Butternut Woolens

The first evening of the Beginner's Mind retreat, we registered, had dinner, went on a tour, and then had an orientation led by one of the co-abbots, Hogan Bays, Roshi. He explained that the retreat would consist of meditation, a work period, formal meals, and more meditation.

For some reason, I was fascinated with the food.

On the tour we saw the kitchen and dining areas. Helping clean up one evening, I perused the titles on the kitchen's cookbook shelf like The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and I'm looking forward to getting some of these and being excited again about vegetarian cooking. I have a very old and tattered copy of The Moosewood Cookbook that I loved when I was just out of college and working as a baker at Bridger Bowl.

The monks eat mostly informal meals, but during retreats, everyone eats oryoki, which means just enough. Oryoki is a silent eating meditation focusing on mindfulness.

After meditating in the morning, a monk would ring a bell and announce, "Oryoki". We'd pick up our oryoki set which consisted of 3 small wooden bowls and a pocket of eating utensils bound in indigo-colored cloth napkins. We would hold the oryoki set in front of us and march out of the zendo, the meditation room, into the dark moist air across the grounds to the dining room, and stand behind our seats. We'd say a few chants of gratitude (there was a laminated blue card with the words) basically recognizing all that went into the food, it's cultivation and growth, the harvest, the labor that brought it to us. We sit on either side of long tables arranged like the letter "E" with the retreat's leaders sitting at the head table and other monks scattered among the students.

At each meal a kitchen monk would stand and call out which of the foods we were eating had been donated and who donated it. For example, "tea from so-and-so, carrots from whose-and-such, and apples from neighbors." We'd bow in gratitude, sit down and unwrap our bowls, set them and the utensils out in a specific way, which I could never seem to remember, getting my chopsticks backwards every time, but my neighbor would tap on my placemat and point to hers, so I'd correct it, no harm done. No one cares if you get it wrong, but there is the expectation that you'll take it seriously and try your best.

Then the officiating monk would clap two pieces of wood together and large bowls would be passed down the table. We'd scoop food into our bowls and put a tiny bit on the end of the spatula as an offering to the Hungry Ghosts, an act of remembrance for all those who have died from hunger.

The morning meals consisted of a cooked grain cereal, soy milk, brown sugar, peanut butter and a fruit. The first morning it was a wonderful applesauce made from neighborhood apples. I loved it. I really like homegrown apples, even standard varieties like Macintosh and Jonagold taste completely different than their commercially farmed counterparts and mixtures of apples are even more complex in flavor. At the farm, I had 16 different apple varieties mostly on old trees. I'd make applesauce and pressed juice, dried apples and apple pies, and give away the best specimens to the neighbors and the boys' school and one year a women's shelter in Portland. Wormy or blemished apples were hauled to the sheep 40 lbs at a time where they were magically turned into wool. Even on the years when I put up the most, it was but a dent. The year I broke my back all but the 200 lbs I had already picked before I fell of the ladder rotted and fell off the trees. We picked them up and composted 3200 lbs of apples and it about made me crazy with grief and guilt.

And that was all we had for breakfast. You could eat seconds as the big pots were passed in silence back up the table, but the idea was to take just enough and to have nothing left in the oryoki bowls at the end. Lunch usually consisted of a vegetable casserole with a vegetable salad or rice, dinner was always soup and homemade bread.

At the Mindful Eating Retreat, we discussed oryoki a lot because most of us had never eaten that way before. A lot of people were surprised by how little food they needed or wanted when they were paying attention to their stomachs. Much of the time we eat to please the mouth with sensations, or from distraction, or for many reasons other than because our stomaches would like some food. Like a lot of other people, I was surprised at how flavorful the vegetarian dishes were and also how I liked the tofu and mushrooms, they weren't rubbery and awful like I thought they would be.

After everyone was done eating, the monk with the clappers would clap them again and kettles of hot water were passed down the tables. We used a little rubber spatula to scrape out and eat any bits left in the bowls, then served each other about 1/3 cup hot water washed the bowls and utensils, then either drank or poured the wash water into a bamboo vase that was passed down. After meals the kitchen monks would take the wash water and offer it to a specific tree on the grounds. Leftover food was composted. We'd dry our bowls, wrap them up and march back to the zendo.

I'm trying to get the kids to eat oryoki, at least until I get a dishwasher. It's not going so well.

I've been stuck at this place in the post a couple of days trying to describe meditation practice in an interesting way for you, but since all of the battles are internal, it makes for a pretty dull picture. Just a lot of people sitting quietly on cushions in candlelight at 5:30 in the morning, but for me the experience was transforming.

