Last July, I set off for a six week journey through Europe.
I knew that my itinerary would be talking me through several different spiritual communities, and I was curious to experience the impact different forms of spiritual practice would have on me.
Tamera In Portugal
My first stop was a community in Portugal called Tamera. For the past thirty years, the people of Tamera are researching a model of living where we can live in peace with each other and our environment.
Inner peace is explored in Tamera through interpersonal relationships. Transparency is a key word in Tamera and the people living there, daily gather in circles where all personal issues are aired, shared, and mirrored, so all involved can grow from out of a narrow personal perspective into a global consciousness that promotes peace and true contact between all living things.
The air in Tamera is static with vibrant energy. The general atmosphere is wonderfully uninhibited, warm, open, and alive with creativity, sensuality and an active dedication to truth and peace.
In the ten days I spent there I watched new people hesitantly opening to the group, and slowly blossoming into the freedom of truthful communication. I found myself exhilarated by intimacy.
But there was little time within the daily schedule, dedicated to silence. And in spite of having a wonderful time in Tamera I found myself yearning for the next stop in my summer programme - a meditation center in the south of France from where I would be setting off on a ten day meditative walk through nature called Dharma Yatra.
Dharma Yatra In France
I remember landing in the meditation center, silence reverberating through the air. I walked past a Buddha statue who stared down at me calmly from out of semi closed eyelids. My body and mind were still buzzing with the energy of intense group dynamics and lots of dancing.
The buzz of my being seemed to be rudely amplified by the quiet surroundings and the contained people who moved down the peaceful pathways, quietly doing their practice.
It took me a few days to settle into silent stillness and the graceful beauty the Buddhist teachings offer. If in Tamera I longed for the depth of silence, I now found myself yearning for the crackling fiery passion of seeking truth through human contact, communication, and emotional expression.
Our human mind is a funny thing, always wishing for that which is absent. But maybe it's simply about remembering that the rainbow has many colors and it's hard to be satisfied with just one color.
The Dharma Yatra is a meditative walk that has been taking place in the South of France every summer for the past eight years. Organized by teachers and friends of the Dharma Network Association, and running fully on donations, the Dharma Yatra brings alive the ancient tradition of spiritual pilgrimage in a vibrant, lively and liberal manner.
Silent walking, meditation periods in forests and fields, group discussions on various dharma themes, are interweaved with music, singing, laughter, and skinny dipping in the numerous lakes and rivers that dot the winding route.
Art And Nature
This year's Dharma Yatra had an additional feature. Senior Teacher Christopher Titmus decided that the creative arts would be introduced into the Yatra program as one more aspect of dharma exploration. And so there was singing and songwriting and even contact improvisation. The effect was glorious.
It was beautiful to watch people tapping into their creative resources, discovering the joy and aliveness of creative expression, in a context of discovering the peace that resides in the core of all things and beings.
On one occasion, guided by a sculptor, we all made small clay images of ourselves and intended to place these models on on a raft that would be sent off into the lake waters during a communal ceremony.
Unexpectedly during the ceremony, amidst cheering and singing, one of our group jumped into the water. Another followed. And another and beforelong the lake was teeming with people some fully dressed, some naked, jumping, splashing, laughing, and like the few left behind on the land, celebrating the joy of wild nature.
Deep Rest Retreat In Spain
My last stop in Europe before going home was a week's silent meditation retreat in Catalonia, Spain, led by a beloved teacher Jaya.
Jaya leads retreats that she calls "deep rest" retreats. She is a great advocate of lying down meditation and on her retreats participants are encouraged to lay down as much as possible. Jaya says meditation is about learning to relax.
She says that we are normally so caught up with "doing" all the time that even when meditating we are often straining to get somewhere, make something happen, straining to do it "right". When lying down the "doing" mechanism is softened.
For a week I sank into deep rest and deep silence; laying on my back for hours…tensions, thoughts, yearnings, aversions, memories sliding through my mind, sinking into the earth…Tamera, Yatra, Buddha… listening to the movement of life within me as it took on it's different textures; stormy, still, prickly, soft…listening to those places and inner voices that can be heard only in deep silence, feeling into my body, my breath…and into that essence, which no matter where I am and what I am doing…is forever breathing through me.