Quest Magazine

Silence

By Mary Anderson

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Anderson, Mary. "Silence." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):186-188.

Theosophical Society - Mary Anderson was International Secretary of the Theosophical Society. She is a former Vice-President of the Society, was for many years Secretary of the European Federation of the TS and lectured widely for the Society in many countries and in several languages. She also contributed many articles to The Theosophist, the international journal of the TS.

We live in an age of noise. There are mechanical noises—the rattle of a computer printer, the roar of a jet, a pneumatic drill; these might be considered useful and even necessary. Then there are sounds which man creates to entertain himself, while sometimes tormenting his neighbors, such as noises emanating from radio or television sets or discos. It is a known fact that loud noises cause deafness, and the deafer one is, the more one calls for amplification. In fact, many young people today are hard of hearing. In addition, propaganda and advertising make use of noise to influence people. Ideas are infiltrated into the subconscious and may cause certain automatic reactions which may even frighten us if we become aware of them.

It is not only mechanical noise which rules our age. The human voice contributes—people sometimes speak too loudly, too much and unnecessarily, perhaps in order to hide their inner dissatisfaction, to overcome their boredom, or to compensate for an inferiority complex by the opposite—a superiority complex.

Aldous Huxley refers, in his Perennial Philosophy, to the fact our words are often unkind, selfish, or foolish. But we are not aware of this when we go on talking without thinking.

It has been said that—in certain circumstances, for example, when we are excited—before we speak we should count to ten. It has also been said that we should ask ourselves whether what we wish to say is true, kind, and useful. The true, the kind, and the useful form a threefold sieve—the sieve of the mind, which should be able to judge what is true, the sieve of the heart (not the emotions), which knows whether something is kind or not, and the sieve of practical reason, which tells us whether what we wish to say is worth mentioning at all.

Sometimes it is asserted that what is true is often not kind but cruel and, vice versa, what is kind is not always true. But if one judges and speaks from a higher point of view, what is said may be kind and true as well. Thus, from a higher point of view, one sees not only the faulty personality but also the inner nature of the other person. There is something admirable in everyone, even if it does not appear on the surface.

The criterion of usefulness is perhaps the most strict. If we always applied it we would speak much less! It is not unimportant to distinguish between what is useless and what is useful, for useless words are a waste of energy. They exhaust not only the speaker but also the listeners. We have surely all experienced this at some time.

Control of the tongue—the "unruly member" —is one of the most difficult things. So control of speech, however difficult, is one of the most fruitful of exercises. This was recognized by Pythagoras who made the beginners among his pupils keep silence for two years. Most modern monks and nuns practice silence for long periods during the day.

Why is it so important to be silent? Why is silence so necessary and so valuable?

First, we should enquire why we often speak at all and about what. It often arises from the need we feel to assert or justify ourselves. And often we speak, directly or indirectly, about ourselves. Let us count how often people—or we ourselves—use the little words "I," "me," and "mine." As a saint once said, "When the I, the me and the mine are gone, the work of the Lord is done." It is no use trying consciously to avoid those words. It is the attitude of self-assertion and possessiveness which they express that makes them a hindrance.

Spontaneous (not enforced) silence is a sign that the little "I" is less predominant. Herein lies, in the first place, the importance of silence in the spiritual life.

Secondly, what is really profound cannot be expressed in words. In Taoism it is said that the Tao which can be named is not the real Tao. The Divine is "unthinkable and unspeakable." Sometimes people try to approach a conception of the Divine by denying everything which the mind can conceive: it is "not this, not this" — neti, neti. In The Light of Asia we read: "Who asks doth err; who answers errs; say naught." The Chinese classic, Monkey, relates how a pious monk set off westwards from China to fetch the Buddhist scriptures and take them back home. When he received them, he was amazed to see that they consisted of empty pages. He complained, and Buddha declared that, in that case, he would give him written pages for his people since they were too stupid to understand the true (blank) scriptures! Great truths cannot be expressed in words. This is clearly stated in The Mahatma Letters: "Most if not all the secrets are incommunicable . . ." It is then pointed out that, if such secrets could be told in so many words, all the Mahatmas would need to do would be to write a textbook so that great truths could be taught to children like grammar in school.

