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Caitríona Reed
La Casa de Maria . Santa Barbara . April 5 - 10, 1987.
We cannot do anything for peace without ourselves being peace. If you cannot smile you cannot help other people smile. If you are not peaceful, then you cannot contribute to the peace movement . . . If one person is a real person living happily, smiling, then all of us, all the world, will benefit from that person. A person doesn't have to do a lot to save the world. A person has to be a person. That is the basis of peace. Thich Nhat Hanh
Although this was my first encounter with Thich Nhat Hahn, I have been aware of his teaching since the mid-seventies when I first came across his writings. I remember being very inspired by what seemed to be a real blending of the practical aspects of daily living with an utterly simple commitment to the practice of the Dharma. Practice, in other words, that is itself completely 'practical'.
Recently I had been feeling a staleness in my own 'practice.' For several months I had felt disconnected - both from my surroundings and from what I sensed had become just a habit of practice, empty. My sadness about the unlikely survival of our society, our planet, left me helpless, angry, disgusted, hollow. I came to this retreat with a feeling that perhaps I needed to graduate from 'Buddhism', at least from what I presently understood as Buddhism, to become a human-being again. To come back to some point of simplicity, to what is 'practical.' Thich Nhat Hahn mentioned that instead of having International Conferences on Religion and such things, perhaps it would be better to have, say, an International Conference on Cooking. Participants could prepare and share food together . . . or perhaps an International Conference on Looking at Trees ! Better to express peace directly than talk about it. Better not to discuss truth - since that's when the struggle for what might be begins; holding on, for whatever reason, to the fixed points of view. So a peace that is dependent on the agreement or disagreement of others may not be peace at all.
We spent a week at La Casa de Maria, and it's the closest I've ever come to attending an International Conference on Looking at Trees. The first thing I noticed on this retreat was the complete absence of any hint of hierarchy or authority or forced structure and rigidity. Perhaps I had simply become tired of imposing those stereotypes on myself, or maybe it had something to do with being around Thich Nhat Hahn. It was something sensed by default, rather than any tangible ingredient. It made me realize how often I have approached practice as an obligation, a chore by which I might gain something. Looking back, retreats and sesshins have usually been an enormous endeavor for me, like some kind of quest. However much I may have consciously understood otherwise, I usually found myself struggling so hard to 'do', to become, . . . to become Mindful, to 'deepen my practice' instead of simply appreciating what I might already find myself to be. Perhaps I'd come here with some intuition that now I might move into some new mode that expressed itself without quite so much of a struggle.
Walking meditation under the enormous trees at La Casa de Maria was wonderful. To simply be under those trees, hearing the birds singing in the clear air. It was so inescapable - INTERBEING. Emptiness coming to mean that there is room for all of this inside me; that it's already there. Something about Thich Nhat Hahn's presence and words was an invitation for perceptions to shift and open, to simplify, to simply be. In being to be a part of this.
At first it wasn't clear what this retreat was going to be. An Interfaith Retreat ? . . . "If the peace on this retreat reveals itself as genuine, then the retreat may serve a bit as a model for further dialogue and peace," as it said on the flier.
Everyone was invited to come together in some way to express the religion of their birth. I remembered how, when traveling as a westerner in India, strangers often come up and ask your name and the country you are coming from. Sometimes there's a third question, 'What religion are you ?' By that is meant not your assumed religion, but the religion of your parents. The understanding is that your roots are undeniable; like a tree's, immovable, the means through which all nourishment reaches you. A large majority of the participants on the retreat thought of themselves as practicing Buddhists, ex-Catholic, ex-Protestant, Jewish by birth rather than by faith. There were a number of practicing Catholics and two Quakers; but how were we going to make an Interfaith Retreat out of this group of mainly Buddhist converts?
But spontaneously the retreat began to take on a form of its own. On the second day of the retreat we were invited to join in Quaker worship. Sitting in silence, mindfulness, sharing the spirit when it moved into words. Later we participated in formal Quaker dialogue, answering in turn the question posed. The question was, "Give an example of how some non-violent action has expressed itself in your life." The act of sharing some difficult memories became itself an act of peace, of opening to others. Questions lead to other questions, revealing assumptions we make about peace and conflict and responsibility. The fear and determination by which we express our convictions about peace being the very source of conflict. Buddhists are supposed to know all about this, it seems that Quakers do too. On the evening of the third day, in the chapel of La Casa de Maria, we celebrated the Eucharist, a service improvised by the one priest and several Catholics on the retreat. Eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ, the living God; our feet washed, as Christ washed the feet of his disciples at the last supper. I remembered the words,"Be still, and know that I am God."
On the fourth day it was the Protestants' turn, myself among them. We turned out to be a mixed group of very ex-Protestants. Those Catholics always had been a hard act to follow ! I wondered how I had got myself into volunteering to be part of a 'Protestant Service'. How to express all the mixture of feelings I had about my matter-of-fact upbringing in the Anglican church ? In secret we painted forty eggs and placed them along the path were we made our walking meditation every day . . .The seed of new life, the seed of continuing life. I recalled how the cross He was hung from is the same cross that in other traditions represents the completion of things, the mandala, the vertical ascent through the horizontal worlds and heavens; how the Christmas evergreen is also the emblem of continuing life; the May-pole, of fertility and regeneration. My roots extend way beyond the particulars and beliefs of the school-master ministers of my childhood. How exquisite - Handel's Messiah ! - and the language of the King James' Bible! Something that goes much deeper than the accident of being born into a particular religion, or the arbitrary selection of some chosen belief-system.
Later that morning a Cherokee dance of Power; or was it a 'Dance of Life' or 'Dance of Peace' ? The same dance repeated in the dawn of the following day. Then finally, on the last evening, the Passover dinner, wine and matzo and all; and a wealth of readings to express the richness of Jewish understanding.
"In this day and age," said Rabbi Moshe, "the greater devotion - greater than learning and praying - consists in accepting the world exactly as it happens to be."
Twice during the course of this retreat under the guidance of Thich Nhat Hahn and Sister Phong we practiced a formal tea ceremony, something like a Buddhist equivalent of Quaker worship where words, poems, songs can be shared as the spirit moves. We made a picture, unrolling a scroll of paper like a river around the room as the brush passed from hand to hand, painting things along the bank. Like water in different rivers, we come together in an ocean that makes no distinctions. I somehow recall that my fantasy of California, during the sixties, before I even thought of coming here, was something along the lines of this retreat. Something more than eclecticism - a deep sharing. Moving through forms to something rich beyond.
I don't know why this retreat was so powerful for me. Perhaps it was just being around Thich Nhat Hahn and Sister Phong. We sat very little, talking was practiced as often as silence. It showed me how much I have hidden in the past behind silence and conventional forms of practice, intensity for no reason except the assumption that more was always better. As we were reminded, 'it's quality, not quantity that matters.' It was a chance to acknowledge my own roots, appreciating that it is truly our roots which either nourish us or poison us. Maybe they need trimming sometimes, maybe parts of them need to be cut right away. Sometimes we may establish new roots in some altogether different direction. Perhaps it shows that Buddhism in the west will be Jewish-Buddhism, Catholic-Buddhism and Protestant-Buddhism. Perhaps it might help in making peace with ourselves if we first come to a reconciliation with roots that have been denied, and nourish them. Just as leaves fall to the ground and give nourishment to the tree that produced them, so where we come from might also be where we're going.
This piece originally appeared in Turning Wheel and was reprinted in In Buddhist America
