Plum Village Retreat
Reflections from a wonderful week-long retreat in a Buddhist monastery
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Plum Village in France for a week of being mindful, learning, and reflecting.
I’d been reading a few of Thich Naht Hahn’s (the founder of Plum Village) books over the last year and it’s really helped shift my perspective on how I want to be and how I want to show up for the crises in the world.
Here are a few of my takeaways and reflections from the week:
A socially engaged approach
To me, the Plum Village tradition is a socially engaged Buddhist practice. It has supported activists from different movements over the last century and are doing a lot to support the climate movement e.g. Christina Figueres and other climate leaders came here for a week before the last COP.
The more I've learnt about systems thinking, personal development and regenerative practices, and how to change our relationship with the world (which I believe is the root cause of all the crises we’re facing), the more important I’ve found the principles of mindfulness and Buddhism, including insights like these:
How we are all completely interconnected with others, and with the natural world
The power of being in the present moment, being grateful and seeing the good in the world, other people and yourself
The importance of accepting the world and people as they are
Coming from a loving, kind and compassionate place always, which starts with deeply loving yourself and ripples out from there
Coming at everything with a beginners mind, being open-minded and non judgement
As well as meditating, reading, listening to podcasts about this, I’ve also been on a journey of evolving my way of being in the world and deepening my self awareness, which has made me feel happier, more content, more at peace with myself and the world.
Want to play volleyball?
When I arrived at Plum Village, I was walking to my room to drop my bags and someone asked ‘want to play volleyball?’, of course I said yes and 10 mins later we were playing volleyball with the nuns. There was no score keeping, no apologising for mistakes, no one getting annoyed or competitive. There was lots of laughter, celebration and helping each other out. I immediately felt relaxed, welcomed and like I was already absorbing their joyful way of being.
A Safe Space
Despite not knowing anyone, never having been to a Buddhist monastery before or knowing what to expect, I felt so safe there, and I’m not talking physically safe, I mean psychologically and emotionally safe.
I find it rare to find this kind of safety in the modern world. At school you can feel unsafe being yourself and there’s a lot of judgment and comparison. In work, there can be difficult relationship dynamics, unsafe cultures that mean it doesn’t feel safe to speak up and you feel like you need to be someone else. Even in close relationships, it cannot always feel safe to be yourself - if someone might judge you or make a joke at your expense.
Here I didn’t feel that. In this type of space, I find people know any negative or judgemental feelings they have about others are reflective of their own feelings about themselves and people are mindful and loving in their speech. People talk from their own experience, they don't rely on intellect or being smart, they speak from the heart and are comfortable being vulnerable. I'm grateful for experiencing such a safe space and learning from it and it has motivated me to continue nurturing that safe feeling within myself and with any work I do in coaching or facilitating.
Absorbing wisdom
There is such deep wisdom in the Buddhist teachings about ways of being, here a few insights I took away from talks and Q&As we had with the nuns (the last two I found helpful to think about in context to the narrative around sustainability and the climate crisis):
Emotions come and go, everything is impermanent, it is important to let the emotions come and not resist them.
We end up attracting what we fear. The more negativity you feed yourself, the more you see it, so train yourself to see the good. Don’t pretend not to see suffering, but focusing on the good will allow you to better cope with deep suffering.
Water the good seeds, see the good in the world, see the good in other people and yourself and water those parts because then they will grow and blossom. If we focus on the negative or the bad, that’s what will end up growing.
Loving speech and speaking the truth
One of their teachings is to speak with mindfulness and love and to speak to inspire confidence, hope and joy. It also says to speak your truth. I shared in one of the sharing circles, that I find this difficult when my work is focused around tackling the meta-crises and I feel like I have a huge amount of knowledge and insight into the harm happening to the world and the future (that I feel like other people don’t know) and there’s a part of me that is worried about sharing the truth of what I know for fear of causing a negative emotional reaction in others, as I really want to inspire confidence, hope and joy in the way I speak and interact with people.
One of the nuns responded saying ‘When you take care of yourself, you know how to take care of the world’ - which I took to mean if I deeply heal myself then I will know how to take care of the world. And it needs to come from that place of healing, rather than a fear-based place. They also said ‘Our present is our future’, so how we think/act now is how the future will play out - if it’s all fear, despair, anger that’s the future we will create, so we have to focus on becoming what we want the future to be like in the present.
