A Retreat
Saturday I went to a Buddhist meditation retreat. No one was more surprised than I when I actually showed up. I had accepted the invitation as a matter of politeness, and was thinking of bailing every minute until I got into the car, yet somehow I ended up on 41st Ave., and Clarendon at the Arizona Buddhist Temple at 10 AM on a Saturday morning.
The temple’s surroundings left something to be desired. It has been in the same spot since the 1960s, and the neighborhood has grown up around it and deteriorated around it as well.
Almost directly across Clarendon St. from the temple’s entrance are a couple of “recycling” companies. In front of one, J&J Recycling, was a line of skinny men pushing supermarket carts, sometimes more than one, and carrying plastic bags or garbage bags full of cans, plastic water, bottles, and other redeemables.
If you have ever seen one of these people wandering your neighborhood, picking your cans and bottles out of your garbage, this must be where they take their carts, trading their contents for money. Most of these people are not well dressed, and are, let us say, slender.
At first I thought they were probably drug addicts, but I’ve reconsidered my opinion since the Buddhist retreat reminded me about letting go of assumptions, and I now think there’s just no way that,if they are pushing supermarket carts all around Phoenix every day, they can keep any weight on themselves even if they can afford enough food. Phoenix isn’t a small city and they must put marathons of miles on their scrawny frames.
In short, it’s a lousy life outside the Buddhist Temple.
Inside, however, we were welcomed by a very warmhearted low key man, whom I was told had left a law practice in midlife to become a meditation teacher. He guided us through an opening meditation on innate good,( emptiness, or the absolute.)
This is a belief I have always held about the universe as an American, at least until Donald Trump began running for office. It went something like this: the universe is basically benevolent, and things tend to work out.
Obviously, this theory has been tested over the past eight years, but I am still able to hang on to a belief in the innate goodness of a universe that, at the very least, is not stacked against us if we register and vote.
The second meditation, however, led me into a darker place. Stephen Snyder, the teacher, asked us to envision ourselves on the ocean and visualize, after a very colorful sunset, a dark night, an ocean full of waves and the opportunity to see ourselves as one of the waves, or as the background, meaning as the entire ocean. Oy.
This meditation scared the pants off me, because I’m a very poor swimmer, and I tend to think of the ocean as dangerous. I was quickly out of my depth, so to speak. In order to continue sitting and contemplating without having a panic attack I had to cheat a little to put my mind in a better place. In line with the ocean theme, I decided to visualize the movie “My Octopus Teacher," in which the diver and the octopus seemed to be in a relationship of innate good.
People who don’t meditate every day are never sure whether they are “doing it right” and I am one of them. But so far this was better than my last retreat, which took place in Guadalajara, and during which I had a midnight panic attack and thought I was dying.
So far so good.
Cut to lunch.
Maryvale was the first suburb built in Phoenix after World War II and it was pretty avant garde in its day, but it is now a melting pot of ethnicities united only by housing prices, including whites, Hispanics, Japanese, and Vietnamese. This makes the food incredibly good, although some of the restaurant buildings look like a paint job is overdue. Following Yelp,we tried to get into a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho 43, but it was so crowded that we would have had to wait through the entire lunch hour, so we defaulted into a Mexican restaurant with equally authentic food. I knew it was authentic because tongue was on the menu. I haven’t had beef tongue since I was 10.
During the afternoon, I couldn’t concentrate because members of my family who couldn’t believe I’d turned off my phone kept calling me. I had indeed turned off my phone, but no one had reminded my Apple watch. I finally gave up and left quietly.
Is there a lesson I learned at the retreat? Oh yes, there were several major takeaways.
First, as soon as you commit to attending a meditation retreat you automatically begin to live in the “now” as you are supposed to. It’s almost as if your mind begins to get in shape for the retreat. I noticed more of my surroundings than usual (I am often unaware of them while I am thinking.) Even before the retreat started,I began noticing things.
If I got rid of thinking, many other things could penetrate, like seeing or tasting .
Second Maryvale is a wonderful place to eat and the small restaurants on 43rd Ave. are worth a try. No way in hell I’d have learned that without the retreat.
Third, people who attend retreats are, by and large, open-minded seekers, who are very fun and worth meeting.
You learn something from every new experience you open yourself to. Sometimes it’s not what you expect.
Next time a visiting Buddhist meditation teacher floats through your town say yes.