from chapter 6, “In the Forest, in the Rain”

Mindfulness slips silently, invisibly, into the corners and crevices of my days, blending into ordinary life without my noticing. It often takes a teacher, or a spiritual friend, to point out places where the sense of separation has softened, when moments are experienced in mindfulness, when my being opens to the joy of simply being. And it took a spiritual friendship to spark a simple but extraordinary idea: two of us intentionally blending practice with daily life by holding our own retreats, at home. Neither of us remembers exactly how the idea arose, but I think the seed was planted years ago.

Sandra and I had met at a Zen retreat. I noticed her right away: whereas most retreatants showed up in outdoor or even athletic wear, Sandra’s look — clothes in deep luminous colors and rich textures, with handsome jewelry and strappy sandals — marked her (in my mind, anyway) as a more arty type, my type. There was something regal in her bearing, and when she spoke in group discussions, her probing intelligence and her skill with language were a joy to me. At the end of the retreat, we rode home together, beginning a long if intermittent friendship, conducted largely during rides to and from Zen retreats.

On our occasional visits, as on those rides, when Sandra and I got together, it was to talk. Mostly we talked about books and art and spiritual life. Our talks ran wide and deep, branching unpredictably in a myriad directions. At times it would feel as if I were standing at the edge of an ocean of allusions and connections and insights, like darkly gleaming gems, undulating, surging against each other, striking occasional bursts of diamond brilliance, stretching into dimensions I cannot name.

Theoretically, any conversation occurs in partnership, but I attribute that oceanic quality of mind to Sandra, seeing myself primarily as a spectator. I suspect it is something innate in her that has developed through her frequent engagement with other people’s creative intelligence. She is a playwright, and she takes for granted that a script is subject to a multitude of forces, from feedback at preliminary read-throughs, to interpretations by directors and actors, and reactions from an audience. She relishes that process, finds that synergy stimulating and satisfying. To me writing seems essentially solitary, and collaboration is inconceivable, scary to contemplate, in fact. I have marveled at Sandra’s taste for collaborative work, assuming that it simply was not for me.

Sandra and I had been among a group of Zen students who, when our teacher could not come to a sesshin at the last minute, held it anyway. We students took turns ringing bells and leading walking meditation, and guidelines were established so that no one would need to communicate with anyone else. Everyone was on time for every meditation period, from early morning until late night, and everyone followed the guidelines. Four days of silence. No writing notes, no writing of any kind, no eye contact. The supportive strength of sangha in that situation could hardly be exaggerated. The others’ showing up, keeping the schedule, sitting still, and staying silent was a powerful incentive for me to do the same, to do my best.

Until that time, I had perceived the teacher as a restraining force against which I could rebel, secure in knowing that I couldn’t stray far, since the teacher was there to shoo me back into line. But at the teacherless sesshin, each of us had to find our own discipline internally. That was the first time I looked to myself for what the teacher had always provided. “Taking responsibility” had always sounded tiresome, something to be avoided, but what I discovered then was how much easier it is than being dependent (seemingly dependent, for this is an illusion) on someone else. Thinking the teacher was in charge of my behavior involved an undercurrent of struggle, whereas once I saw that self-discipline was up to me, what had to be done was accomplished effortlessly. It felt great — so great, so grown up, that I initially suspected my teacher of engineering the whole experience, just for my benefit. It seems to me that consciously accepting responsibility for our experience is a crucial shift. I have to make that choice again and again, but over time, trust builds that everything we truly need is within us.

Throughout that sesshin, the silence was almost palpable, a presence in itself. Leaving the retreat together, Sandra and I did not speak for a long time. When we did, we agreed that we wanted more of that silence in our lives. Years passed before it occurred to us that we didn’t have to wait for somebody else to impose silence and structure. As that seed of trust opened in us, we saw that we could offer that to ourselves, through our own retreats.

