ME-ditation

Surprisingly for a happy atheist, the approach of Easter does not overwhelm me with chocolate- and bunny-related excitements. Instead, I begin to feel anxious about the four-day double-bank-holiday-whammy some months earlier, berating myself for not being invited on a surprise minibreak by the man of my dreams, and bitching inwardly about the gaggles of beautiful, beboyfriended hipsters who get the prime tables in pub garden sunshine and sit there all afternoon getting pleasantly drunk on lager without showing a hint of muffin top, while I stay home alone getting my faded knickers in a twist about the previous week’s American Idol results.

With true ‘face your fears’ gusto, in recent years I’ve done almost anything to sprint out of London over Easter. Last year I set myself the challenge of walking Hadrian’s Wall, solo. I went a bit mad by the end but it was worth it – I look back on the experience with a great deal of satisfaction and fondness. This year I thought I’d do something a bit easier, and booked to go on a meditation retreat, where I figured I’d do lots of sitting around and read books.

It was not easier.

But it was not bad, either.

My last travel adventure was to the pop-up capitalist city of Dubai, and I took to my destination like a duck to desert. Turns out that the opposite of Dubai is the campus of Nottingham University on a weekend when Thich Naht Hanh is visiting.

Thursday 5 April

I get off the train and drag my luggage into a nearby café where, in full knowledge of my impending vegan six days, I buy an emergency ham baguette and a brick of cherry and almond cake. I have conveniently forgotten about the old ‘your stomach is as big as your fist’ adage. I take a taxi to the university, check into my room and, within seconds, have wolfed them both. Turns out that many years of hard graft on the eating front has transformed my stomach into the size of a massive baguette and a big slab of cake.

My room is fine but the insulation is poor – every time someone else on the corridor lets their door slam shut, I feel like I’ve just been on the receiving end of an Oscar-worthy flounce. Still, this is the same person who, in 1993, fell asleep standing up outside Our Price on Kensington High Street while waiting for Charlotte to meet me, so I don’t think a few door bangs are going to beat me. Outside my window is a beautiful birch tree, covered in catkinny type things. There are no leaves yet but it’s just about to pop. I examine the timetable and try to work out when I’m going to be able to do all this loafing around I’d planned. Things look awfully hectic for a Zen retreat. I lie on my bed in the sunshine and read my book until dinner. I feel happy and a bit intrigued.

The next five days are all about Mindfulness, a secular branch of Zen Buddhist meditation that encourages people to focus on the present moment through their breath. By bringing one's awareness to the breath and the body, the hope is that the stresses caused by the imagined future and the completed past will be put into perspective and, eventually, dissolve. Part of mindfulness is that it’s pretty much constant; the idea is that it’s possible to live fully in the breath, to focus on the present moment so often that peace becomes inevitable. The weekend is led by Thich Naht Hanh, an 86-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist monk who now lives in Plum Village, a community of monks and other mindful visitors that’s based in a hamlet in the Dordogne. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. for his efforts in opposition to the Vietnam war and I’ve paid £495 to spend six days and five nights in his milieu. As far as possible, the retreat will follow the routine that the brothers and sisters lead when they’re back in France. We’ll get up early, meditate, exercise, eat, hear a talk or two, meditate some more, share some things, eat and rest, much of the time in Noble Silence (which I fear is just normal silence rebranded to sound less shit).

Tonight’s dinner is my first foray into the Noble bit of silence. I often eat alone without speaking, sitting at my desk and reading the Guardian online, or loafing on my sofa at home watching TV, but it’s not really so much an eating ‘experience’ – rather, it's often not until I’m painfully ravenous that I start planning what food I'm going to eat, so then I have to prepare something in a matter of seconds to avoid collapsing into a writhing heap on my kitchen floor, using my dying breaths to cram Weight Watchers Nacho Cheese Flavour Tortilla Snacks into my mouth. Usually I end up consuming cereal, my spoon hand moving so fast between the bowl and my mouth that it threatens to stir up a tiny dust tornado in my sitting room. After the first couple of bites, my aching hunger passes; I become distracted by reading or viewing and stop noticing the fact that I’m eating until my portion is gone, when I experience a brief moment of surprise that it's all over, followed by a wave of disappointment.

