Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 83

Ten years ago today I woke before dawn in a tent on a terrace on a mountain in Spain. I had not slept well. Wild boars had been rooting through the undergrowth all night, grunting and growling, sometimes so close to my tent I could almost smell them.

I wasn’t afraid. I knew if I didn’t move, they wouldn’t be bothered by me. And I was in their territory after all. Let them get on with their wild ways, as I was getting on with mine.

As I lay awake, contemplating the significance of what I was about to do, I heard a different sort of rustling. And then saw the movement of light as someone slowly and quietly tip-toed past my tent, head bent down to allow their head torch to light the way, while inadvertently casting shadows of nearby rosemary bushes in my direction.

I knew without a doubt who it was, my teacher Viveka.

We’d met ten years ago. I was twenty-two years old and in a right state. Grieving the death of my mother and drowning in my own version of hell, I’d walked through the door of the San Francisco Buddhist Centre hoping for healing.

I wanted to learn to love myself fully. All of myself. My hurt parts and angry parts and judging parts and tender parts.

And there she was, thirty-one and already ordained, chairing the centre and leading my course, an introduction to Buddhist meditation.

I remember we’d spend what felt like hours together on the sofas in the tea area after class talking about the nature of mind, what the heart is like, and how one goes from being a complete mess to being free.

We became fast friends and eventually I asked her to ordain me. I had no idea what I was asking for at the time. I just knew I wanted to go deeper and I knew I wanted her by my side as I did.

Now here we were ten years later, camping together on ancient terraces beneath a massive rock called Pena Roya, red rock. An intense protrusion rising up out of the top of the mountain like a crown, stained red from oxidation.

Countless vultures nest in the rock, which makes the lower cliff just below a perfect place for collecting their feathers. And if you climb to the very top you can see forever the geological formations bursting forth from the depths of the earth over thousands of years, carving out nutrient rich valleys below.

Those valleys replete with olive, cherry and almond groves, growing on terraces carved into the land and up to the highest peaks of the mountains.

The mountain itself is covered and infused with fossils, having at one time been under the sea. I once found part of an ammonite as big as my lower leg while following a dried-up riverbed between two cliffs.

It had sixteen ridges on it, the same number of women getting ordained on this retreat. Later I’d give it to the founder of our tradition, Sangharakshita, to whom I’m forever indebted for putting in place the conditions that would eventually lead me here.

I lay in my tent for a little while longer and then decide to get up. I’d like to get down to the retreat centre for a cup of green tea before heading back up the road to the kuti (hut) where Viveka will be privately ordaining me at 6am.

I chose this time. I wanted my private ordination to be first thing in the morning. In the freshness of that space between dark and light, before the day clamors in. I wanted to have the longest period of time available to steep in the aftermath of it, taking in my new name and all the symbolic significance of dedicating my life to waking up.

I’m not a morning person. Never have been. In fact, mornings literally make me nauseous. I remember on my first ever retreat almost hitting the floor when I found out what time we’d be getting up to meditate.

But somehow over the years I’ve learned to love rising early on retreat. I still haven’t managed to do it at home. But when I’m on retreat, surrendered to the schedule, I have absolutely no problem getting up.

So this morning is like that. I’m glad, delighted, to scramble down from my terrace and carefully wind my way down the track in the darkness to make myself a cup of tea.

About halfway there I suddenly catch sight of a dark figure in the bushes to the left of the track. Completely startled, I practically jump out of my skin and yell, “Fuck me!”

Then I realise it’s Viveka. She’s already been to the retreat centre and is now making her way to the kuti. She clearly doesn’t want me to see her, so I walk on by.

I make my cup of tea and drink it slowly, watching the light starting to slowly saturate the sky, stars fading, blue emerging.

Then I begin to make my way. I am walking up, up, up into the luminous sky. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’ve worked so hard preparing, preparing, preparing for this moment and still I don’t feel ready.

I’m still aware of so many parts of me yet to be fully liberated. So many parts I still don’t understand, down in the depths of me waiting to emerge, be witnessed, fully known and felt and loved. Calling out to be free.

I’ve felt freedom, I’ve known moments of grace. Moments when old habits no longer stuck in my mind, stubbornly glued to self-sabotage, counter-productive yet familiar and safe.

I’ve known moments of liberation from suffering, seeing a movement towards anger or apathy or desire dissolve in the clear light of awareness and love.

But it seems the more I’ve opened the more I’ve also felt the deep frustration of seeing the world at war with itself. Knowing so many others are yet to be free. And not just free from mental affliction, but free in even the most basic and fundamental ways.

The freer I’ve become, the more in touch I feel with the tension of knowing others still suffer. The tension, which I feel deep in the heart, of knowing none of us are free until we are all free.

All this I carry with me as I climb to that sacred spot.

I approach and knock tentatively on the door, it opens and I enter.

Afterwards I skip the first meditation of the day to go for a walk in the forest. I head further up, up, up the track until I reach the top of the red rock.

I whisper my new name to myself and imagine I’m a snow lion high in the Himalayas, leaping from rock to rock, my feet hardly touching the ground.

She who has the radiance of a lion. Something deep within me stirs.