retreat, n. a withdrawal: an orderly withdrawal before an enemy, or from a position of danger or difficulty: retirement: seclusion: retirement for a time for religious meditation: a place of privacy, seclusion, refuge, or quiet; an institution for treatment of the insane, drunkards, or others.
[L. retrahere, to draw back.]
– Chambers English Dictionary
I’ve just returned from a trip south, taking in a wonderful reading to launch Magma 88 – the Underworld issue – at the Workshop Theatre in Leeds, a retreat in Sussex, where the fields had become lakes and the may already in flower and, on the way home, a stay in London to see my sister (and the stunning Julia Margaret Cameron & Francesca Woodman show at the refurbished National Portrait Gallery). The weather veered from bitingly cold to heavy rain to glorious sunshine to the threat of thunderstorms. Clothes were layered on, layers were peeled off.
Being on silent retreat exaggerated the incessant change in the elements – and generally was less soothing than many people imagine. Most folk associate the word ‘retreat’ with ‘spa’ or at the very least ‘sanctuary’. My experience is often more like Ian Hamilton Finlay’s suggestion – talking about gardens – that a retreat is often doublespeak for an attack. Not just incessant change, Every Single Thing is exaggerated. You don’t appear to be doing anything but you’re in the spin cycle, going through the wringer, airing your dirty laundry – so many washing-related metaphors seem to apply. Once you stop pretending it isn’t happening and surrender to the flow – chaos – uncertainty – risk – vulnerability, things usually calm down a bit and you might perhaps emerge washed clean, ready for the world to seep back in and crumple you up again.
The people in my life have got used to me going on retreat – usually twice a year or so for the past twenty-seven years ( – passed in a blink…still so green and uncomprehending…). They express horror at the idea of not talking for a week, getting up at around 5.30 in the morning, sitting for many hours in meditation, or, at my local monastery, not eating in the evenings. Why would anyone want to willingly suffer all these deprivations? I’m never sure how to answer, unable to make a clear case; ‘aims and objectives’ contrary to the spirit of this kind of embodied, in-the-moment unfolding.
This time, unusually in recent years, I was travelling to the other end of the country to join a retreat in a place I didn’t know, with people I didn’t know, which made it seem all the more inexplicable and taxing. The pull was a chance to practise with a teacher visiting from America, who I’ve been getting to know online and through his excellent books – Lama Rod Owens. His approach is Tibetan Buddhism from a contemporary queer black perspective and I’m really grateful for the inclusiveness and diversity of the community that is growing around him. His style is urban and maverick, with a deep appreciation of the land and the ancestral relationship with the land. I’ve found this deeply refreshing in the rather bland, homogenised, middle-class, white space that is Western mindfulness. I realised on retreat one of the things I love about Lama Rod is he doesn’t use the word ‘mindfulness’. He talks rather about ‘remembering’, and some of his favourite words include ‘liberation’, ‘audacity’, ‘wholeness’, all delivered in a sweet southern sing-song drawl.
Going on retreat for me is less about the ‘retreat’ (although I luxuriate in being temporarily liberated from the digital and surrendering to the silent spaciousness this creates) and more about taking myself out of my comfort zone. It’s often busier, noisier, than it is for me at home; certainly more populated, regulated, active than my usual quiet, a-rhythmic, solitary routines. This all gives me something to work with, introducing a fresh take on my habits of mind and awareness.
To give those of you who are interested a sense of how the time is spent, and to dispel any mystique, here’s an example of our daily schedule – quite relaxed compared with retreats in more monastic settings:
5.45 morning bell
6.15 – 7 morning practice
7.15 – 8.30 breakfast (byo)
9 – 11.30 teaching/practice
11.30 – 12 movement practice
12 – 1.30 lunch
1.30 – 2.15 rest
2.15 – 3.30 affinity groups
3.30 – 5 community practice
5.30 – 7 evening meal
7.30 – 10 teaching/practice/ritual
Whatever else was happening, the food was magnificent – always extra-important on retreat – and cooked with love and imagination by Isy and Charlie of Two Trees Catering, based in Bristol. We ate outdoors, huddled in coats and scarves, sheltered by willows and wild flowers.
