WARNING: This one is pretty long.
There’s a reason the southwest is the environment most associated with vision quests. The sun is so hot, and the sky is so big, and the ground is so desolate, you can’t help but feel exposed. I felt like the sun was beaming through a magnifying glass, directly at my heart. On retreat land where there are few distractions, this feeling was magnified even more. It did not feel good.
I hadn’t come to the ranch for a vision quest or for retreat. I wanted to work and to see if I still felt as strong of a connection to the land and the Lama as I’d felt when I first visited earlier this year. I wanted to see if this was a place I’d want to spend a few months living and working this coming winter. I wanted to see if I still felt like Lama S was a teacher I could work with in developing more discipline in Buddhist practice, admittedly still contemplating if I even really want to develop more discipline.
I spent much of my time on the ranch feeling restless and uncomfortable, feeling like I wanted to leave and run for the cover of Redwood trees, shun the sun, but I didn’t. I would hope that the fact that there is no geographical cure for ME is something I can just know at this point in my life and not have to re-learn it over and over. Bailing might have given me more distraction, but it wouldn’t make the feelings go away, and I said I was doing this, so I stayed.
I settled into a routine of laying awake most of the night, often crying a lot and/or having psychotic thoughts. I had one of the worst bouts with PMS I’ve ever had, and would have to get up to pee three or four times in the night, despite not consuming any liquid for hours before I went to bed.
Every time I fell asleep, I’d be wakened within an hour with nightmares. The same nightmare, over and over again. The same nightmare I’ve had since April 9th. I saw something that day that made the nightmares start, and they haven’t stopped since, although sometimes there’s a few weeks break between occurrences. On the ranch though, the only time I didn’t have nightmares, was when I was awake.
The first morning there, I got up, went to the kitchen building, made some coffee and started slicing peppers. I listened to ‘Drift’ by Rachel Maddow and sliced peppers for the better part of a day and a half.
Everyone communicates by walkie-talkie on the ranch, and sometime mid-day, Lama walkied down that she wanted to meet with me, so after cry o’ clock in my casita, I put on my sunblock, sun hat, sunglasses, and long-sleeved, collared white shirt for the walk up the hill. I would put these on every time I left any building, even just to go to the composting toilet. It was over 100 degrees in the shade every day.
It was great to see her and catch up. She was feeling low energy, suffering from extreme adrenal fatigue, so she had been taking it easy, not traveling as much, and spending time going through her files from two decades of working in the domestic violence movement before becoming a Lama, deciding what to donate to the archives at Smith College and what to toss. She asked if I would work with her while I was there, a few hours a day, re-organizing and indexing her files, retreat notebooks and prayer books so that she could find things easily, as there were several piles on her desk and other things out of place. Her house had AC and I have a degree in organizing information, so I said I’d love to.
So I’d get out of bed around 4:30am and head over to the kitchen building, feeling like a shell of a zombie with DTs. I’d make coffee and eat a little yogurt, take my vitamins and then M, another woman visiting the ranch, would meet me and we’d walk over to headquarters. The ranch folks are slowly building an addition on the HQ building, and we were going to grout the space between these large iron beams and the concrete/styrofoam blocks each morning until the sun got too hot to work outside, between 8-9am.
We mixed grout, troubleshooting until we found the right water-to-powder ratio for a still wet, but putty-like consistency. We wore gloves at all times and masks when we were mixing, since the grout would burn your skin or lungs upon contact or inhale. The mixture would dry up and harden within about twenty minutes, so we’d make sure our ladders were positioned in the right section of beam before mixing it and then carefully ascend the ladders. With trowels and fingers, we’d each push grout under our side of the beam until what we’d pushed in was solidly meeting in the middle.
We talked about Buddhism and the ranch and relationships. M had lived on the ranch for several years a few years back, and had a couple of relationships in that context. Her two ex-girlfriends from the ranch were actually dating each other now, which she seemed fine with. Relieved, even. She was pointing out date spots to me from our vantage point on top of the unfinished building. It hadn’t occurred to me that the ranch could be such a romantic place. I don’t know why, I just didn’t think about it that way. I liked hearing her perspective on it.
