Retreat

Shrine to Shakyamuni and Vajrapani, Taraloka, September 2019

Last week I slept in my tent in the grounds of a women's retreat centre on the Welsh border. It wasn't easy to find, mainly because I forgot how untrustworthy my satnav is - it took me to the general location, but I had to resort to Google maps for the last couple of miles. It wasn't raining as I put up the tent, but after that it rained solidly, persistently, pitilessly for very nearly all the time I was there (although it wasn't actively raining when I took the tent down at the end). On one day it was sunny in the afternoon, and then the night was cloudless and the temperature plummeted, but I had borrowed two extra duvets from the centre as well as a hot water bottle so I was actually too hot.

Accommodation aside, there were 21 of us including 5 who were helping to run the activities, and a couple of other staff who did the cooking for us. The food was vegan, delicious and plentiful. We all had about an hour's work to do every day - chopping veg, washing up, cleaning - and for the rest of the day there were scheduled activities, plenty of free time, and a proper break from routine. No TV, radio, phones, email, Internet. For all we knew the outside world could be going through an apocalypse but if it was out of earshot and didn't show up in the sky we would have been blissfully unaware.

It was blissful, actually. The second worst thing that happened to me all week was that I swapped places to be in a different chair in the shrine room without knowing that they were rearranging the shrine room so the change of seating was completely ineffective. The worst thing that happened to me all week was that I was forced to go first when we were talking in pairs - doesn't sound very bad, but I really didn't like it at the time.

The daily routine was an early start for meditating before breakfast, including gentle exercises that I didn't want to join in with on the first day but looked forward to by the end of the week. After breakfast there was free time, then a session before lunch, another break, a session before the evening meal and then some sort of ritual before bed, which for me was about 9.30 p.m. given that I needed to get up at 6 a.m. I'd prepared for the ritual stuff by getting my local group to focus on ritual for the previous four weeks, and I gave it a try, but it's not really my thing.

We spent about three days in silence. This seems like an odd thing to do, and it is, but it seemed to serve two purposes. First, it really frees up thinking space. You don't get sucked into conversations, or have to seek out somewhere quiet to do some reading. The second effect is that it removes the social pressure to make conversation, to think of things to say over meals, to fill silences with trivia, complaint or just small talk. The downside is that during that silent time you don't get to know much about the people you are with, or make meaningful connections beyond passing the peanut butter. But silence isn't so much a rule as a guideline. Rather than protracted miming it was perfectly acceptable to ask quietly "Where are the spare duvets kept?", and if you wanted to have a conversation it was fine to go for a walk along the canal.

As for what I learnt, it wasn't very much about Buddhism. The theme of the week was 'Mindfully Alive', and as usual much of the talk was about existential concepts that I can't easily grasp (which is why I wanted to go second when we were working in pairs). But I got to grips with Buddhist ritual, met some lovely people, did a lot of reading and thinking, some walking and writing, slept happily in my rain-sodden tent, slowed right down and enjoyed the silence. A calm, positive effect persisted through the weekend, and of course was dispelled almost immediately at work on Monday by my colleagues.

Goddess face, Adhisthana, July 2019