As I queue for the canteen, already in silence, I wonder what it'll feel like eating silently in a room full of a couple of hundred people, and panic gently about the completely expected but still unwelcome absence of meat and hard liquor. One day without them is fine, but I'm not sure how I'll cope with five in a row. Reaching the food zone, I feel a rush of relief as I spot a few key treats. I help myself to soup, a plate of salad, a dollop of houmous, a bread roll and an uncool amount of peanut butter. This is going to be a breeze, I think to myself, sitting down at a table and salivating at the thought of guilt-free Sun Pat. Then I notice that no one else is eating. This is very annoying but I sit there and try to look impassive (not one of my special strengths). Once all eight places have been taken, someone who's obviously been here before picks up a laminated card that is sitting on the table, and passes it to my neighbour. "Would you like to read the Five Contemplations?" she asks quietly. I am immediately piqued with jealousy that I was not asked. Do I not look like I am amazing at reading aloud? I start to question my existence. The man next to me accepts the card and starts to read. To be fair, he does it well.

"[1] This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard, loving work. [2] May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it. [3] May we recognize and transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation. [4] May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of living beings, preserve our planet, and reverse the process of global warming. [5] We accept this food so that we may nurture our sister- hood and brotherhood, strengthen our community, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings." A secular grace. I love it. While the contemplations are being read, we all stare at our food. Once I relinquish the pangs of hurt that I am not the one reading/shining, I realise that it is better to be the one that is being read to. This is a shock. I find myself thinking about the people who worked in the peanut butter factory, the kiln that fired the plate, the machine that washed the last person's saliva off my knife and fork. And then we bow, and we eat.

My food tastes delicious: fresh, alive, healthy. Cursing my panic baguette, I feel full after about half my meal has gone, but waste is clearly not cool so I slowly force down the rest. I will take smaller portions in future. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, one of the monks stands and rings a meditation bell three times, signalling the start of an adult game of musical statues. Everyone freezes - perhaps putting their cutlery down, but certainly not finishing a mouthful. The bell's rings are long, maybe twenty seconds - while each one sounds, we are meant to breathe in and out three times, nine mindful breaths during a meal of mindfulness. Despite the silence and the attempts at focus created by the contemplations, I still find that I am grateful for the bell as my mind has wandered far from the campus. When I finish my food, I copy the others, bowing once towards my empty plate and once at my dinner companions. Other than the contemplations, we've not exchanged a word. I return to my room.

From 19:00, we start to gather in the East Midlands Conference Centre, which has been renamed the Dharma Hall for the duration of the retreat. I take a seat near the back. As socked feet file in quietly, I manufacture a face of pleasant gentleness and look around me. There are several hundred of us present, about 60% women, vastly white with a few Asians. The age ranges from sleepy young children to plenty of pensioners - I am pretty much bang in the middle and feel fine about that. There was a small part of me that wondered if there might be any hunky young meditating males but now I'm here I realise the length of my longshot. Plus I've recently made the acquaintance of a new man who's spending Easter in France, so I have zero interest in Nottingham-based flirting but am instead focusing on getting the right train next Tuesday so I'll be back in his arms at 15:44 as planned. As ever, I win at living in the now.

There are a few inner-sanctum types who've clearly done this all before and want as many people as possible to witness their rope awareness credentials, but as I bristle I'm aware that my irritation is just my own ego disliking not knowing what's going on. The bell rings and Thich Nhat Hanh enters. Thay (as he is known by all - it means 'Brother' and is pronounced like what you do with the yellow ribbon round the old oak tree) walks slowly on stage, deliberately, peacefully, mindfully. There is no sense of momentum. It is just a case of watching someone put one foot in front of the other in his own time. His walk is awesome. Then he starts talking.

Oh, this is wisdom. I can't do justice to his messages here, but his introductory talk moved me in many ways. Thay works a lot with metaphors - tonight's was about the mind as a garden that needs to be cultivated. In the right conditions, the good seeds will grow, but work is required. Without effort, the soil will harden and dry out - only the pernicious weeds will be able to push through. A good gardener must work to cultivate the right conditions and not sit back year after year, expecting wonderful things to happen. Happiness takes effort. You cannot, he claims, experience true happiness with an uncultivated mind. There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path. There is no path to peace: peace is the path.

Equally, Thay explains, you cannot experience true happiness without suffering. Suffering and happiness are intrinsically connected, as the left and right hand sides of a sheet of paper. This really, really resonates with me. It is the difficulties I've had that allow me to experience such joy in the present. I am happier now than I've ever been, but with a genuine awareness of suffering and a feeling that it is always there, inside me. There is no point running from it - it's part of being alive. We must cherish these seeds of suffering - not cultivate them, but not try and get rid of them, either - for to get rid of the seeds of sadness would be to get rid of *all* seeds.

