Staying grounded as the days get shorter
Dear Friends,
As the weather begins to turn slightly cooler and the days shorter, we naturally feel like turning more inward. During the time that the Buddha lived, he spent 45 years teaching - most of that time walking around India with his monastic community showing people how to find happiness and ease in the midst of our everyday suffering. But he also knew that it was important for his students to set aside time for self-reflection.
There is a season in India and in parts of Asia where there is heavy rainfall, often called the monsoon season. This extreme weather caused flooding which made travel for the Buddha much more difficult. The rain also made small animals and crops more vulnerable to injury. For these reasons, and also to reground themselves in their practice, the Buddha decided that he and his community would spend those months – 90-days each year – practicing meditation rooted at home.
The annual Rains Retreat, the name that these 90-days came to be called, is so important to monastic communities, that a monastic’s seniority is based on the number of Rains Retreats they have attended, rather than the number of years that they have been part of the community.
This year, I will be embarking on my first Rains Retreat at Plum Village. I will be sitting the first half of the retreat, starting on October 13. I would like to invite you to join me by creating your own retreat, whatever that might look like for you. You might think of creating a Winter Retreat if you live, as I do, in the Northern Hemisphere.
One way to retreat would be to join an existing program at one of the Plum Village practice centers or another center. If that’s not possible for you this year, consider creating your own at-home retreat for a set period of time. You can set up a schedule of sitting meditation, eating meditation, walking meditation and watching pre-recorded dharma talks during your retreat days. I’ve done this many times, and would be happy to answer any questions you might have about it.
I hope that you can find a way to weave in some longer practice periods during the upcoming darker days. I find that turning inward offers insights about my habit energies and thought patterns. And, the more we know about our internal processes, the more we can understand what needs to be let go of in order for us to be more free.
As the 13th century Zen master Dogen wrote, studying ourselves is the first step to enlightenment:
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
As always, please reach out to share your plans or your questions anytime. I will be completely off email from October 12-November 22, so please reach out before or after that.
