{"id":77444,"date":"2014-09-29T13:22:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T17:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=77444"},"modified":"2014-09-29T14:44:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T18:44:35","slug":"letter-from-a-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/29\/letter-from-a-retreat\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter from a Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

How not to meditate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Himalaya_sud_avion\"<\/a>

Photo: Michel Royon<\/p><\/div>\n

Martin had a long pair of navy-blue socks that he wore when it was cold. He wore them in the morning before sunrise, and usually took them off before noon.<\/p>\n

We were doing a silent, shamatha meditation retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas. The retreat was led by a stern Zen monk from Japan. We referred to him by his honorific, Venerable. Venerable was tall. It was hard to determine his age. He might have been fifty years old, at most. He wore aviator-style glasses. He had square front teeth. His eyes tilted a bit down at the outer corners, down toward his ears, giving him a sad, warm, sexual look. He was handsome and he was stern. He told us that if we learned to sit shamatha, we would no longer have nightmares, and all our anxieties would reveal themselves as mental disturbances and nothing more. He asked us to consider, when we were feeling anxiety, if that was really bliss. Really look at it, he said, really ask yourself. Actually, I don\u2019t think he understood our practice, but I think he\u2019d gotten some instruction, and I was a little offended and a little uneasy that he\u2019d come and sit here and insult us\u2014suggest vaguely that his style of Buddhism was superior. But maybe I was imagining it.<\/p>\n

On the first night of the retreat, Venerable told us that ego is like a vampire. Martin, whom I was secretly dating, raised his hand and asked how, if he was to think of his ego as a sneaky vampire, he was expected to relax. The phrase \u201csneaky vampire\u201d got stuck in my head. The question seemed like a comeback. It made Venerable seem, all at once, ridiculous. I was afraid, while Venerable answered, that I would start laughing, so I didn\u2019t hear his answer. The next person asked a question. I was still thinking \u201csneaky vampire.\u201d Then I broke. I started laughing. Each time I got my laughing under control, it would explode again, worse, when I thought, \u201csneaky vampire\u201d while looking at Venerable\u2019s handsome face, noticing his elegant comportment. Venerable was answering an Australian paraglider\u2019s question about light. \u201cAh, light,\u201d he said, \u201cthat is a big subject. For that, come and talk to me in private.\u201d <\/p>\n

Martin and I had begun simply, on the first morning of the retreat, during the second session. Venerable started us before sunrise. Our second four-hour session began at eight and ended at noon. I took the glasses of a local Indian villager and slipped them onto Martin\u2019s cushion. This small gesture doesn\u2019t sound like anything.<\/p>\n

The place where we were meditating was a small Tibetan refugee colony. I think about six hundred Tibetans lived there. On the hillside above their houses was a monastery for Westerners, where we were. It had been built by Tibetan Buddhist monks who had moved to town when they outgrew it. Above the Tibetan refugee village was a village of Indians. Westerners didn\u2019t go up there very often. In fact, I had lived in the village for months before I even heard of the Indian village. I went up to look around. I sometimes walked up to get my whiskey there, but usually preferred to take the longer walk to the whiskey store on the edge of town. Something about the Indian village felt sinister, in the way some very small towns do.<\/p>\n

So this Indian man coming down from the village to the monastery was an unusual man. He was a guest. We treated him carefully, with a mixture of respect and condescension. He was about fifty years old, and he looked older. I\u2019d had tea with him one time. He was strange. He\u2014I don\u2019t know how he got started coming down to the monastery, but once he\u2019d discovered it, he\u2019d made it a part of his life, and while we had tea, he gave me instructions on Buddhism. They were the beginner\u2019s hodgepodge; he\u2019d seen me do something wrong, and so he corrected it. Anyway, he was a poor villager. He took his spectacles off to meditate, and he closed his eyes, as did Venerable. Martin left his glasses on, and kept his eyes open, as our guru did. By slipping the Indian man\u2019s glasses onto Martin\u2019s cushion, I\u2019d created a situation of potential awkwardness. Martin felt that. Sitting on the cushion, staring at the glasses, reminding himself he wasn\u2019t supposed to move, remembering when the villager had advised him\u2014breaking the vow of silence\u2014to remove his glasses during meditation, Martin recognized the sparkling ludicrousness of his situation. And he had an image of very sad, German-style, inexpensive glasses. He laughed. Later in the day, during lunch, he got me back. We went on in this way, torturing each other wordlessly. It escalated.<\/p>\n

The jokes, when they were at their best, had a lightness, an inevitability. They came without forethought. I wound up sitting beside Venerable at dinner. Venerable\u2019s attention was diverted, and Martin poured salt all over my eggplant. We had an unspoken aversion to\u2014even a taboo about\u2014wasting food at the monastery. We just didn\u2019t do it. I looked at Venerable. I admired him. I started to laugh. When I realized I had a new problem\u2014my laughter was worrying Venerable\u2014I laughed harder. I remembered the sneaky vampire. I choked on my tea, and it came out of my nose, and I sort of threw up on my eggplant. I laughed until I cried. Venerable seemed concerned.<\/p>\n

During a walking meditation break the next day, I grabbed Martin\u2019s two wool socks, which, bundled together, were the size of a football, and I threw them at the Australian paraglider. They hit him square across the face. He looked, for a moment, like a boxer who has taken a right blow. His head was thrown into profile, his mouth came open, and saliva\u2014I guess from all the quiet introspection and light\u2014traced out left to right.<\/p>\n

The Australian snapped out of his meditation. He strode up to me, and started to yell. He was really angry. I stopped laughing. I felt so guilty, so crazy, so bad at meditating. Venerable was right to be concerned. It was only the third day, and I had thrown a ball of socks at a complete stranger! I was just washed over by shame.<\/p>\n

Martin broke his vow of silence when the Australian paraglider walked away. He touched my arm and said, \u201cOh, Amie. You always take things too far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amie Barrodale is soon to publish her first short story collection, <\/i>You Are Having a Good Time.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How not to meditate. Martin had a long pair of navy-blue socks that he wore when it was cold. He wore them in the morning before sunrise, and usually took them off before noon. We were doing a silent, shamatha meditation retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas. The retreat was led by a stern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[1785,15469,6879,15466,12192,3988,15468,15467,6049],"class_list":["post-77444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-buddhism","tag-irreverence","tag-meditation","tag-monks","tag-prayer","tag-romance","tag-sanctity","tag-the-himalayas","tag-tibet"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLetter from a Retreat by Amie Barrodale<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 29, 2014 \u2013 How not to meditate. 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