Post #3296: Sesshin Return

On Saturday night I returned from a 7-day Zen Sesshin in the mountains outside of Squamish. This was my 7th sesshin since I started practicing with my Zen community 10 years ago, but my first in-person retreat in over 3 years due to covid.

Sesshin is an intensive residential meditation retreat with a focus on monastic Buddhist practice. It includes many rituals to encourage full immersion in meditation, even during meals. Participants rise at 5 am and go to bed at 9 pm, and there is little “free” time during the day. At a regular sesshin, at least 8 hours per day are spent in the zendo (meditation hall), with the remainder spent at meals, in work practice, or taking short breaks for rest practice.

A sesshin removes one from regular daily life to allow for full engagement with meditation. It is sometimes liberating, occasionally illuminating, and always exhausting. Though it is not really the blissful/restful experience most people associate with the idea of a meditation retreat, it is always a heart and mind-expanding exercise for me, one I’ve really missed over the last few years.

I had big plans for my drop back into regular life (writing, working out, seeing friends) as soon as I got home, but on Sunday night I came down with a cold (likely picked up on the packed ferry). Though it’s a relatively mild illness, it’s put the brakes my return somewhat and allowed me to preserve a lengthened period of quiet. I went into a pretty altered state towards the end of sesshin, and I’m not sure that I’m fully reintegrated even now, so I think that having my roll slowed a bit is a good thing.

Although the forms are always the same (we sit, we walk, we chant, we eat – all together all the time), each sesshin has a totally different character depending where you are at when you arrive. While preparing to go, I thought I would spend a lot of my time on the cushion unpacking the last few hellish months and it would be a heavy retreat, but instead I was treated to the running hamster wheel that is every inconsequential thought I’ve ever had and found the letting go of them one after another to be the simple whack-a-mole of observing one’s thoughts. On the other hand, my sleep got very strange and started to blend seamlessly in with meditation practice (I would wake in the night frequently, already in a state of meditation or thinking I was). Although I slept very little, I was never actually mentally tired, though physically I would hit the wall every once and awhile and need to lie down. I’ve always slept quite deeply on retreat, but I do understand that this kind of wakeful non-sleeping is common enough and was in no way unpleasant.

It’s so hard to describe what sesshin is like, and as I say it’s different every time. But “feeling all the feelings” is an apt way to describe a week of silent observation. One thing that always trips me out is looking around at all the other people and knowing they are having their own roller coaster of experience right alongside me no matter how they appear to be getting along. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have a whole lot of big feeling-self during a retreat like this, it just goes with the territory.

This was not a retreat of big catharsis for me, nor was it full of internal promises to “do better” or “be better” – but I did come away with more thoughts on a question about my spiritual path that has been open for awhile. I’m going to rest more with that question and the answers that are forming, but this retreat was a confirmation of how much this practice continues to resonate whether I’m on an intensive retreat, or sitting for my daily practice in the tiny Zendo at Birdsong.