Puffy eyes for dayz.
We talked about Chogyam Trungpa, attachment, Minneapolis (where M is from), music and trans-politics. Once the sun got too hot, we would use up whatever grout was in our buckets and then rinse everything off with a hose. We’d head back to the kitchen and make breakfast, sometimes making our own thing and sometimes making something to share. Then M would head up to the shrine building where she was working with Sam, another ranch resident. They were drawing up designs for finishing the ceiling of the shrine building with panels painted gold.
Ranch butterfly.
I would walkie up to Lama and see when was a good time to come up, then go to my casita and lay down and/or cry for a few minutes. Then I’d pull it together, put on all my sun armor and head for the shower building, brush my teeth and wash my face and continue on up the hill to Lama’s house. As I walked, I kept my eyes on the ground not only to prevent tripping on the uneven terrain, but also to see the beautiful geodes and quartz crystals littering the ground everywhere I walked.
I would put my hands on the ground, trying to feel whatever energy was in there, but I was unable to feel any the whole time I was on the ranch. My heart ached for the soft, Spring reborn green trees and moss of New England. Without any sleep, I felt needy for energy and I wasn’t finding any in that dry dirt, but I’d collect crystals and put them on a flat rock in front of my casita anyway, knowing there was energy in them, but I was just too unfamiliar or too tired and hormonally/emotionally jacked-up to feel it.
Visitors are asked not to take any of the crystals from the ranch, as they believe it weakens the earth spirits of the land. When the spirits are depleted, they don’t bring the rains. I didn’t know this when I’d visited in January, so I’d taken a few crystals home to Rhode Island and put them on my nightstand. Luckily, upon learning this, I remembered that I’d brought all my little nightstand stones and trinkets on this trip, along with a few other decorations. I went back to my casita, found the crystals and returned them to the land. I did find a rusty horseshoe that I kept, however.
I’d arrive at Lama’s house sweaty and short of breath, my lungs still adjusting to the altitude. I think it’s something like 3000 feet. Maybe higher. I’d knock on the door and step into her cool, quiet house. I’d take off all my sun armor, shoes and socks and we’d sit in her living room, talking politics. Everyone on the ranch is pretty unplugged from the outside world, so she liked that I was up to date with political banter. She’d asked if I had any spiritual questions my first day visiting her, and I said I’d think about it and if I came up with any, ask her tomorrow.
I asked her about attachment and letting go, but mainly we talked about my journey and navigating the uncertainty of it. I expressed my mixed feelings of interest and ambivalence at getting more deeply involved in Buddhism, cultivating a disciplined practice, joining a sangha. I love the basic concepts of Buddhism and have been reading about them, contemplating them and integrating them into my life for about fifteen years, but ‘I’m just not much of a joiner,’ I said, ‘I am wary of organized anything.’
I can get down with mindfulness and equanimity and tonglen prayer and all that, but when it starts to get into karma and dedicating virtue and the four winds of this and the eight mountains of that, it starts to feel more complicated and abstract than the spirituality I feel in my heart. I get skeptical and defensive. As someone raised in western culture, even raised atheist/Buddhist, I don’t know if I can genuinely not feel like a douche using Tibetan terms and chants. It feels culty to me the same way AA mantras feel culty. While many of the mantras of AA and Buddhism ring true to me, I am still leery of chanting them in a group of people. I’m guessing this would have to be a ‘fake it til’ you make it’ situation for me if I was to dedicate energy to developing discipline.
Lama said, ‘well, there are thousands of ways you can walk the path of Buddhism, if you feel it’s for you. First, though, you have to decide what the purpose of your life is. If you feel the purpose of your life is working to reduce the suffering of all beings and attain enlightenment, then you decide how fast you want to reach that goal. You can sit for few minutes every day in your nine-to-five life, that requires the least amount of compromise, or you can go live on a Buddhist retreat and practice twenty-four hours a day. If you practice with pure motivation, you may reach your goal a lot faster this way, but you’ll likely endure more concentrated discomfort and compromise. Of course there is the whole range of paths in between those extremes as well.’
