This post is a simply a collection of my favorite pictures taken during the creative meditation part of my day throughout the retreat.
Mostly plants-
Thenemesis9d9@yahoo.com is my email address. Feel free to reach out. My wildlife and nature photography can be found at uadarthmaul.smugmug.com .
This post is a simply a collection of my favorite pictures taken during the creative meditation part of my day throughout the retreat.
Mostly plants-
I had intended to write this entry right as I was arriving at my next location in Mongolia, but I only had one full day in my hotel before going out into the countryside, and I forgot to write it that day!
From Tokyo Station, I took a bullet train to Nagano, a subway to Suzaka Station. Once there, I sat on a bench waiting for a bus. There were three other non Japanese people waiting nearby, and sure enough, they boarded my bus towards the temple. We began chatting on the ride. One was Swiss, one Israeli, and one German. Two women, one man, with ages from 22 to 38. We got off at our stop and two miniature sized mini vans were waiting to bring us the final few minutes to arrive at the temple.
Weird blue building at the bus stop. |
This was to be a silent meditation retreat, but the first day was more of an orientation, and talking was allowed. The other man, a 38 year old pediatrician from Switzerland, was my bunkmate. We were given a two story loft, with a wide staircase and curtain dfferentiating our areas. We had a bathroom, but had to slide a large and heavy door open, and take a single step outside before accessing it.
The building on the right was our house. |
This was my room, and the steps leading up above was given to the Swissman. |
Front of the main buildings. |
The tea and snack room. |
Entrance to the chanting and calligraphy building. |
The beads used to craft. |
My first Buddha tracing attempt resulted in a picture of a Buddha who got into a bar fight and lost. |
This was the first set of calligraphy letters. I think it is supposed to represent something regarding a protagonist. |
The lower left characters spells my name(not UA). |
I spent a lot of time reading at the retreat. She encouraged reading Buddhism related books. On my kindle, I had Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. It was a surprisingly compelling read, and not the kind of ok that I would normally read(I must have picked it up for free with some deal). It was the journey of a man to find the meaning of life. He tried to be a minimalist monk who lived in the wilderness, eventually abandoned that and tried living in a city and finding love and learning a trade. This led to him succumbing to human excess, leading him to once again dropping everything and searching, eventually finding peace living alongside another man, running a ferry in the countryside with no one else nearby. His final challenge involved caring for his son, that he had not known he had. He dealt with the frustration of his child having a very different path from him and had to learn to let him go, to live his own life. There were many truths in this story, with the standout being that you can teach knowledge, but not wisdom.
My roommate was named Carlos, and I loved his dress style. I asked him what kind of clothing it was and he shared the name of the brand and style. It is a European brand, but there is an American branch that only sells direct. I plan to try it out upon my return. A memorable moment that I had with Carlos was on the first night, when we were allowed to talk. We were waiting outside for the others(we actually were in the wrong location, and they were all waiting for us elsewhere), he asked about my life. I told him about getting custody of Miles, along with that whole story. In response he said something akin to, "How does that make you feel?" I thought that that was a brilliant and elevated response question. Every time I interacted with Carlos he had a smile on his face and gave an aura of peaceful pleasantness about him. I greatly enjoyed having him around. We made sure that we were both on time to expected gatherings.
One creative assignment was to draw commitment in nature and commitment in your own life. I drew a wasp nest and occupying wasp that I found while practicing photography. I drew myself staying in America to raise Miles. The second to last day was gloomy outside, so I took the opportunity to do photo editing on my laptop as my creative meditation. I felt that despite being electronic, it fell under the creative and meditative umbrella.
After each meal, we washed dishes in pairs, with one washing and one drying. The following meal would have the other two people doing this work.
While we stayed silent the vast majority of the time, calligraphy required some speech to ask specific questions or to ask for help. She was not ultra strict about it, as it was sometimes necessary. That being said, I definitely was chastised at least once for breaking protocol. I definitely felt a school vibe, where I was always on the edge of rule space, often going just over the line before retreating back across it.
I noticed that when I received my phone back each day, it would be accompanied by higher levels of anxiety and overall higher stress, and I felt more relaxed and at peace without it. This was so readily apparent because of the twenty two hours of the day without it and how relaxed I felt during this time.
Overall, I enjoyed my time at the retreat. What I enjoyed the most, despite the silence, was the comradery with the other people. I wished it had been a regular meditation retreat without the silence, but even with silence, there are many ways to communicate and enjoy a shared space with others. I do not feel like I was able to make much progress in learning to meditate, however. Maybe I would have been better off having had more experience beforehand.