Our retreats reflect our wish to live in a more conscious balance of flow and order. Unlike other retreats, ours do not mean leaving behind the comfort and convenience of home, and, most important, our work; the original impetus was wanting to be together in a way that allowed silent time for writing. As the idea took form in our minds, we saw that all our daily activities — not only working but preparing food, eating together, cleaning up, exercising, relaxing — would be opportunities for mindfulness. Of course we’ve heard that for years &mdash when we were away on retreat. Now, instead of leaving our normal routines to seek spiritual experience, we bring the two together.

A key element in our retreats is meditative dialog. Sandra teaches a writing awareness practice and studies the A. H. Almaas inquiry method, which shares key features with Gregory Kramer’s insight dialog. For our retreats, we let go our usual way of talking in favor of something we deem more precious, silence and mindful communication. Those retreats, I realize now, are a form of collaboration — in our spiritual practice

•

Typically our retreats are two or three days, spent mostly in silence. Our schedule includes several hours of work in the morning and again in the afternoon, and because we both write, we use those work periods for writing. Along with sitting meditation, we practice meditative dialog. We don’t plan our retreats very far in advance; they just seem to come around, like the seasons.

We meet at Sandra’s weekend house in the mountains, not far from where I live. The house is in a forest, surrounded by hemlocks and rhododendrons, facing a rocky stream and a waterfall. At this moment in late April, dogwood has sprouted its first tiny leaves, paired upward-pointing hearts in the freshest newborn chartreuse. They remind me of the heart–shaped leaves of the Bo tree, which sheltered the Buddha as he sat it out all the way to enlightenment. Today venerable Bo trees shelter countless shrines in Asia. Sandra and I do not worship, we have no shrines, and yet the air of this forest carries a delicate suggestion of a holy place, like the faintest trace of incense. No, not a place, but a holy time — the time we have dedicated to this purpose.

As in the Zen retreats we attended together, our schedule is drawn up anew each time. This is significant: the schedule is not imposed mechanically but arises in fresh response to our needs and the situation. Unlike Zen retreats, there is no wake-up schedule. We rise and have breakfast, separately and in silence, and then our schedule begins.

• 9 am–We sit on facing cushions and meditate for half an hour.
• 9:30–We raise our eyes and begin our practice of meditative dialog, which may involve long periods of silence.
• 10–We return to silence and write.
• 12:30–One of us fixes lunch while the other continues to work, and we remain silent during that time.
• 1 pm–Lunch; we talk quietly while we eat and then take a walk.
• 2–We return to silence and writing.
• 5–Still silent, we have free time for yoga, reading, sitting outside.
• 6–The silence ends, and we fix supper, eat, and clean up.
• 8 pm–Sitting meditation for half an hour, followed by open-ended dialog that often continues until we go to bed, in silence.

We may have sat together before breakfast on our first retreat; I don’t remember. Sometimes we have had a sitting period before or after lunch, sometimes not. Whatever schedule we adopt, we do not always adhere to it perfectly. We no longer see the schedule as a restraining force, in loco parentis, as it were, just as we no longer see the teacher that way. Sitting meditation, dialog, and writing are what we want to spend our time on, and pursuing those activities within the structure provided by the schedule makes them all the more focused, meaningful, true. The schedule serves our most cherished purposes. Why wouldn’t we want to follow it? Well, conditioned minds have their reasons. We might want to talk or have a snack or take a nap, and we might do those things. But the presence of the other person is a reminder of our purpose in being together in that particular way, a way different from ordinary life in which we unconsciously succumb to — indeed, are almost entirely driven by — the siren songs of ego.

Nor is our environment as controlled as it would be at a retreat center. Sandra’s elderly cocker spaniel spends most of the time asleep, until we begin to meditate. Then he wakes up, walks back and forth between us, clicks his toenails on the floor, paws obsessively at an old towel he plays with, snuffles, and — most distracting of all — stands close in front of me, looking up into my lowered eyes.

A childhood memory arises: looking into the eyes of my kitten, this creature I love so utterly, and wondering, Who are you? What are you? It is the question we ask ourselves, in one way or another. The question with no answer. The question at the heart of spiritual practice.