The Mahatma adds that what is necessary, if great truths are to be passed on, is inner readiness on the part of the pupil. Herein lies the third reason for keeping silence. One who speaks continuously does not listen. And one who chatters inwardly, who is constantly mulling over thoughts, imaginings, feelings in his or her head, is not open to anything. Where everything is full, there is no room for anything new. An aspirant went to a Zen master and asked for instruction on the spiritual life. The Zen master first offered him tea. He poured the tea into the aspirant's cup and continued after it was full, so that it overflowed. The aspirant protested, but then perceived the symbolic meaning of this action. If we are still completely oriented towards the earthly—the selfish—there is no room for the spiritual!

"Silence" does not only mean avoiding the spoken word. The seventeenth-century Spanish mystic Molinos spoke of three kinds of silence: silence of the lips, of the mind, and of the will.

By the silence of the lips we avoid waste of energy at the physical level. The silence of the mind can perhaps be compared with chitta vrtti nirodhah, the soothing of the waves of the mind which is Patanjali's definition of Yoga. With what do the waves of our thoughts and feelings busy themselves? With the past and the future, with memories and imaginings. Our consciousness is only seldom in the present, perhaps because the little "I" finds no place in the present—which contains nothing with which it can decorate itself.

Concerning the silence of the will: the chattering of the will (or desire) forms, often unconsciously, the background to the speech of the mind. The silence of the will refers to the ceasing of our longings or desires and our dislikes.

How important it is for us to become conscious of those desires and dislikes! It would be a first step on the way to inner silence, the way to true enlightenment.

Wherein lies human suffering? According to the yogic philosophy of the klesas (that is, of suffering and its causes), as explained in Patanjali's Yoga-sutras, desires and dislikes are part of the chain which binds us, which causes the suffering of humanity and all beings. From ignorance, the first link in the chain, there arises the ego-sense, the feeling of being a separate "I." Ignorance here means illusion in the sense that one sees things and oneself as something other than they are. For example, we consider what is only temporary to be permanent; we may know in theory that something is not lasting but we act as if it were eternal. Thus people collect possessions which they will have to leave behind—at the very latest—when the physical body dies. And the result of this ignorance is the ego-sense, the second link in the chain of klesas. Even if only subconsciously, we also consider that the "I" —our present conscious being—to be something permanent. And that "I" wants certain things for itself and rejects others. Thus there arise from the ego-sense desires and dislikes, the third and fourth links in the chain of suffering.

Molinos, who spoke of the silence of the lips, the mind and the will, was the founder of Quietism, a devotional mysticism. His philosophy was not in line with the dogmas of the Church and he died in a prison of the Inquisition.

But, in fact, Quietism, like all types of faith, contains certain dangers, if it is wrongly interpreted. There is the danger of passivity. If we refer to the three gunas in Indian philosophy, we might say that this danger consists in overcoming rajas or excessive activity (for example exaggerated chatter) by excessive passivity or tamas instead of harmony or sattva.

Complete silence has its place but there are times and places for speech. Nevertheless, we should pause from time to time and realize what our motives are in speaking and filter our words through the threefold sieve of truth, kindness and usefulness.

Silence means, in a way, being empty and open. We must be open before we can receive anything. But openness is not everything and may be dangerous in certain circumstances. A medium is open to illusory and even dangerous influences. Our silence should be based on absolute purity, which is selflessness. Above all we should be open to what is within. This does not mean openness to astral influences, to the influences of our own imaginings, tendencies and dislikes. We must be open to a deeper level of our inner spiritual nature which is our true being. This is very difficult, because our feelings often disguise themselves as higher inspirations and intuitions. We must always be very distrustful of ourselves!

