Needs a paint job….

  “Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof….”—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

  We were dining alongside the water in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue, at the furthest western point of Montreal island. The sun was sinking toward the trees on the western horizon and had painted both sky and water a peachy pink. Célèste was describing her volunteer work at a ten day meditation retreat she has attended on a number of occasions. 

  “I cannot imagine sitting still and being forbidden to talk for an entire ten days!” I marvelled. 

  She laughed. “It’s certainly hard,” she said, “and it takes a lot out of you… before giving it back sometimes in the end.” 

  I asked her what was the breakdown of male to females participants. “At first it was mostly women,” she told me, “but over time more and more men have shown up and now it is about even.”

  This was all completely foreign to me and I wondered if I could soldier through such a protracted regimen. The food was lean, cleaning, cultivating in the gardens, and jobs in the kitchen were assigned, and of course there was the sitting and meditating. 

  “The kitchen is the best job,” she said with her wide warm smile, “because you cannot feed fifty people without a certain amount of communication and coordination. It gives the tongue and voice a little exercise they wouldn’t otherwise get.” 

  I see the point of our need, our craving for centredness in the hurly-burly of modern Life, but the truth is I do not feel a need to pursue it down that road. 

  For years a truck rolling and winding through the majesty of the mountains served as my meditation centre. I had also driven tour busses to the mountain and lake highlights scattered throughout the Western Canadian Rockies. 

  “Maybe,” I floated, “I should buy a bus and start my own rolling meditation centredness retreat. I could call it the Omphalos Magic Meditation Centre Touring Company.” 

  How’s that old saying from the Book of Twenty-Four Philosophers go?

  ‘God is a circle who’s centre is everywhere….’