Starting a new journal leads one to reflect on time, the passing of stories, the present moment, and the mystery of what is to come.

At the moment, holding this book in my hands, a treasure even empty, because the symbol on its cover is a Tree of Life. This one, while detailed, is actually quite simple. Like the trees outside my cabin windows, it’s natural without added ornamentation. Branches on a trunk, with many leaves, radiant with flowers. Healthy, proclaiming existence, drawing energy down from the heavens to the earth, standing guard, witnessing.

I find myself in a place called Williams, a corner in the Siskiyou Mountains, at 1800 feet. This cabin is on the edge of three hundred acres of private land devoted to Buddhist practice. Not many of us here at the moment, so it’s quiet, as retreat is meant to be.

Sometimes, though, such solitude is the thing you wish you hadn’t wished for. But the trees here are a resolute presence filling in the empty gaps. In the deep quietude of meditation, somehow they embody the pregnancy of the moment. Without movement, and yet, pure presence—the magnificent big ones, the young saplings, and the spaces between them—this energy, whether it’s imputed or actual, not sure. But it’s reassuring; it’s company. Or, part company and part context.

When I get very quiet here in the trees, it’s as if the trees’ breath supports my own breath, and the connection supports a deeper level of meditation. Even at this moment while writing, I’m sitting indoors in a comfortable chair, looking out the long door window, and observing how it is. So, it works even from this vantage point.

What is the pregnancy of the moment? It’s the potential for something. A sense, subtle, that things could be otherwise. At the Salish Sea the environment there is always in motion. Even on days when the wind isn’t blowing the trees and inspiring the gulls and eagles to sail, to kite around in the sky, the sea is always moving. The current going one way or the other in a gigantic mass of exodus or invasion. That movement inspires a certain kind of meditation, where one finds stillness while riding this motion, riding on the top of it, within it, sometimes in spite of it.

But here, the environment itself is usually still. The trees in position, maintaining their stances. And in that I can somehow sense movement, or the potential for movement. This supports a different kind of experience, experimenting and exploring various depths of my own stillness. Perhaps it’s my own pregnancy—which is emptiness after all, and the potential for anything to arise.

Essay written in second year of retreat,
from Chapter 6: Williams, Oregon II

Copyright 2023 Diane Berger