Finding Your Stride Into Retreat
April 19, 2011 Guest Contributor Pelgye (John Douthitt)
Oh so many years ago, I read a fundraising blurb in Smithsonian Magazine for an anthropology expedition to Samoa. It said, “In the U.S, old age and obesity are considered chronic diseases; in Samoa they are considered achievements.”
I have now managed to achieve old age and obesity, but in my mid-20s I had a passion for running. Every morning, I ran through a hemlock forest - about a three-mile circuit - and in the afternoons I would imagine myself as a deer running through the forest with abandon in any direction. It was so enjoyable and I had so much energy that the goal of sprinting the entire three-mile loop in the mornings didn’t seem out of reach. I had no training in running but I paid close attention to my limitations and sought to reduce them.
I can’t recall which running constraint came first to my attention. I think it must have been traction, which was easy to solve. I bought long spikes and felt like I was flying through the trees. Next I noticed posture. If I kept my spine and pelvis straight, I could avoid losing power on every stroke. Then I recognized breath. I tried to figure out how to pass as much air as possible through my lungs so I could blaze continuously without burning out. Ultimately, I had to re-think my posture strategy because full, deep breaths required that I employ some of the muscles I’d been using for posture. It was a wonderful process of discovery.
Toward the end of the morning run was a narrow chasm with a creek at the bottom. A fallen tree formed a bridge there, but instead of being thick and solid it was thin and springy. My second goal became to make it across that tree without falling into the creek. It was about 15-feet across the trunk and a long drop to the creek. At first, I slowed down and tried to walk across. No good. I invariably fell in because in shifting my cadence I would lose my balance. Then I tried just galloping across. Again, no good. The force of my stride would set up a springy rebound in the trunk and I would get tossed into the creek.
Believe it or not, this actually relates to meditation and retreat. The part about breath and posture we all know. They are essential for energy, stability and stamina, and do not underestimate their importance. Sometimes the springy trunk part gets glossed over. Eventually, I discovered that if I maintained my cadence but reduced my force, then I could float effortlessly across the tree at speed, never breaking stride. I don’t think a person can really enter retreat at a gallop. Just as well, when we try to slow down upon entering, all of a sudden, we feel out of balance.
Meditation is all about balance. To this day, I haven’t been able to figure out how to maintain my cadence, while reducing my force so that I can flow into retreat effortlessly without breaking stride. But this is what I have discovered. If I can give into slowing down long enough, I can regain my balance at a slower pace. I sleep a lot the first day of retreat. If it is a long retreat, like a month or more, I’ll sleep a lot for up to 3 days, until I regain balance as the pace continues to diminish.
Retreat is a dependent arising from our daily lives. My immeasurably kind teacher, Thubten Rabgye, often reminds me that the goal is to remove the difference between our daily lives and our retreat. He has the greatness of heart that for him the goal of spending his entire life in relaxed attention, aware of how his experience of the world arises, while focused on serving others, does not seem to be out of reach. In or out of retreat, he never breaks stride. Just thinking of his example brings me to tears.
After I discovered such delight in running, friends often asked what was happening in my life. Clearly, there was some big shift. I was different, and in a good way. I would tell them, “I’m running a lot. I love running…” They would respond, “That’s cool. But there is something really different about you.” It was frustrating. Running was transformative for me, and yet I was unable to communicate how. My friends were not athletes. None of them seemed to have had experiences that would allow them to relate. I began to realize that the gap between my experience and my friends’ experience, while seemingly large, was nothing compared to the gap between an Olympic competitor and myself. This seemed like a metaphor for something far more important - and yet I couldn’t quite grasp what it was.
A couple of years later when I’d finally gained escape velocity, my life ran toward the monastery. My last stop on my way out of the country was a visit to a friend whose father had been a quadriplegic for more than 20 years. The doctors were puzzled by how he continued to do so well. Although his body had been like a prison for almost as long as I’d been alive, he showed a mental clarity and kindness that seemed extraordinary. He asked me what I hoped to gain by entering a monastery. I told him that I’d come to think of the gap within physical experiences as a metaphor for a gap within inner experience. Perhaps the gap of my inner experience was so great that it rendered me unable to grasp what people with spiritual depth were trying to communicate. Understanding and closing that gap had become my goal. I asked if this made sense to him. He replied, “If I didn’t believe in that, I wouldn’t be alive today.”
I know that I’m wandering, but sometimes it’s good to approach things sideways or in a spiral. I’ll say it again - our retreat is not separable from our daily lives. We slow down, we change our focus, but we ride our habits. I can confirm from direct experience that even a blind, intolerant fool who can’t bring himself to maintain a daily meditation practice can have wonderful, inspiring, transformative experiences in retreat. Please, jump at any chance you might have to do retreat, no matter what sort of fool you may be. However, once you gain even a whiff of understanding that every enjoyable experience you’ve ever had or will have comes only from putting others’ interests first - particularly if you’ve spent any amount of time practicing meditation - so much more is available when you do retreat.
Pelgye (John Douthitt) was a Buddhist monk for 11 years but decided to disrobe before he “brought too much shame on the sangha.” He's been married for more than 13 years. Pelgye is currently a Physician Assistant in a community clinic, still trying to make up for all the mistakes of his younger years.