Well that’s not heavy or anything. I mean, of course I want all beings to be happy and free of suffering, but do I want to form discipline around it? Doesn’t it make more sense to volunteer at a soup kitchen or animal rescue than to sit on a cushion dedicating the virtue you’ve gained from sitting there out into space? (I know many people do both). The spirituality I’ve felt in my heart since I was a child is very simple. There is energy that runs through the Universe and everything and everyone in it and we are all connected by it. If I hurt you, I hurt myself and so on. Buddhism speaks to this and then it gets complicated. I don’t want to prostrate and pray in a foreign language, it feels contrived to me. Lama reminded me that the Buddha laid out something like 39,000 paths to enlightenment and that one can only walk the Buddhist path in their own way. I hear that.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I want to attain enlightenment or even try. How many westerners actually pull it off? I figure that unless I die at an unexpectedly young age, I’m already 30-50% of my way through this life, and I’m doing alright. Do I want to put the energy into forming discipline? How much good can we really do others with prayer and dedication of virtue and merit when peak oil, global warming, pollution, political and economic corruption, and water scarcity are real? I mean, aren’t we pretty much going down anyway? Isn’t it human nature to kill and destroy as well as to love unconditionally? Even if we could somehow tip the balance of what’s affecting the world more to the love side, haven’t we already done enough irreversible damage to the Earth’s ability to sustain life? Am I just lazy and selfish and looking for a pass? Am I just over-thinking this as I do everything? Probably.
You know what helps with over-thinking? Meditation. Goddamn me.
After we had our talk, we were indexing her retreat notebooks together when this fell out of one of them.
Lama laughed and remarked on the auspiciousness of this falling out of a notebook she’d not touched in years, right after she told me I need to decide what the purpose of my life is. She gave it to me and reiterated that this journey I’ve chosen is perfect for contemplating this question if I choose to do so.
After working with Lama each day, I’d go back to the kitchen building for lunch, which ranch residents were taking turns cooking each day since the kitchen manager was away. I cooked lunch for everyone one day. I stepped in for the kitchen manager somewhat and did a lot of the kitchen cleaning each day. That felt good.
Then I’d head back to my casita and lay down. The work day is pretty much done by 2pm when you start at 5am and didn’t sleep. I’d lay there sweating, watching episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program that I’d downloaded years ago until my computer battery was low. I didn’t feel capable of reading or writing or sleeping or practicing or doing anything otherwise productive. I’d head back to the kitchen around dinnertime and eat something.
Each evening after the sun started to go down, JT and I would take a walk down to this well half way down the ranch’s mile long driveway. Near the well, there was a big tub the cows that roamed around the ranch (owned by a neighbor) would drink out of, and when they keep the tub full, the cows and other animals tend to stay down there instead of coming up, so we’d walk down there and fill the tub each evening, freeing any mice that had been captured in the store-room, sitting on an old rusty cart, checking cel phones and shooting the shit while the water pumped through the hose into the tub. It took about twenty minutes to fill.
Instagrammed well cows.
M joined us one evening and on the walk back, JT and M started talking about spiders in their beds and Black Widows in their casitas. I hadn’t seen any Black Widows yet, or had any spiders in my bed, and I jokingly told them that after this conversation, I bet I’d see them everywhere. I was right. I went to take a shower when we got back and there was a huge Black Widow in the middle of its web, partially strung to the pump gallons of shampoo and conditioner we all used. I didn’t use them that day and took my future showers during the day when the Black Widows stay hidden. I went to the sinks outside the shower building after my shower to discover Black Widows chilling under each sink.
I headed back to my casita and as I was reaching to slide open the screen door, felt spider web stick to my face. I looked up. Two Black Widows, directly above the only entrance to my casita. Every night. Waking from nightmares to pee at least three times every night, I’d lay there, stuck in the nightmare and anxious about walking under the spiders, but I’d get up and do it eventually, squatting under the bright moon.
