Danyo's Bowls

There was a silent meditation retreat during my last days at Indralaya. About 15 people partook, and it was perfect to end my time on the island in an atmosphere of deliberate silence. 

The meditator who I will remember most from the retreat was a Somalian man named Danyo. His complexion was so dark that it was almost purple, and he wore loose white robes. He walked slowly, with a sort of hulking grace. Before the vow of silence was taken, Danyo told a story about how he sustained a compound fracture in his upper arm running from a hippopotamus in the swamps of Somalia. 

The first evening of the retreat we all gathered in the library to enter into silence together, and Danyo unveiled his bowls. He had seven bronze bowls of various shapes and sizes. Wrapped lovingly in burlap, they were nested inside of one another like Russian dolls. He took them out one by one with an astonishing gentleness, and arranged them around his folded knees. And then he told us the story of his bowls.

Danyo told us how he moved from Somalia to Manhattan, and then got a job as a taxi driver. One day, when he was driving around the city, he passed a shop that was owned by a Tibetan couple--it sold traditional Tibetan items like thangka paintings and incense, and Danyo was immediately attracted to the place. That very day he parked his cab and walked inside. "It was like I was going home. I loved the bowls as soon as I saw them," he told us. His accented voice was rich and sweet like honey. 

Over time Danyo saved enough money to buy his bowls. Now he knows each of their voices like they are his brothers. He calls himself the steward of the bowls, and he lives only to let their singing lead people toward truth. To begin our silence, he rang the largest of the bowls. He struck the thick brass with a wooden mallet again and again, and I could feel the deep ringing in my chest. This was a sound that a whale would understand; a sound that a mountain might utter over the course of eons. And then everything was quiet. 

Now I'm not exactly sure about my status on reincarnation... I tend to believe very little, but lately I've been trying to remind myself that believing nothing gives me the space to accept everything. Why shouldn't Danyo be a reincarnation of a Tibetan lama? It really would make perfect sense. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a Romanian Religious Studies professor that I met on the train in Tibet, when I was leaving Lhasa. After briefly discussing the clouds and their meaning, this middle-aged Romanian woman relayed to me her experience in a Tibetan monastery. She told me how, upon entering the walls of the monastery, she immediately fell to her knees and dissolved into tears of joy. She told me that, before that moment, she had never felt like she belonged anywhere.

Why not?

I left Indralaya at dawn, before the silence was broken. The sun rose as the ferry bore me across the sea to the mainland. It's sort of a scary thing, "the mainland." It's a land of job markets and graduate school applications; a land where I could see the Bellingham oil refinery belching out plumes of dirty smoke over the Pacific. But we all have to return to the mainland, I guess. We have to take the peace and light that we gather on our respective islands and bring it home with us, bottled up somewhere inside of us. We have to share it to the best of our ability, cuz it's far too easy to get lost in the fog. At least that's what I'm trying to do. 

When I focus I can still let myself hear Danyo's largest bowl resonate. Or at least I can still imagine the vibration, somewhere near the pit of my stomach.

 

Written for an Indralaya Publication:

I grew up coming to family camp at Indralaya with my mother and brother. I vividly remember the sense of magic that permeated my experience of this place: we would always stay in Apple Cabin, and the carpets of my secret workshop that I built during guided meditations were deep purple. All year long I would look forward to painting my nails for the Sock Hop, or watching my intricate beach mandala vanish in the tide. That was back when I thought that “ferry” and “fairy” were the same word. It was easy for me to see the halos around trees.

A decade has intervened since my last visit to Indralaya. I started High School and then I graduated; I enrolled in college and emerged with a degree in Religious Studies and Neuroscience. I’ve studied in Egypt and Turkey, taught English in Tibet, practiced Buddhist meditation in India, and hitchhiked across South America. I’ve engaged critically with the questions that I find beautiful, been lost and confused, and grappled with the implications of my own freedom. I don’t know about “growing up” but I’m twenty-three now. I’m striving to carve out a place for myself in a chaotic world.

And now, ten years later, I have returned to Orcas Island to spend six weeks at Indralaya as an intern. And it’s beautiful. Again. I meditate in the morning, comparing bells with gulls and remembering the limitations of my analytical mind. I’ve laughed in the basil patch, made gallons of pesto, and stuck my face into plum trees in search of their perfect purple fruits. There have been moments where time collapses, and where I sense the presence my childhood self—the girl who believed that anything is possible. After being swept away in a whirlwind of continents, résumés, and unanswerable questions, it is so relieving to plunge my hands into freshly turned earth and breathe.

Of course my path is still loosely defined, and my thoughts still get the better of me. But my hands are stained with beet juice, and the other day I watched bioluminescent lights kiss and spin in the nighttime ocean. I’m remembering exactly how deep a moment goes. Although many years separate me from wide-eyed childhood wonder, Indralaya continues to be a beautiful place for me to plant my feet and remember my spirit.