Ithaca and the Blue Cliff Monastery

Last Thursday I set out, with some apprehension, for Ithaca and the Blue Cliff Monastery in New York state. My apprehension was due to the fact that I had the beginnings of a urinary tract infection (UTI). Although I had been trying to cure it with litres of cranberry juice, it was still intruding on Thursday morning. I remember a microbiology professor saying that his wife had once compared a UTI to peeing glass. So I was worried that a) I would need to find medical help at some point in the States, which would be both time-consuming and expensive; and b) due to all the debate about health care there now, I wondered if I would become a headline: Canadian travels 400 miles to get help for UTI in the United States. I bought another four litres of cranberry juice before leaving.

I was also apprehensive about camping for four nights. It had rained a lot lately and was starting to get cold. So I borrowed a thick mattress from a friend, took along two thermorests, a sleeping bag rated to -20 degress Celsius, my duvet, and flannel sheets. I briefly considered taking Charlotte, my fluffiest cat, but I hadn't gotten around to getting a passport for her. Camping being what it is, part of the purpose of stopping in Ithaca was to spend one comfortable night in a B&B before enduring four nights in a tent at the beginning of October.

I don't have much to report about the lovely town of Ithaca, home of the Moosewood restaurant, except that after reading the list of chargeable offences in the library I noted that what I had long thought of as a trivial bit of petty larceny can also be viewed as a delicate Parisian morsel of petit larceny.

On my way to the Blue Cliff Monastery I stopped in Roscoe (“Trout Town”) to have lunch at Buffalo Zach's café. There I drank the last cups of coffee (organic fair trade) I would have until the retreat ended, ate vegetarian delights and listened to the music of Louis Armstrong, surrounded by bearskin rugs, deer heads with Mona Lisa smiles, antlers of mostly unimpressive size and fluorescent light covers with images of Native Americans in full head gear. Part of the way through my meal a father and son entered the restaurant. They looked like they might have supplied much of the décor for the restaurant. Seeing them made me wonder why hunters bother with camouflage pants when they're wearing neon orange jackets.

When I arrived at the monastery I learned that 1100 people were going to be at the retreat, which almost made me turn around and head home except that I didn't want to drive for another seven hours. I was directed to a rather delightful setting in a grove of trees where Christmas lights had been strung to light up the path. A greeter offered to help me set up my tent. It was all very pleasant, but still, the thought of such large numbers was offputting. Thankfully, it never felt like there were that many people there. The whole experience was quite different from what I had expected. The meditation retreats I've been to before have mostly been done in continual silence, with much of the time devoted to sitting meditation. We sat for only an hour in the morning on this retreat. Part of Thich Naht Hanh's “thing” is to create a sangha, or community, and to engage in applied Buddhism, which means not just sitting on a cushion but learning how to relate to the world in a more non-reactive and compassionate way. So there was a lot of interaction: we were divided into groups, each one led by one of the monks or nuns. Our group was led by Brother Phatman (pronounced "Fatman", although he is anything but), a young ex-surfer from California who now lives in Plum Village in France and has a fabulous sense of humour. He told us that the monks and nuns are allowed to visit their families for two weeks every two years. He had just come back from spending time with his mother and sister in Hawaii. When his sister at one point accused him of ruining the day, rather than responding in some sort of enlightened manner he shot back, No, you're ruining it. And he told us that at the time he thought his sister was following a very weird spiritual path, but then he got sight of himself in the mirror with his shaved head and brown robes.

With our groups, we spent the next four days doing working meditation (in our case, the breakfast dishes), dharma sharing and deep listening, and occasionally breaking into song. I found the songs rather creepy and cult-like, but most of the rest of the retreat I enjoyed. I especially liked the mindfulness bell. When it sounds, everyone stops what they are doing and takes three deep breaths before resuming activity. Like hitting the pause button on the remote. I also liked the occasional announcements at mealtimes.

Brothers and sisters, sorry to disrupt this wonderful meal, but would you please look at your feet. If you are wearing black crocs that aren't yours, please come to meditation hall as someone is looking for them.

Brothers and sisters, sorry to disrupt this wonderful meal, but would the Blueberry group please report to the kitchen, as you are supposed to be washing pots. Slight pause, during which there is some confusion in the dining tent. Oh, sorry to interrupt this wonderful meal again brothers and sisters, that is supposed to be the Elderberry group. Blueberry group, you may continue to enjoy this wonderful meal. Elderberry group, we need you in the kitchen.

Brothers and sisters, sorry to disrupt this wonderful meal, but if a wallet that is not yours has made its way into your pocket, please return it to the office.

It's disconcerting in some ways to spend such a short, concentrated time with people. You just begin to get to know them and then you have to say goodbye. (Or, as one man in our group remarked to me, We're all just getting to know each other enough not to push each other's buttons.) On the last day everyone at the retreat headed to the meditation hall for the final dharma talk. It was a beautiful day, so a number of us stayed outside. I sat a little apart from everyone as I am wont to do. Someone was singing inside the meditation hall, except this time it wasn't creepy or cult-like but rather elegiac. It was the time of silence, so there were waves of people approaching the hall quietly. It felt like the point in the movie when all talk stops and the music starts up, when you suspect that the credits are about to roll but hope that they don't, for although there has been little plot and nothing to resolve you know that if it ends there you will be left hanging.

Things I learned on this trip:

1. You can stave off a UTI with cranberry juice, but I think this only works if you catch it in the earliest stages. Cranberry juice prevents the bacteria from adhering, which they need to do in order to reproduce. (This makes sense: few creatures are adept at having sex in mid-air, apart from members of the Cirque du Soleil.) If you don't get them before they've started to go forth and multiply, I think it's time for antibiotics.
2. My tent can withstand prolonged rainfall.
3. I can go for 96 hours without coffee. My closest friends would probably find it less surprising to hear that I had gone hunting than to learn that I had gone without coffee for this length of time.
4. Others (some at least) see me as a free spirit. This isn't an image I have of myself. I usually feel weighed down by worries about the job situation, the house, old age... With all that weight I sometimes forget that hitting the road has been a large part of my life and that I so enjoy the freedom of it. I could speak in Buddhist terms and say that we are all free spirits, that that is our true nature, and that all those things weighing us down are just illusions. But that will probably cause some of you to roll your eyes. So I will just say that maybe I need to change my perceptions about who I am. Why view something as trivial when you can see it as a delicate Parisian morsel instead?