Monday, October 26, 2009

Countdown to Buddhist Camp

I have ten more working days before I go on silent meditation retreat.

My body is craving the silence, although I've been trying to train for the inevitable physical effects of actually sitting for prolonged periods of time.

On one of the Zen meditation retreats I went on, the abbot would actually walk behind the sitting meditators and, if requested, whack us on the shoulders (kind of like violent shiatsu) with a long stick to help release some of the tensions from sitting. It worked. You'd be surprised how much you look forward to that kind of thing if you've been sitting for a long time.

2 comments:

PTR said...

That's fascinating - I'd always though that "whack with a stick" thing was a bad urban myth.

cousin w said...

It sounds great - will look forward to hearing about it when you're back...