Secret of inner peace revealed!

<insert teacher voice> So I hope you’ve all been paying attention these last two posts and realize that I’m still in the midst of my silent retreat.  We’ll wait while you get yourself up to speed...

Okay, you’re all good? Now read on…

Food
Saturday the bell wakes me at 6:00, not five as feared, and breakfast is 6:30.  Oatmeal, yogurt, homemade granola and fruit are served and it's delicious. After breakfast people with real jobs have to do them but I'm free to take a three mile walk-yay me! (oops that’s so un-Buddhist…) until the first sitting at 8:15.  Lunch, the main meal, is a savory vegan chili served with maple corn bread and a full salad bar.  Oh, I could get used to it here.  

I take most of my meals outside which is kind of wonderful.  Once meals are done, there's nothing to snack on except hard-boiled eggs unless you brought your own stash.  I did not but I'm fine on three meals. At least I think I’m fine.  My stomach in the sittings has got to be distracting the entire room. It’s not just growling. I seem to have swallowed a tiny wolf whose tiny profile I envision in my stomach, snout pointing skyward and sounding out long, low hungry howls while a tumbleweed blows past him.  My apologies, fellow yogis. I had days during my last trip that I only ate one meal if things got busy and yeah, I’d get hungry late night and go to bed starving. Then I’d remind myself that millions of children worldwide go to bed hungrier than I will ever be on my hungriest day and won’t awake to the breakfast feast I will inhale in mere hours.  But back to the retreat. Dinner is always soup (and of course it’s yummy) and homemade bread, proving yet again that if I allowed it I have the potential to gain weight on anything, even healthy vegetarian food. Dry rice cakes that taste like cardboard? Bring it!
My (so-called) practice
I'm not going to lie - I doze here and there during some of the sittings and my head jerking keeps me from falling over, but for the most part I really stuck with it. The day is broken up with sitting meditations and talks and walking meditations that are each about forty-five minutes long.  There are three of each in the morning with a short break, lunch and then four of each in the afternoon. About 4:15 people with jobs have to do them and I get to take another three mile walk.  

It’s the same walk I did in the morning but it’s working for me.  I’m passing farms with grazing cows and bleating goats, I see lots of little red salamanders and frogs.  It’s a nature wonderland and the mountains around me are magnificent. I’m digging my walks. When I get back I see someone has posted on the job board that the kitchen (!) needs someone to chop vegetables Sunday morning at 7:15.  That’s my walk time but if I can be guaranteed to chop next to Hot Kitchen Guy I will totally volunteer.  Alas, the lack of guarantee prevents me from skipping the nature walk I’ve already come to love. {Sidebar: No HKG sighting Sunday so I know I’ve made the Right Decision, albeit for the Wrong Reasons.} After dinner is my two mile hike with the spider web incident and needless to say I do not venture back on the trails. The schedule for Sunday does involve getting up at 5:15 but I opt to sleep in until six (hey, it’s my weekend after all) and go to breakfast at 6:30. That I even feel compelled to rationalize “sleeping in” until 6:00 shows you how far I’ve already come. Anyway, there's only so much meditating I can do and there are more sittings before it’s time to leave.
The secret of inner peace revealed
Some people will leave more frustrated than when they arrived because they think meditation is a magic bullet.  I learn during a Q&A on Saturday (noble silence momentarily broken) that people are super twisted about whether they’re “doing it right.” One guy asks, “When is something supposed to happen?” Some come to these retreats heavily emotionally burdened or burning with questions they want answered.  I just came for some formal training so I can more easily channel serenity when bombarded with everyday stimuli.  I’m not bothered that my mind wanders (and it does!), I just bring myself back and keep at it. This level of presence is enough to bring me more inner peace than I’ve ever had, and by nature I’m a pretty happy person. 

Be present in your everyday life, even, or perhaps, especially, during activities people consider mundane and merely a means to an end: walking to your car, loading the dishwasher, taking out the trash, etc. Those things are your life in those moments so acknowledge them instead of having mental conversations that haven't happened.  Complete acceptance of this moment, whatever is happening, is the closest thing we have to a magic bullet. And that, amigos, is the secret to inner peace. Cheers!

Photo courtesy of Oprah.com