Day Seven

This is the 7th day of writing/meditation retreat. Things are beginning to get interesting.

Last night, I drove the 10 miles to Shambhala Mountain Center to hear Sakyong Mipham give a talk and in-depth meditation instruction. It was wonderful to see him, beyond wonderful, indescribable. Anyone who has had the great fortune to find a spiritual teacher, the teacher for them, knows what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, it’s very hard to say what it feels like. Although there were several hundred people at last night’s talk, I felt that he was speaking to me personally; his teaching reverberated with some aspect of my practice, my mind, my concerns. It has nothing to do with making you feel happy. It’s more like a kind of profound intimacy, like someone talking with you from within your own mind and moving with or away from all the subtle shifts, turns, and gradations that arise. It is so private.

I also saw many, many friends from the noble Shambhala sangha, which was lovely but also kind of heartbreaking. I long to be with them, to practice intensely and experience the joy of enlightened society that is created under such circumstances. I can drop in for various things, but it isn’t the same and so I felt very lonely.

Speaking of lonely. Today, like the majority of the past week, I have been completely alone. I’m in a beautiful house, beyond the beyond of lovely. Spectacular.

The house has every conceivable comfort. The phrase “well appointed” comes to mind. It is a house of devoted practitioners and I can feel their dignity and genuineness in every corner. The house is designed to relate to the mountain range it looks out on. In all the main areas of the house—bedroom, living room, kitchen, dining room, you look out onto extraordinary spaciousness. If you could see what I’m looking at right now… well, actually you can. See photo of right now:

Wherever I settle myself, I’m able to see how the mountains morph throughout the day, responding to sunshine and clouds, darkness and light. Yet they remain implacable. Would that we could all be this equanimous, this inscrutable; responsive yet utterly planted.

The first few days, I took pictures of everything. Every room, every vista, every time of day. I realize now that I was trying to have a conversation, trying to bring someone in, show someone (Duncan, my parents, my girlfriends) where I was so I wouldn’t be so alone. When I’m home, I crave solitude. But the first thing I did was try to establish conversation. I see that I’m scared to be completely alone. I don’t understand much outside of city living and so it intimidates me to walk too far from the house. This makes me sad. I’m scared of the dark and I really don’t know why. As the sun sets, like it is doing now, I feel my loneliness and fear rise. What am I afraid of? Again, I do not know.

There is no phone here. I miss talking to Duncan so much. I miss how he makes me feel safe. Without him, I’m not sure how to do it for myself.

I spend all day doing one of three things: practicing meditation and studying texts that relate to my practice; working on my book, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart,” which is due in October; or fussing. I’ve been spending a lot of time fussing. I sit down to read and then think I should write. I start to write but have nothing to say. I fix myself something to eat but then I’m not hungry. I check e-mail and then feel a longing to be working on the book. I return to the manuscript and find that it says nothing, absolutely nothing. Then, finally, at some point, hopefully at least once in a day, all that drops away and I find my voice, I find that I do have something to say.

Practicing meditation has been very deep. I spent the week before coming here teaching a retreat so I had already been acculturating to a retreat pace, sitting for short periods throughout those seven days. I came home for 36 hours before leaving for NYC for one night where I participated in a “talk back” after a theatrical performance of a play called “The Perfect Couple.” If you’ve never heard of a talk back (I hadn’t), it’s when people with something to say about the play are on stage afterward to dialog with each other and with the audience. I was one of three authors and our conversation was moderated by the two completely awesome authors of “The Nanny Diaries” and did I ever love them. Plus it was really fun to talk to the audience about relationships. For that night, I stayed at the apartment of one of the producers who was also a producer on some John Waters’ shows based on his movies, like “Cry Baby” and “Hairspray,” I believe. Her assistant let me into this lovely apartment on Union Square right near where I used to live at 10th and University. The producer and I never even met. She came in late and I had a 5:30 AM car to the airport to fly to Denver. So that was a completely urban blip between these two retreats. I felt totally comfortable walking all over downtown Manhattan and staying in a stranger’s apartment on Broadway but I feel kind of stiff and shut down in the house of friends, in the middle of the mountains. Once when I told a friend of my fears of being alone in the country, he said, “you’ve got it reversed. You should be afraid in NYC and feel safe here.” Well it doesn’t work that way for me.

Anyway, between the solitude, the beauty, receiving teachings from Sakyong Mipham, trying to grasp the nature of heartbreak, and a lot of meditation practice, I feel so raw. My responses are unpredictable. Sudden things arise in my mind that make me cry or laugh, but mostly cry. I could try to give some examples, but they would be meaningless to anyone but me, to whom they are quite meaningful, yet also completely ephemeral. The instruction under such circumstances is just this: relax. But relaxing doesn’t mean spacing out or distracting yourself with Project Runway reruns, or even the new season, which started last night but who’s counting. It means allowing what arises to arise, and to continue allowing and allowing, without knowing what it means, where it’s going, or how it will end. All by yourself. It is scary and noble at the same time.

But wait. I’m not alone. I have a kitty cat for company. Here he is, assisting me in the writing process.

categorized in: creativity, dharma