Openness towards what is within is therefore necessary but it must be openness to what is selfless, to the highest, to what is always beyond. Openness towards what is without is also necessary, but it is not a matter of accepting everything which we meet, everything about which people are enthusiastic. It has been said: "Examine all things and keep what is good." For us to know what is good, discrimination is necessary. The greatest hindrance to such discrimination is egocentricity. Our own interests distort our image of things.

Genuine, profound silence is, as we have said, not passivity, not a state of sleep. It is quietness—noiseless and therefore scarcely perceptible to our usual senses and capacities. It is pure consciousness, that is, consciousness without the "I." As Krishnamurti said, where the "I" is not, there "the other" is, meaning the Highest, the Ground of all things; where the "I" is not, there is real love.

Where emptiness or silence in this sense reigns there is energy and tremendous activity. Our strength is no longer wasted through unnecessary words, thoughts, feelings and wishes. A dynamo turns so quickly that its movement is invisible but it is the source of great energy.

This has something in common with the state of pralaya in which everything is contained, but in a latent state. "The Eternal Mother," Space, is present in pralaya, as also is the Great Breath—the constant movement of in-breathing and out-breathing. It is akin to the transcendental Deity, in contrast to the immanent deity corresponding to the manifest universe. This transcendence is the source of immanence, that is, of the manifest universe; it is at the same time its final goal. But it is also its heart. When the outer is silent, we can hear the inner voice of the silence. When the lower is silent, the higher can speak.

Watch It

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty."Watch It." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):124-125.

Theosophical Society - Betty Bland served as President of the Theosophical Society in America and made many important and lasting contributions to the growth and legacy of the TSA.

As soon as the first rays of daylight peep through the edges of our window shades, my cat perches on her viewing table at a particular window of interest. After about fifteen minutes, patience wearing thin, she begins a gentle tapping at the shade, softly at first, but quickly building to a level to compete with any rock band. We of course express our gratitude to her for eliminating any need for an alarm clock, and then drag blearily out of bed in order to accommodate her feline curiosity.

Thus begins the day of watchfulness over the squirrels and birds, which seem to deliberately cavort in that particular spot just to tease her. The intense vigil is punctuated by occasional breaks for food, affection, naps, and frolicking. At her post, however, there is no room for lapses into laziness. Whiskers and ears forward, marking every movement beyond the window, she is poised for that one moment when the glass might disappear, giving her full access to the ground below with all its tantalizing inhabitants.

Living in two worlds at the same time, our cat exemplifies the kind of attitude we might develop through a committed vigil of silence. Anyone familiar with cats knows that they do not in any way neglect their creature comforts. In the fashion of Garfield, they are known for their luxuriating habits. Yet, they become fully alert and ready to pounce at the slightest appearance of a target. They live every moment attuned to their daily needs but always seem to have an inner radar tuned to other possibilities.

We also live in two worlds at the same time, but we mostly live in a state of forgetfulness concerning the world of reality that waits in the inner silence. A world of strength, potentiality, and certainty does exist through the interior window of our being, but we forget to be attuned to it, to have that daily vigil of alert watching. The ordinary activities of our lives, minds, and emotions create a cacophony that drowns out other possibilities. Perhaps we need to consider exploring that inner alertness every morning in order to carry that kind of attunement all day long.

Far more important than the cavorting squirrels, that interior space contains the patterns and causes of the present situation as well as the source of wisdom as to how to work within and through it. Theosophy teaches, and many of us have begun to realize this truth, that things unfold from within outwards—that the world is guided from this inner plane.

The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes, by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people, and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry; but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "stir-an," to steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is master of the outer, just as a man's brain guides the movements of his lips.

Mabel Collins, Light on the Path

If we really believed this truism, we would apply the same intensity as the cat to our vigil at the window of our souls. Our distractions are so strong and our watchfulness so tenuous, that the only way we can begin to develop an attunement to this inner knowledge and guide is to deliberately sit ourselves down in an environment of tranquility and silence. With practice, a sense of connection with this alternate reality begins to arise and we are drawn more often to that window—even at unscheduled times when the need arises. Within this wellspring of silence can arise the strength of being to dare and persist, the potentiality of inspiration to solve issues and create a better world, and the certainty of direction to guide us into our higher purpose.

