Vacation is almost over. I could get used to this. And as usual I figure it shouldn't be that hard to maintain -- or at least to make room for, this experience of rest, peace and openness to the present moment even when I'm back at work.
I wonder how (maybe even, if) others do it? Maintain some practice of restful sabbath in their routine, workaday life?
Unlike last year, this year we made it to the cottage. Thank you, John and Judy for your continuing generosity. It was a thoroughly peace-ful week. Japhia calls the place God-kissed, and that means a lot coming from her.
For me, a great gift of the week was the opportunity to visit the Tisarana Buddhist monastery featured in a recent issue of Broadview (the new incarnation of what used to be The Observer) as one of ten "spiritual road trips" worth taking in Canada this summer. When I saw it and noticed the monastery was just a little over an hour from Varty Lake -- just a few kilometres south of Perth, and that they welcomed day visitors, I knew I would get there.
Online I learned that Saturdays at 1:30 they host a Public Meditation, described as an hour-and-a-half to two hours that begins with chanting, then 45 minutes of meditation, followed by a talk and a time for Q/A. So Saturday morning I looked at the maps, wrote down directions to help navigate the backroads I would have to take, checked one last time that Japhia didn't want to go and was okay with me leaving her at the cottage for the better part of the day, thanked her for the lunch she made for me to eat on the way, and I set out.
Twice along the way I lost the route. The first time I just flat out missed the sign for the road I needed to take. The second time the roads themselves had been changed from whenever the directions were posted, so a turn I needed to make wasn't where and how I was told it would be. So twice I drove for a ways in a wrong direction, turned around when I realized it, and asked for help (can you believe it?) from strangers to find the way again.
The first time even after asking I almost decided to go in exactly the opposite direction I was advised. Even though I was in unfamiliar territory I thought I knew better because -- oh, it pains me to admit this level of Western white bias! -- the man advising me was a Korean convenience store owner who spoke broken English. The second time -- yeah, you guessed it! -- the advice came from a young, tanned, blond, White man who I listened to readily. Both knew the territory better than me. Thankfully I asked for help and, regardless of bias and prejudice, accepted it from both.
And isn't that the way?
And isn't the way more important in the end than the destination itself? The choosing of it, the losing of it, and the continual re-finding of it in ways we don't expect, with the help of strangers, over and over again? And, just as important, knowing peace and gratitude in, in spite of, and because of each present moment of the journey, no matter how we might feel about it?
Which is exactly, of course, something that Buddhist awareness, mindful meditation, and the life of faith are all about.
As I was reminded of, in the Public Meditation at the monastery which, by the way, I reached with time enough to spare.
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