When I sink into doubt and despair, my teacher advises me to ask the classic questions, Who experiences doubt, who is in despair? Recently she suggested something different — that in low moments, I say to myself, I am a person on the path to awakening.

I look into the mirror and face the being I know so intimately, yet do not know.

•

Beneath the placid surface of silence and schedule, any retreat has the potential for serious internal upheaval. In my retreats with Sandra, there have been two such incidents.

On one retreat we inserted forty-five-minute periods of “real” work, clearing branches and debris left from a fallen tree, pruning overgrown bushes, and weeding. Our aim was to treat work as meditation: to focus on the immediate activity rather than the result, maintaining mindfulness of body, thoughts, and feelings. We would work in silence, stopping periodically to stand together and take several breaths, bring our minds to the present, relax our bodies, and recommit to our tasks at a gentle pace.

It was early summer, and we scheduled the first period of outdoor work from 8:30 until 9:15. Then we would change clothes, sit down on our facing cushions, and spend fifteen minutes reflecting, in meditative dialog form, on our experience during the work period. The schedule resumed with our usual periods of sitting meditation and writing during the middle of the day. In the afternoon we planned to stop writing an hour early for another forty-five-minute period of outdoor work, plus reflection.

Sandra’s relationship to work is somewhat problematic; in particular, she has a frank aversion to manual labor. But we share the commitment to face what is hard, and working meditation offered areas of aversion for both of us. In my case, what’s problematic is being in charge. Thus the significance of my serving as Work Director (a role we borrowed from our Zen retreats) was less my familiarity with yard work than my aversion to being in charge. Telling someone else what to do “brings up my conditioning,” as we say, meaning that ego is uncomfortable, and the mind fills with reasons to avoid the disagreeable task.

That first morning we walked the few yards from the front door to the driveway armed with garden tools and work gloves and Zen guidelines for working meditation, our mission involving, ostensibly, overgrown shrubbery. As I look back on that scene, I am touched by our earnestness: spiritual warriors, venturing forth to confront our demons. Inviting our demons to meet us at that time and place, for the purpose of getting to know them. That is, getting to know us.

The morning work period went well. The season, the day, the warm air seemed to bless our efforts: close by, bumblebees pursued their own tasks, and in the woods around us, an ancient species of magnolia blossomed with ragged pale-yellow stars.

But at the beginning of the afternoon period, Sandra did not appear. What to do? In our tradition, part of the Work Director’s role is to see that each person has what is needed for the job, including encouragement to resist ego’s promptings — whether those promptings be to push ahead to the result, or do the job differently from the original assignment, or quit when it gets hard. But I had no idea what was going on with Sandra. What to do?

I went off to my immediate task, moving tree limbs from a big pile at the edge of the driveway. What if Sandra were asleep? What was my responsibility? I felt resentment arise, felt how it tensed my body. I would pull a branch from the pile and drag it up a little clay slope and into the woods, my mind briefly on the task, then riddled with worry.

What if Sandra had given in to her aversion and decided that she wasn’t going to work after all? Alarm surged in my solar plexus: our joint effort would be abandoned, I would be abandoned, even humiliated if she derided my commitment, my seriousness. I heaved a branch into a clearing and stumbled back down the clay bank.

Then, for a moment, my self-concern lifted. What if Sandra were humiliated, ashamed at having given up (as I would be)? That was even more threatening; what would I do? The alarm sank into my abdomen, ominous, pressing. I lifted a big branch. The leafy end caught in other branches, and I tried to jerk it free, tension mounting in my head and neck.

A cue to pause. I laid the branch down, stood still, and let my attention follow my breath. Where is my conditioning in this? I asked myself. I don’t know what to do, and I feel as if I should know, because I am in the role of being in charge, which I hate. What’s beneath that resistance? Fear. If I confront my friend, she might challenge — or worse, ignore — my authority. Resent me, not like me, leave me. I felt like a whimpering toddler.

