Distributing The Journal: Dropping in on Maenllwyd During a Retreat

Our kitchen table is about 15 miles away from Maenllwyd. At last it is free from stamps, labels, subscription reminders and freshly printed WCF matter. Doing this mailing work is like sitting. Thoughts and images arise and fall. I watch them as my hand movements become more automatic. A pair of roguish Tibetan monks in the Golden Temple in Patan, Nepal come to mind. They sat at dawn muttering mantras, counting with rice, sliding grains from one pile to another. One of them began to count the paper money that was offered by passing devotees, the other elbowed him back into order. 

Moving envelopes from one pile to another I do sometimes sing mantras. Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha. Sometimes I notice a name, or a place on an envelope sticker. I am impressed by the labels that deliver the contents to Hong Kong, Japan, India, U.S.A. Is Iceland zone one? I enjoy the simple repetitive nature of the action, the intention and the attention, and the feeling that I am indeed "getting more involved with John's organisation", as a monk on Shih Fu's retreat advised me to do. I reflect upon the time, commitment and energy that have culminated in NCF23 and its sibling newsletter and retreat programmes. The lineage, the interdependence of this very moment. Is that Eastenders again or another football match that I hear in the background? Will my sons help me this time? Later I am cheered to hear, "Another mail out Mum? Shall I stick some labels on?" Time for another meal, move the boxes onto the stairs for now. 

I wasn't surprised that John happened to be in Nick's office when I went in to get a blank cheque for the stamps, the day before the Ch'an retreat. (Let the universe do it). He kindly invited me to "come and sit" when I asked if I could bring his NCF delivery up to Maenllwyd, "we're a bit short of women". I decided that Tuesday would be the day. Yes it would be fine to come in time for the morning service, 6.40.a.m. The retreat would be in its fifth day. 

The evening before, I went out to my Tai Chi class in the village hall at Llwyn y gog (cuckoos' grove). I was beginning to get a sore throat. I returned home to the aftermath of an unresolved battle between my partner and his stepson, my son. My son presents me with a tirade, which he has written on the back of his bank statement entitled, "People shouldn't abuse positions of power". He points to a magnetic sticker on the fridge, which anchors a newspaper cutting from today's Guardian: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return (W.H. Auden)". My partner says that he hasn't eaten supper because he felt sick and he hasn't cleared up either. He is hiding behind a newspaper on our bed. My sore throat feels worse and I want to go to bed early because I want to get up at 5.a.m. My heart sinks. 

Both people I love fighting again. I read my son's accusations. I tell him that they are a bit exaggerated, I am taking him seriously, but I am too tired to do more this evening. I also say that he will have to get himself off in the morning because I am leaving very early. My partner is looking reproachful and doleful but I say that I need a torch for the morning and had better sleep in my daughter's room (she's away at university). I just haven't got the energy to get caught up in it. They become like deer with locked antlers and I am not the person to resolve their conflict. It is very painful for everyone when it happens. It can split me in two, like my son has felt when I left his father. Time to sleep. I have a restless night. It feels like the first night of a retreat. How to be free of suffering and help others to move there too? 

I wake with a sore throat but no hesitation about getting on my way to Maenllwyd. It is dark when I park the car in the lay-by on the Rhayader road. I follow my cold nose up the mountain. I carry the words in the boxes stacked on the flat of my skull, balanced by a gloved hand. The ground is frozen and my footsteps startle a few sheep near the hedge, who startle a bird in the cluster of pine trees. I am a medieval woman delivering a sack of grain for milling, an African woman carrying a jug of water, a Nepalese woman with planks for a new house up there on the mountain. My destination is marked by two squares of flickering candlelight, hovering and shimmering like luminous flags in blackness, above me. I feel in my element. My heart is opening. 

I enter the cottage and deliver the boxes to John's room. I descend the stairs to find Kindness in the Kitchen. He smiles and says, "Are you here for breakfast?" He then offers me his cushion for the sitting before the Morning Service. I slip into the Ch'an hall behind the last retreatant. The heaviness of the previous evening had long dropped away into the frosty night on my way up the mountain to this refuge at Grey Rock. Simply by walking mindfully up a mountain in the dark, balancing some dharma on my head. 

The silence at the Maenllwyd has ripened over five days. It is warm, spacious, empty, full of a mixture of suffering and compassion. I bring whatever is within me into that precious place, which pulses with the three jewels. My pain is dissolved. Our grain is being milled. We drink the water. We are building a new house which has Kindness in the Kitchen. We sing the words of the Morning Service. The vows ring true. Some of us wear woolly hats. We are mountain people. We cross the yard for breakfast. Our breath wafts and clouds, a cluster of white, silent balloons. 

Ken asks me, "Have you got a place?" I say, "I don't know". Kindness in the Kitchen says," Yes I've laid one for you." We eat porridge for breakfast. I am smiling inside. I feel perfectly at home in this community of silent souls. I feel grateful, I want to offer my life in some way. 

Work period. "Dust and polish in the library. Use your ingenuity for tools." John mutters that it looks as if a bomb has hit the place as I peer in the dawn light unable to see the dust on the surfaces. Yes, it looks like our house does when I go away for too long. I neaten the piles of papers, dust, shake the rugs into the cold air. They ripple and crack and the dust disperses into the dawn air. I took great pleasure in restoring the presence of the jade Kuan Yin from behind some dusty birthday cards and lighting a candle by her so that she glowed in the dawn light. Yes, light a candle and some incense beneath the painting of Shih Fu. Empty the fruit peelings, fill the jug with juice. Sorting, purifying, polishing my mind. 

Ken says, "Nothing like a woman's touch." I could feel patronised but nothing is arising. But I do feel as if I have been rearranging male territory. Treading around other people's baggage. (What difference does it make if they are jumbled piles or neatened piles? Is the urge to tidy mostly a female characteristic? The line between order and chaos is fine and subjective. I often choose to leave cobwebs hanging at home, especially when they are beaded with dead bluebottles). Later, when John is teasingly provocative ("I sometimes wonder if there any women left who want to be nice little girls!") I laugh to myself. What is this 'messy'? Maybe I have stumbled across a feminist koan. After the work session Rebecca leaves and I take her place. Still only three women. Monks and nuns. Are monasteries messier than nunneries? 

The dharma talk was so appropriate to my personal needs (how could it not be?). John spoke of partial view and the whole View. About the Wheel of Samsara goaded on by the pig, the cockerel and the snake in the centre. The greed, the hatred, the ignorance sustaining the six states. Also the eight states that we must avoid becoming attached to (fame, love, wealth, joy, poverty, sadness, being unnoticed, and?). The different kinds of love (friendship, spiritual and sexual). As a parent and a partner I must work hard to free myself from my prejudices, delusions and attachments. As a parent and a partner I must be honest about my mistakes and live knowing that every moment is an opportunity for change, to work towards good, to polish and purify ourselves until we shine. Crossing the yard for lunch we wear woolly hats because the sun doesn't break through the icy mist. 

After lunch I polish a brass candlestick, whittle and fit a candle, leaving it on the tidied, dusted desk for the evening. I walk down the mountain in the afternoon. The sun is clearing patches of mist and melting frosty hillsides. I return home and write, "Those to whom love is done, do love in return" and stick it on the fridge. My son comes in and we make pizzas for my partner and our younger son and two of his friends. The kitchen is full of kindness again. The NCF23 is finally delivered. Now I can sit down and read it! I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.