My first post

Ok...so I have wanted to create a blog for a while, and the New Year seemed as good a time as any to begin. I spent the time between Christmas and New Years in a Zen Buddhist silent meditation retreat. The way I got to such a thing is that about 3 months ago I was looking for places to learn meditation. Through word of mouth I ended up at The Village Zendo in Soho, in NYC, sitting counting my breaths a couple evenings per week. My reason in doing this is to clear my mind of all the thoughts that are constantly banging around up there, in the hopes that it will help me get through some of the things that stop me from progressing with my vocal lessons.

So after a 2.5 hour train ride and a $45 taxi ride, I find myself in this beautiful area of rural Connecticut in a large dorm building run by Catholic nuns, that has been rented out by the Zendo for their week-long annual winter retreat. As a participant you are expected to remain silent, with your eyes at a downward 45 degrees the entire week. I was assigned a room on the 4th floor with a silent roommate, who I learned later was a 40-something Latin teacher for a charter school in MA. Over the next 5 days (I arrived 2 days into the retreat) I spent much of my waking hours (5:45am to 9:30pm) sitting on a round cushion on a 2 foot by 2 foot mat, staring at a heater vent and counting my breaths from 1 to 10 and then back again, trying not to become distracted by random thoughts. I found this extremely difficult because my back was sore from something I had done before I had arrived. The object of the seated meditation was to sit absolutely still, not to fidget, which was exactly what I was doing. I was frustrated.

And then there were all the Buddhist services and liturgy that I had never seen or expected. I wasn't too keen on all of the bowing and the chanting in Sanskrit and Japanese, but it was harmless and after speaking to one of the Zen teachers in "Interview" I found that even she wasn't all that keen on the ritual, but that the meditation took her where she needed to go and so she looked past all the other stuff. That sounded fair.

The food was all vegetarian, there was plenty of it, and mostly it was good. I was assigned to the daily task of washing dishes and cleaning the lunchroom every day after the mid-day meal, which was the only time I got to talk with other people, and so it was welcomed. They call it "work practice" which was an opportunity to practice a meditative state while wiping bean sprout tofu terriaki off of someone else's half eaten plate...but always in a "mindful" way. Sounds like Buddhist bullshit to me.

The countryside surrounding the retreat site was beautiful and between my long walks every day and the outside walking meditations that we did, I was able to fully appreciate the beauty of the snowy New England Countryside.

About 3 days into the retreat my back was less bothersome and I actually managed to sit through my meditations with less and less thoughts intruding, and when they did they intrude, they didn't really take hold. It was exciting because that has been my goal all along, to quiet the mind. My favorite "practice" time was the first meditation in the morning, at 5:45am when the world was still dark and quiet. It seemed a sacred time.

Finally on New Years Eve, a service involving the ringing of a very large bronze bowl, sounding somewhat like a sonorous gong, 108 times. This continuous ringing experienced by what was now a relatively quiet mind was quite pervading, with the sound surrounding you, going through you and being a part of you all at the same time. I think I achieved a Buddha moment listening to that ringing. After that service, all of the participants (about 60 of us) got to share for the first time that week. It was then that we got to look at everyone else and listen to their experiences and find out who we all were. I think that everyone was profoundly affected by their experience. I know I was.