High Energy

Last night I returned home from the five-day Rohatsu Sesshin, a meditation period celebrating Buddha's enlightenment.

Did you ever go away to summer camp when you were a kid? Do you remember how that one week somehow seemed like a lifetime? You start out kind of scared and alone, but you start doing fun activities, you meet new friends, you create things. By the end of the week, you're heartbroken to have to leave everyone behind, because they are all your best friends by now, and you have a vast shared history together.

Sesshin is kind of like that. I feel as if I could write an entire book about the experience. So much happened in such a short time.

I had to launch right into the work week today, and tomorrow will be my weekly deadline. Because of that, I will be brief for now. But I hope to explore more deeply and more minutely the wonder of sesshin over the coming week in this blog. I certainly have no shortage of material - I have dozens of notes jotted down already.

For now, just this - the sesshin brought to me a huge, sweeping feeling of energy. By the final day, despite the aches and pains in my body, and the lack of sleep from the tight schedule, I was actually more energized than I was on the first day.

Tony and Darlene and eight of us who were at the sesshin met tonight at our regular Tuesday sitting group in Healdsburg. Before the sesshin, I thought, oh, I'm going to be hard pressed to attend my sangha after the fatigue of those five days! But quite the opposite turned out to be true. The sesshin energy was evident in the room tonight. You could just feel that we all were still joined from the experience. Our service was particularly powerful, and everyone was practically giddy by the time we got to the dharma talk.

I feel like I could just keep going, and going, and going....