The second day of retreat is a day of settling into the retreat’s rhythm and adjusting to being together with others in silence. You have friends here with whom you have attended retreats, counting our old Zen days, for over 40 years. Many of them, like you, are easing into the gray-and-wrinkled zone. You can’t help but wonder how we have been together on this path for so long, through marriages and divorces, kids, grandkids, and illness. Along the way, we have lost comrades and a beloved teacher. But still, we return to this place like a migratory species, to wonder and investigate the mystery of life, of who and what we are beyond the noise of the mind. We may be getting older, but the investigation is always new. Perhaps it is that single fact that keeps us coming back
You would not like to give anyone the impression in these writings that meditation is all peace and light. On the contrary, true meditation is the art of facing oneself, warts and all, moment by moment, without the slightest shred of hope. Yes, sorry to say, hoping for some better state has nothing to do with true meditation. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? To give up hope goes against the grain of everything we’ve learned from our parents, our teachers, and our society. As you took your place in the sitting room this morning, you realized it was on this very same sitting cushion where, many years ago, you came to the end of hope and woke up to what you are, what we all are, in the only reality of the present moment.