As soon as we realize that these are the grand prizes dancing just beyond our reach through the window, one would think that we would become just as intense in our vigil as the cat, watching to catch the slightest hints from the world beyond the window—the world in which our higher self, our ultimate master, resides.

Something About Annie Besant

By Fritz Kunz

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Kunz, Fritz. "Something About Annie Besant." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):190-191.

The typescript for this article—three pages of onionskin joined with a tiny straight pin—arrived in the Theosophical Society Archives with decades of papers from the Kunz family. This particular article was composed between 1914 and 1917, when Fritz Kunz began a three-year term as principal of Ananda College, the Buddhist boys' school in Ceylon founded by H. S. Olcott. His friend, Basil Hodgson-Smith, was serving then as a lieutenant in the trenches of France. Kunz was frequently asked to contribute to and The Theosophist, writing on topics as perse as Shakespeare, the South Seas, Atlantis, and trade unionism. He knew Annie Besant very well, so it is natural that he was invited to write of her. In a footnote, he explained his choice of title: "I like to try to follow editorial desires; and this is exactly what I was asked to write about."

The teenaged Fritz first met Annie Besant at Adyar in 1903, when he and his English friend, Basil, worked as secretaries for C. W. Leadbeater on a world lecture tour. While at the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar from 1917 to 1922, Kunz served Mrs. Besant on the staff of her newspaper, New India, and assisted in her efforts for educational reform and Indian independence. Throughout his long career as a Theosophical lecturer and writer, Kunz related admiring affectionate accounts of "the Chief" describing her brilliance, her kindness, and her leadership. This article provides a glimpse of how he viewed her in the early days.

Theosophical Society - Fritz L. Kunz was an American lecturer, educator, editor, and writer associated with the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India. As a young man he worked with Charles Webster Leadbeater and Annie Besant, and later he was married to Dora van Gelder Kunz, who served as President of the Theosophical Society in America.

It is well known that when Alexander the Great visited Diogenes he asked that worthy philosopher what he, the conqueror of the world, might do to please Diogenes. Whereupon the tub philosopher replied gruffly, without even looking up at the great Alexander: "Stand from between me and the sun!" One who writes about Mrs. Besant should feel as insignificant as Alexander must have felt on that occasion, for the best way to convey some understanding of Mrs. Besant is to remove one's little person from the scene and let the sun shine for itself. And of those who wish to gaze upon the light as it is I cheerfully relinquish any pretense holding the attention. But it sometimes happens that one likes to study the light after it has passed through some medium which analyses it into itself components, even if that medium happens to be. a very imperfect refractor; it is for them I write.

A disingenuous youthful admirer of Mrs. Besant—I should more properly use the Greek term, lover—once innocently revealed in one sentence a most significant fact with regard to her. He was to consult her upon some points which, to his young mind, seemed weighty. When he returned from the interview he said in effect: "Before I come into in the presence of the President I am filled with ideas that seem to me most important, and when I find myself before her these things dwindle into nothing and I see them to be of no moment; and then I think that I have a petty mind."

Now I do not quote this lad to be patronizing, for I find the same thing within myself! Our minds, I have no doubt, are charged with notions that are galvanized into a semblance of vastness and importance by a considerable contribution of egotism and self-importance. We think our ideas are great because we conceived them; we bustle with mental importance; we think that we must lay these great conceptions before someone able to appreciate them; we— I might say here "I"—have a lurking idea somewhere in a dark corner of what I am pleased to call my intellect that Mrs. Besant will be interested in my ideas. And then, in the mere presence of that kind lady these splendid ideas shrivel away, crumble into dust; and there I stand, denuded of that glorious fabric of intellections, insignificant, and wondering at my satisfaction with what I now see to be inventions that were one half pompous self-esteem. My only consolation is that I have got so far as to be able to recognize the truth even at that late stage!

