Day 2 - Craving for Quietness -inside and outside

Photo: Golden sunrise, misty blue  mountains beyond the cliff, grey sky.

They had asked for help in housekeeping, since most visitors (visitors that had come for the TET celebrations) were leaving after lunch or before. Unlike other places where there are either paid employees or monastics with specifically assigned responsibilities, this works as a community: everybody can do anything, and if help is needed, it is requested to the community. After helping to keep away and organize dishes, and turn chairs back on the floor, we had a tea-meditation in the smaller meditation hall. At first it seemed awkward to me to have meditation with food and tea (there were treats, cookies, etc). I picked the last row, close to the altar. One of the sisters invited me to move forward, so I realized I ended up sitting by Thay’s place! Having only mats and pillows to sit on the floor gives great versatility: we were sitting in a circle for this tea meditation. The meditation was a mix of sharing things, poems, singing. It was a socialized reflection, making public comments or additions.


They had asked me to stay so that one of the sisters would give me the orientation, which consisted in a guide of the way they live, and also in checking what my experience with meditation was (since I am not a Buddhist). The sister did not hide her surprise (and also some kind of relief) with my regimen of attending at least one or two silent retreats per year. Lunch was late…. We finished 1.15PM and I missed a phone call.

I realize I am not very much in a mood of socializing. Many people here –fortunately most are gone, less than 10 of us are left- try to socialize, to connect, to reach out. I only participate if they specifically ask me to. I find that monastics for some reason are interested in me, maybe because I am so quiet.

After lunch, which I decided to have by myself in the room where the piano is, since the dining room was too loud, I had a deeply relaxing siesta. Then I changed rooms -I preferred to be by myself- and went for a 40 minute run and hike. When I came back, most of the people were gone. Everything is temporary...

Day 2 - Light Start, Enlightened Perspective

“Avoid eating in excess, sleeping in excess, working in excess.” (*) Monday is structured with a light schedule, since people are leaving and also to recover from the previous days (celebrations, socializing, eating). I am grateful of this timing, since it allows me to recoup energy. I went to the meditation hall but did not get in, just looked from outside briefly -safer than interrupting-, I had 30 minutes and preferred to go for a walk, after being sitting for a day! So I went for this walk up and down the hills, and came back for a cup of green tea and hot oatmeal, enjoying the silent breakfast. The first twenty minutes of each meal are supposed to be silent, until a bell rings advising otherwise.


I realize again, how much I enjoy simple things, not just enjoy them, I find them soothing and energizing, reconstructive and liberating. Unlike 5-star life which I find exhilarating, draining, emptying, pro-dispersing of energy, distracting.

All the buildings and rooms have TNH’s (**) thoughts, like “Peace is every step”, or “Time is Now”. Although I have not been yet to any formal, serious activity, I am enjoying it already. I am grateful I can be here, now. I remember I was going to come in October ‘08, but I had an invitation to visit New Paltz instead, For some reason, going to New Paltz seemed closer to me and my life, and what my gut asked me to do. And I do not regret. I feel I was also more ready and thirsty for this type of experience now than a few months ago. Ah… timings, our desires, our wishes…! There is a saying in Spanish: “God’s timings are not our timings.”

Sometimes though, I can get impatient, so impatient because our timings may be different, but the issue is we do come with an expiration date, unlike him! Maybe this gives you a hint of why I am in the monastery. Yes, let go, “Go as a river” as one of TNH’s posters says...

(*) basic Buddhist principle.
(**) TNH stands for Thich Nath Hanh, aka Thây, Buddhist monk, zen master, poet, founder of the Eglise Bouddhique Unifieé- in the USA they have Blue Cliff Monastery (NY) and Deer Park Monastery (CA).

PHOTO: sun rising behind the meditation hall.

Day 1 - The End

I walked by the first small room with the big monk, and it was still crowded; so popular or too small of a room? I did not have the energy to find out. So although people were still hanging around, I thought it was time for dinner, scheduled for 6. I had a big bowl of veggie broth, veggies and brown rice. Not even the delicious and hot meal was able to bring me out of that almost comatose exhaustion: I forced myself to eat, although I was hungry (but exhaustion was stronger than hunger); taste was like in a dream, although it was delicious.