Enlightenment is in every breath, he says. By connecting with our breath, we connect with our body, and then we experience, viscerally, the miracle - the *miracle* - of our own existence. I am in tears. In 2011 I spent about an hour genuinely appreciating the miracle of my own existence, up from about six seconds in 2010. It is not enough. All we have is our breath and our body. Being in touch with those things, being grateful for them, opens up a connection with everyone else. Suddenly you are a better friend, a better daughter, a better lover. Cultivating mindfulness in ourselves benefits the whole world. Big words, big ideas - but why not? They're not arrogant concepts. They're not about gaining power to control others. They're about making the world a better place through loving peace. I am profoundly inspired.

We walk back from the Dharma Hall mindfully, slowly and in Noble Silence, feeling the sole of each footstep making contact with our home, our planet. It takes twice as long to return to the hall of residence as it had taken me to get to the Hall before the talk, but I don't feel cold. I feel really quite alive. I know I'm being cheesy but I don't care. It's lovely. I've not been wearing any make-up, my daywear was in the hinterland between pyjamas and convalescence and it feels great. Noble Silence lasts from the end of the evening talk (at about 21:30) to after breakfast the following morning (around 09:00). I wonder whether I'd like to become a monk. My plate is piled high with things - choir, friends, uke band, dayjob and writing two books - and I'm about to start a counselling course and potentially fall head over heels. Maybe moving to Plum Village would be good for me. Not sure I'd want to shave my head though. I stress lightly about tomorrow’s early start.

Friday 6 April

Unexpectedly, the 05:45 alarm call isn't too painful and there's no denying that there's magic in the air as I walk across the frosty field to the Dharma Hall, hundreds of people gravitating silently towards it from a variety of directions, all moving softly, slowly, mindfully, one pace every two or three seconds. Once we're settled in the hall, some sitting on chairs, some on mats and cushions at the front, we're given a guided meditation – mostly things are completely silent but every now and then, one of the monks will give us something to visualise. I focus for a few seconds after each suggestion, but find my mind drifting to other topics. I become unnaturally fixated on when I am going to find time to shower before my Tuesday afternoon date. When I walked Hadrian’s Wall I spent most of the week in a mild flap about catching my return train, despite the fact that I knew it was going to be fine and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it even if it wasn’t fine. Eventually I realised that my default internal setting is ‘mild flap’. I got very cross about that and stopped – but then found that I had nothing to fill the brain space. This panicked me. Now I am on a retreat and there are hundreds of people around me, all showing me the way. You ditch the mild flap, you focus on your breathing, your mind clears and… that’s it. There is no spoon.

The low point of the meditation was when we chanted along to one of the Buddhist sutras and I was hit by the combined force of several strangers’ eye-watering morning breath. I can only imagine that there is some Zen thing about not brushing your teeth before breakfast but I’m not happy about it. I resolve to sit at the back tomorrow.

Following the meditation, we are given five exercise options. I opt to do a quick burst of advanced yoga, which is made slightly more complicated by the fact that we are doing it on a carpet and I’m wearing tights. My downward dog slips into a plank on more than one occasion. Then back to the halls of residence, still in silence, to confront the unique terror of a second unfamiliar buffet. No one knows what is what and, in true rookie style, I end up putting a large dollop of unmarked honey on my porridge before realising it’s actually Marmite. Embarrassed about waste, I covertly ditch the bowl and get a yoghurt and some fruit before moving mindfully over to the beverage area, where I take the last sachet of Twinings green tea and a mug of hot water. Eventually I find a seat and, following the reading of the contemplations, begin by trying to put my teabag in my mug of hot water. As I pick up the Twinings sachet I find that it’s empty. Someone put their empty sachet BACK IN THE BOX. HOW IS ONE SUPPOSED TO STAY ZEN THROUGHOUT THESE CRISES?

