I just went on a meditation retreat. This retreat was not at all like the one I did last October. I was not in a calm, serene setting. I did not have gorgeous vegetarian food prepared for me by a fine chef. I did not have a kind and pleasant teacher who guided me through the ups and downs of all the emotions that can show up when you silently turn inward. No, this meditation retreat was in my own home. I was shut in with over a foot of snow outside in the company of my energetic 5 year-old son and very mobile1 year-old daughter.
Myla and Jon Kabat Zinn wrote a book that I had posted about before on the topic of mindful parenting. It’s calledEveryday Blessings. In the book there is a chapter called “An Eighteen Year Retreat.” The implicit message is that the vocation of parenting is where the rubber meets the road for all of the qualities we hope to cultivate in a mindfulness meditation retreat (e.g. patience, compassion, self-awareness, and acceptance). And the vocation of the parenting is where all of theobstacles to mindfulness meditation will be met head on (e.g. impatience, suffering, ignorance, and non-acceptance). During my recent snowy adventure, I can tell you I experienced all of those!
My husband plows snow. So for the past 14 years that I have lived with him, I have gotten used to spending a fair amount of quality time alone during the winter season here in New England. I would actually enjoy it to tell you the truth. I love my husband dearly, but we do not have a lot the same interests. Hence, when he would head out to plow snow, I’d use the time to listen to music very loudly (he doesn’t like it loud), dance around in the living room, burn jasmine incense (it makes him sneeze) and have complete control of the ever important remote control.
That was all before I had children. Now, when the roads are impassible, and I am in single parent mode, it is non-stop focused attention. The days of distracting myself and passing the time with entertainment are over. And that alone makes it very similar to a meditation retreat. A sustained period of time where there is no writing, no reading, no processing material out loud (with another adult anyway). No time where you space out and turn on the autopilot switch.
But, unlike a meditation retreat in the comfort of that fabulous former monastery I went to last fall, being snowed in with my children is like being with a meditation teacher who likes to push you in your practice by pressing your buttons. I personally have not experienced this (yet) but I’ve read about it. The well- known Buddhist nun, teacher and writer Pema Chodron describes her first teacher in that way. She also tells the story of a Buddhist community whose leader intentional kept an annoying individual around who constantly tried the nerves of everyone else in the community as a way to keep members on their toes in practicing the dharma. That’s hard core.
It’s like saying: You say you know how to handle your anger, your frustration tolerance, what if I say this? What if I do that? You say you are a loving, compassionate and patient individual, what if I say this? What if I do that? Let me test you. Let me try you. I swear, It’s like Advanced Placement mindfulness meditation retreating.
Another one of the similarities of thinking of your children as your mindfulness teachers, is that, at the end of the day (or maybe every hour on the hour depending on how the day is going) you know you love them and they love you, in the most organically human way possible despite (or maybe with) all this button-pushing going on.
It’s hard though, to become so acutely, painfully aware where you are stuck or rigid or inflexible; coming face to face with your blind spots and limitations that were not visible to you until you no longer had your whole tool belt of distractions available to you. All those escape routes that have gotten me out of feeling any sort of mild to moderate to severe discomfort.
My blind spot presented itself to me when my son was 3 weeks old. My husband had gone back to work and it was now him and I in the house alone. And because I didn’t yet have clearance to drive following a pretty difficult birth and C-Section, I was stuck in the house for 8-10 hours, straight.
Writing this now I feel ashamed. I want to say to myself: bad parent! But I won’t. Because it was that experience that opened my eyes to one of my escape routes: getting in my car and leaving my house. When uncomfortable, upset, restless, anxious, agitated, bored…you name the difficult mind state, I ran from it by changing my scenery.
Now, you could argue, hey, there could be more dangerous or risky ways to escape reality (drugs, binge eating, sex with strangers, working all the time, whatever). And yeah, maybe that’s true. But, at the end of the day, it’s all the same, isn’t it? Aren’t we as human beings incredibly creative in all the ways we can come up with the numb, escape and avoid reality? Including our own inner world. Isn’t that part of what any meditation retreat worth it’s dime is meant to teach us?
The problem is, for a working mother like me, sending me to beautiful lush grounds where really every need is cared for, and the only thing I have to do is walking meditation, sitting meditation, yoga, silent mindful eating, a dharma talk, and maybe sharing about my personal experience, well that sounds just completely wonderful! That sounds like a vacation! Like it could even be just another way for me to find an escape route.
Please don’t get me wrong, I think there is value to a formal mindfulness meditation retreat away from all that is familiar to go inward. In fact, I plan to do my first 5 day retreat this coming July, and after that I might post that everything I said here today was completely wrong! But I also think there are experiences in our regular everyday lives of being working parents that push us to the edges of our own limited awakening in ways that can be paradoxically excruciating and eye-opening. Like when you find yourself saying, “okay, there is no way out. How do I want to proceed in reality as it is? With ease and surrender or with suffering and aversion? I’ll take the former please. But I’m gonna have to practice.
I hear there are two more snow storms coming this week. I guess I will have more time to practice sooner rather than later.
How about you? How will you practice what Pema Chodron calls in her book title: “The Wisdom of No Escape?” Or what Jack Kornfield calls in his book title: “Bringing Home the Dharma?” Where do you have opportunities to reap the fruits of a mindfulness meditation retreat right here in the (dis)comfort of your own home?
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