By BEN FAGAN

   Arising
   Looking
   Is/Are
                        Be                      

It’s fair to say I had some trepidation about participating in this year’s Wisdom Retreat. While I had done two solo retreats with Fred, neither had been seven days long, and this would be my first group retreat. But, since I live a seven-hour drive away, I am not often able to get to the center in Tampa. And this was the first time that I was going to be in the country during the Wisdom Retreat. So I let go of my concerns and made the drive down.

One of the first things that struck me about the retreat was the deep sense of community. There’s something profound about getting to know someone without speaking. And our shared commitment to practice definitely lifted me up when my energy lagged. I felt many things on the retreat, but I never felt lonely. I truly experienced what it means to take refuge in the Sangha. 

About midway through the retreat, Fred offered a teaching on how our thinking minds have a strong habitof reifying everything we encounter. It would even try to turn our experiences on retreat into something called “the retreat". I have noticed this occurring since returning home. 

Fred gave us a day to reflect on this teaching, and I began to think about it in terms of nouns and verbs. I’ve been teaching writing of one sort or another for about 20 years, so my mind tends to go in this kind of direction. I realized that my thinking mind tries to make everything into a noun, into a thing that my self can then define itself against. 

But, when looking directly at my thoughts, my mind, and my self, I could find no such thing, no such noun. All I could find were processes, fluidity, verbs. I recognize that nouns and verbs are themselves concepts that I need to be careful not to attach to, but they are concepts that help point me towards the greater truth that Fred helped us experience on retreat. 

As I write this, it’s been exactly one week since “the retreat” (see, there’s the noun) ended. Thoughts of the impact of the retreat, and of whether or not I can maintain it, have arisen. But using the tools Fred taught us, I can look at those thoughts, understand their emptiness, wish them well, and let them go. And even though I don’t know when I’ll be back in Tampa, I can take refuge in the Sangha every day. It’s a refuge I need, and for which I am so grateful.

Ben Fagan lives in Opelika, AL, with his wife Juliane. He first encountered the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh over 25 years ago, but practiced only sporadically until joining FCM in 2020.