I say "kind lady" with great deliberation, because I want to make emphatic the point that this curious mental denudation has no connection with fear. The young man I mention is as her son in her affections and, for myself, I try to be not far behind him. It is merely that in the presence of a mind that is ablaze with Truth our half-dark minds are momentarily searchingly. illuminated, and we see that what we thought fine, scintillating fabrics are, after all, only dusty cobwebs.

Now and then it happens, however, that one does bring to her an admirable idea in embryo. And then the result. is equally sure and the effect quite as instructive in a different manner. For she throws upon the point the same torrent of true thinking; and the idea suddenly glitters forth in one's mind like a star, and throws off all sorts of new lights from unsuspected facets, as a diamond that is drawn from a dark box out into the light. And then one feels rather pleased with himself—until he carries his diamond away from the sunlight and finds that it does not glow so brilliantly, and that, after all, it was the sunlight that flashed and not the diamond!

When I was very much younger, and before I had come to India, I had a sort of ide fixe that Mrs. Besant exaggerated the importance of India in the scheme of things—(I claim a lenient judgment for myself on the ground of my extreme youth; at any rate, so I thought). And then, about ten years ago, on a certain memorable day I saw Mrs. Besant for the first time—and in India. It was in the octagonal room at Adyar, where I. was with Mr. Leadbeater and Mr. (now Lieutenant) Basil Hodgson-Smith. Mrs. Besant came over to see them there for a moment about some arrangements in our tour. We had all seated ourselves again after her appearance; behind her chair stood one or two Indian gentlemen— I forget who they were and it doesn't matter. I had a very excusable curiosity as to that great person which was before me; I fear that I stared rather rudely. There was mention of my name—that I would make out the timetable for the tour, I believe—and suddenly I found myself looking, not upon Mrs. Besant, that celebrated and interesting lady, but upon an old, old friend. I remember a sudden, radiant smile, incredibly seeing eyes—it was as if, upon the heels of a long and torrential rain there had suddenly blazed out the whole light of the sun as when one sees far, far into the sky and feels for a time, uplifted, freed. And in a moment—I quite understand that this is not logical; but I'm not talking about logic or anything so merely Aristotelian—I understood the inner truth about India; and in ratio to my understanding I saw my old notions as absurd. And as intuitions are only good when put into action, I too do my little mite with my little might for that India that she sees, not alone the "historical" India of parched or steaming plains or fertile river valleys, the India of the millions; but that other India of the Rishi of green hills, that supra-historic India that sings its way through the Himalayas, that India of far off days and forgotten Powers that now, once more, springs into new being.

At this stage I am reminded that my subject is Mrs. Besant, and not myself and not India. The point is well taken, although we should remember that, for the time at least, India and Mrs. Besant are elements that cannot be considered separately. However, let me heed the interruption to this extent; we shall look a little into the second half of our subject, P. T. S.

I have a conceit that T. S. means not only Theosophical Society but also The Service, and, more specifically, Their Service; that we are the body of picked people who serve men and Supermen; that just as the Indian Civil Service is a body of picked men whose business is to be the servants of India, both the lowly and the lordly, so it is our business to serve humanity, those men beneath us and those above us. Truly performed, this is a grand and an arduous task. In simple physical terms it means toil, in the psychic world it means stress; but in the spiritual and super-spiritual worlds it means unfoldment and abiding joy. For in the labour and the strain that comes to those who serve lesser men is at the same time the source of inspiration from the greatest Men; to serve the one is to serve the Other.

And from this it follows that the President of the Theosophical Society is the Head of The Service which labours for men and under the direction of the Masters of men. And we Fellows of The Service recognize, even if we cannot fully comprehend, the burden that this post brings with it, the duty of being Perfectly Their Servant, the hidden meaning in the letters P. T. S. On one day at least in the year we weigh this fact; we take stock of ourselves; we try to see how we can measure a little more closely to the stature of our Chief. And this, I think, is the opportunity that the first day of October brings to us.

F.K.