All of a sudden, I’m struggling. I’ve been here around 24 hours and it’s sinking in that I’ll be here for the rest of today, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, all day Monday and half of Tuesday. It seems like a very, very long time indeed, and I’m not feeling very mindful at all - or, at least, my mind is not full of the right stuff. Instead I’m constantly planning for the next hurdle. I’m aware that this is vintage me, that I always like to know what is happening and have control over my timetable, but here that’s impossible – stuff overruns, I don’t have a watch, I never know if I’m going to have time to have a shower or if I’ve got enough time to read a good chunk of my book. Of course, I also know it doesn’t matter, that this is precisely why I’m here – to relinquish control and to focus only on my breathing. But all I’m focusing on is 15:44 next Tuesday.

I snooze through the first half of the morning’s Dharma talk, where Thay outlines the importance of the bell, and then we gear up for walking meditation. I'd imagined a relaxed stroll, but it's much more intense than that: an hour of pacing ohhhhh-so-slowly, taking one very small step only every six or seven seconds, hundreds of us following Thay in total silence around the university’s beautiful grounds. At first it seems massively unnatural to move so unhurriedly and I feel guilty about engaging in nightmare behaviour that on Oxford Street would quickly and justifiably lead to a stabbing. Then, gradually, it gets really quite cool. I can’t explain what happens, but the shift seems to occur when I accept that I don’t know where I’m going, nor when I’m going to get there, nor what route I’m going to take. The only things I do know is that I’m the only place I can be, and that I'm not in a rush to get anywhere else. As a metaphor for life and death, it’s pretty obvious, but that doesn’t detract from its impact.

As I reach the end of the circuit, I see that Thay has taken a seat under a tree and is drinking some tea (vodka?) from a stainless steel thermos that one of the brothers has carried for him in a brown cloth bag. The children are in a semi-circle in front of him: he shows them how to ring the mindfulness bell, and lets them have a go. We sit and stand around the tree, still silent, just watching, no hurry. Eventually I turn and walk slowly back to the hall, still at mindfulness pace, and feel a bit extraordinary. It’s weird, but positive.

I can’t help but doze off again in the afternoon’s guided meditation session but perk up when I hear about the Dharma Sharing families. Everyone on the retreat has been divided into small groups of around ten people, and we will meet each afternoon at 16:00 in one of the other halls of residence. It’s like an AA meeting (I imagine) and this seems slightly edgy and glamorous. We sit in a circle, introduce ourselves, and talk a bit about a topic suggested by our leader, a gorgeous but socially uncomfortable Scot who’s training to become a monk and lives in Plum Village. We go round the room introducing ourselves and then, gradually and at random, someone will ‘bow in’ and start talking. When they’re done, they bow out and we sit in silence until the next person is inspired to share.

The first person to talk is a lady about my mother's age, who's been on one of these retreats twice before, and is struggling a little bit but knows that things get easier as the days progress. She only says a couple of sentences and then bows out. The next person is a girl my own age who rants angrily about it all, explaining that she's an addict who can't help but compare this retreat to others she's been on - she's stressing about the weather, about the distance between her hall of residence and the Dharma Hall, about the people she knows and whether or not they're having a good time, about the food. She wants to stop beating herself up, she says, but it's very hard for her. She lets rip with a tidal wave of moans and remorse - almost all of which sound familiar - and then all of a sudden she comes to a reluctant halt after four or five minutes.

Other than a couple of whispered pleases and thank yous in corridors, I haven’t spoken to anyone since I was on the train yesterday morning. I bow in and explain that I heard of Thay a few years ago when I was researching secular meditation techniques, that I'd booked this retreat at Christmas when I was feeling a bit low, but that I am now madly in lust with a virtual stranger and all I can think about is how much I do not want to be anywhere near freaking Nottingham and that I'd gladly take a partial refund and spend it on getting to his mum's house in France so we could go on our second date. It is an overwhelming relief to tell my story and make strangers laugh. I have a palpable sense of the tension easing away as I share: it feels emotional and wonderful - I am extraordinarily grateful to these strangers for listening to me. After a flurry lasting a couple of minutes, I bow out.

One by one, the rest of our group take their turn. I am surprised by how much everyone else seems to be finding things hard too, and I feel substantially less alone. That said, I'm also aware I should be living in the now but that all I seem to be doing is planning what I'm going to wear next Tuesday. It is not cool. But then, I never was.

