yatra

together, alone

Today I went on a ‘yatra’, a silent  walk, with a group of about twenty people, and one dog. During our initial check-in/introductions, sitting in a circle on a grassy cliff top, almost everyone said how much they enjoyed silence, and walking and nature, and the opportunity to walk in a group. Our leader walked ahead, his partner behind the group, and we could straggle or walk briskly in between as suited us. We stopped a couple of times to sip water, eat fruit and watch the whales and dolphins from the cliff top.

I found it comforting to be freed - temporarily - from the efforts and obligations of making conversation.

We walked for two or three hours then stopped for lunch under a clump of pandanus at Flat Rock Beach. We could chat during lunch, and we all did, for a while, though it felt odd initially, after the ease  of silence. 

We talked about what we’d noticed during the walk - both the external  things (wind rippling the cliff top grasses, a red hibiscus in full flower in the coastal forest, a Brahminy Kite soaring and diving for a fish) ; and also the internal landscape - the mind’s busy-ness of thinking/trying not to think/ going in and out of being present/ observing the body, awareness of the feet making and breaking rhythmic contact with the earth.

A bit more chat - it seemed livelier because of the preceeding silence - then most of us dropped back into companionable quietness. Some of us had a swim after lunch, others  snoozed in the shade till it was time to return by the same path, back to the carpark.

Our themes for the day (from Jason Siff’s ‘Recollective Awareness’) were gentleness, acceptance and curiosity.