering "Courage!" Everything was fleeting. More food. Prayers. The ultimate gong of the day. "How did you meditate today?" This was on a par with "Why are you here?" All these people speaking of calmness, peace, equanimity! Maybe I'm too highly strung for this. I don't fit in here. Just let me go to bed. I went and slept, brain numbed.
Up and at it. Lavatories and exercises. OK. It's cool. I can do this. Wrong. Early morning zazen a nightmare. Wriggle wriggle. I could have rolled on the floor screaming. A brainful of anger and hatred. Personal demons. Private hell.
Stomped over to the refectory. Gruel tempered with rehydrated fruit. Not so bad. More bread. Drank more tea, getting less polite. Chopped another six kilos of onions. Oh look! The anger had gone. The head was clear. The body relaxed. Where had all that stuff gone?
A pleasant zazen. Sunlight on my face through the window. Heard the birds. Heard flies too. People trooping in and out. Some opted for shoulder whacking. Crack! Crack! Feel undisturbed.
Interview. Curiously aware of speaking to John and listening to myself doing it. Can I really be saying that? I am fascinated by it. I don't say things like that - ever. My voice doesn't crack with a stranger. "I" doesn't talk about anger and weeping. A strange koan this. Who am I?
The days moved on talking, sharing, holding. I wept into my tea after morning exercises. I wept in the zendo. Mealtimes became a ritual of paper towel acquisition for facilitating tear absorption. Who am I? Who are you? What is the eternal? What is fulfilment? The questions circled the hall. Felt warmth and love and compassion and movement. Strange answers appeared at the edges of my head, in front of my eyes, at the ends of my fingers. Some things lodged in my chest, my arms, at the frontiers of consciousness. A lot was going on. I laughed uproariously at the idea that love might be a fundamental part of the Universe. The question eluded me but the answer was floating tantalisingly in front of my vision.
I thought I had the answer to my question. Lying in the zendo looking up at the rafters I knew it. Hah. Zen joke. My answer was equivalent to my initial attempt at mindful onion reduction. "Well, you're nearly there." It was only when I confronted the irritation in myself and the self-imposed isolation that clarity began to dawn.
"Go and climb the mountain!" Did this mean the Zen mountain or the hill behind the house. I went for the hill. It seemed more manageable. The answer to the koan lay in the gorge in front of me. A scene from a Chinese calligraphic painting. A tree, a stone, a mountainside, and me. There. All perfect in the moment. Colour, form, sound, smell. Exact real existence. The answer to the koan? Was it alright to be a Lesbian in a Zen Monastery? Of course it was. What else was there to be except "I".
The ending of the retreat was very emotional for me. I had begun something that would continue. Here were people whose lives I had held and who had held mine. I was torn between wanting to take something of them with me; photographs; addresses and wanting to leave it all there somehow in an offering of gratitude to the Universe. No longer did people seem like southerners. Indeed several of them "came out" as having originated in the North. Here was a bond of extraordinary plain simple closeness. In the end I made myself leave. It would have been easy to delay further.
At the head of the valley in gorgeous sunshine and autumn colour, in an amazing clarity, I saw a Red Kite. It was joined by another and they were calling as they circled. Their cries and the sounds of the bells at the zendo encompassed the silence of the last five days. I knew then that the retreat was over. At home I couldn't bear the electric light let alone the T.V. I went to bed by candlelight.
Afterword
The sound of the bells and wooden clappers is a call to community. It is more than a signal to join your fellow retreatants in your made-up community of a Zen monastery. It is a call to a larger community. Perhaps it is the Zen equivalent of the "communion of saints". Each sound is a call not just to the next activity but to a progressively deepening association with those who have gone before you.
The string that holds the worry beads is the thread that binds us to the teachings and doings of all the other practitioners moving through time and space. We are bound also to those who have yet to come, including our future selves. The thread binds us to everyone doing anything to feel connected to the Universe. People practising karate, tai- chi, chi-gung as well as those sweating in gyms pumping iron. It ties in people managing their daily life in a routine fashion in order to stay in control. It binds in people fighting against all that the Eightfold Path represents, rapists, muggers, murderers; all are bound so tight to the universal thread that the only way they can live is to survive by fighting the bond.
All other living beings can just "be" in the way we must stop struggling to obtain. Rocks and water are simply themselves. What else can there be but compassion for all beings, all states of nature? We can do nothing other in the face of this than cherish the planet.
Except through suffering how else can this come through in daily life? If we did not suffer we would never feel love, peace, joy. How can there be silence without two noises to encompass it, surround it, give it shape. The call of the bell is not just the call to community. It is the call to remember and realise all the contents of the Universe, all that it entails, every fragment that has been and will come. Suffering will increase as our present life continues for we have less and less time to make the realisation. Birth, sickness, ageing and death - the pain that binds us to the eternal.
Every aspect of the Maenllwyd life is necessary. Silence to waken your eyes to see. Up at five in the darkness to encompass life in the daylight. Stillness to see the movement through time to eternity. Community to tighten the string of connectedness. Friction to make you see beyond joy. The gentle holding of cups of pain, our own and others, to help us see that everything can be borne. The work to keep us grounded in the everyday. The walks to unite us with nature. Zen food to sustain the flow. Teachings to make sense of experience. Warmth and exercise to keep the body moving through it.
The coming to Maenllwyd and the leaving of it, each like a birth and a death complete with love, joy, fear and anger is like the gentle "ting" of the bell at the end of zazen wrapping the experience and giving it form for me to take with me on my journey through life, on and off the path.
And so the "I" does not exist. It is like the cries of the birds adding to the silence not detracting from it. It is merely a flow of being. And time is just the ring through which the tiger jumps.
