Wattle HollowPeace Path |
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Wherever I travel in the American outback anymore, I hear the same comment from the locals: "Civilization is creeping too close....the horizon has been trashed, ....nothing is the same anymore; the developers are coming!." But it still came as a shock nonetheless when the sound of huge trees crashing to the hum of chainsaws became an hourly occurrence one fall day. It seemed to be happening just beyond the classic, untarnished mountainside view from Wattle's main classroom. At the time there were a dozen Buddhists on silent week-long retreat with the teacher Mary Orr. In the evenings, during metta ( lovingkindness meditation ) we would pray for the trees, and for a heartfelt connection with the people cutting them down, lest we become self-righteous and polarized.
I discovered that one of my neighbors, an oil-rigger who made a pile of money in Dubai, had bought the 250 acres across from me, and had sold every piece of timber over 10" to the local logging operation. He later told me " we 'shore' tried hard to get down that mountain across from you, Joy but it was too steep for the machinery." I nodded and silently thanked Spirit .
And so the answer to my quest for resolution became the advent of the Peace Path. I could not control the entire horizon, I figured, but the woodlands within my 40-acre domain could become a sanctuary independent of view " out there ." I believe we will all be doing more and more with our own backyards, as land shrinks. So I cut an oval-shaped path in the Wattle woods, and began making little silent nooks where one could contemplate a special tree or rock formation or listen to the creek gurgle past. Each year, while on silent solo 40-day retreat myself, ideas came to me and I watched them unfold. |
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Duni
firepit and the meditation hall were conceived and created by Joe Bender
and friends. Joe's spiritual master, Meher Baba, asked his devotees
to create a duni pit and burn whatever they were ready to release after
writing it on a piece of paper every month....There's just one little
caveat, Joe says, whatever you choose to release will probably come
up in your face in a BIG way, for the last time.
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Other
groups have used the firepit in similar ways also. And many Buddhists
do their walking meditations on the platform during retreats.
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The
Meditation Hall, a lexann and cedar sanctuary, is a hexagon of colors
and forest life. It is a place of formal meditation, or to digest the
morning's writing exercises, or just a getaway from social interaction.
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Next
stop on the woodlands trail is a 6' x 6' site called " Creation
". It's a tile mandala of the ancient ouroborus, a serpent attacking
itself....
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Stop
awhile and consider our own self-awareness, the mind contemplating itself....
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Finally,
the last stop on the Peace Path, before returning to the classroom area,
is called " The Mother Place."
Please come visit with her
when you come to Wattle, or on your way down the creekbed.
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" I had a very sweet meditation at the Motherplace. I will visit her often...I got a wonderful sense of part of her unique power-she is both Mother and Crone - a unification of both aspects in appearance and in energy." |
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