I am just back from a week-long Vipassana (insight meditation) retreat in stunningly beautiful Vallecitos, New Mexico. This is an off-grid retreat center, with solar-based (intermittent) electricity, rustic ‘dry’ cabins, and no cell service in any direction for about 30 miles and no Internet. This retreat, called “Land as Dharma,” was held on a Wildlife Refuge and set in the middle of an Alpine meadow, offering land-based silent retreats with some of the most delicious food, and some of the most exquisite teachers and mentors, I’ve ever been gifted with receiving (note to teachers and artists reading this message: Vallecitos offer scholarships that cover over 90% of the fees through the Hemera Foundation=you should apply).
Thirty-five of us were in silence from Friday night until the following Friday morning (6 days). The only speaking happened when our teachers gave us meditation instructions, offered their ‘dharma’ talks (talks focused on some part of Buddhist philosophy), and when we met with our teachers for brief, 15 minute check-ins throughout the retreat. The rest–eating, chores, logistics communications, and all other daily functions–happened in silence or via a handwritten message board that acts as a sort of “central station.”
As I wrote when I returned from a Vallecitos retreat last year, silent retreats are an interesting bird in their own right, and even more interesting for someone who identifies strongly through voice in the world as a singer, a multi-lingual speaker and an ethnographer. In other words, in many ways, I “lead” with my voice in the world and in the ways I express my core identity. So, being in silence for that long can be scary but also richly rewarding, as we learn what stays when our voices leave us, and the deeper ways, for example, that we can sense and tune into human goodness without hearing someone utter a word.
Here is what I learned and saw about my fellow retreat participants through not speaking:
I tuned into the ways they move, and by extension, the ways I move through space.
I turned into faces, and eyes and eye contact, much more than I normally would.
I was able to sit, stay and eat in close proximity to others, something I often struggle with, with very little anxiety, as I didn’t need to make conversation or anticipate making conversation with anyone.
I learned new gestures to show mutual respect which don’t use the voice, such as placing my hand on my heart, when passing others, acknowledging their presence without needing to offer small talk.
I started writing songs, initially for myself, as a way to communicate what I was experiencing and feeling, and this served a profound function of communication in these days.
After 3-4 days off of phones, off of all screens and deeply immersed in land and nature, peoples’ faces began to actually change, with the folks around me losing their creases and furrows; eyes in particular became softer and looked more alive.
Bodies that walked pitched forward, heading somewhere, became more upright, as our destinations were few and schedule was slow/easeful
Another interesting side effect, for me, was an increased sense of safety around participants, and around male-presenting participants in particular. Being able to feel and see peoples’ inherent goodness–for example, I washed dishes each morning as my ‘work meditation’ with two male participants, which was super joyous and we often made ourselves laugh with our dish antics–without being or feeling sometimes harmed by peoples’ unskillful words, was deeply powerful. This process of ‘being with’ but not ‘speaking with’ bypassed a lot of that. As our teachers, Erin Treat and Brian LeSage phrased it, being silent was our gift to one another throughout the week.
What was delightfully surprising to me as a linguistic anthropologist was to hear, when the silence was released for our final sharing circle at the end, everyone’s speech and dialectal/regional inflections. Many, many people sounded completely different than the voices and speech styles I had created for them in my head. So, it was also a beautiful cultural lesson in releasing expectations surrounding region, identity and speech style, and simply noticing how people actually did speak and move in the world.
As I attended this retreat, I also began reading Zen Master and Nobel Peace Laureate Thich Nhat Han’s Old Path, White Clouds, a book about the historical Buddha’s (Siddhartha’s) life and how he came to create the philosophies of/behind Buddhism and the Dharma. Each morning, during our break, I would head down to the local stream, sit on the little wooden bridge with my feet dangling in the water, and read a few chapters from this book. At one point, Siddhartha is with some musicians (flutists), who play for him, and then hand him the flute and ask him to play. Even though he hasn’t played in seven years, he nonetheless accepts the invitation. He plays exquisitely, and, when asked how he could play so well after so many years of not playing at all, he replies:
“Playing the flute does not depend solely on practicing the flute. I now play better than in the past because I have found my true self. You cannot reach lofty heights in art if you do not first discover the unsurpassable beauty in your own heart” (Old Path, p. 165).
meals offered at Vallecitos
As I read it, I realized: this is the musician I want to become, both in the songs I write, the way I perform them, and in the ways I interact before, during and after a show with my audience. What a teaching, and what a delightful piece of advice!
So what I took from this retreat was: We are not our speech. We are bigger, deeper and great than that. And, we can always attune more deeply into our own hearts, as artists, and teachers, as mindfulness practitioners, and as humans who are deeply curious about this beautiful planet.
The Buddha Tree, meadow at Vallecitos
I’ll leave you with this latest song (you are the debut audience), recorded on my phone right when I got home. It’s a rough demo. and you’ll hear a pause as i scroll to the next set of lyrics, but I was really feeling the song when I sang it, and for me that’s what counts the most. It’s about this exquisite old Ponderosa Pine tree at Vallecitos, that is over 900 years old! I hope this song does just a little bit of justice to her beauty:
‘The Buddha Tree’ (listen here): https://on.soundcloud.com/crFiWRjXuCa3Gq7L6
Kristina Jacobsen, copyright 2024
Place written: Vallecitos, New Mexico
She smells of vanilla
butterscotch and tobacco,
She’s a Ponderosa pine
from a long, long line
Of holders and healers
She’s a witness, a believer
She can feel you shimmer
As you lean in close
She’s tall and majestic
Red bark crackling with age.
She’s a keeper of secrets.
And you bet she’s heard her share
There’s a niche right at her base.
A hollow space.
Where all the people lay
lay their burdens down
Chorus
In this little valley
Sitting by this Buddha tree
Just right now
May I find peace
When Coronado came to this land
in the 1500s
already fierce, already tall
she was here to see it all
People ripped right from their roots
grief I can only imagine
she stayed rooted and strong
when homesteaders came along
Carved the land, built their homes
Jicarillas removed to Dulce
Utes forced over to Colorado,
the tree still grew steady
Their ancestors knelt at her base
A hollow space
Where all the People laid
laid their burdens down
Chorus
In this little valley,
Sitting by this Buddha tree
just right now, may you find peace
we still kneel at her base
A hollow space
Where all the people lay
lay our burdens down
Chorus
In this little valley,
Sitting by this Buddha tree
Just right now, may we find peace
Just right now, may we all find peace
Hi Kristina!
Movement, time, and silence are interconnected with reality. So just enjoy the silence as a movement to understand reality with time. Thank you for a wonderful song, I got goosebumps...