I told one of the sisters that I would go to sleep, regardless of any activity scheduled until bed time. All the sisters look the same to me, except someone with some obvious remarkable feature. I had never seen monks and nuns with this austerity of attire: starting with their heads, which are totally shaved for both genders. This is particularly striking in this freezing cold weather. Even the color and style of their robes make some other monastic look ostentatious.

I went to sleep 7pm and although I woke up when my roommates came in and later on when 2 ladies were snoring, I was so totally dead beat and at the same time relaxed, that I would fall asleep again and again and again, no matter what and how many attempts to interrupt my sleep.

For some reason I cannot explain, it feels like coming ‘home’.

Day 1 - Welcome to Nirvana (or a piece of it)

Photo: Path to the Green Pine Hamlet.

“Hello, hello”. Nada. But noise is coming from what I guess is the kitchen. The rest of the house and area is in total silence. “Helloooo”. Nada. Again. A nun comes out. This very young sister might have recognized my face of exhaustion, since first of all she offered tea, water, soy milk, and asked me to relax in the tea room (a small area with a few sofas around a coffee table) while she looked for the other sister. I was impressed by the simplicity and informality of the place. I have been to many other retreat places, and although simplicity is comparable, maybe because these were German places, the order was hospital-like (I mean, first-world, top-line hospital). This felt like coming into a house where people are living: tea mugs on the table, someone who had left her knitting work, books marked...


This sister explained that it was the second day of the New Year’s Celebration (Vietnamese TET), and that day of my arrival is unique: in the morning, they visit the sisters’ rooms and in the afternoon, the brothers’. It is only once a year that their rooms are open to the public and to each other. Then the older sister came, gave me a bag with linens, and showed me with her finger where I would sleep. “Now it is busy (maybe 30-40 people, including kids), but then they all go and you can have a room for yourself.” I would sleep with 5 other women, in a bunker bed (in other circumstances, I would be wondering about this experience, but in my conditions, I just want to sleep!). This other house is just as simple, but new. You can even still smell the fresh wood of the floors, doors, maybe the beds. After leaving my bags in the room, I headed to the brothers’ hamlet for a taste of that unique experience. There are 11 brothers. The first room was very small, with a big monk sitting on the floor, and people around, in a circle, food on the floor in the middle. It was too packed, so I continued to the following one. This one was large, maybe the largest room. I was not sure of entering since there seemed to be 2 or 3 circles of people and very much caught into their conversations. But a monk with the kindest and most transparent eyes I’ve seen (even though they are dark), realized I was hesitating at the door and invited me to join their circle. He invited me with hot tea and there was plenty of food too: from dried fruits, to Viet treats and western goodies. I stayed there, just observing, too tired to reach out for conversation, with a pulsating headache out of lack of sleep, lack of hydration and I cannot say emotional stuff because I think I had already faced all that while still in BA. They offer to visitors and sisters red envelopes with something in it- there was a 1-dollar bill in each. He also grabbed his Spanish guitar and started singing a beautiful quiet song that he said he had composed, inspired on Plum Village. After a while, the sisters joined him in repeating his lyrics. I wanted him not to stop singing. Even if I could not understand a word (Viet), the voice, the melody, the guitar were soothing and mesmerizing in their simplicity. Maybe understanding the lyrics would have been a distraction from this balm.

After that I went to another room at the end of the corridor, where there was a western monk and an eastern younger one, who spoke perfect Spanish (born and raised in San Francisco). The western monk offered thoughts printed in colorful paper, on a bamboo tray. I grabbed mine, had some dates and nuts, and left. I was too tired for all the festivity. When someone would leave, they would kneel, with their hands together in prayer and wish good things to each other, or thank each other. This is the message that I got in the bright  red rectangle of paper:

“We should let go of pride; we shouldn’t sleep too much, nor let ourselves fall into indolence. We should know how to live and work moderately, and not let ourselves be carried away by the majority. Let us not be caught by any dazzling appearance, and let us know how to walk away unfazed. Let us always contemplate the empty nature of all things in order to attain the quiet Nirvana.” (Sn. 942)

Caveat & Apology

If you read my first postings, and you are now reading the "Day 1- Trip to the Monastery", you may wonder if I forgot what I had warned you about: that this is not a traveling journal. I have not forgotten and it is still not! I will only be recording experiences that are unique for me and that I believe are worth sharing. If it happens that I had 6 days of unique experiences in a row, then you will see 6 days in a row.
I also need to apologize for the gap since my last posting. There were a few unexpected developments that demanded my full energy and attention, including a drastic change in plans and logistics. But, continue caravan-ing and you will know what I am talking about! I hope you enjoy this journey with me...

