As mentioned earlier I have been working on deepening my meditation practice and decided that attending a full-day retreat focued on Buddhist meditation techniques would be my next adventure. Today I did just that at the Common Ground Meditation Center in Seward.
I’ve been meditating daily at Common Ground for the past three weeks, so I was not especially nervous about going there for a full-day retreat. Going there for 9 hours would be different from going for my normal half-hour, but not that different.
The agenda for the day was pretty close to the sample agenda they have on their site – alternating 30-minute sessions of sitting and walking meditation. The afternoon is a broken up by some small-group and full-group discussion, but the morning is basically all meditation. It’s intense and exhausting. By the time we got to lunch I was ready to take a long break from sitting with my breath and my hips were definitely done with sitting on a zafu.
Over the thankfully-long-and-unstructured lunch break I thought a lot about the theme of the retreat, “What pleasure do we find in being present?” Mark (the teacher) introduced the theme at the start of the retreat and we returned to it in the afternoon sessions. On different days I would have different answers but today I was finding pleasure in being present with my fear. Fear’s not an emotion I want to hang out with but a goal of my meditation practice is to become familar and friendly with my negative emotions.
Today during a walking meditation I had a strong fear reaction about some upcoming life stuff. And the skills I’ve learned in meditation let me pause, sit with the fear, examine it without freaking out, and learn. I found pleasure in that.
Other than the amount of meditation the major difference between a retreat like today’s and my MBSR retreat is the amount of talk about the Buddha. Unsurprisingly a Buddhist meditation retreat is going to talk about the Buddha a bunch. I was OK with this. But if you’re not then you might not dig the day as much as I did.
How much does it cost? That’s up to you. I took the cost of my half-day retreat and doubled it but what you pay is your choice. You can also volunteer at Common Ground instead of paying money.
As good as the day was, I can not see myself attending these every month. Not only are they intense but it’s difficult to take a full day off from life. But I could see attending one every 2-3 months. And maybe someday I’ll find a way to sit on a zafu without pissing off my right hip.