Everyday Enlightenment

By Margaret McKenzie

Originally printed in the SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: McKenzie, Margaret."Everyday Enlightenment." Quest  94.5 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2006):171-173, 196.

Theosophical Society - Margaret McKenzie is a social worker in Du Page County, Illinois. She is a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen where she has been a student of Zen Master Barbara Rhodes for thirteen years.

When I first heard of the idea of enlightenment, I thought it was some mysterious unusual state; something like levitating or being out of the body, and available only to a select few. In studying and practicing Zen, I have come to see that enlightenment means something else.

When the Buddha sat under the tree and saw the first star in the early morning, he did not see anything extraordinary. He saw the star complete as it was and observed:"How remarkable; everything already has it." We are all already enlightened, but we fail to see it, because we are caught in desire.

The second noble truth says that it is my attachment, or desire, to having things be a particular way that causes my suffering, not the events themselves. It is my identification with my opinions, my ideas, my likes and dislikes that are the cause of my misery. Sitting one hundred days in the woods provided me with an opportunity to watch events unfold very completely; to let me see things simply as they are—not as I want them to be.

In the fall of 2004, I spent one hundred days in a hermitage in northern Wisconsin and did a silent Zen retreat. The external frame of my days was structured with each day just the same as the day before. I did a three-hour block of bowing, chanting, sitting, walking, and a physical practice like yoga. I repeated this block four times a day. In between practices I cooked, ate, cleaned, and slept.

I brought four books with me. I read from one of them each morning, another each night. I took a walk everyday; the same walk of about a mile and a half down to the main road and back again. Everyday I ate the same meals of oatmeal, rice, carrots, squash, dried fruit, protein powder, and peanut butter. By removing so very many of the choices that enchanted, bewildered, perplexed, and confused me on a daily basis, I gradually cleared away the clutter and opened a welcoming place in my heart. It was a space where everything in the world, outside and inside, could receive my full attention.

Narrowing the field of one's attention and then dwelling within that space through the turning of two seasons, permits the very smallest aspects of the place to be revealed. All that surrounded me were a few acres, two ponds, a few buildings, the woods, a meadow, and a road. This allowed me to dwell in the landscape, perceive impermanence, the shifting of the seasons, the variety in the day, and to observe all of this with all of my senses.

I arrived in the last week in August. It was still hot, with the temperature in the eighties. The trees were green and full. In contrast, I was overweight and out of shape. I sweated until my clothes were soaked and my body throbbed. At night I fell into bed like someone who had been mining coal all day. I have never in my life slept with the deep unconsciousness that I did in those first few weeks. However, in the months between my arrival August and my departure in December, my habitual mind began to wear away and by the time I left, I felt empty within my clothes and rarely slept past three in the morning.

The routine of practice gradually sharpened my attention, allowing awareness of my environment to become more and more acute. I seemed to understand the way that my senses had been developed to let me live within a landscape. I named parts of the road where I walked by events that occurred there: the stream where I saw the muskrat, the tree where the pileated woodpecker sat, the patch of milkweed that changed from green to bright gold in a single night.

In October, as the leaves changed, I was able to identify the leaves that were different from the day before. In my daily rounds, I encountered new companions: the two cats that periodically accompanied me on my walks; the cows I heard every morning from a mile away, but never saw; the coyotes that howled in the middle of the night, and the deer.

There were about fifteen deer living on the land. When I arrived in August, there were several family groups; fawns with spotted pale patches on their coats, half the size of the adults, standing near their mothers. Besides the fawns and mothers, a third group looked to be gangly yearlings. The deer were around my cabin everyday. In the very early morning I would encounter them, strewn throughout the woods in groups of five or six.

At first I would know they were there because my heavy footsteps would spook them and they appeared to me as flipped tails and feet, racing off through the woods. As time went by though, we tamed each other. In learning to be more aware of my walk, I skillfully and quietly became a regular part of their landscape. By the end of September, I regularly walked within a few feet of them as they grazed around the land. They would lift their heads, gaze at me with their beautiful almond eyes, and go back to eating.