Hogan Roshi, our teacher, instructed us to notice our breath, to start with the top of the head and move though the body slowly consciously relaxing the muscles on the out breath. When we notice our mind is not on the breath, we label it "thinking" and gently bring the mind back to the breath. This technique is called a body scan, it's one of four techniques we learned.

I used to think I meditated on long walks, while knitting and spinning, while dyeing and washing wool and all of those activities can be meditative, but none are as deep or intense as sitting meditation. The nearest analogy I can think of is that sitting meditation feels like giving your full attention to a rambunctious and mischievous 2 year old child with the attention span of a gnat.

I sit down and arrange my legs in a comfortable position, one I can sit in for 30 minutes without moving and then I watch the movie of my mind as it unfolds. It goes something like this.

Me: Breathing in consciously starting at the top of my head and relaxing the muscles on the out breath. Hmmm, face feels tight. Hmm, bit of a headache in back where the neck connects, hmm...

Mind: Does this really work? It isn't hard, I'm doing great...

Me: Thinking. Breathing in....breathing out....

Mind: Easy peasy I don't know what the big deal is.

Me: Thinking. Breathing in....breathing out...

Mind: I wonder what's for breakfast?

Me: Thinking. Breathing in...breathing out...

Mind: I hope there's not mushrooms for lunch. Stop it with the mushrooms already, for the love of God! You're not supposed to be thinking!

Me: Thinking. Breathing in...breathing out...

Mind: You've only been sitting like 5 minutes and you can't even get 2 consecutive thinking-free breaths in. I wonder if other people are the same way. Probably not the monks. They look like they can sit for hours without having to listen to all this inane chatter. I wonder how long it took them until they were getting it down pretty good. I wonder what it's like to be a monk. Do they have sex? They seem really happy. I wonder what kind of people they were before they became monks. What if one of my boys wants to become a monk. Wow, that would be hard for me, I don't know, blah, blah, blah,...

Me: Hello? Thinking!

Mind: Right. Are they keeping track of the time, because it sure seems like it's been 30 minutes by now, I'm pretty good at telling time without a clock blah, blah, blah...If you don't stop thinking you're never going to get this and it will have been a terrible waste. Concentrate you dumb ass! That's really not appropriate, we're not supposed to be hard with ourselves, we're just supposed to think 'thinking' and gently bring our concentration back to the breath. You're right, you'll get it, you always do eventually....

Me: Thinking.

Mind: I wonder if there are any cute single guys here.....

Me: Thinking. Fantasy. Breathing in...breathing out....

And so on in 30 minute chunks for about 5 hours a day. The hardest part for me was the first morning, after that my mind settled down, my breathing became less constricted each session and I could feel I was relaxing deeply. The whole retreat except for the initial orientation and a small group discussion session on the second day was conducted in Noble Silence. I liked the silence, it allowed me to be free from having to take my attention away from my own experience to chit chat or be concerned with someone else's feelings. The silence felt surprisingly intimate and I didn't feel alone or lonely.

On the third and last day we learned the technique of asking "Who". For example, if the mind is wandering and chattering, who is the one that notices and brings it back? I had a breakthrough with this as I realized that there were 2 of me. One which was afraid and chattering, and one who was still and deep and beautiful. It wasn't an ecstatic experience, but it was a profound one. I realized that the real me was the still, deep and beautiful one, the other me was just the little fearful one on the surface, a thin layer that looks real, but isn't. I'm afraid this isn't making any sense, but think of it this way. What if you had found a statue at a flea market and it had an interesting shape and was painted in faux granite spray paint and you took it home and washed the paint off and gasped at what was underneath. The most beautiful precious material you had ever seen. A treasure beyond treasure. That's what I felt like on the third day, like I had found a one-of-a-kind treasure of infinite beauty.

The experience has lasted now 2 1/2 weeks. I have felt extraordinarily tender with myself and with everyone else, including Mr. X. A crack of compassion has opened up and I see that maybe he does have an illness on the autism spectrum, perhaps complicated by something else and having a family proved more than he could handle. Maybe I could forgive him. Maybe I could forgive him even when he's being obsessive and stalk-ery. Maybe. I have a sense that if I could forgive him, I'd be able to live more with the deep, still and beautiful me and a lot less with the frightened me. Perhaps forgiveness and fear are linked in some way. Perhaps it takes courage to forgive and by using this much courage to forgive this big ass wrong, more is made available to use for other things. Like eating mushrooms, and living with uncertainty, and loving again.

For information on meditation retreats see the Great Vow Zen Buddhist Monastery's website.