on retreat

This week I'm working/living on retreat. My 3rd year class is dying, they are ending. This is their last retreat together, and my last chance to spend a bunch of concentrated time with them. I fall in love with every class. I get attached. And now our time together is coming to a close, and it is time for me to start letting go. This is the 5th year I've done this retreat.

Synchronicity keeps happening in my life lately. Here, on retreat, it is no different. Birds and fish keep popping up in various forms. I don't know if it means something, or if it is just coincidence.

Yesterday I had a fabulous experience of watching the bouncy-castle that is my mind. It was a day of silence from the time we woke up until about 8pm. Silence is such an other-worldly thing in a group of 20 people. Meals in silence, gongs indicating when it is time to sit and when it is time to walk. Conches are blown 10 minutes and 5 minutes before each sitting period. I sat 6 hours of meditation, 4.5 of which I was either the umdze (timekeeper) or gatekeeper. I love ringing the gongs, even if I'm a little out of practice. I've been more successful blowing the conch this year than anytime in the past. Everyone else dislikes this conch because the blowhole is really big. I find the big conch-hole much easier to blow.

Today, more sitting, and silence has lifted. The schedule for the rest of the week:
8am-9am breakfast (I'm waiting my turn to shower right now).
9am-12 meditation
12:30-1:15 lunch
1:15-2:30 staff meeting
2:30-4 open time or maitri space awareness practice
4-4:30 tea snack
4:30-5:30 open time or maitri space awareness practice
5:30-6:30 meditation
6:30-7:30 dinner
7:30-9 evening activity (usually a talk)