What if, instead of feeling myself to be in charge, I considered what I might offer? If Sandra were sunk in her own conditioned reaction, shame, say, what would be the most helpful, compassionate, enlightened response? Ah — to help her see that suffering is unnecessary. Not my job to enforce the schedule or defend my earnestness. But I could point out that suffering serves no purpose and can be let go.

I freed the tree limb from the brush pile and dragged it into the woods. My worry subsided somewhat, and I was able to keep my attention on the physical experience for longer stretches as I moved the rest of the brush.

Our work period ended, and no Sandra. What would happen? How would things unfold? No way to know.

I went to my room, changed clothes, and since Sandra wasn’t there for our scheduled dialog, went onto the deck and did yoga. The need to know what was going on with Sandra, the need to respond, to do something — all that energy lashing me to what had happened and what might happen — began to abate as I settled into experiencing sensations in my body. Now and then I would glimpse the possibility that no matter how demanding the situation seemed, no matter how dramatic my feelings about it, nothing at all was required of me.

I was lying in relaxation when Sandra came out to the deck. She asked if I would dialog with her, even though it was an hour behind schedule. I agreed, and we moved to our facing cushions.

We sat in silence, our eyes open, our gaze lowered. Breathing. At ease. Gentle movement of air on skin. In the woods around us the pale magnolia stars were luminous in the late afternoon sun.

We sat that way for quite a while. Then I heard the soft intake of breath that precedes speech, and into that full and empty space, Sandra released words for which I was entirely unprepared.

“I just realized . . . .” She hesitated briefly, and I sensed the shift. “I don’t have to say a thing.”

In that instant, all the drama I had built up during the work period dissolved. I almost laughed. I’d come close to accepting that Sandra’s action did not require a response from me. But it hadn’t occurred to me that she was similarly freed from obligation. I didn’t look at her then, but I smiled. Yes. Sandra is there, I thought. She just stepped into freedom. She’s where we all want to be. Or rather, we are here. Not a word need be said, by her or by me. In this moment, this place, nothing needs to be questioned or explained or defended.

Here is the resolution of the koan I had been carrying around, the puzzle of how to deepen relationships while maintaining silence: communication is reined in from the claims of past and future, from the habit of reactivity, to the stillness of each moment, in which the right words will arise.

•

The other unsettling incident also occurred in dialog, as we sat on our cushions in a dark room with a candle lit between us. Looking into each other’s eyes, we described our body sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Our pauses became longer and longer. My memory is that we settled into such deep stillness that the normal inner agitation subsided, and we rested easily in each other’s gaze. Then Sandra spoke.

“I see through you.”

The shock felt seismic. What words could be more frightening to ego? My mind lurched into protective mode, anticipating attack. Never have I felt so vulnerable. Not only naked, but transparent, seen through. And yet my body remained still. It felt as if I had spent my whole life hiding flaws that now would be exposed — although, oddly, no particular flaws came to mind. The terror lay in being judged at all.

We are here together, my teacher once said to me in what I perceived as a tirade, and you act as if you are alone. Those words had served as a koan for me for much longer than the question about deepening relationships (and surely apply to all of us suffering under the illusion of separate selfhood). Now Sandra and I were together, and I could not run, hide, pretend, or act as if I were alone. Our agreement was to look together at whatever was there to be seen.

Eons passed before I found words.

“What do you see?”

Within awareness, attention may fix on fear and turmoil, but awareness itself is stable. I let my attention rest in awareness, the ultimate refuge. Something in me would survive, I trusted, however devastating the reply. I sat still, in total terror and in deep calm.

“You know more than you admit.”

Now, it might seem like a reprieve to hear those words rather than, say, “You know less than you think,” not to mention words naming my acts of cruelty or folly or deviousness. What I remember, though, was a vast sinking, as if the ground beneath me had vanished and gravity along with it; disorientation, almost dissolution. What was it that I knew and would not admit? The secret seemed as limitless as the universe, and completely closed to me.

“Know about what?” I asked.

“About the spiritual path.”