Once I entered my casita, I saw a brown spider on my bed. I kept trying to capture it, but it was too fast, so I just wrapped up the whole blanket, walked it outside under the Black Widows, and shook it out. If anyone could have seen this panicked scene and decision-making process, I imagine I would have looked like someone who has to pee really badly and is slightly bent over, knees together, shuffling from foot to foot. I decided that I’d have to try to make peace with my fear of spiders for the remainder of my time there. I’d have to pretend I was still blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was surrounded by Black Widows and other spiders. Also scorpions, wolves, and rattlesnakes. I didn’t see any of these other creatures on this visit, which was fine with me.
A few days before I left, K the kitchen manager returned and asked me at dinner that night if she could ride to Northern California with me. I said sure, but I am stopping in LA for a few days and she said that worked for her. She’d go to San Diego and spend Father’s Day with her dad. Great! As much as I love driving alone, the company and help driving was a welcome change at that point. With two of us, we’d be able to cross Arizona at night, which would be safer and more comfortable than trying to do it during the day with no AC.
People spend a lot of time in silence on the ranch. Residents who leave the ranch spend the entire day after they return in silence. Sometimes they wear little signs around their necks that say ‘please respect my silence’ and sometimes they just write on the dry erase board in the kitchen that they are in silence. Some people do functional silence, which means you can talk to them about work, but nothing else. JT was in functional silence every day until noon. The first day I didn’t notice the sign on her neck and said good morning or hi and when she didn’t respond, I remembered about the silence. I must have tried to talk to K at least three times when she was in silence because I kept forgetting. Doh! I felt like a jackass, but everyone was nice about it. ‘You just got here,’ they said.
Lama and I were able to organize everything she’d wanted to by my last day there, which felt great. I was so happy to have been able to help with a project that seemed so daunting to her and so simple to me. I’d gotten to spend a lot more time with her than most people get to, and she is very wise, indeed, but also fun and funny. I showed her how to use Google maps and she helped me map out my route across Arizona and convinced me to do it at night. She gave me her numbers and asked me to call and let her know when we’d made it safely to Los Angeles. I walked back down the hill to the kitchen and saw JT. I told her I’d be leaving later that day and she said ‘well we gotta hang out then.’
We hadn’t gotten to hang much during the time I was there with us both working a lot and neither of us sleeping much. She was suffering severe adrenal fatigue like Lama was, had been for several months, and was pretty clearly running on fumes. I’d had adrenal fatigue for a while last Fall and completely understood. I took expensive supplements for it and it cleared up, but JT doesn’t have any money for supplements, so she avoids foods that make it worse and tries to get as much rest as she can, but the adrenal fatigue makes it hard to sleep. You just lay there wanting to. I can relate to that too. We went and sat in front of the fan in her casita and bonded for a couple of hours before K and I got a ride to my car in Duncan.
We talked about the ranch, our childhoods, relationships, Buddhism, ranch lesbians, filthy queers, Michfest and San Francisco, where we’ve both lived in the past. Although we’ve been acquaintances for a couple of years, I really only started being friends with JT a year ago, and although we get along pretty well, I don’t actually know much about her, so it was nice to learn more, clarify and deepen the friendship.
Seeing Lama and JT run down from working so hard at the ranch plus having such a hard time emotionally while I was there had me thinking I probably didn’t want to come back in the winter. By the day I left though, the same day I got my period, I realized I’d unintentionally felt the emotional discomfort people often feel when they are intentionally on retreat, intensified by hormone fluctuation and still feeling heartbroken.
I decided I’d have good boundaries around work if I decided to come back for a few weeks or months later, no one else on the ranch had adrenal fatigue, and some of them had lived there for years. They just don’t work as hard as these two women and I wouldn’t either. I’d figured out that while I want to maintain a relationship with the ranch, I still don’t really want to delve more deeply into Buddhism as a practice, even though I’ve found a teacher with whom there are mutual feelings of connection. I said goodbye for now to the ranch and C, the office/administrative person on the ranch, gave K and I a ride into town.
Super sweet ranch dogs, Sonam and Samo.
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Tags: Buddhism, Buddhist retreat centers, Buddhist retreats, earth energy, effects of insomnia, heartbreak, Insomnia, PMS
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