The Long & Winding Road Back to Ourselves

2024 kicked my butt. Not gonna lie, it felt relentless. There were plenty of personal struggles and who can deny that the global scene — political & environmental — has felt particularly fraught. I arrived with some trepidation at the Buddhist Retreat Centre via ‘a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it’ (Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country). What would happen when I stepped off the mad mad merry-go-round?

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The first time I visited the BRC, 13 years ago, my children were little and my parents were living in Umdloti on the North Coast of tropical Kwa-Zulu Natal. Just about every holiday growing up we spent in neighbouring Umhlanga. My grandparents had a wonderful holiday home and our Christmases were made so special by them and their unmatched hospitality.

So I left my little ones with my parents and borrowed my mom’s car to give myself three days self-retreat at the famed BRC, voted top amongst the world’s best retreats, and rightly so. It is also one of the few places in South Africa that truly runs on Buddhist principles. Those three days were important, but not necessarily easy. I hiked a lot, something I missed as a mother of small children, and made some peace with my new reality.

Give up to grace.

The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore.

You need more help than you know — Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

As a visiting teacher, the generosity shown by the BRC knows no bounds. This, my third time facilitating there, I was gifted 10 days to slowly allow my knots to untangle themselves and my mind to become more tranquil. As I gazed at the mist rolling in, basked in the sun, watched the darling troop of monkeys doting on their batch of tiny babies, listened to the birdsong, relished the delicious food, my days started to feel measured, my nervous system began to simmer down.

I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us — Anne Lamott

Every morning I woke with the dawn chorus around 5. Then enjoyed a walking meditation in the lovely labyrinth, followed by a sit in the zendo.

You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it — Mary Oliver

Breakfast brought fruit salad and the world’s most delicious chai along with porridges and cooked goodies served with the mouth watering farm baked breads. The kitchen fairies are tremendously skilled and clearly love their work.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. — Flannery O'Connor

Meditation Medicine

My days were spent practicing yoga, qi gong, hiking, reading beneath a tree and meditating, which comes from the same Latin root word (medeor) as medication meaning ‘to heal or to make whole.’ Meditation triggers a self-repair mechanism in our bodies — studies show cortisol and adrenalin production slows while endorphins and serotonin increase. Meditation beside the dam, strolling the rolling hills, circumnambulating the stupa, walking from one sacred site to the next on this blessed land, often while chanting mantras, helped me leave behind a whole helluva lot of mind clutter.

There have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins and the water is bright and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again — till next time.

I've learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won't stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown.

The best I can ask for is that this love, which has been built on countless failures, will continue to grow. I can say no more than that this is mystery, and gift, and that somehow or other, through grace, our failures can be redeemed and blessed.— Madeleine L'Engle

All of life is a meditation, in that it calls us to pay attention. In curious mindfulness we find our playful connection to Life itself.

I hiked out to a waterfall the one day and then up to a village where I met friendly children and grannies hard at work in their kitchen gardens. I met the founding mamas of Woza Moya, created by the BRC in 2000 to provide the local community with support. I simply adore their sock monkeys of which we have a little family that grows every time I visit. Last year’s retreat on Joy had a bright pink monkey sporting a wild afro as mascot and this year we welcome Grace into the fold.

The Retreat

As humans we live here amongst the ‘family of things,’ yet somehow separate. This illusion of separation the Tibetan Buddhists term Maha Bekandze – the Great Suffering.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

When you make a pilgrimage, which is what coming to the BRC entails, it requires that you give yourself the gift of REALLY being present. I turned my phone to airplane mode and within 24 hours my monkey mind had quietened significantly.

The invitation is to do less, to slow down…all our habitual ways of doing doing doing…and invite in more presence. Mindfully walk, brush your teeth, eat, speak (probably the most challenging).

In pairs we shared the quotes on Grace you find littered throughout this piece and tied a white thread around our partner’s wrist in the Thai Buddhist tradition of Sai Sin, as a mindfulness reminder. Then took to our journals, ever a kind listening ear.

Why am I afraid to dance,I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter?

Why am I afraid to live,I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea?

Why am I afraid to love,I who love love?

— Eugene O'Neill

Journal prompt: I am afraid to… because…

The most common form of despair is not being who you are — Soren Kierkegaard

Journal prompt: Who am I?

The Medicine Buddha Mantra

Mantra helps soothe and focus the anxious mind. This particular one is for clearing negativity and helping us heal. Since I first did the Medicine Buddha puja with dearest Lindi, South Africa’s OG sound medicine mama, at Kagyu Samye Dzong while grieving the loss of my grandparents (and so much else) during the Covid pandemic, it has proven a balm.

TAYATA — ‘like this’ — carried beyond samsara & nirvana, samsara meaning ‘wandering’ or ‘world,’ meaning the cycles of birth and death, the suffering caused by karma that ends in nirvana when we gain insight into impermanence

OM BEKADZE BEKADZE.

MAHA BEKADZE BEKADZE — Bekandze means ‘the elimination of suffering’ and is repeated three times for the removal of suffering on the physical, emotional and Maha Bekandze, the great suffering, which stems from the illusion of separation

RADZA (Divine King) SAMUNGATE (wisdom as wide as the ocean) SOHA (so be it/ pure devotion & intention from which all manifestation arises)

The Medicine Buddha Mantra comes from the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. For more on the different schools of Buddhism here’s a lovely article in Tricycle Magazine.

If you like, you can visualize Medicine Buddha sitting, looking at you. He is depicted as having a dark blue (lapis lazuli) body, this being an archetypal color of healing. It also happens to be my lifelong favourite. With his left hand he holds a bowl of healing amrita, purported to be produced by the body during deep states of meditation. With his right a medicine plant called myrobalan. In your visualization, he is at about the height of your forehead, a few feet in front of you, gazing at you with so much love. Buddha (the Awakened One) is everything beautiful gathered into one.

We had Deva Premal and the Gyuto Monks support us in chanting 108 rounds of the mantra. Gyuto was founded in 1475 and is one of the main tantric colleges of the Gelug tradition. In Tibet, monks who had completed their geshe studies would be invited to join Gyuto to receive a firm grounding in vajrayana practice. These monasteries used to be in Lhasa, Tibet, but they have been re-established in Dharamsala, India. Today, there are nearly 500 monks in the entire order. The Gyuto monks are known for their tradition of overt