January 14th, 2010 - Zen Temple, Vermont

The place is cozy and made of wood, in the middle of a forest.

The priest is lovely and kind.

I use an outhouse in the snow at night and wood burning stoves.

We ate the lunch mom and dad packed for me for dinner and loved every bite.

Haiti is in ruins, and she (Sensei) knows I want to do something. I told her my long-standing plan to go there directly after the retreat, in April. Then I told her more about my relationship with Haiti than I've told most people; it's called me for a long time. She asked if I believe someone can send peace through pure meditation, making it easier for others half a world away.

I said I don't know. I know meditation helps me to balance, and without balance I have made muddles of my attempts to help in the past. At the same time, I said, sometimes people need straight up support, not metaphysical peaceful feelings. Strangely, this is almost what she'd said earlier in the day.

She had said sometimes people need crisis support, sometimes shifting of power and discussion of justice, and sometimes a peacefulness internally. Responding with infinite patience and internal peace isn't always what the doctor ordered.

She cuts to the heart of it, now at dinner, over dad's fudge, as snow falls gently outside the wooden windows.

She says, now I am here. She asked me to try to cultivate the mindset that pure meditation and prayer can change things for people.

She talked about studies where groups of meditators had come into violent places and changed the statistics. She knows I am willing to leave early if there is something concrete I can do. In the interim, while I am here, I should just sit. Sit and cultivate the mindset that the meditation is not for me. It is purely for, as she said, that kid sitting in the parking lot next to his dead mother, with nowhere to go.

Let that kid feel love and peace, enough to find a way to stand up. And, at the beginning and ending of each meditation session, I should beg with all my soul for it to work.

God bless her, that isn't very textbook Buddhist, but I guess that's why I love Buddhists--that was the only thing in that moment that could have made any sense to me. This woman can teach me.

So I turn out the light, look up at the stars through branches of winter trees, and I beg.