A sharp hopeless wish to disappear. It was an impulse I had felt each time my teacher refuses to accept my complaints that I don’t know what I am doing in my practice. Now I could not hide behind the student role; Sandra and I had become our own teachers, our own windows onto ourselves and each other. We may hide our wisdom from ourselves, but not from our teachers, not from our spiritual friends.

•

Sandra and I have practiced meditation more or less regularly — dutifully, even — for many years. Gradually the balance of our attention has shifted away from sitting meditation and toward maintaining mindfulness in ordinary activity. At times each of us has considered giving up sitting practice, and yet we never do.

We wonder if once people set foot on the spiritual path, they are on it forever, regardless of how long it takes to get there.

Get where?

We’ve both been reading books by Advaita masters about enlightenment, the once-and-for-all, ever-after kind, not the momentary glimpses that leave us tangled in longing. Are we going for ever-after enlightenment, we ask each other? My teacher says that one result of dharma practice is that we grow up, we become adults. Jiyu Kennett called Buddhism “an adult religion.” Vipassana teacher Matt Flickstein says it’s easy to find people who have had enlightenment experiences, but rare to find people who are fully mature human beings. Sandra and I decide that our aim is adulthood. If enlightenment lies further along that same axis, so much the better.

During one dialog session, when I lower my eyes, the shape of Sandra’s head glows in afterimage against her body, like an inner being deep inside her, the same size but without surface features. I sense a similar being within myself. We speak through our personalities, but does something in that speaking come from these deeper aspects? The words that emerge in this meditative communication are so simple, so direct, so clear, so compassionate — even as they take us into strange territory, where we encounter unexpected subtleties and unspeakable complexities, pain and fear, awe and ease and joy. That is the fruit of giving full attention to what we say. After the dialog, I think, This is how I want to be with people.

•

On a walk we stop at the edge of a lake. Fish turn to face us in the clear shallow water. They seem to be looking at us, as Sandra’s dog looks at us, oblivious to our personalities, asking the wordless question, Who are you? What are you?

That evening rain drowns out the sound of the waterfall. We sit in meditation with the rain. When it is time for dialog, there is a sense of, why speak at all?

We do speak a little, quietly, embraced in the sounds of the forest, and then our speaking dies down. The rain stops. We continue to sit, our schedule abandoned. We sit in the hum of fridge, the chant of frogs, the murmur of the waterfall. Fridge hum stops. Frog sounds fill the world. Are the frogs speaking to us? Or are we, in our listening, asking them the same question the fish and the dog ask in their looking at us?

Frog chant fades into a few solo voices, falls off into single notes, then silence. Still we sit. At some point it seems clear that the last frog has spoken. We rise without speaking, go out onto the porch, stand in the dark facing the waterfall, the only sound.

The next morning in meditation, my lowered gaze is filled with Sandra’s motionless form — the horizontal base, knee to knee, and the upright torso with hands forming a circle, the cosmic mudra familiar from Buddha figures. A Buddha before me. Buddha-shaped, anyway. I am aware of myself as Buddha-shaped.

In the final writing period before the end of our retreat, I come to a stopping place, put away my notebook and pencil, and gaze out into the treetops. Soon, summer will screen the view of the waterfall with foliage. But not the sound. It will vary, from a burble to a soft roar of white noise, but the sound of falling water is heard year-round.

Now in late April, the forest itself is revealed in all its ongoingness. Trees toppled in a winter ice storm pierce the space with fractured trunks, and the ground is littered with limbs. A few dogwood blossoms still fleck the woods with brilliant white, but most are past their peak. Against the dark evergreen background, the pink-yellow fuzz and slick maroon of new oak and maple leaves suggest a tapestry, woven on trunks and branches splotched with moss and lichen, pale green in the damp. This forest lives much of its life veiled in rain and mist.

I think about forest monks in the Buddhist tradition, their rainy season retreats, their Bo trees. We are a world away from that; renunciants we are not. And yet there is a thread of intent linking them and us. Who are we? We are on the path to awakening.