Here's a photo of the survivors of the Austin Dharma Punx Zen Retreat 2010. We all made it through alive, but just barely!The retreat was held March 18-21 at the Recreation Plantation campsite a little ways outside of Austin, Texas. My first teacher routinely runs retreats at campsites in Ohio so I figured this would work out OK. But I was too busy with moving across the country to attend to the specifics of the event and did not realize what I'd gotten myself into until I got there.
The zendo was to be a covered pavilion. I had imagined an enclosed space. I should have looked up the word "pavilion." It turned out to be basically a roof over some picnic tables. This obviously wasn't gonna work. So we decided to use the nearby covered stage for a zendo. This at least had a floor. It was a raised stage, about three feet tall with a roof but with no walls.
The weather was good on day one, and I was starting to become hopeful that the retreat might work out. It certainly wasn't an ideal situation to sit zazen in the open air. But it was do-able. The ten of us made it through, a little chilly but OK.
That night I spent my first ever night in a tent. It was freezing cold, which kept me wide awake until close to midnight. I finally slept. But at about three in the morning I woke up to a rustling noise outside. It sounded like either a person or an animal as large as a human being walking around in the grass just outside my tent. Since the nearest other tent was about fifty feet away and down a hill there was no good reason any of the retreat people might have been hanging out in front of my tent at that hour.
I switched on my flashlight and tried to sound threatening as I squeaked out, "Wh-who-who's there?" I unzipped the tent flap and saw nothing but grass and trees. It was then that I realized the wind had kicked up during the night and that what I was hearing was just the rain fly of the tent rubbing against the tent itself.
After a while I settled down enough to sleep, although the cold was even more intense now, which made sleeping even harder. But I'm a light sleeper so every time the rain fly rubbed against the tent I was up again. I wasn't scared anymore, but I couldn't sleep through it.
The next morning the wind was a lot harder than it had been on the first day. We'd set up a tarp on one side of the "zendo" to provide some kind of a wall so that participants weren't staring out at the pavilion. But the wind started whipping the tarp around like crazy. We'd weighted it down with heavy rocks and a cinder block. But the wind was strong enough that these were sliding all over the place. I cut the morning zazen short so we could fix the problem.
It was clear we weren't going to be able to continue this way. So we reconvened and decided to pay an extra fee to rent a tiny cabin on the site. This was basically a two-room shack, about the size of a large bedroom. We managed to squeeze all thirteen participants (three more had arrived on the second day) set up our Elvis Buddha on a book shelf to make a kind of altar, took off our shoes and got down to some zazen.This went all right in spite of the cramped quarters. In fact the small space made for a nice sense of camaraderie among those involved.
For the second night I and one of the other participants elected to move into the shack rather than sleep in tents. The others bravely stayed outside. Which was fine until 6 A.M. when a huge thunderstorm hit. The temperature dropped by something like 20 degrees in an hour or so. Lightning was flashing on all sides and the rain was as hard as I've ever seen. Oddly enough 6 A.M. was the time we were to begin the day's zazen.
We decided to follow the schedule at least until lunchtime. We'd be OK in the cabin. At lunch we had a mass meeting and decided we were going to finish out the day. But there was no way we were going to spend the night in the mud and rain.
I'd promised to do dokusan in the afternoon. One of the participants offered her tent. So I bundled up with two jackets, two hats and a big black thermal blanket and started doing one-on-one interviews with the members of the group who'd asked to speak with me.
This actually went better than I'd have imagined. But I was surely glad when the final interview was done and I could go into the cabin where it was a couple degrees warmer.
We tore up stakes then and went to one of the participant's houses for dinner. Several of us were from out of town. Space was donated by kind local folks and we all went back to sleep in warm beds or at least couches.
The Austin Zen Center was nice enough to let us use their space to do the last couple of sittings the following morning. That's where the group photo above was taken.As you can see we all made it through. It was hardly a disaster -- in fact it was kind of nice all things considered. Even so, that's the last time I agree to do a retreat in a campground without an enclosed space for zazen.
Phew.
Tomorrow begins the 2010 Southern Dharma Retreat in Hot Springs, N. Carolina. At least they have a fully enclosed sitting space and nice, heated living spaces for everyone involved! Then it's on to Brooklyn and Baltimore. For full info on where I'll be check out this link. See ya there!
