Little Buddha.

January 1st 2012, I drove to the Garrison Institute in upstate New York to sleep, eat, and meditate about Buddha. I knew nothing of the man or the practice of Buddhist meditation.

For seven days, I was in silence. I ate strictly vegetarian everyday. No heavy reading, very little writing, and hiked regularly.

I found that after the third day, I was having some problems with sitting for prolonged amounts of time. Being sociable is my nature and an apparent habit that weakened me and distracted me from the focus on "self" that this retreat was geared toward. I had very few options - either I force myself to bear the 15-hour days of sanskrit chanting, wall-gazing, and talks of a foreign religion. Or, I find a way to modify this bizarre experience into something wonderful in its own right, and even further - maintain my sanity. I chose the second option. By day I obeyed the rules of that place.. I ate all my food, made sure my bare feet stayed hidden in the presence of our holy teacher, sat still during guided meditation with our teacher - Lama Surya Das, and switched off all my lights when not in my bedroom.. even at night. By afternoon and evening, I was WILD.. in my hat, with wool scarf and walking stick, I trekked for hours outdoors to shake the misconceptions of this religious practice and the anxieties of what I should be doing here that were eating away at my nerves. Never have I owned a "nervous tick", nor rocked back and forth in a chair with, uncontrolled, untraceable thoughts running rampant in my mind. I would shake trying to sit still sometimes. It was clearly getting bad.

So my remedy was: "I have to run...."

I worked out the frenzy and burned it off as energy that immediately inspired me to bring along my camera and notebook to, at least partially, record my journey. My hat had wolf ears to assist the "transformation".. and I would leap upon fallen trees and survey the wooded, deciduous terrain. The trickling little creeks would pass along me as we both ran down the incline. My eyes grew bigger, my breath drew deeper into my chest, my legs carried me over, and under, in between, and back over again. My head was clear. My body was clean. My heart was full.... I had done it. My transformation was taking over and my worried thoughts of anything having to do with this place had evaporated.

What inspired me to go forward and do this retreat in the first place was following up to my change. I had recently left my job and was looking for a new beginning, and words like "Winter Renewal", "yoga", "vegetarian", "Hudson River", and "Buddhism" all sounded like 'this is place I ought to be'. But I had never met Buddha before. Nor noble silence. Or ideas like "this world is an illusion". Every possible preconception that I had of this place or of the experience being light or easy was quickly being disregarded with instant heaviness. What's everyone else doing? What was I doing? What does this mean? How can that be true? Why do I feel as though I'm "sinning", clearly a Christianity concept in this Buddhist sanctuary? It had all become too much, and my only method of self-medicating my conflicts and confusion was to have the ground pounding beneath my feet and my heart thumping within my chest. I was truly happy in this way, and half the time I didn't really know why. "Loosing yourself and finding your true self," our teacher replied one day.Was I escaping or hiding? No... I was uncovering, I later found out, because I've never considered myself an avid outdoorsy person. But here I am, scaling tree limbs and laying down in the top arms of trees, in complete peace. As I was, coming into a place that I had no previous connection to or understanding of, is justifiable for the way things seemed to unravel. To be outside, I had to go inside and recognize that I'm not like those people in there. Though certainly they are good people traveling on a certain similar path, mine is this one.

This writing is dated January 4th 2011 in my journal. The one and only time I picked up a pen to write while there. A means of marking my defiance in a way, and expressing how at the time, sitting still and breathing logically couldn't get me anywhere:


I myself am so small
to be inside inside
I must be outside
to grow and elevate,
to see my breath,
to cast out impurities from my skin.

I run, and make small flights above the ground;
I am fast.
I climb, and stretch my arms long like tree branches;
I am strong.
I jump, and land off-road in deep ditches and onto high rock;
I am brave.
I step, and place my feet on paths off of the living green;
I am kind.
I sit, and listen to the water, now passing me by;
I am patient.


The energy I create is now filling this place.
I am not so small anymore...

My eyes, my legs, my chest expand;
This is my outside outside.

My mind exhilarates, my heart rejoices;
This is my inside outside.


In a non-conventional way, I'd say I found myself. Everyone's means of getting to where they want to be or ought to be in life is completely individual. I don't regret having gone off and made this retreat experience my own. It felt right for me. And in speaking with other retreatants on the eve of our last day, I was actually commended for just making it there in the first place, considering my background as Roman Catholic and having never meditated in this extreme measure before.

There's a "little buddha" in each of us, I was taught and the path to Enlightenment is in finding the buddha in you... not an ancient man, not Asian, not a statue, as we think of commonly think of Buddha... but the goddess or god within you, which is in turn your higher Self.**



"There's no pot of gold at the end; it's golden all the way..." 

- Lama Surya Das, January 2012