There is anarchy at supper as two people speak out loud for reasons other than to read the five contemplations: one woman asks me if I think the soup contains lentils and another comments that it's very salty. I notice too that the general walking pace is noticeably quickening. Rebellion is afoot. But then things calm down again in the evening, when we have a thing called Deep Relaxation/Touching The Earth, led by Sister Chan Khong, one of Thay's most respected followers. I get behind the Deep Relaxation concept wholeheartedly, falling soundly asleep while everyone else is still unrolling their six billion princess and the pea mats and cushions, a special rectangular one to support their lumbar region, a cannister shaped mini-bolster under their ankles etc. I'm all (literally all) for comfort but the ostentatious amount of meditation and relaxation paraphernalia that some of my fellow retreatees seem to require is a little questionable. BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? So I fall asleep on my yoga mat and wake up god knows how long later and our 74-year-old teacher is singing something in Vietnamese to the tune of You Are My Sunshine. Next she appears to sing the same thing in French but I can't make head nor tail of it. I make out six different (loud) snores around me and am struggling to conceive how anyone is finding this conducive to peace. Someone a few bodies away sneezes and farts simultaneously. I get the giggles. It is as relaxing as the spider house at the end of Arachnophobia.

But then Touching The Earth turns out to be something quite lovely, all about standing up straight and being proud of the good in you and then lying on your stomach and venting the bad, pouring it into the earth because the earth absorbs everything we give it (milk, honey, excrement, blood) and produces spring water in return. (We don't mention lava.) We must do the same - absorb all we're given and return purity. We all express gratitude for our parents and the wonderful gifts they've given us, and then we lie on our fronts and pour out our frustrations about anything we've lacked. Once again, it's the sharing of this, seeing hundreds of people face down on the floor, all venting about their parents, that makes me realise afresh that we're all in this together and have been since the very beginning. We stand up again and do the same thing for our spiritual family, our teachers, and for our nation. It's pretty affecting, although I feel a bit left out because I don't have a spiritual teacher.

There's something startling about this complete acceptance, this expectation that there is suffering in all of us, that every single part of existence involves both joy and pain. It's pretty unfamiliar, this sense that it's OK to feel pain - that it's not something to run from or be ashamed of, nor to try and avoid - because to run from pain would be to run from an intrinsic part of oneself, like running from one's own blood. It's a big relief, actually. I walk back to the hall slowly afterwards and sleep soundly.

Saturday 7 April

Following Morningbreathgate yesterday, I decide to sit on the chairs for meditation but am still plagued by the bodily functions of strangers. The average gap between phlegm-related incidents is circa six seconds. One time I manage to count to eleven before a cough or sniff occurs but the tidal wave of mucous that follows is so traumatic that I resolve to stop counting. Guided meditation is quite good - they sensibly try to provide an overall concept before reducing it to bullet points: "Breathing in, I feel at one with the earth. Breathing out, I feel at peace. In, earth. Out, peace." Some of the guides get a bit surreal and I wonder if Noel Fielding is conducting things from an anteroom. "Breathing in, I am aware that I am made of trees. Breathing out, I feel solid. In, trees. Out, solid."

After meditation is over, I turn left out of the Dharma Hall instead of right and take a twenty minute diversion to another part of the campus, away from everyone else. I am going to sent a postcard to my virtual stranger, and the feeling of stepping outside the timetable is exhilaration. I feel rebellious and joyful. Later on I bust someone using their Blackberry during walking meditation - they see me looking and smile ruefully. I feel smug that I only cracked as far as mailing a postcard: my phone is still in my room on airplane mode. I am desperate to join the covert Blackberry user but somehow resist.

Thay's third Dharma talk is really special. I'm not sure how he remembers it all - each time, he speaks for about two hours and covers an extraordinary amount of stuff. One of today's highlights is the suggestion that we need to meditate, to be mindful, in order to give up our superiority complex, our inferiority complex, and our equality complex. This is an extraordinary eye-opener for me and a reminder that I must get off the ladder and knock it to the ground. There is no ladder, there is no ratings system, and clinging on to one does not help in the search for peace or happiness. Thay talks about the interdependence of all things, how the flower is made of clouds because the clouds cause rain, how it's made of sunshine and earth and compost and minerals, that when you look at a rose, you can see soil and clouds within it. The flower is made only of non-flower elements.

Next he talks about cows, telling a story about how Buddha was with his monks and a rich guy came by in a flap and asked, "Have you seen my five cows? I've lost them and without them I will die." Buddha tells the man no, that he's sorry but he hasn't seen his cows, and the rich man scuttles off. Buddha turns to his monks and says, "How lucky you are - you have no cows to lose." We must all identify our cows - those things that we think make us happy, but which in fact may be the source of our complexity and our dissatisfaction. And we must let them go.

