But The Laziness never entirely faded. For the rest of the retreat, I felt like I could see more clearly, because my thoughts and emotions had become transparent. Things seemed charged with mythological import, especially when I was outside. The Hudson became The River. A path winding through woods became The Path. A brick wall was The Wall. A goldfinch preening in a pine tree was all the evidence anyone could want of Divine Creation.
The retreat convinced me that contemplation can reproduce the effects of psychedelics, a claim I have long doubted. On the retreat, as during a trip, I saw life’s inexplicability and improbability, which I like to call “the weirdness.”
On psychedelics, the weirdness screams at you. On the retreat, the weirdness murmured.
Imagine the perceptual state that inspired Dickinson to write “A Bird Came Down the Walk.”
In my old tripping days, when I encountered strangers, I shunned eye contact, because I feared people would see into my soul and know I was high. I felt that same reflexive fear during the retreat. I had to remind myself, You’re not doing anything illegal, fool! And everyone else here is probably tripping too!
Some other students seemed to be in trances much deeper than mine. On the last day, when we could talk, a young man to whom I mentioned my looking-for-your-eyeballs analogy said he felt like he’d been looking for his head and realized he had no head. Whoa.
It’s considered bad form to talk too directly about enlightenment, and I understand why. As Dickinson said, some things are best seen veiled.
But enlightenment, I decided by the end of the retreat, is banal. It means simply appreciating each moment, no matter how mundane and annoying, as an end in itself, not as a means to another end, like making money or impressing others. Like, be here now, Dude.
Easy to say, hard to do. Most of us see our lives as a series of chores to be completed, not moments to be cherished. I certainly do. An insidious effect of being a blogger is that my life becomes fodder for my writing. I’m not complaining, I love this gig, but there is a price.
Is it worth devoting weeks, months, years, decades to cultivating hyper-attentiveness? Is that the best thing to do with life? No. There is no best thing to do with life, and Buddhism errs in implying otherwise. The exaltation of enlightenment makes us vulnerable to abuse by sleazy gurus. And seeking enlightenment is pretty self-indulgent. The world isn’t all fireflies and goldfinches. It has problems that need fixing, as I was reminded whenever I looked across the Hudson at the West Point Military Academy.
But I’m glad I went on the retreat.
The Lama, during our private chat, said Buddhism isn’t true, but it works. Something worked during the retreat, but what was it? My wishful thinking? Suggestibility? A charismatic guru assuring me over and over that I am Buddha? Hours and hours of meditation? Chanting? Staring at clouds? Isolation from my laptop, phone and Kindle? From email, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, The New York Times, idle chitchat, all the usual distractions? The heat? Withdrawal from caffeine (I cut back when I took ayahuasca earlier this summer and quit entirely for the retreat)? Who knows.
Now that I’m back in the real world (which, given the digital distractions, is more virtual than real), The Laziness is fading, becoming a memory, an idea. I don’t know what The Laziness is, and I’m suspicious of any explanation of it, Buddhist or otherwise. But I want to get it back, and sustain it, no matter what I’m doing. Grading freshman papers, waiting for the subway, watching Humans with my girlfriend. When I seek The Laziness, I am not living in the moment, I am looking for my eyeballs, but I can live with that paradox. I’m thinking of starting each day by chanting, D’oh.
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A Buddhism Critic Goes on a Silent Buddhist Retreat
