Three-day Chan Retreat 2022 (by M.C.)

This Three-Day Online Chan Retreat was hosted by Dharma Drum Vancouver Center on April 15-17, 2022.

Retreat report by Michelle C.

First, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Rebecca, for carrying out the weekend retreat so meticulously and guiding us through the practice in such a loving and compassionate way.

I’d like to describe how I feel about the retreat by using an analogy. For Chan practitioners, self practice is like hiking the longest journey alone. We don’t know how long it’ll take us to the final destination, but we do know we’ve been experiencing ups and downs along the journey every now and then. A Chan retreat is functioning as a staging post, offering shelters where we can take good rest and get necessary food supply, and meet other hikers on the same path, hearing their experiences and advices. We can also get a band-aid if we’ve got a wounded finger or a blister covered heel, or a compass which we may find helpful in navigating across a desert or forest along the way. Therefore, when leaving the retreat, we will be fully recharged and equipped, and hopefully, with a more clarified view of which direction we should be heading toward, and what attitude and method we should be applying along our own journey ahead.

The past weekend retreat with Rebecca has been extremely healing and rejuvenating for me. It has not only corrected some of my erroneous views on practice, but also cultivated my appreciation of being unconditionally kind to ourselves. From now on, I will keep practicing to relax into every emerging present moment, by allowing thoughts and feelings arising in and passing through my mind, and by letting go my entrenched habit of constantly judging and criticizing myself for not being good enough, based on past experiences or future assumptions. It’s okay for not being okay, as long as I become fully aware of the constantly changing nature of every phenomenon in every moment. It’ll pass whether it’s favourable or not. All I need to do is bring myself back to the present moment, and fully experience it. If I were allowed to take one word from the retreat back to daily life, which I can use as a reminder for myself from time to time, it would be “BE HERE, JUST BE HERE.” Simply enough, yet powerful enough. 

Once again, my deep appreciation for Rebecca’s teaching and for all the causes and conditions which has brought me here today at this moment.