On our arrival we were invited to wait by the canal while they found the person who would help us get settled in. After Paris, it felt like heaven to sit, with no particular hurry, in the dappled sunlight.
People were sitting here and there, talking, finishing their lunch, washing their lunch dishes in the buckets outside provided for the purpose. Afternoons were free time. Almost every other time was meditation time! A big bell, that had had a former life as some sort of storage tank, rang the changes from one kind of time to another.
Dinner was meager: soup and bread. We wished they had told us to make sure to eat a good lunch beforehand. I was still jet-lagged and not eating at normal times.
At night, it took some time getting used to the fact that our cabin had rodents of some kind in the attic.
The mornings were silent, and began at 6:30 with a meditation sitting. It was cold enough in the mornings that we needed blankets.
The meditation itself was hard, but good. You'll have to ask JD for his impressions, but as for me, I very much appreciated having people to meditate with. The sessions were 45 minutes, which was longer than I had done by myself, and gave me some back trouble, so I sat on a chair. I got some practice in supporting my lower back with a cushion while sitting up straight with my upper back. After just a few sessions, I could really feel it in my intercostals.
Then breakfast. It's odd eating with a group of people in silence.
After that was work time. I got to be on garden detail because I had some experience with plants, however slight. Impressively, a lot of the food for the summer open retreat comes from the garden.
The first day I deadheaded flowers all over the grounds, and the second day I broke up branches and tied them into bunches of kindling for when it gets colder.
City girl that I am, I do sometimes think about what it would be like to work on a farm. I'm not sure I would like it, though of course one can get used to anything! Anyway, at least it was a good break from my usual work, and it was heartening to know that I was doing something that would be directly useful.
There was a dharma talk after work -- in English, with French translations, which pretty much sums up the linguistic situation there in general.
Then lunch, where the general silence was broken. The people I talked to there were all pretty neat. Everyone had some sort of story there. Some had been on the two-week walk that had wrapped up a few days before. (They'd had 180 people on the walk, though there were only 30-40 people there when we got there.) Everyone was super nice, not syrupy nice, but normal and kind and common-sensical. There were families with children, young people traveling through Europe or around the world, teachers, a cat, and the calmest puppy I've ever met in my life. I didn't take photos of the people because I didn't want to bother them, but I did get the animals. :)
I only missed a couple of the meditations. The last one, I had hurt my back a bit doing yoga, so I did a walking meditation around the pool.
I really liked that there was so much water there, between the pool, the canal, and the river running by the house. The house, which had originally been built as a jewelry factory, was built right on the river to take advantage of the water power.
The last night I was there, it was a full moon, and someone wanted to celebrate by doing some storytelling, so we went out with our cups of tea and sat on the dam in the river and watched the moon rise and listened to the story.
I'm so glad I went. Everyone there was so inspiring. And just doing the meditation was inspiring too.
There are a few more photos here.
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