Unlike some people who find silence challenging, it really suits me. I enjoy sharing a space and not needing to talk – simply to be alongside others in a convivial, supportive silence allows you to go inward, be more aware of yourself and also of those around you. I find it refreshing, a relief, not to have to talk or respond, except by expressions and gestures. And people reveal more of themselves without words than with – there’s nothing to hide behind, a deeper intimacy of connection. Perhaps that’s why they/we can find it so difficult – like going naked. But you’re all there naked together so really there’s no need to worry. (And if you find you need to, you can talk to a teacher or support person.) The invitation is just to stay present with whatever arises and hold it with kindness. Sometimes this feels manageable, sometimes less so. One person left after the first couple of days for reasons of her own. I noticed she’d gone – the seal of the fifty or so of us in our rickety home-made boat broken – and hope she was okay.
There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present-day society: to retreat ahead of it.
– Roland Barthes
The main teachings and practices took the form of talks, meditations, visualisations, chanting, inquiry (interspersed with chi kung/tai chi-type movement, dancing, self-massage, ancestral journeying and rituals, involving fire or walking – not at the same time…). It all felt very holistic and heuristic, substantial, integrating. The focus was on love and compassion, the cultivation of wholeness and protection, the decolonialisation of the heart and mind. At times I was glowing with a kind of rapture, full of warmth for myself and all beings, feeling deeply connected with our beautiful biosphere. At other times I was jagged with a fierce restlessness, boredom and irritation. What am I doing here? I want it to be over. I want to go home.
But in the end, you’re able to notice it all passing through you – like the weather, shifting dramatically over the course of a single day. On the face of it, I have perfect conditions for this sort of reflection at home, but it’s different alongside others, in community. Not getting your own way all the time (actually any of the time – the schedule can’t suit everybody), you don’t delude yourself so easily. You see how we’re all different and all the same – all of us suffering, all of us doing our best, just wanting to be well, to be free, wanting all beings to be free. You’re emptied out by the experience and slip back into your life, changed by it, the door nudged open to let in a little more light.
We come to a point where we decide that there’s nothing to get out of this at all. This is the complete giving up, the complete letting go: not getting anything out of anything.
– Ajahn Sucitto
Going on retreat and being on retreat becomes entirely ordinary and that’s okay. I’m increasingly interested in the ordinary rather than the momentous, what sustains us rather than the promise of any fleeting delectation, the immanent rather than the utilitarian. Everything we need is right here. Yes, there are many things to be disappointed about, so much sadness, and that has to be okay too – part of our grieving for a burning world.
This time, for the first time, I was perhaps the oldest person there – a rare experience for me these days when I often seem to find myself in rooms full of people with white hair. It was both welcome – fresh! beautiful! uplifting! – and challenging – no pretending I’m not getting irrevocably older, slower, less energetic… I generally find retreats tiring, especially the first few days, but I was quite shattered much of the time and slept whenever there was space in the schedule. Despite the sudden immersion into London life (also exhausting), I’ve come home feeling regenerated, a creature fit for May and all that sap rising.
On our last morning on retreat, I spent a long time with some of the place’s many gorgeous silver birches, sun shining through their bright green leaves, and heard a cuckoo calling across the fields – a blessing from the pale clay of this part of the earth as I made my way back to the darker, colder north I’m happy to call home.
That friends, is the sum of my wanting.
Next to nothing, close to everything.
– Pablo Neruda
*
A reminder that on next week’s New Moon we’ll be gathering for our Writing into Being Writing Hour– May 8th 4 – 5pm BST. Look forward to seeing some of you there.
Also perhaps at Newcastle Poetry Festival 9th – 11th May, kicking off with the Poetry Book Society’s International Symposium on 9th. I’ll be reading on Friday from my Leonora Carrington-inspired sonnets, accompanied by slides. This year I’ve been doing some work with the Young People’s Theatre again and they will be performing their piece about Shields Road on Saturday morning.
All together a good few days of ear-to-ear poetry – a different sort of retreat…
Go well.
L
x
So apt so clear so inspiring. Breathing in your retreat experience reminds me of my two months of silence with 34 people on the Gower Peninsula. I echo many of your words. And I look forward to our retreat together in the Autumn.
I find silent retreats enormously helpful. I enjoy being with people without the need to communicate with words - somehow you meet in a different, less guarded way. I would very much like to join the writing hour on Wednesday.