Monday, May 15 (continued…)

My wife and I had had a quick discussion in the few minutes before we had to evacuate the house on Monday morning. My first instinct was to grab both of our pets, a hyperactive tortoise called Stookie and a six foot long female iguana called Yoda, even though we had no idea where we were going. Shrijnana’s instinct was to leave them behind, on the assumption that they’re fairly low-maintenance pets and that it would be less stressful for them to stay where they were. I think it was a mistake to leave them, but I’m not a morning person at the best of times and at 5:20 A.M. in the middle of an emergency I’m not (I discovered) up to rational debate. Anyway, the pets stayed and we left.

Once it was obvious that we could, at worst, stay in my office in Newmarket High Street, we had to think about what to do with the animals. I was determined to go back to the house to see whether the water had made it inside, and to see what we could do with the pets. On Monday afternoon the rain had slackeded and Shrijnana and I drove over to the area where our house is situated to see what was going on. Both of the roads leading in to our condo complex were flooded, with the river having encircled the houses, creating a small island. One road was very busy, with police cars, while the other was deserted. Because there were cars in the water we could see that it was several feet deep.

Nevertheless, I determined to wade through the caramel-colored water to visit the house. Shrijnana was not at all convinced that this was a wise course of action, but this time it was I who prevailed and she followed me in. The water wasn’t too cold, but it came up to my crotch at the deepest part and the trip wan’t pleasant. We went slowly, unsure of what was under the water. In a flood you can come across sinkholes, branches, even bodies under the water. And then there are the things that are less tangible, like sewerage, bacteria, and chemicals, not the mention the possibility of getting electrocuted by underground cables. It seemed to take forever to get to the other side, and in fact it was a long walk through the water — perhaps 200 yards.

Our house, when we got there, looked normal. My car was still parked outside, and obviously wasn’t going anywhere: there’s no way we could have driven through the water we’d just crossed. Once inside my first priority was to check on the animals, who were absolutely fine. Both of them were happily sunbathing under their heatlamps. Next, the basement. As I walked downstairs I still had a lingering hope that the flood had peaked before entering the house, or that perhaps the sandbags and the doors themselves had held the river back. And everything did indeed seem to be normal — until I saw that the floor was three inches deep in water, which had been almost invisible because it was so still.

I was very grateful that the previous owners had put in a tiled floor rather than wood or a carpet, and I was grateful also that we’d spent the previous day removing most of the perishable furnishings. There was no way to assess at that time what damage had been done.

We waded back out (a task that was even more unpleasant than the trip in), and talked more about the reptiles. For now they were fine, but I started to wonder how long the electricity would stay on. We went back round to the other flooded road and talked to the guys from the fire service; sure enough, the electricity was about to be switched off for safety reasons. So back to the house we waded! And this time I made the return trip with a four foot long iguana under my jacket. Yoda was very well behaved and seemed to enjoy her excursion without wriggling too much. Shrijnana brought up the rear, carrying heatlamps and a mesh crate that Yoda would be able to sit on once we got her back to the office. If you’re wondering what we did with Stookie, the truth is that we reckoned he’d be fine. Unlike the iguana, who’s a tropical reptile, the tortoise is adapted for a more variable climate and when it gets cold he just goes into a stupor.

Yoda was a bit nervous in the office, but after a while she seemed to settle down and to enjoy the attention. Life in the office was strangely normal. It seemed as if it was the only place in Newmarket where people were still working; we had internet service; and the only thing that was unusual was a stream of visitors — friends who would normally be at work.

We spent the evening touring Newmarket, although by this time so many roads were closed that it was hard to get around. We visited our old apartment on Packers Falls Road, and found it was on its own little island. It sits right on the Lamprey River where it empties over a waterfall into the Piscassic, and the Lamprey was so swollen it had wrapped itself around both sides of the house. The water-treatment plant next door (which filters the river and turns it into drinking water) was largely submerged. We”d wanted to take a trip along to Packers Falls, which we’d been told were spectacular, but the road was being closed just as we tried to head in that direction.

Shrijnana and I had several offers of places to bed down for the night, but it seemed like it would be more of an adventure to stay in the office. We had camping mats, sleeping bags, hot water, and a toilet, which is more than a lot of people could say.

I just got back this weekend from a retreat I led at Rivendell Retreat Centre in Sussex, England. The feebdack on the retreat was excellent, and for me the retreat was an excellent opportunity to deepen my practice after the rather exhausting ordeal of repairing my flooded house (more of my belated flood-reports later…).

The retreat was called “Big Sky Mind” and was an exploration of different aspects of mindfulness and pure awareness practice.

Openness was an exploration of mindfulness and acceptance. I emphasized keeping a broad awareness during meditation rather than prematurely focusing. Often when we zoom in on the breath we end up excluding parts of ourselves from awareness, producing a subtle form of repression. Starting meditation in a wide-open way allows us to acknowledge our experience more fully so that we can then become more wholeheartedly focused. This process of being aware of the breadth of our experience also involves fully accepting whatever we find in our experience.

I also emphasized the aspect of mindfulness known as “dhammavicaya,” or “investigation of mental states.” This involved exploring and noting the qualities of our experiences, and especially of our “distractions.” So an itch or physical pain comes to be seen as a collection of different sensations, rather than just a unitary experience, and an emotion becomes a field of energy within the body. Often when we observe an emotion, such as anger, we notice that there is an underlying sense of pain or hurt that has to be acknowledged before we can fully process the emotion itself. Dhammavicaya is an important aspect of acceptance and mindfulness.

Emptiness was an exploration of impermanence and interconnectedness. In this phase of the retreat we noticed the impermanent nature of each experience that we focused on. It’s tremendously liberating to realize that our distractions are simply short-lived phenomena that arise within experience and then pass away, rather than fixed “things.” With persistent observation we can come to see that our distractions are not ultimately a part of us, any more than a cloud is a fixed part of the blue sky. This is liberating too. In this part of the retreat we also did the Six Element practice, in which we reflected on how everything that makes up our physical being is borrowed from the wider universe, and that within this human form there is nothing we can call our own. What we call “me, myself” is composed of rivers, clouds, trees, soil, and the sun. We come to see that there is in fact nothing we can grasp onto in life, least of all ourselves!

Awareness is the hardest part of the retreat to describe. At this stage of the retreat we weren’t simply exploring mindfulness, but were exploring the difference between “Mind” (our mental states) and “Awareness” (used here to mean the intrinsic, illuminating, blissfull state that contains those experiences. We practiced letting go of our identification with Mind, and instead relaxed into an identification with Awareness. There’s no question of our creating Awareness or of our striving to attain it. Awareness is intrinsic and ever-present, and it simply has to be experienced.

There were nineteen of us on the retreat, and I was impressed by how harmonious the group was. From time to time there will be someone on a retreat who is “difficult” to work with, but I found everyone who attended to be very receptive and appreciative. Rivendell itself is situated in beautiful grounds, and we were very well looked after. Although I’ve been back at work for a couple of days now, the effects of the retreat are still very much with me.