one week of a monk’s life

There’s a restlessness inside of me, an excitement mixed with dread. I’ve already withdrawn from others, no more emails, a quiet meeting for tea with a friend because she asked for it, otherwise winding down. Doing laundry, counting t-shirts and woolly pants, digging for a soap dish to take, tidying the house. All with a sense of leaving without knowing the outcome. Yet, on the surface, I’ll be travelling, by ferry and a five-hour drive, to a Zen monastery. Six days of silence; something I have done dozens of times over the years.

“I couldn’t be silent for that long,” people say when I tell them. “On retreat? Lucky you. I need a break,” say others, ” doing nothing, being fed, relax, get away.” Going on a monastic retreat is all that, but so much more. Or less, really. As has been the custom in monasteries the world over, be they Christian or Buddhist, our days will follow a set pattern. They start with the waking bell at 3:40 am, followed by chanting, bowing,  sitting (in meditation), eating (communally), working (in the garden and grounds,  kitchen, maintenance or housekeeping), resting (briefly), sitting some more (16+ half-hour rounds), walking outdoors (with feet kissing the earth), meeting a teacher face-to-face (for guidance), ending with evensong and sleep at 10 pm (unless one has the need for more meditation into the night).

With outer activities regulated by bells, gongs, and wooden clappers, without speech, eye contact, or touch, the mind naturally turns inward, not to peace and quiet but to the chaos of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Thomas Merton, who lived for 27 years as a Cistercian monk, saw monastic vocation “by its nature, [as] a call to the wilderness.” Walking in deep woods which can be eerily familiar in one moment and unsettling in the next; with nothing to go by than an inner compass he’s forgotten how to read.