Day 1- The trip to the Monastery

Photo: Just checked-in. A view from my room.

Whichever way one wants to see it, the adventure has started. The time for true introspection while being in places with no safety net.

I was relieved when leaving Miami, just because the long traveling, the rushing within tight schedules, the organizing and fast decision-making trying to get life organized for the upcoming 8 months or so, was over.

Technically, Buenos Aires-Miami is an 8-hour flight non-stop. However, because of several reasons, I had a 3-hour stop-over in Panama. That meant I woke up at 5am to leave BA and I did not go to bed until 3am (BA time)! Things could have been a little bit faster if luggage had shown up earlier, the shuttle to the hotel would have shown earlier, and if my luggage would not have been the last one to get off the shuttle (this meant being the last one on the line for checking in at the hotel… yes, the whole shuttle was checking in ahead of me). And I had to wake up at 7 am for an early and packed day. Of course, I am not complaining, I would like you to feel where I was coming from. I am actually grateful that weather conditions were in my favour (in spite of playing crazy games all over: unusually terrible thunder and windstorms in Argentina, snow in Florida, bad snow and wind storms in NY), that my luggage was not lost (or delayed), and that I am now writing in a freezing upstate NY, from the coziness of a lovely, simple, welcoming monastery.

Leaving Miami was a full day of traveling, that is 2 days after the 21 hour travel day. However, it was full of little pleasant surprises, yet so meaningful in a trip like this one. I was lucky that the shuttle driver saw me waiving at him to wait for me; I might have been tight with the flight otherwise (particularly since it seems that now, this major airline –which I will keep anonymous- has embraced the good habit of punctuality!). When I arrive at Port Authority Terminal (to take the 2-hour bus to Middletown) the most unexpected thing happened to me. Unexpected because being born and raised in a big city like Buenos Aires and having visited Manhattan a few times, I am familiar with the big-city mode (people rushing, tense, maybe even bitter or in a bad mood, maybe even edgy or aggressive, go fast, get out of my way, don’t look at me, don’t even try talking at me, get out of my way I said). I am not criticizing, I am just describing. And I have to confess that I have caught myself in that mode so many times, either because it works as a defensive strategy –particularly for women- or because I might be running late otherwise. This was the last stop of the bus and I am with the driver unloading my 2 suitcases and carry-on, I am arranging them in the way I know so that I can carry them myself all together. When a guy asks: Do you need help?

Of course, automatic response: no thank you.

But then when I was about to go up the flight of stairs, he just came and grabbed one suitcase! The guy not only helped me up those stairs, we walked down to buy my ticket and then 2 floors upstairs to the gate where my bus would leave. I was feeling so bad because of too much unsolicited help- he said he had come to bring some German friends to the station after going out that night, and his only task on his day was go back home and catch some sleep. I confessed I was surprised with so much generous help, particularly in NYC. He was born in LA. In the few minutes that took us to walk through the station, we exchanged brief basic data (what you do, where from, what next). He is envious of my sabbatical and my months ahead.

The bus ride to Middletown was smooth and with Swiss punctuality. I was getting off the bus when the taxi (pre-arranged, by the Sisters’ recommendation) arrived. It was a beautiful ride, about 20-30 minutes, through the snowed hills of upstate NY. The driver was extremely friendly, and even though I was indescribably exhausted, we had a pleasant conversation seasoned with some laugh all the way, sharing anecdotes about US-Canada border-crossing, my upcoming trips, his sons, the monasteries in the region...

The “monastery” is an old simple house, that used to be a hotel. There are a couple of buildings on one side of the road, and few others on the other side. The driver left me in what was the old hotel, so that I could hopefully find someone there, although I could not see anyone. There was some scattered noise coming from the kitchen.