Discovering The Value Of Dharma Service

 

 

 

 

Discovering the Value of Dharma Service

 

            Serving at a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat has filled me with energy, joy, and gratitude for the privilege of deepening my Dharma practice while serving others. After sitting several wonderful ten-day silent meditation courses over the past several years, I was happy to finally have an opportunity to give something back. I quickly discovered that the value of Dharma service goes beyond the joy of selflessly serving others. After a short while I realized that I was learning how to more skillfully apply Dharma in my day-to-day life.

            While preparing nutritious vegetarian meals for 125 meditation students, center staff, and teachers, my co-servers and I were learning to act according to the Dharma in our interactions with each other and develop equanimity with the less than perfect situations that can arise even in the small peaceful world of the meditation center. Despite the fact that unwanted things occasionally occurred, like prepping the wrong vegetable for the day's predetermined menu and burning a big pot of brown rice, I was able to practice maintaining the balance of my mind and generate love and compassion. The long days of reparing food, washing dishes, cleaning toilets and mopping floors became joyful opportunities to practice mindfulness and compassion.  

            The one-hundred and thirty acre California Vipassana Center, which is located near North Fork, California in the foothills below Yosemite National Park, is a peaceful and beautiful setting, perfect for learning and practicing meditation. Spring is a wonderful time of year to retreat there. The weather was a gentle microcosm of the seasons with cold clear nights, and a refreshing mix of light rain, dustings of snow and clear warm sunshine during the day. And what a joy it is to be awakened each morning at 4 a.m. to the melodic song of a Burmese gong echoing through the pristine canyon, calling students and servers to the meditation hall for the first one hour sit of the day.

            Several times each day the servers make the half-mile trek up the steep path from the kitchen to the Dharma hall to practice Vipassana meditation with the regular students. Climbing in silence I noted each step up the serpentine ridge, over time weathered rocks with their gardens of pink and green lichen, past wild black berry brambles, oaks, pines, manzanita, and meadows blushing with the fresh pastels of spring's wildflowers. We walked in silence but there was sound enough; the breeze in the tall trees, the muffled clods of scuffs underfoot, the rhythmic knocking of woodpeckers, the call of blue jays, the soft sounds of white tail deer as they meandered by us aware but unafraid. Walking in silence I noted it all. Every step and every breath became meditation.

            Each night folowing the 9 p.m. sit, I would look up beyond the dorsal tilt of the Dharma hall's rooflines, beyond the hillside and the tapestry of leaves, trees and emptiness to stars that bare me up. Like flowering branch spays of exploding densities, they appeared so entirely vivid that I felt I could touch the sky. From there, suspended inside time, I felt humble, serene, and in harmony with all of Nature.

            Selfless service, I learned, is an essential part of the Path of Dharma, an important step in the direction of liberation. My journey on the Path of liberation is only beginning, but it is enough to bring me a deep sense of gratitude for having been given the wonderful teaching of Dharma. With these feelings of love and compassion, the wish to help others out of misery arises within me. May all beings find true happiness, true peace.

Tags: Dharma service, nature, meditation, Vipassana, serving others, compassion,