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It was a bit after 5:30 a.m., a chilly dawn in June, and I used to be sitting on a meditation cushion in an enormous red barn within the Hudson Valley. A dozen other people sat with me in deep silence. A whole lot of birds began to sing within the meadows and trees. In the gap, we could hear livestock and machinery, the sounds of a working farm waking up.
I had not checked out an email, chat, headline, news alert or tweet for several days. What a wierd situation for an editor who leads a breaking news team at The Latest York Times.
I had dabbled in meditation on and off for a few years, but my practice deepened in 2015 after I became editor of the Express team, now a gaggle of 23 journalists all over the world who cover breaking news in any respect hours. That was also the 12 months I started frequently attending retreats organized by a small Zen meditation center in Manhattan.
The news cycle is relentless and taxing, often involving stories of profound human suffering. The week before this retreat was busy enough: An Iowa constructing collapse left people dead and missing. Rosalynn Carter received a diagnosis of dementia. The Pentagon banned drag events at military bases. The season’s first tropical storm formed within the Atlantic. And, in a lighter moment, the Scripps National Spelling Bee crowned a recent champion.
I’m rarely removed from a screen or free from the pings of devices. Working with other news desks, the Express team tracks competitors’ articles, social media posts, alerts from police and emergency agencies, and other sources of stories. Unplugging from all of that’s each thrilling and scary, like stepping off a 100-foot pole into the unknown, to borrow a Zen metaphor.
I actually have learned to trust that the news will get reported, nevertheless it was not all the time easy being off the grid. Right after my first weeklong retreat in 2015, I saw a front-page headline concerning the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, S.C. It was horrific, and I felt that peculiar journalist’s pang of not being there for a vital story. Since then, we’ve covered more mass shootings than I ever imagined possible.
During this retreat, smoke from wildfires in Canada turned the sky orange over Latest York City, and former President Donald J. Trump was indicted. I could smell the smoke. I learned concerning the indictment later.
For seven days, from sunrise to sunset, I used to be amongst serious meditators sitting still for 25-minute periods, punctuated by 10 minutes of walking meditation on a rustic lane. We took breaks for meals, exercise and, gloriously, day by day naps. We were expected to refrain from speaking, passing written notes only when it was unavoidable. For my work task, I made the salads for meals, chopping vegetables in silence with the remainder of the kitchen crew. For a part of the week, I used to be also the timekeeper, ringing a bell to begin and end meditation periods.
Unchained from the web, I wandered the grounds and woods and stared up from a hammock at treetops more vividly green than I had ever noticed. I used to be often fast asleep shortly after 9 p.m.
Co-workers and friends who don’t meditate imagine a serene experience. “Have a good time!” they are saying, with a touch of envy. But meditation is tough work. There’s the physical discomfort of remaining as still as possible, despite itches and aches. After which there’s the mental effort of focusing awareness on the breath while the mind serves up plans, memories and emotions, not all of them nice.
And just as you finally loosen up, a fly lands in your hand.
Slowly, with enough practice, you learn skills that allow for greater focus. “Leave your front door and your back door open,” the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki used to say. “Let thoughts come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”
Meditation also helped me through the Covid-19 pandemic, although the retreats were over Zoom. (Chances are you’ll be amused to know that even Buddhists forget to mute.) Back within the newsroom as of late, I’m more capable of take a beat amid the stress of breaking news. (But I actually have not attained perfect equanimity, as people I work with on deadline will agree.)
After the primary day on the retreat in June, thoughts of labor slipped out the back door. One exception: In a chat, a teacher quoted with approval from a recent Science Times column by Dennis Overbye, who reflected on predictions that in 100 billion years the universe and all sentient beings shall be no more. Some physicists, he wrote, consider this grim fact of universal impermanence should free us to “consider the magic of the moment.” I used to be doing my part.
On the bus ride home, I felt calm, yet energized. I didn’t worry about my full calendar, the lots of of emails waiting in my inbox or the top of the universe. The week ahead would bring fresh headlines, lots of misery — more wildfire smoke, contaminated strawberries and deadly tornadoes within the South.
But for the moment, all the things was OK.
