Meditation Of Heron
Excerpt from Small Boat, Vast Ocean
As a little gift on this second year completion day I found a rather large agate on the beach. The bright sun at winter’s low angle made it glow against the more mundane beach pebbles. Still cold, barely above freezing—but the unobscured sun’s rays warming. Lovely.
A lone heron for a long time was standing in shallow water, fishing. I stood nearby, a lone yogini, hands resting on staff, meditating. A pair of beings, looking out together, to the sea and the eastern sky.
I’ve been thinking of the little boat out in the middle of the ocean, on this voyage. Looking back, toward the east (the direction that got set in those childhood dreams), I see I’ve covered a distance of two years. The shore hasn’t been visible for a long, long time, in some ways, a lifetime. But I can still recall the shore’s shape, its smell, its familiarity. The surface of the ocean has held every kind of formation: calm undulations, slow eddies, glistening ripples, reflections of stars, moon, and brilliant sun; also, choppy whitecaps, stormy swells, cascading waves to disappear in, and typhoons with giant whirlpools from which I barely escaped.
All that is now behind me, and I turn forward, to the west. It no longer gives me nausea to look down from inside my tiny boat to the unknowable depths, to realize that I’m still quite in the middle of this great ocean, this epic inner journey. The far western shore is still beyond easy reach. If I called out, no one would hear me. I don’t know what the depths of the ocean will stir up between here and there, and yet I feel content. I don’t know if this state of acceptance is due to having crossed an imaginary mid-point in the journey, or if it’s just that I’ve grown accustomed to being out here. Either way, whatever it took, I’m grateful. In the middle, and yet arrived. Cutting a path but leaving no trail, bobbing along in the immensity.
In all this time, it’s been barely a month that I’ve been able to go really single-handed. I’ve been on my own in most ways since the beginning, but a lifeline has been some communication with others, through phone or email. It was clear that I needed that. Originally I never imagined that I’d be on solitary retreat these three years, since it’s most common to do a first three-year retreat with a group. But circumstances prevented this. So to give balance, stability of emotions and psyche, I communicated in some form with someone almost every day. Then, a couple of months ago I suddenly felt ready to go solo.
Now here at Margi’s house, safe and sound, at the turn of the new year, I dropped that stabilizing anchor, and without any problem, it’s been smooth sailing. I’m finding myself to be happy, stable, and disciplined. My days are full. There’s not a part of the day or night that I dread. Every day about the same. Ocean, and more of it. But the interior world offers much to chew on, to observe. And then there is the turning of the earth in the starry sky, Jupiter to track in the eastern twilight, the rise and fall of the season, the surprise of flowering bushes in mid-winter, the hubbub of hummingbirds, cries of eagle, sand messages on the strand, and meditation of heron in still water.
Reflection from beginning of third year of retreat,
from Chapter 7: Bainbridge Island II
Copyright 2023 Diane Berger