I began to talk to them, calling them the"dear deer" and"little friends." Since I was keeping such a regular schedule, the shifting of the season was apparent by my morning encounters with them. They entered the property on the east end and browsed their way through, exiting into the woods to the west. As the days shortened, I encountered them at different points in the landscape.

The deer appeared in the evenings as well. My hermitage was across from a small pond. Often, just at sundown, they would materialize out of the woods, drinking from the pond, making their way across the meadow into the space around the hermitage. Sometimes they came so close I could hear them eating.

All through October, I dwelt in a golden, sunlit land, pillared about with maple, oak, and aspen trees. I settled in, with my body settling, my mind slowing, and my heart opening. A crop of golden mushrooms appeared in the front of the cabin. Every evening three teenaged deer would come and eat them. They loved them so much that I could pass right by them into my cabin and they would stay still, mushroom crumbs falling from their mouths.

One day, as I sat to eat my lunch, I looked out the back window and noticed two deer that were sleeping. Curled up a few feet apart, each kept one funnel shaped ear erect, turning it constantly, scanning the land for change. I learned so much about attention from that half hour of watching them. They knew exactly how much attention to pay, when to stir, when to lift a head and look, and when to think about moving on. When they got up, they stood close together and groomed each other like cats.

Golden days do not last forever, though. The weather turned, and the leaves began to fall; slowly at first, and then it seemed all at once the trees were bare. The sky turned gray and the first of a month of rainy days arrived.

Life shifted in the deer herd, too. The groups were smaller, the teenagers sprouted antlers almost overnight. The herd seemed restlessness and jumpy. Males with full racks of antlers often came crashing through the woods. The days grew shorter and I came upon the deer less and less often while walking.

Then one day in early November, I was taking my walk to the main road when two men in a truck stopped me. They wanted to know who owned the woods and if the land was posted. I said I did not know and kept walking. When I looked for signs, I saw only one side of the road was posted"no hunting," while the other was not.

The next day I got a message from the woman who managed the hermitage saying that it was hunting season. She sent me some orange clothing with instructions to wear it whenever I walked off the property. Hunting season opened with bow hunting. It would continue for one month with firearms allowed during the last two weeks.

The first moment I fully absorbed the news about the hunting season, my mind began to go a hundred miles an hour. My mind became a trapped animal as I considered options: I would leave; or I would go into the woods and make a lot of noise; or I would confront the hunters and try to reason with them. A million ideas arose, but I actually did nothing except what I had been doing for the last sixty-five days: bowing, chanting, sitting, walking, and eating.

All that day I practiced, while crying and thinking,"I have to leave. No one would expect me to stay here while my beloved deer are being killed. I will call my teacher, she will understand. I have done my best. I must go."

For much of my life, I have been a leaver. When I had unpleasant neighbors, I moved out. When I had a difficult boss, I got a different job. When my marriage ran into rough waters, I departed. It became a style of mine: When problems appeared, I departed.

One of the first lessons of Zen meditation is about staying put. At a retreat during a sitting period, you do not just get up and leave. When you show up for a weekend retreat, you are expected to stay the whole time. During my years of practice, I learned something about staying. Whether sitting with uncomfortable physical sensations, sitting with unpleasant memories, different agitations, grudges, or itches, the practice is to just stay put and watch the parade come and go. Now, even though I felt like leaving, I knew I would not do so. I thought, planned, raged, but I did not go anywhere. I just kept on bowing, sitting, chanting, eating, walking, and sleeping. Things shifted.

First, I decided that what I could do was chant. There is a chant with the purpose of sending energy and healing. I started to do that chant for the deer on my walk each day. The second day, I decided to chant for the hunters, too. The weeks of bow and arrow season passed. I saw few hunters, encountered no killed deer. Then it was the opening day for gun season.

I was sitting on my cushion when dawn—or whatever the signal to begin hunting season was—arrived. The air filled with gunshots and it did not stop for two hours.

