I joked that it took only one bedtime with a reluctant 8-year-old to re-establish pre-sesshin stress levels once I'd come back... but in truth it's not been like that. But it's been interesting.
As Keizan Sensei puts it, when we go on sesshin, we voluntarily submit ourselves to a set of externally-imposed restrictions on our time and behaviour. So I get up a lot earlier than I'm used to, and I go to be a lot earlier too. I eat more regularly (though just as fast!), spend much more time silent, and of course there's all the sitting...!
One thing that I've grown to appreciate is being offline - not having an internet connection. I get jittery at first, like someone who's just decided to quite smoking. There's something I'm supposed to be doing... oh, that's right... my email. Relax. Pretty quickly, though, not having to check my email or Facebook or whatever becomes a huge relief. When I got back to Northampton, I didn't turn the computer on for two days (something of a personal record).
But now I'm back at work, and the emails need answering, and the meetings need attending, and the students need reassurance (or yelling at, occasionally!), the family needs attention, the dishes and the recycling aren't going to do themselves, and The Ten Thousand Things come crashing down all around me just as they ever have. So has anything changed?
Yes, and no.
Yes: I've reconnected with the sangha, with Sensei, with my brother and sister monks, and I carry that sense of connection back home with me to strengthen my practice and my sense of not being alone in this. And yes, I always find it easier to get my arse on the zafu after sesshin, and I've sat every day since returning and it's felt easier than before.
But no: the world is ever as it was... constant in its furious impermanence. So this is where I have to make my home. Sesshin doesn't rock my world, it brings me back to it, gently and repeatedly.
I'll be back!
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