Internal Drama

[reposted 8/23]

I recently spent one week on a retreat at a Zen monastery in Northern California. For years I've been reading the books published by the head monk, and over time her words convinced me to begin and sustain a daily meditation practice. It felt like it was time to visit and learn how to incorporate some of the other spiritual tools she had mentioned in her writings and on her radio show.

Before I left a few people said, "Have fun!" or "Have a great time!" or "Sounds peaceful." I am guessing these well-wishers had never spent a week in a silent, structured environment that is designed to reveal to retreatants how their minds operate. With no e-mail, Internet, phone or other things to distract my attention, my monkey mind was more clearly exposed. Volatile, not peaceful, more accurately describes what I experienced.

Although this retreat was not completely silent - we participated in brief group discussions every day - I had enough time alone to observe what my mind will do to generate drama out of thin air, or, in this case, out of the dirt. This monastery, located on some 300 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills, had a lot of rules to follow, all clearly spelled out in a guest booklet that I found in my hermitage, a tiny cabin in the woods. The rules mostly fell into two categories: silence and sanitation. In the former, we were instructed to not speak to anyone, to walk with an averted gaze so as not to make eye contact, and to leave a note for "Guestmaster" on the message board if we needed something. Since this was a role and not a specific person, "Guestmaster" took on the quality of an anonymous, omnipotent authority figure. Leaving a note for "Guestmaster" felt, at times, as if I were asking God for a favor. In terms of sanitation, we were asked to remove shoes and don slippers to prevent dust and grime from dirtying the dining room and meditation hall. And we were asked to wash our hands every time we entered the dining room, even if we had just washed our hands after using the restroom. I often ended up washing my hands nearly a dozen times a day. If cleanliness is next to Godliness then I was getting closer.

But my internal drama centered around another phrase in the guest booklet: Assume Nothing. The comprehensive rules were, apparently, not enough. The monastery did not want people to make judgments and decisions for themselves about what else might be appropriate or acceptable.

In between sits and group sessions we had free time and I would go for walks around the property on various dirt paths. It was quite hot and I was not moving quickly and on my second or third day my eyes were drawn to some shiny turquoise shapes on the ground. I looked closer and saw that they were shards of pottery that looked similar to the hand-thrown dishes and bowls we used at meal times (another rule was that we could not remove these special plates from the dining hall. Now I understood why - apparently many of them had not survived the journey from dining hall to hermitage).

My artist-self got excited about a potentially large treasure trove of colorful pottery shards for her mosaics.

Assume Nothing.

"But we're at a monastery," my inner Policewoman said to the Artist, "don't assume you can take them. Ask the Guestmaster."

"That's silly," came the reply, from a rather pragmatic character. "Probably no one even knows these shards are here. Some are partially buried. Leaving a note is just a way of drawing attention to yourself, and that's not why you're here."

Another voice chimed in: "These are sharp and could hurt someone or puncture a tire. You're doing the monastery a favor by picking them up."

I started to collect the shards, carefully choosing the best ones in terms of thickness, size and shape and putting them into a bag.

"You really should ask first," warned the Policewoman. "Don't take that which is not given."

Indeed, that is one of the lines I'd heard the monks recite each morning before meditation.

"But they might say no! I really want these. Then I'll be upset," my Inner Child piped up.

I had observed that the Guestmaster often took up to 24 hours to respond to a note. Did I want to suspend my collection efforts for such a long period of time or, worse, have to hand over my stash? That would be mortifying.

"They won't say no - that's crazy!" said the Pragmatist.

"You're too conscientious. This is NOT a big deal. If they didn't want people to remove stones and objects from the property they would have created a rule and told you. No rule = no problem," contributed the Lawyer.

"But," the Policewoman emphasized, "they said Assume Nothing."

"Well, these pottery shards are not in the field of their awareness," said the Lawyer, cleverly co-opting the monastery's terminology. "Trust me, no one is going to know they are missing."

During my walks I continued to pick up the shards but I kept looking around to see if anyone was observing me. I realized I was behaving like a thief.

"If I don't ask I will feel like I'm hiding something. And I don't want to hide anymore," said the voice of the well-intentioned person who had come to the retreat. "I don't want to leave the monastery carrying a secret, no matter how small it might seem."

"So, ask the Guestmaster if it's OK to pick them up. Pretend you haven't touched them yet," advised the Lawyer. "And what happens if they say NO?!"

"Well, I can get up early and dump them somewhere. At least I enjoyed finding them. Or I can take them with me anyway and I'll have had the experience of going through this process. This is all part of awareness practice," I countered, sounding a little too lawyerly for my own comfort.

"How you do anything is how you do everything," intoned my Spiritual Guide, quoting one of the head monk's favorite phrases. "You can ask, speak up and clear your conscience, rather than continue lurking around the edge of this sangha (community)."

"Why do you want to feel like a part of this sangha, anyway? It's a resource for you and you contribute to it financially. Why not keep it at arm's length?" said a rather cool, calculating Accountant-like voice.

"Besides, you're Jewish!" declared the Rabbi, as if I needed to be reminded. "Why don't you join a synagogue, instead?" (side note to dualistic Rabbi: "Why can't I join BOTH?")

I decide that I'm fed up listening to the Pragmatist, the Lawyer and the Accountant. Two days before the end of the retreat I muster the courage to leave a note for the Guestmaster. Rather than fudging it, I explain that I'd already picked up some shards, realized that I should have asked first, and that I wanted permission to take them and use them in a mosaic for the monastery's benefit. Either I could donate a piece of art to one of their fundraising events or sell it on my own and send the proceeds to them.

The hours slowly passed. I kept checking the message board to see if the Guestmaster had responded. Nothing. After 22 hours of waiting, I started to feel sad, ashamed (after all, now they knew what I'd been up to!) and deflated. The various voices in my head convinced me that the monks had gathered in a special session to "discuss" my situation and to render a "verdict", as if this had been the most important issue at the monastery. My excitement at taking the broken pottery and transforming it into a piece of art had dissipated, if not disappeared altogether. Although I noticed a rich lode of scrumptious pottery shards on a less-traveled path, I decided not to pick them up until I had received a response. My Artist and Inner Child felt chastened and deprived. I explained to them that the fun was in finding the pottery and that we'd have a chance to work with lots of material back at the studio. And we'd probably find even better things to play with elsewhere.

The night before I was scheduled to leave the monastery I saw a note addressed to me on the message board. Fearing disappointing news, I decided to wait until the following morning to read it. When I opened it the note simply said, "Thanks for asking. That's fine with us." It was 6:20 a.m. and I grabbed my satchel, bounded out of my hermitage and harvested another pound of pottery from that rich lode.