Stillness in Action Retreat.          

One Person's Experience.

What an enticing title for a retreat. "Stillness in Action" It spelled out exactly what I wanted and I decided to participate as soon as I came across it. In my current lifestyle there was certainly no ‘stillness’. Not in my thinking nor in my activities which were frenetic to say the least and totally exhausting. And as for ‘action’, well I might have been active but I was surely getting nothing done. Stillness in Action was exactly the medicine I felt I needed. And the Wat Buddha Dharma retreat Centre at Wiseman's Ferry seemed to be a great place to have it.

Much of the pain in my life came out of a sense of despair about the state of the world. Degraded environment, pollution, toxic waste, war, overpopulation, over-consumption, rich/poor divide, the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow airport. You know, all of those essential life elements that were heading nowhere good.

To arm myself for the fight I had done much to educate myself which had been mostly about acquiring more knowledge, experience and information. All that had done was increase my despair. What I really needed to do was move into a journey towards wisdom which would mean letting go of what I thought I knew. Rather than knowledge, understanding. Rather than fear, compassion. I had wept so many tears for the mother earth, both real and metaphorical that I had come to a point of feeling totally drained. Without wishing to sound too melodramatic, it felt like I had been shedding my own blood in order to feed the starving and ailing earth.

Ha. And I’m the fellow creating spaces for people to talk about sustainability. Those activities now seemed more like talk to conceal the pain I felt for mother Gaia rather than revealing any great wisdom

You can guess from this that I would have been ready for a retreat.

Here’s the bleedin’ obvious that became clear to me during that wonderful seven days.

"I cannot, and am not going to, save the planet."

"I cannot even serve the planet while I’m wrestling for my own survival materially, intellectually, or spiritually."

This is true even though I deeply believe that above all else, ecological integrity is the single most important issue to be addressed. All else is frivolous by comparison to a point of being dangerous.

The clear understanding I got from this was simply that I must come to a point of personal peace. This peace will not come when we have built a healthy, sustainable world. It is my peace of mind that is required to bring about a healthy and sustainable environment.

It is from a place of internal peace that I can make sense of my intuitive perceptions of my world and incorporate them into the hard objective reality that cannot be ignored. This internal experience of peace can be associated with what Csikszentmihalyi calls "Flow" (Pronounced ‘chick-shent-me-hail.’ Really.) and it is this focussed attention on a state of excellence where time stands still, that happiness can be found. It is unselfconscious and totally in the moment.

The Stillness in Action retreat gave me the opportunity to experience that peace that is found first in the quietness of our surroundings. Mornings spent in silence added to the beautiful bush setting had a powerful effect. Next was the gentle but firm guidance in meditation and focussing techniques helped to still that chattering monkey that prattles almost constantly in my head. At the Wat I was able to give my brain a rest and know that quietness both inside and out. Also to quit thinking or wrestling with scrambled ideas and to dispense with all judgements. To just ‘be’.

Well not quite. You see I did make some strong judgements at meal times about the food. Healthy, unpretentious vegetarian nosh that was simply delicious. (I proposed to the cook daily.)

But back to the observations on peace. As much as anything, I learned to stop wanting the world to be different. I think the Buddhist traditions encourage followers to let go of desire. Dropping my urgent need to control our relationship with the environment automatically dropped my experience of pain about the world. Every day there were exercises engaging both brain hemispheres that led to a deep experience of the futility of how I’d been dealing with my world.

Does this mean that I have given up on the world? That I no longer care? Oh no, not at all. What it has shown me though is how to be a much more useful servant, coming from a place of internal peace and thus opening myself to a level of creativity and power (by this I mean the ability to have an effect) that was not available to me before. Found in my notes is a scribbling which says, "Nirvana – emptiness, should not be seen as a goal of Buddhist practice but a point of departure."

Somewhere else I noted that a culture of awakening can never be a private affair. It has to be done in community with support and accountability of the group. We need friends to keep us reminded and help us see the blind spots. Those who won’t hide any of the difficult stuff. Which brings me to the people of our community for that week.

During all of my time at the Wat, I was deliciously aware that this is exactly where I wanted to be and these people are exactly who I wanted to be with. There was a level of listening and mutual respect, dare I say ‘love’ that is rarely felt amongst so many strangers. I felt supported, challenged, accepted, trusted, in fact honoured, every moment. I am very grateful indeed to have had the opportunity to learn so much in such wonderful company.

I can’t tell if this has told you anything about the Stillness in Action retreat but I do hope you got some impression of the effect it had on at least one struggling soul. What, with good food, fine company, superb teachers, beautiful environment, and inspiring processes, how could one miss? It did indeed turn out to be the very medicine I intuitively knew I needed. When they hold another one, I’ll be there. How about you?

May you know boundless joy and live in deep peace.

Noel Winterburn

Sydney January 2004

Call Noel:   9819 7914  or send an email.