I sat on the cushion, got up, made my breakfast, and had a cup of tea. In all that time, the guns never stopped and I did not stop crying. Again, the same flood of thoughts broke over me:"I will call my teacher; I must get out of here; no one would blame me for leaving early."

And then a different thought appeared:"This is what a war is like." All over the world, there are people who live with this every day—except they are not safely tucked away in a hermitage with a choice about staying or going. The guns are outside their windows, in their houses. It is not deer that are getting killed; it is their families, friends, and neighbors. I had a rush of understanding about the privilege of my whole life: How blessed I had been to have never been in a war and how incredibly fortunate I was to be on this retreat.

I remembered a practice called tonglen. In it, you breathe in the suffering you are experiencing on behalf of everyone who is suffering and when you breath out, you send them peace and calm. It was easy and also a great relief to breathe in the suffering of all who hear gunshots and grieve, and to send them the peace I had known in the golden light of October.

Over the last weeks of hunting season, things gradually began to shift around inside of me. I did not leave. After that first day, I never thought about leaving again. I did my practice everyday and tried to bring the practice and the situation of sitting in the midst of shooting, together. I kept asking,"What is this?" Different answers appeared out of my practice. I sat at times full of compassion for all those who sit in the midst of shooting: people in Iraq, in Palestine, and the people who live in cities where there are gangs. I thought of my own"shooting," judging, condemning, and writing off different people, and I sent loving kindness and compassion to those memories and the places in my mind from where they arose.

I continued to encounter hunters when I walked at noon. I worked at keeping my heart open to them, acknowledged that I did not know what hunting meant to them, and sent them loving kindness when I walked by them. I fell into the rhythm of hunting— hearing the shooting at dawn and dusk, while noticing the quieter moments in between.

One day, toward the end of the two-week season, I got up from my cushion and walked to the window. It was sundown, but there was still a lot of shooting going on down the hill. I looked out the window; there were six deer out at the pond. They were drinking and grazing, and began walking uphill toward my cabin.

Bang, bang!—there went the guns—quite loud. The deer did not do anything. They did not lift their heads or even look toward from where the sound was coming. They did not have a conversation with each other about how awful the shooting was. They ate and drank and walked up the hill.

I started laughing just then and woke up to something: I saw the truth about the suffering of those two weeks. I recognized how my suffering arose from my ideas about how my retreat should be, about the lives of deer, about the character of the hunters, and not from the facts of the deer.

The deer just lived their lives, eating, drinking, walking, and when they were shot, dying. They did not spend any time beforehand thinking about dying. The cause of suffering was not the event itself, but my attachment to having the world run a particular way.

The hunting season ended, much as it began, with a two-hour barrage of shooting at the end of the day. Then quiet returned and continued through the last week of the retreat. One morning I went out to walk before breakfast. The sun was just coming up. I walked up to the big meadow. The sun was just rising and all the clouds were streaming from behind me toward the rising sun. The clouds all looked like rows of tiny square pillows; the wind was behind them and they were racing toward the sun. I had this complete sense of the world turning quickly toward the sun. I stood transfixed.

As the clouds moved and the sun rose, different parts of the clouds became illuminated in pink, rose, peach, coral, gold, and yellow as though someone was turning lights off and on, illuminating first one pillow and then another. I must have stood for ten minutes, unable to move.

Suddenly a door slammed. Hearing a rustle behind me, I turned to see a whole herd of deer barely ten feet from me. They turned, flipped up their wonderful white tails and were gone. Following their spontaneous retreat, I watched intently as they sped away, moving smoothly, effortlessly across the meadow and through the filigree of clean, bare, open woods beyond.

Margaret McKenzie is a social worker in Du Page County, Illinois. She is a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen where she has been a student of Zen Master Barbara Rhodes for thirteen years. Margaret has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1995.

  1. Solitary Retreat Musings of Ani Kunzang
  2. Silence is the Garden of Meditation
  3. The Art of Simply Being
  4. Soundings of the Presence of God: My Contemplative Path

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