Retreating

Rivendell, July 2022

First the usual explanation of the delay between blog posts - I managed to leave the power cable for my PC at mum and dad's so I couldn't type until I'd got that back, and as usual there have been a million things to do since getting back home.

The retreat was at a centre I hadn't visited before, with enough space in the glorious gardens for my luxurious tent and a more modest tent belonging to another retreatant. The weather was perfect and by chance (or maybe the other camper knew what he was doing) we both had found the best orientation for our tents - facing the early sun for warmth in the morning but shaded in the hottest part of the day.

The grounds of this retreat centre were amazing. The house was at the highest point with a beautiful garden at that level, then wide terraces descended to a pond used for waste water treatment and beyond this there were woods. The trees were mature and enormous: mighty oaks, a stupendous lime, willow and more towered in the distance.

The theme of the retreat was Buddhist practice outdoors, led by Vajragupta who wrote the book about this, and it was for 'beginners'  which meant that non-Buddhists could also attend. These two points meant that the flavour of the week was very different from my 'Seven Days of Silence' in Wales. We had periods of quiet and spent quite a bit of time outside on our own, but it was very sociable at other times. On the last full day we were given our own packed lunch and sent off until tea time.

I love Vajragupta's book on how he spends solitary time living in basic conditions, and would love to do the same. This week felt like practising for that situation. While some spent their day on a long walk (as I did on that previous retreat in Wales) I decided I would sit in just one place for a day and see how that felt.

I chose a meadow with a few isolated mature trees that I visited individually. I sat under a sycamore, and there were also two copper beeches, two trees I didn't recognise and a magnificent and beautiful oak. There were also deer grazing and resting and keeping well away from me at the bottom of the meadow, and I saw birds, butterflies, insects, spiders and rabbits. I sat there all day apart from a short walk to visit the trees, and didn't get bored for a minute.

That was probably the best part of the week if you don't count the time that three of us rolled down a short but very steep slope in the terraced gardens. That was a lot of fun. The worst part of the week was less than a mile from the centre - as I started my journey home I ran over a squirrel. Proper squashed. There goes all the karma gained from my good deeds for the week.