Little Larissa and Plum Village
I have spent the past few weeks and months connecting with my inner child. I finally finished reading Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, Reconciliation: healing the inner child, which I bought over a year ago at his monastery in France. I went there just under a month after giving birth to Jamil- I booked it two days after deciding not to have a C-section. I needed so badly to have something to look forward to, something positive on the horizon after the death of my son. I was expecting to give birth within a couple of weeks and so booked the trip for two months after that. Of course, Jamil held on for 6 more weeks and so it was that I flew to Bordeaux 3 weeks after giving birth. It was before his funeral so I didn’t have his ashes with me, something which heightens all flights for me now: the feel of the locket containing his ashes around my neck always feels heavier when I am flying.
I took an extremely early morning flight, and arrived at my hotel in Bordeaux around 11. The room wasn’t yet ready, so I left my bags and wandered off to explore and find a good place for lunch. I walked around the working class neighbourhood by my hotel and the station and made my way to a market I had found on the map. It was early and the market was still being set up, so I walked around whilst talking to my mum and a friend of hers. Around 12.30, I settled on a restaurant I had spied setting out tables in the sun whilst on the phone. I sat down and took in my surroundings, ordered a glass of white wine and Veal Morengo (I had to ask, it’s a veal stew, a French version of Osso Bucco and totally delicious). The wine was delicious, chilled to just the right temperature for the warm day. I felt happy for the first time in a long time as well as excited and nervous. I also felt self-conscious sitting in this restaurant, obviously a favourite among locals. They started arriving around 1, and some were visibly miffed that I had taken a table in the sun. I called my sister, and caught the confused looks from the neighbouring tables at my English: I had spoken perfect French to the waiter and the couple who asked for the chair opposite me.
After lunch, I walked towards the river and came across a square with a market and a church. I entered it, and enjoying the cool stillness of the interior I walked slowly around. I was alone initially, looking at the unexpectedly modern stained glass windows, but was soon joined by a couple. She was an older white French woman and he was black and dressed in a burgundy velvet suit, a cane in his right hand and a matching burgundy top hat covering his dreads. She was taking photos of him and I wondered if he might be a model or some kind of artist.
I was soon distracted by childhood memories, and my father’s face came to me. We came to France every summer when I was a child, and my father, despite or perhaps because of being a lapsed catholic, made us visit every church we came across. Walking around that church, I remembered how much I hated it as a child, but realised how grateful I was for it as an adult. I felt a connection with my father, understanding perhaps for the first time why these quiet cool places so appealed to him. I felt a wave of sadness that I hadn’t been able to tell him these things when he was alive. I never thought I was like my father, I spent all my energy on resisting the notion that I was exactly like my mother. In that church, at that moment, I realised how similar we were. I had enjoyed my afternoon so much, the walk around the market, the good wine and food, the wander around the town and now this church. It was all the kind of thing my father loved, down to the veal. The closeness and connection to him I felt was tinged with regret.
And then I saw the last stained glass panel, depicting the slaughter of the innocents, and it took my breath away. In the top right hand corner a seated woman holds her dead child. The woman had long straight dark hair, white skin and the child was a light shade of brown. I felt the dull ache of grief in my chest and struggled not to sob out loud. The look on that woman’s face so perfectly mirrored my own, this piece of 1950s French modernist art spoke directly to me. I stared at it for a long time, tears falling silently down my face. By now the church had filled up with a few groups of tourists, so I made my way back to a statue of Mary with baby Jesus and lit a couple of candles by her feet. I sat and thought of my father and Jamil and decided there was no harm in asking her to watch over them. I asked my father to forgive me for giving money to the Catholic Church and smiled to myself picturing his laughter at my joke.
The next day I travelled through some of the best wine country in the world, past towns with familiar names like Saint Emillion to Plum Village monastery. Set in, you guessed it, a plum orchard, the monastery is now split between three locations. After checking in and finding my room mates and room in a house next door to the monastery, we returned for dinner. This was taken in silence, with each person bowing to the others before starting. Everyone was encouraged to eat mindfully, reflecting on the work that went into each morsel of the delicious Vietnamese vegan food. We were asked to think about nature and the earth who provided it, the farmers who grew it, the people who picked and transported it and the nuns who had cooked it. As I sat there, slowly chewing my food, I noticed the insecure voice in my head nervously laughing at the woman in front of me who was eating with her eyes closed and a beatific smile on her face. The sarcastic judgy monologue was relentless and I joked to myself that I seemed to have joined a cult.
After waking at 5 am, we had out first full day. I had chosen Plum Village firstly as I had read some of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books, but also because the schedule at the retreat was not draconian and harsh. We meditated for an hour before breakfast and then were free for a few hours before doing a long walking meditation. Lunch was followed by some work around the monastery, sometimes teaching in the afternoon and an early dinner followed by the final meditation session before bed. You have a lot of free time, a ‘lazy day’ with no meditation or work, and twice a week, all three monasteries come together for a day of teaching, lunch and then Dharma Sharing (where you sit in a circle and are free to talk about your experience, if you want to). You are encouraged not to spend your free time on your phone, reading a book, listening to music, or even chatting to the other people on the retreat. I spent hours listening to birdsong and frogs’ strange calls, watching the dandelions gradually open as the sun rose, feeling the cold of the early morning, seeing the frost and dew on the grass and then watching it disappear as the sun rose and warmth spread through my body. When we walked, I took my shoes off and felt the earth beneath my feet, a deeply relaxing and unexpectedly moving experience.
Everything slowed down in Plum Village. My grief and shock was still there, but instead of feeling it overwhelm me, I noticed it constantly present in the background. Every gentle experience of observation was tinged with it, every realisation of the beauty of the world rendered more poignant. I spent many hours simply walking through the orchards, always returning to one particular statue of the Buddha. The gentle smile on his face calmed me every time, and I felt a powerful connection to myself and the world around me when I looked at his face. I have a picture of this statue as my screen saver now, and am reminded of the calm it brought me every time I see it.
I didn’t float through my week there without difficulty though. The intensity of the experience was masked by the calm atmosphere and it was only in the last days that I realised how profoundly I had been affected by it. I had gone on retreat expecting to focus exclusively on my grief in meditation. And although it was present in every meditation I did, the most difficult session I had, the one that brought me the biggest insight was focused on my childhood. It was the second to last day, in our morning meditation, and I had decided to connect with my inner child for the first time. It was such a powerful session I cried (as silently as possible!), for the first time I could really connect with little Larissa and listen to the fear and loneliness she felt. I realised how much damage I had done to myself by ignoring her. I imagined myself picking her up and giving her a full body hug and felt a deep healing and calm descend on me.
The next day we travelled to one of the other monastery locations for our final day. Everything felt different, I felt more open to others and less inhibited and defensive. I felt the beauty of nature more deeply on our walking mediation, I thought I could actually feel the earth’s energy flowing through me from the ground up. After lunch, I sat with a group of women from my monastery and we talked for over an hour. I realised that I hadn’t gotten to know them at all over the past week, but understood that I was now more able to open up and have a genuine connection with them. I understood that I had never felt this open to people before as the defensive, judgemental, sarcastic voice in my head was actually little Larissa, trying desperately to protect herself from being hurt. On the train back to Bordeaux the next day, I felt free and light. I caught myself in the window reflection smiling for no reason. It was the same smile I had seen on the woman’s face at my first dinner at Plum Village. I laughed at the thought that I had now fully committed to the cult.
