and seats himself on his cushion facing the wall. As my movie-theater blindness clears, I see more people and Penelope’s meditation instructions call out from the back of my head. Imagining a square dance caller’s bark, I’m pushed to similarly bow low, “honor my corner, honor my partner,” and settle in on my stool. A gong is sounded and a monk announces, “Meditation.”
We now sit for thirty minutes. I go at this with a Western Protestant work ethic, resolving to muddle through no matter what. Within ten minutes a tingling numbness races past my knees up to my thighs. I’d heard that zazen meditation could become uncomfortable, but one should focus away from the pain and on one’s breathing and not allow physical pettiness to keep you from Nirvana.
The numbness in my limbs is actually a welcome relief compared to the excruciating, hatchet-like attack in the center of my forehead—certainly a mega-migraine. Since it’s after 4:00 p.m., this is probably the result of major caffeine withdrawal. “Going to God no matter what,” I become “one with,” although I’m not sure with what. I try to settle in and even out my breathing.
Hardly noticing the time pass, I hear a deeper brass gong and then a monk’s soft voice announce, “Walking meditation.” I note tremendous rustling as all stooped bodies become erect and begin a slow walk. As I kick back my stool, my legs shoot forward like matchsticks. No matter how much my Western mind urges me to get upright, I roll over onto the sides of my feet and buckle under. Undaunted, I push and work my way up like a grasshopper, immediately crumbling onto the rug. Feeling no sensation from my hip socket down, I have no fear of amputation, just embarrassment that I can’t get up from the floor.
Reverend Penelope’s voice whispers close to my ear, “Are you having trouble, Judi?”
“Is the pope Catholic?” I want to scream at her naked earlobe. I nod instead.
“I think you’d better try the bench. Come, I’ll find you a place.” She holds my elbow and we waddle over together. Sitting through the second stage with “old” ladies on the bench, demoralized at my “failure,” I don’t even notice how many others chose this more practical perch.
When meditation ends, I finally find the answer to that mysterious “nooooooo rrroooooommmmmm.”
Reverend Kincaid enters the darkened hall, flipping on the lights to alert our squinting eyes and announcing melodiously, as he’s no doubt done for the previous two weeks of the retreat, “We will now prepare a chamber for sleeping.”
All of the retreat trainees huddled below the Buddha statue know their assigned roles (except for me) as they bow to the Buddha, bow to the door, and then race down a ramp to a storeroom filled with sleeping mats and room divider screens. They scurry like squirrels, each grabbing a screen and bowing to Buddha on the way back in.
The screens are set up to create a division between the male and female sides of the hall. All carry in futon mats, each knowing which one is his or her own. After placing sleeping bags atop these futons, they rush quickly out to the “conversational tea.” We are scheduled to be there to make small talk with selected monks. But I’m having none of it.
Observing this human anthill hurriedly moving large objects, I stare straight ahead, totally transfixed. My breathing is shallow and I’m clueless as to how to proceed. Reverend Kincaid stirs me out of my stupor. “Judi, would you like to choose a mat?”
I rush to comply as neither of us notices the large tears swimming along the rims of my eyes. Overcome with a sick feeling of flight like a threatened animal in the wild, I want to relieve myself and gallop off.
I’m expected to sleep in this large hall with all these other trainees? No privacy? No walkman? No rrrrrrooooommmmm!
I’ve found my room, but hit the wall.
Too much is just too much.
I must have a room. I like my comfort. I need privacy. I have music to play.
I begin planning my escape.
I’ve done all they said. I’ve willingly crushed my legs under the stool, pushed leaden limbs erect, and now dragged a futon to the last empty female space in the shrine. I’m obediently accepting whatever is put in front of me, but enough is enough. I can’t take any more. Without a chance for privacy, I can’t last.
In a daze, I spread out my mat and push myself to the next scheduled activity: the monk’s “conversational tea.”
I don’t bow one gassho at any shrine on the way, and then, in a tearful trance, I enter the recreation room where Reverend Paul leads the tea party. He’s telling cute stories while old-timer trainees giggle and sip. They’re serving newly picked cherries. I scoop myself a bowl and begin popping them absentmindedly, spitting pits and stems back into the same bowl. Tears now unashamedly roll down my cheeks.
I have to leave.
I just can’t take one more minute of this place.
I run out, and, despite the Buddhist exhortation against wasting food, I toss my cherries, pits, stems, and all into the nearest trash bin. After racing back to the luggage room to get quarters, I leap cloisters hurriedly to reach the public phone booth.
I call Yves’s motel. “You’ve got to get me out of this place. I can’t take it. I don’t belong here. Kincaid was right; I shouldn’t have started midstream.” I sob and gulp.
Yves, in his deep, mellow, radio-announcer tones, coos, “Oh, poor baby. You’re really having a hard time, aren’t you?” Despite the fact I’d initially fallen in love with his gentle, soothing voice, I have no time for that comfort crap now. (We’d had a phone romance for three months before we actually met. He told me then, “I give great phone.”)
Phone, shmone; like E.T., I want home.
Keeping up my gently oozing sobs, I can’t think of anything else to say.
Yves asks, “Have you talked with anyone there about this?”
“No,” I whine, and the rest tumbles out quickly. “I don’t know what to say. They’re all very nice, friendly, happy folks. I can’t take the bowing. I don’t have a room. We sleep on the floor. There’s no free time. I’ll never get to use my computer or hear my music. I can’t sit on a stool. My legs are giving out. I don’t know how to meditate. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I just can’t take the bowing. We have to bow at everything!”
“I think you’re feeling really lonely,” he soothes in his best silver-tongued-devil voice. “Why don’t you talk to someone there first, and then if you want I’ll definitely come and get you. Could you hold out ’til morning? I’ll come for you in the morning if you decide to leave.”
“Okay,” I sob. “I’ll talk with them. They’re having tea now. I can’t interrupt the tea. I’ll go back and listen. I just don’t understand what I’m doing here. Is this for the benefit of my patients or what? I don’t need to be doing this. Let me read a book. I’m not a Buddhist.”
“Jude, it’s about control. They’re taking away your power. You’re in a scary new place where no one knows what an important person you are. You aren’t in the power position. You don’t have all your usual trappings of contentment. There’s no podium or image to hide behind. No one