Someone came up to me after who coaches in a similar space to me and said she sees it as the work we have to do is to ‘help people fall in love with the world’, which I so agree with.
Helping feels good
People are naturally helpful at Plum Village, there's no telling people ‘we need you do this’ or ‘you must help us’ but there's the offer to support with household work and gardening. Every time I offered to do something like wash the pots, peel potatoes it felt great to be able to contribute to the community. A roommate was ill and so I offered to drive her to a few appointments at the pharmacy and the doctors, a part of me didn't want to miss out on the activities or leave the ‘zen’ zone by venturing into normal world, a much stronger part of me wanted to help out and I know it always feels better to help.
On the prescription they got it said ‘thanks to heather’. I don't think I've ever seen the plant heather credited on anything so it felt like a little sign from the universe and we laughed a lot!
I always feel better when I’ve helped someone, it's a core part of any wellbeing list I've seen to ‘give back to others’. Which makes me think of something I heard once ‘if you ever have the urge do something nice, act on it immediately before shame, doubt, self-consciousness kicks in’. It's like seeing someone who's without housing, my immediate reaction is always - do I have any food or money to give them, could I have a nice conversation, give them a kind smile, which I often do but sometimes I get caught up in everyone else ignoring them and just walk past. I was in Brighton after the retreat and saw a woman giving change to someone and someone else then asked me if I had a change and I was feeling inspired by having seen the woman’s act of kindness and I was really impacted by what I learnt about this person’s situation so I got out money for them. It just made me think about the ripple effect of just seeing one person exhibit kindness, inspired me to do the same and what would the world look like if everyone acted on those instinctive feelings we have of kindness and care..
Care and generosity felt very present with everyone at this retreat with people going out their way to help others and people watering the good seeds - seeing the good in others and recognising them for it, calling it out and thanking them for who they were as people. The person I took to the doctors draw this picture of me and wrote me a touching thank you card, which warmed my heart, and makes me want to do something similar when someone helps me out and so the kindness and generosity ripple spreads.
Connection and community
The value of living in community really stayed with me from the retreat (they call it Sangha). Being around people and knowing you are part of something bigger and there are people to talk to, was so valuable. I currently live on my own and work for myself so a lack of community is very live for me at the moment and I'm seeking out communities to join and creating them where I can too. There is so much power in being part of a supportive group and there was a love and understanding at the retreat, really genuine smiles and a deep peacefulness about the people and place that made me feel part of something meaningful for humanity. I noticed once I left, having intentionally barely used my phone for the week, how much I rely on it for connection, it's an unconscious habit to continually check it. So a reminder to myself - focus on spending more time with people in person, more time in nature, less phones and screens and continue to seek out community - I think it’s natural for us and it’s good for the soul to be in community.
Taking it slow
I drove to Plum Village from Surrey in the UK, it was around a 12 hour trip each way and I took it very leisurely over a few days. I have an EV so had regular stops to recharge (both the car and me!) and went for walks, did some writing, ate food. It was good to slowly arrive and leave to let things settle, particularly on the way back. I decided to camp a couple of nights on the way home, both in campsites by a lake as I love being near the water. I took things slow. I walked around and sat by the lakes, I sat on the side of the road and watched the sunrise, I went to a Nature Reserve and slowly wandered round, observing the birds and watching them interact or existing.
It felt good to slow down and just be and live simply and enjoy nature and is the main takeaway I am trying to embody now I’m back is to slow down and focus on my being.
(I think the theme of slowing down can also apply to the technological advancements in ‘green’ technology - the complexity of the EV charging ecosystem as an example - so just to save anyone else buying 3 different RFID cards, downloading 7 apps and spending hours reading advice from diff Google sites (like I did…), if your a first time driver of an EV in France -I just got a shell RFID card and found chargers using the shell recharge app and it was all seamless.)
I’ll leave you with something I wrote in my journal during the retreat:
‘Am I becoming love?’
The more I’m learning, the more I believe that everything comes back to love, and nurturing that in ourselves, for others and for the world. I believe that really becoming love is one of the most impactful things I can do on this time I have on earth and what a beautiful way to spend this one precious life.