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Murphys retreat lets seekers get away from it all
Murphys retreat lets seekers get away from it all
By Anna Kaplan
Record Staff Writer
December 16, 2006 6:00 AM
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061216/A_LIFE/612160304
Sit still and silent. Keep your eyes open. Count your breaths. Focus on where your thoughts go, then bring them back to the room, to the earthen walls around you, to the rain's rhythm outside.
A traveler on the winding roads of Calaveras County wouldn't know there is a place hidden behind the trees where people live in silence and focus on the moment. The Zen Monastery Peace Center likes it that way, practicing Zen Buddhism inconspicuously among the cattle farms and mountain vistas just outside Murphys.
This is where practitioners come to recharge while they release all the distractions of daily life. There are no televisions, no cell phones, no computers. There is just silence and the present.
TO LEARN MORE
To learn more about the Zen Monastery Peace Center, call (209) 728-0860 or check out www.livingcompassion.org.
This is where Cheri Huber and her staff of monks spend their days in meditation, building their own awareness of the world within themselves. They finished the monastery building in 1993 after living in tents for several years, and have been hosting retreats and other events for students of Buddhism ever since.
The only words spoken by visitors on the monastery grounds are in the main meditation hall. Meditators recite prayers before lapsing into stillness, which is followed by a group discussion.
When residents pass each other in the monastery halls or the hilly paths around it, however, they don't speak. Instead, they bring their hands together and bow to each other. This is called Gassho (gah-shoh), which means "my heart and your heart are one" in Japanese.
The reason for the silence is the same as the reason for no outside distractions - the goal is to look inside the self, to pay attention to nothing but the present moment. There is also no photography of people on the monastery grounds and no notetaking in the meditation hall.
Huber, 63, calls it a "privileged environment," where visitors can escape distraction. The effect is like vacation, except the trip is inside rather than outside, away from distraction rather than into it.
"You get to focus yourself on what's going on for you," said Ann Dannelly, one of the resident monks. "You don't have all those social trappings. You don't have to do all the stuff that you do out in the world."
The basic tenets of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the origin of suffering, the extinction of suffering and the eightfold path that leads to the extinction of suffering. The goal of Buddhist practice, then, becomes to stop suffering by being aware of its origins and learning to avoid it.
Detachment from the outside is a regular characteristic of Buddhist practice, and practitioners learn how to achieve this in their everyday lives.
"What's so attractive to me is the ability to simply accept what's going on and be with myself and others compassionately, not get all wound up in some story about what's right and what's wrong," said Mickey Williamson, who meditates at the monastery several times a week.
Many of those who walk the silent paths of Zen in the Murphys mountaintop refuge came to the practice the same way that Huber did: by stumbling onto it and feeling like they'd struck gold.
Raised in the Bay Area, Huber spent most of her adolescence and her 20s seeking out religious experience until she read a book about Buddhism. She became a monk and wanted to live out her life in a cabin in the woods with no human contact, she said, but a teacher encouraged her to teach others. She started a Zen center in Mountain View in 1983 and began publishing books about her chosen path.
In 1987, she and several followers wanted a more rural location, and ended up buying the 320-acre chunk of land in the Sierra foothills. Up to 10 monks live in the monastery at a time, plus groups of retreat participants who stay for up to a week.
Dannelly, 47, became a monk in 1998. The Methodist minister's daughter from the Bay Area attended a workshop led by Huber in Mountain View and never looked back.
"When the student is ready, the teacher appears," she said, speaking about meeting Huber for the first time.
Dannelly isn't the only one who came into Buddhism from a Christian worldview. Williamson, 60, is a retired United Church of Christ minister who lives in Murphys.
"The teachings and practice of Buddhism, the compassionate awareness, were really what Jesus was talking about," she said. "They were both expressions of the compassion of being in the world."
Contact reporter Anna Kaplan at (209) 546-8294 or akaplan@recordnet.com
By Anna Kaplan
Record Staff Writer
December 16, 2006 6:00 AM
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061216/A_LIFE/612160304
Sit still and silent. Keep your eyes open. Count your breaths. Focus on where your thoughts go, then bring them back to the room, to the earthen walls around you, to the rain's rhythm outside.
A traveler on the winding roads of Calaveras County wouldn't know there is a place hidden behind the trees where people live in silence and focus on the moment. The Zen Monastery Peace Center likes it that way, practicing Zen Buddhism inconspicuously among the cattle farms and mountain vistas just outside Murphys.
This is where practitioners come to recharge while they release all the distractions of daily life. There are no televisions, no cell phones, no computers. There is just silence and the present.
TO LEARN MORE
To learn more about the Zen Monastery Peace Center, call (209) 728-0860 or check out www.livingcompassion.org.
This is where Cheri Huber and her staff of monks spend their days in meditation, building their own awareness of the world within themselves. They finished the monastery building in 1993 after living in tents for several years, and have been hosting retreats and other events for students of Buddhism ever since.
The only words spoken by visitors on the monastery grounds are in the main meditation hall. Meditators recite prayers before lapsing into stillness, which is followed by a group discussion.
When residents pass each other in the monastery halls or the hilly paths around it, however, they don't speak. Instead, they bring their hands together and bow to each other. This is called Gassho (gah-shoh), which means "my heart and your heart are one" in Japanese.
The reason for the silence is the same as the reason for no outside distractions - the goal is to look inside the self, to pay attention to nothing but the present moment. There is also no photography of people on the monastery grounds and no notetaking in the meditation hall.
Huber, 63, calls it a "privileged environment," where visitors can escape distraction. The effect is like vacation, except the trip is inside rather than outside, away from distraction rather than into it.
"You get to focus yourself on what's going on for you," said Ann Dannelly, one of the resident monks. "You don't have all those social trappings. You don't have to do all the stuff that you do out in the world."
The basic tenets of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the origin of suffering, the extinction of suffering and the eightfold path that leads to the extinction of suffering. The goal of Buddhist practice, then, becomes to stop suffering by being aware of its origins and learning to avoid it.
Detachment from the outside is a regular characteristic of Buddhist practice, and practitioners learn how to achieve this in their everyday lives.
"What's so attractive to me is the ability to simply accept what's going on and be with myself and others compassionately, not get all wound up in some story about what's right and what's wrong," said Mickey Williamson, who meditates at the monastery several times a week.
Many of those who walk the silent paths of Zen in the Murphys mountaintop refuge came to the practice the same way that Huber did: by stumbling onto it and feeling like they'd struck gold.
Raised in the Bay Area, Huber spent most of her adolescence and her 20s seeking out religious experience until she read a book about Buddhism. She became a monk and wanted to live out her life in a cabin in the woods with no human contact, she said, but a teacher encouraged her to teach others. She started a Zen center in Mountain View in 1983 and began publishing books about her chosen path.
In 1987, she and several followers wanted a more rural location, and ended up buying the 320-acre chunk of land in the Sierra foothills. Up to 10 monks live in the monastery at a time, plus groups of retreat participants who stay for up to a week.
Dannelly, 47, became a monk in 1998. The Methodist minister's daughter from the Bay Area attended a workshop led by Huber in Mountain View and never looked back.
"When the student is ready, the teacher appears," she said, speaking about meeting Huber for the first time.
Dannelly isn't the only one who came into Buddhism from a Christian worldview. Williamson, 60, is a retired United Church of Christ minister who lives in Murphys.
"The teachings and practice of Buddhism, the compassionate awareness, were really what Jesus was talking about," she said. "They were both expressions of the compassion of being in the world."
Contact reporter Anna Kaplan at (209) 546-8294 or akaplan@recordnet.com
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