Being Peace-
I can’t really call this a retreat story as it predates any formal retreats, but it’s worth sharing.

Throughout my early childhood I spent some of my time after school and on weekends, on a tiny island on a small pond in the woods near my house. I would cross the shallow water on a handmade raft! I didn’t live in isolation. I had playmates and did the same activities as my friends: ride bikes, jump rope, play games (remember jacks and hopscotch?), paint and draw. But then I’d hear the adults talk about the 1950 world around me. That world seemed filled with negativity: concentration camps, death, racial bigotry… and I choose time alone to try to understand it all. “Why do we hate”? I’d ask? How do we heal hate?

For many years I had “heard” in my thoughts the one I called “Man in the Clouds’. I could feel the energy and receive the thoughts and they were always helpful. I learned years later that this was not Aaron but my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba. He seemed to come through clearest on that island, probably because that was when I was quiet. At a very young age, sitting on that shore with agitation and questions, he taught me to meditate and to recognize and rest in spacious awareness. He helped me to better understand the chaos of human experience. I never thought to question his presence. I assumed we all had such guidance. As the years passed, he was there when I needed help.

Fast forward: I’m 11 years old, at overnight camp, and have gone with my cabinmates on a hike, where we’ll sleep on tree house platforms, bedded with fresh straw. Bringing our sleeping bags up the ladder, one camper noticed a nest of infant mice in the straw and screamed. A counselor came to look, and with her heavy boot heel, trampled the baby mice, killing them, and threw them all off the platform into the woods. I was horrified by her callousness, in tears and angry. When the rest of the campers set off hiking to the nearest town for ice cream, I chose to stay there at our campsite, sitting by the lake, and talk with the “Man in the Clouds.” One counselor stayed behind with me but left me alone with the setting sun.

“Why do we all seem to hate and kill? I don’t want to live in such a world. What can one person do?” I sat and allowed my emotions to quiet, or more accurately, to find the place of quiet under the emotions, as I had been taught, the place he called “The space of infinite love”. Finally he began to talk. I wrote it in my 11 year old diary. Here are several sentences.

“Your true name is Shanti Das. When you understand your name. you will be ready to do your work in the world. Get to know the meaning of Shanti Das.” How does an 11-year-old understand these foreign words. There was no internet google search in those days! It took some years to find the translation, Servant of Peace, and many more years to understand their true meaning. First, I became an almost militant pacifist, and quite self-righteous! Gradually understanding came. To support peace, one must come to know the self as that peace and live it in one’s life. It means befriending all the negative thoughts and impulses that arise, moving beyond fear and condemnation of them, and deeply knowing and trusting the true self. It means holding oneself in compassion so we can hold the world in such compassion. It involves a lifetime of practice and learning.

We are all Shanti Das, all servants of peace. In retreat we may come to know and become more stable in that aspect of our being. I look forward to practicing it with you.

With love. Barbara