All those years of therapy and training had helped me see the root causes of my competitive striving. My own fat and furious disposition germinated in a home where both parents repressed their own constant fear, pain, and sadness. Their generation didn’t talk about deep feelings. They only knew how to express anger. I carried their sadness for them. And no matter how cute and precocious I was, I couldn’t fix them. I compensated for this perceived inadequacy by developing a winning personality to use as I went out into the world to win friends and influence people. But then I’d come home to hear, “You’ve got them all fooled. They can’t possibly know how rotten you really are.”
Believing from an early age that I was really “no damned good,” I walked out into the world seeing and creating my own violence and violation. It’s so difficult to avoid hurting self or others. Sadness and pain are just unavoidable.
But who’s to blame?
In medicine, the Hippocratic oath admonishes us to “never do harm.” The prescription in this monastery is to try to do no harm to any living thing. Facing the difficulty of that prospect, I’m anxious to make small talk with fellow trainees.
I’m anxious to start commenting on these ideas and this experience.
I want someone to see that I tried hard to be good, but screwed up anyway. I want to rant to someone that “the kitchen monk hurt me.”
Doesn’t he know that I just want to be a good kid? I want to know all the times to bow and to whom. I want to dig the deepest ditch, swoop with the lowest bow, and eat the fullest orange. But I just can’t. Instead, silence is the golden rule. I don’t say a word.
Silence.
Clearly, I cannot tolerate anything less than perfection. Attached to my need for a perfect image, I will be given innumerable chances to flunk out.
By bedtime, I am resigned to wandering through this place without being appreciated or receiving any praise. I will just be. In a brief twenty-four hours, I have managed to survive and sit in stillness through all the meditation sessions, albeit from my high perch on the bench. I have become acutely aware of sensory input—from quiet gongs of meditation bells to screeching chairs on dining room floors, to the rich smell of earth inviting me to enter deeper. I’ve watched calluses sprout on my fingers and felt “moderation” ideas sprout in my cerebellum. I have absorbed the security offered by these monks and their structure, and though shocked by the kitchen monk’s judgment, I have not diminished my resolve.
Exhausted by nightfall, I tumble into bed with no more energy to cry.
On day two, dressing becomes easier and I can do it faster. I stand upright to put on my prayer skirt while the others are squirming to get dressed while still inside their sleeping bags. “We try not to offend ourselves or others,” Reverend Muldoon’s words echo.
Well, the hell with that. I’ve lived a lifelong struggle with obesity, full of shame about my body, stretching hand towels in high school gym classes across rolls of pubescent fat.
So now I should cover up and worry about someone viewing my sleek, slim torso? Offensive? Disturbing someone’s practice? Give me a break.
My concession to this monastic modesty is to dress quickly, albeit standing.
Right after morning prayers we are sent out into the freezing cold to line up for work details. The crisp, cold essence of pine needles seeps up my nose as the morning work assignments are called.
“Maureen Richter, who is new today, will work with Judi Hollis for the maintenance department.”
Why had they announced my last name? I’m here for an anonymous private retreat. Why are they even giving me a helper? I was doing quite well by myself.
I’m back in the ring.
Maureen wears all the right gear: hiking shoes, baggy pants, a thick pink sweater, and green fleece hat. She is short, with pixie-cut, curly brown hair and a smile that says, “I’m at peace.”
I catch her eye and whisper, “I’ll show you to the toolshed to get further direction from Reverend Joel.”
I pray she’s on a different assignment. My head screams, “I want to be alone.” I’m sure there’s room for only one pick and shovel at my ditch.
Guess what? She’s assigned to help me.
Damn.
We walk silently and then she asks, “Didn’t you give a training presentation at a hospital in San Bernardino last week? I recognized your name.”
Clenching teeth, staring straight ahead down the path, I can’t decide how to respond.
Caught. I’ve traveled 600 miles to the top of a mountain to get away from my life. I’m finally settling in to being a newcomer, accepting that I have nothing to do or say but learn. And then, this.
I start laughing. “I don’t believe it.” I laugh harder and louder. “I just don’t believe it.” Maureen catches on immediately and laughs with me.
She leans over conspiratorially. “I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable. I can understand how you’d want to be away from your roles and responsibilities. I just wanted you to know I thought it was a great seminar and I can really see how your treatment ideas reflect much of what is taught here at the monastery. This is my sixth summer here. My husband and I have been meditating for many years and we incorporate Buddhism into our work as therapists.”
I have such a warm, ironic giggle bubbling up and just waiting to escape from my pursed lips.
This is the best cosmic joke ever.
I draw furtively closer to her and whisper, “I try to get away from my professional roles so I can be in a position of learning rather than teaching.”
Then I immediately start teaching.
I tell of my struggles: how my center is like this monastery, but how difficult it is to justify within a medical model. I go on sharing my debates about mechanistic, standardized recovery programs teaching “adjustment” versus my more spiritually oriented program of “expansion.”
I’d love to rattle on and on.
This is my first conversation, and on my turf, yet.
Something stops me. I explain to Maureen that it’s probably best to avoid such discussions. “I’m happy you like my work. I feel guilty talking during work period.”
“Me too,” she smiles, shrugging her shoulders and giggling like, “We’re so, so bad.”
However, I keep talking. “I’ve been quite shaky since I got here. I cry all the time. I see there’s a lot for me to learn if I can just stick it out.”
“I cried during my first week, too,” she counters. “Each time we return here, I find myself getting anxious and queasy during the drive up. There’s something inviting and repelling about the experience. I do like the quiet time and the loving people.”
We agree not to mention things back down in the world again.
As it turns out, Joel assigns us to the same ditch.
