SILENCE SLOWING

I've been a solo retreatant at the Dharma Center for the past 6 years coming often with a focus on retreats through the winter months. Winter on the land here has such a deep quality of stillness… it invites and awakens experiences of all ranges. I've learned from this quietude, that when fully steeped in it, just how much noise is being created by this body. When there is nothing to return to except the silence of the land or the hushing wind through the white pine, one discovers the sheer volume of noise created both inside and outside this body. One thing I love to do at the Dharma Centre is meditation walks. Slow crunchy steps with intermittent pauses… sound, no sound, then sound again. 

The silence of a winter retreat brings the knowledge that, in spite of it all, I am still here. Locating oneself within the silence is like finding animal bones half buried in the thick moss. Memories and reminders that something was and still is, here. 

Days are spent simply. Porridge breakfast and early meditation leading into stretching, reading and journaling. Afternoons are the warmest part of the day though extra layers are needed for long still stints among slow meandering walks from temple to temple. Evenings bring quiet reflection and Orion cabin's off grid feature allows for limited artificial lighting providing a more natural prelude for an early turn in. The days pass [quietly, slowly?] as do animals in the night. Fox, squirrel and rabbit and occasionally larger animals, deer and moose, track through the forest. Their paths though intersecting are often made in solitude, each animal stealing the silent time that is theirs among the trees while meditators dream. 

My experiences at the Dharma Center have revealed time and again that it is a place for sinking into whatever experience arises.All the while the land and precious silence provide the base and presence of support to transition into true equanimity with self, other and the wider world. 

Peter Kok