From Hidden Harm to Dharma: Silent Retreat Finale

Click here to view Part One and Part Two of this series.

Three days for a retreat isn’t a long time, but it feels like the perfect amount of time to reset. Long enough that your mind can quiet and your body can relax. Long enough to appreciate the new patterns and new community you are creating alongside your peers. Short enough, that on the last day as you near the closing ceremony, you begin to preemptively miss the quiet and hope you can bring the teachings home into your every day life.

The dharma talks center on non-harming, a leading principle in Buddhism. This retreat, focusing on the Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s work towards justice and “non-harm”, allows us to see this principle in action. MLK regularly gave a talk, “Love Your Enemies”, revisiting it often with new insights. This ideal seems all too relevant today, with the separation so many of us feel, amplified by the media outlets and leaders further creating false divisions, stripping us of our common shared humanity. 

In “Love Your Enemies”, MLK asks us to look at ourselves first. For me, this relates well to how meditation, solo hikes, or making art without music or podcasts on, allows your thoughts to bubble up and be loud and clear. You get to notice what you are saying to yourself about yourself and about others. It’s amazing and even humorous to see what your mind says. In the communal meditation space, you can watch your mind start judging others for not sitting correctly or for walking too loud.  Really. It’s a great opportunity to witness the mind doing all kinds of acrobatics. And it’s a great opportunity to practice new ways for the mind to function. 

Our teachers, Tuere Sala and Shelly Graf, offer us some practices for when we notice our minds negative tendencies. We can interrupt the chatter with two simple questions:

Is this causing harm?

Is this skillful?

When we think of harm, we may first think of big actions, like physical violence, but harm exists in each of us in small and large ways. We all cause harm, despite our best intentions. That is part of our shared humanity. Most of us don’t want to acknowledge we cause harm. How do we train our hearts to be open to our imperfection? To accept when we get it wrong and make amends? 

When we ask is this skillful?, we get a more nuanced approach to our actions.  Maybe the thing I want to say to the person, maybe it is honest and true and I believe it will help a situation, but is it skillful? Is there a better way to approach the issue that is more skillful?

This inquiry asks us to stop and be present with the moment and consider it differently. It breaks the cycle of our minds gymnastics and asks us to look with a new lens. 

When we want to shut down or blame others, it is the time to ask these questions and interrupt our story lines. We can be curious about our imperfect actions and thoughts. This curiosity will soften our defenses and lead us to learning new ways of being. Asking these questions starts the slow process of training our hearts to be still and sit with the uncomfortable feelings. 

The retreat ends with everyone joining into groups of 10-20 people so we can all share a little bit of our experience and process together how it went for us. Again, it was remarkable to hear the other participants mirror the range of inner dialogue and experience, from moments of joy at the stillness and inner peace you glimpse to humor or disappointment at the repetitive and petty places our minds go. Our humanity comes front and center when we don’t have distractions to mask it.

Our teacher, Shelly Graf closes the retreat with an act of humility, modeling how to start with our selves when we practice non-harm. Shelly states she assumes she has caused harm over the past few days. It is inevitable in our imperfect human bodies that we hurt ourselves and others. Shelly asks for forgiveness and I think we all kind of melt into our meditation cushions, our hearts open and receptive.