Then Thay does a long spiel about hands, and about acceptance and non-judgment, talking about how the left hand and the right hand are not one hand, but work together as one. Thay explains that he writes his many books and poems with his right hand, but his left hand does not get jealous. Then, when his left hand holds a nail to the wall, and his right hand accidentally hits his left fingers with a hammer, the left is not angry. It does not shout for justice. Instead, immediately the whole body feels pain, and instinctively the right hand puts down the hammer and rubs the left, taking care of it as it would care for itself, with love and compassion. We are all parts of one body.

Finally, he says that he can see his mother and father in his hand. His mother made him. She is always in him and always with him. She is in your hand. When you had a fever as a child, perhaps she put her hand on your head. She can still do that, he says. He puts his own right hand gently on his brow, and asks us all to do the same. Riddled with PMT, I lift my hand to my head and find that I am properly bawling. All around me it's the same - the room is full of people with their mummy's cool hand on their feverish brows. I am by no means the only person crying. It's a powerful reminder that we all need our mothers every now and then, even if we're an 86-year-old Vietnamese monk who's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A potent leveller that I won't forget in a hurry.

Zen turns to zoo at the end of the talk - one of the sisters tells us about Thay's calligraphy that is on sale in the shop, raising funds for Plum Village, and we all mindfully scramble outside to the trestle tables and stand three deep at the counter in a scene reminiscent of the bar at the Brixton Academy, mindfully waiting our turn to reserve the ones we want, mindfully jostling people out the way and mindfully sticking post-its on the ones we plan to mindfully hang in our homes to prove to our visitors how mindful we really are.

The second Dharma Sharing session this afternoon is great. I bow in almost straight away and admit to the group there's been something on my mind following Thay's talk. Is love a cow? Several of the group share powerful and interesting thoughts: love can be a cow if it takes you away from yourself, how if you need it to give you things then that isn't great, but that love is a journey that can help you see life in a wonderful and unique way. I am relieved that I don't have to dump my wondercrush after one date. Someone in the group admits that she has always worried about leaving out her left hand so much, that she's felt really guilty, and that Thay's talk was a real relief as she realised she didn't have to spend time panicking about that any more. I feel unusually balanced in comparison.

At dinner I realise that I have overdosed on houmous and can no longer use it to jazz up my salad. This is disappointing.

Sunday 8 April

I attend an 06:15 ceremony where more experienced followers make public declarations of intent called The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. It's quite impressive and moving but I am transfixed by the enormous quantity of illness in the Dharma Hall. Everyone is producing torrents of snot. I have a vital second date in just over fifty hours; sickness is not an option. Remaining peaceful in this situation is surely beyond any normal person. I spend the two hour ceremony taking shallow breaths through my shawl and trying to send positive vibes of health and fitness to my cells.

Regardless of Noble Silence, mealtimes are easily the least Zen part of each day. The theory is great: you get healthy, delicious food that hasn't harmed any animals. You sit down at a table. The five contemplations are awesome. Noble Silence is genuinely not just rebranded normal silence - it is profound and awesome. Not awesome is people who put their tray at a place on a table and then WAFT OFF AROUND THE CANTEEN FOR SIX HOURS GETTING VARIOUS HERBAL TEAS AND YOGHURTS WHILE THE REST OF US SIT THERE UNABLE TO EAT OUR RAPIDLY SOFTENING MUESLI UNTIL HE (it is always a man) RETURNS.

As the day progresses, I seem to be overwhelmed with ways to be UnZen. During Thay's mid-morning Dharma talk, he mentions Albert Camus' L'Etranger and some woman near me does a really audible "Mmmm," which in true language means: "I love that French book and am thus relating to Thay on a higher and more intelligent plane than those who did not go 'Mmmmm'." She needs to receive a firm reprimanding blow from the goose-down-filled Mallet of Smugness. Also in the queue for Mallet administration: people with £1500 digital cameras who don't know how to put them on mute, and people with £1500 digital cameras who know how to put them on mute but who choose not to. And Smuggy McSmugsons who really showily smell flowers and rosemary during walking meditation. YOU KNOW WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE, STOP TRYING TO LOOK SPIRITUAL AND IN TOUCH WITH NATURE. Or something compassionate.

Monday 9 April

You can always tell when I've loosened up, given in and started to enjoy something when I stop writing so much. I give myself permission to sleep late on Monday morning and feel absolutely delighted about that. NB a lie-in here is until 07:50. Straight after breakfast I walk back to the Dharma Hall for Thay's Question & Answer session. First the little kids go up on stage, then the teenagers, and finally the adults are allowed to put their queries to our Yoda. One teenager asks, 'What are the benefits of being a monk?' and I am vastly impressed with Thay's honesty when he admits that, simply, it is much easier to practice mindfulness this way. It's living in the 'normal' world, with all its distractions, that makes living mindfully (and thus being happy) so hard. Another asked, 'Do you have any cows?' and Thay says that even Buddhism can be a cow. I accidentally direct a stab of 'HA! TAKE THAT!' at all the mindfuller-than-thou acolytes sitting rapt on their custom meditation stools in the front, but then feel bad. I have cows too. The wondercrush moos loudly.

The final Dharma Sharing this afternoon is a bit emotional. As a seasoned visitor to several of London's most affordable therapists, talking about my feelings is as natural to me as urinating or wanting to have a smaller arse, but for the rest of my group, these things are a little less intuitive. It has thus been very rewarding seeing them relax into the sharing process. In this last session, our leader asks us to introduce our parents to the group (dead or alive) and say something we love about each of them. It's a bit emotional hearing about everyone's family and once again I realise the benefits that come from regularly remembering that we're all part of our own trees, and ultimately connected. I shuttle about my daily life, rarely thinking about the fact that every single human is carrying complex baggage passed down the generations. Sharing in this way brings perspective and peace. I tell the group that I'm grateful my parents are so open - that if they like you, you know about it, and if they don't, you know about that too. It can be tricky, but it also means I'm compulsively honest. I've seen a lot of people bottling a lot of stuff up, and I don't find it enviable. 

But the thing I keep coming back to is the flower that's made up entirely of non-flower elements: this duality of everything, sadness and happiness in each moment - you cannot have one without the other - happiness IS sadness and sadness IS happiness. A flower is made up of non-flower elements. Happiness is made up of non-happiness elements. Why is this so personally affecting? It's a valuable reminder that 'bad' days and dark times are inextricable from joyous times. The low moments are the inescapable, inevitable window to joy and compassion, and thus must be cherished and lived to the full. There is no need to run from anything any more.

Perhaps as a result of this revelation, I notice that I've finally slowed right down while I've been here. As the monks prepare for a talk, there is a certain amount of faffing on stage. In a comparable situation in London, I'd be checking my phone, writing an email, sending a text, or at the very least reading an edifying book. Here I have no phone and no book, so I am forced to sit quietly. At first, sitting was 'waiting', and waiting was wasteful and crap. But now I just sit. I'm not waiting. I'm in the moment. And that's fine. I hope I can take this away with me. 

Our final night's event is called a 'Be In', where many different groups of retreatees put on skits or sing songs for our entertainment. The small children are unacceptably cute, particularly a bouncy five year old in a Spiderman costume who pogoed his way through 'I like the roses'. The teenagers, however, are a profoundly effective contraceptive - while ten or fifteen awkward young people sing a peaceful song onstage, two boys attempt to beatbox over it. Their display is excruciating. How can they be so misguided as to think they are being cool, or that I might want to listen to their pathetic efforts? I squirm down low in my chair while cursing the fact that I hadn't been filming the whole thing, for it would surely be a YouTube sensation to rival Kony 2012. I am feeling the opposite of Zen when a man in his forties comes on stage and reads a poem he's written about the weekend. Really, if you're going to grab a microphone in a room full of several hundred people, and read them a poem that you wrote, that is four A4 pages long, front and back, surely you could try and make it NOT COMPLETELY CRAP? I am gobsmacked that he thinks this is a beneficial way for all of us to spend eight minutes, and despair at his lack of humility. Then I realise that I am judging him, which is not very humble at all. Inwardly, I feel ashamed and then a bit proud of my new self-awareness and self-acceptance. Outwardly I am sitting with my Dharma Sharing family and crying with laughter.

Tuesday 10 April

The sun shines brightly on our final morning and Thay's farewell talk is another game changer. I scribble a few notes in my book, banking the concepts for another time - right now I'm planning my outfit and wishing I'd packed different conditioner. Leaving the others sitting on a wall before their last lunch, I get into a minicab. I stare out of the window as we drive to the station and I marvel at the miracle of life. I've been doing a lot more of that, lately. It's good.