A lost dog leads to insights about karma and kindness..
I’d never heard of Neubergthal before it popped up on Air BnB as I was searching for a quiet place to participate in a ten-day online meditation retreat.
Herdsman House in Neubergthal, a historic Mennonite street village an hour and half drive south of Winnipeg, is an unusual setting for a Buddhist meditation retreat but it was one of the few places available that would welcome Tashi, my geriatric dog, as well as give me some privacy.
The simple single-storey dwelling was restored to much the way it may have been when the village herdsman lived there more than a century ago. Set amongst towering cottonwood trees, lush pastures, grain fields in harvest, and a peaceful street lined with historic house barns on spacious properties, it took me back to my rural roots in southern Ontario. Roosters crowed me awake in the mornings and a chorus of crickets lulled me to sleep.
Tashi and I settled into a comfortable routine. Upon rising at 6:30 am I would let Tashi out to relieve herself while I made breakfast for us both. I didn’t worry about her wandering far given her age (about 90 in human years) and the severity of the arthritis in her back legs.
So on the morning of day seven, I let her out as usual.
But unlike all the other mornings, she doesn’t return.
With growing alarm, I search the property, following a path around the pasture where the horse and donkey graze, crossing the street to investigate a tangle of trees and bushes, poking around the rows of raspberry bushes in the garden, peering into culverts, circling the chicken coop. No sign of my sweet little border collie.
My mind falls into catastrophic thinking. She’s fallen and can’t get up. She’s been hit by a car. Someone’s taken her. She’s gone somewhere to die. There is no use calling her name; she’s stone deaf, half-blind, and cognitively challenged with doggie dementia. She’s a borderline collie.
I alert the neighbours. They are sympathetic, reassuring, kind, and they promise to look out for her. “She’ll turn up soon,” one woman says with confidence as she cradles her little “Covid” dog, a shih tzu.
Margruite Krahn, my host, joins in the search for a while but has somewhere she has to be. Besides running a BnB, she’s an artist who plays a huge role in restoring Neubergthal’s heritage. Moreover, she has a kind of spiritual aura that I am instantly drawn to. Seeing my stricken face, she says with concern: “You are not alright.”
Indeed, I am not alright.
Each day on retreat I have spent time reflecting on the Five Daily Recollections of aging, illness, death, loss, and karma. Number four — “All that is mine, dear, and delightful will change and vanish” — is a challenging reflection at the best of times. Now it’s in my face.
The other reflections also apply, especially the fifth: “I am the owner of my karma (actions); I am born of my karma; I am supported by my karma. Whatever I do, good or evil, that I will inherit; my karma is my only inheritance.”
Tashi is wandering around, lost and confused, without collar or ID tag. This is my doing. Amidst the flurry of packing for the retreat (Food bowls? Check. Medication? Check. Brush? Check.) I inadvertently left her collar and leash behind. I didn’t keep an eye on her when I let her out this morning. My karma, my actions, my bad, led to her disappearance. I feel the burning pain of remorse.
After four hours, Tashi still has not turned up. The online Zoom session with teacher Leigh Brasington is about to start. What to do? She could be anywhere. There is nothing left to do but wait and trust that she’ll turn up, like the woman with the Covid dog said.
Thinking it best to give my mind a rest from useless worry, I enter the gazebo and fire up my laptop. Leigh appears on the screen, along with seventeen other retreat participants from across the U.S., Canada, and the UK.
The topic is the third foundation of mindfulness — mindfulness of mind. (Fun fact: In Buddha’s time, the mind was thought to be located in the heart. Brain was not known as an organ. The stuff between the ears was believed to be skull marrow.)
About a half hour into the session, Margruite approaches the gazebo with the look of a person who has news. Sure enough, Tashi has been found. Safe.
I rise quickly, my chair toppling behind me. “Where?” I ask. I’m astonished to learn that it’s far enough that we have to drive there.
We hop into Margruite’s car and motor down the street and across the highway to the north end of the village. We pull into the driveway of a house where a woman and a dog — my dog — are waiting on the front porch. Tashi contentedly drinks from a pail of water, seemingly equanimous in the aftermath of her “incredible journey.” My worst fears evaporate as quickly as they have formed. Another demonstration of anicca (impermanence).
Darlene, who is Margruite’s friend, explains how she initially spotted this strange dog with wobbly legs — Tashi walks like she’s drunk — sniffing around a property across the street. A little while later the mystery dog appeared in the garden where Darlene was at work. When Darlene returned to the house, Tashi attempted to follow her new best friend indoors.
After a few well-placed phone calls, the lost dog is reunited with its owner.
I am awash in relief and gratitude as I happily scoop Tashi into my arms and we drive home to Herdsman House with my “little bear” in my lap.
After settling Tashi into her bed, I get back into the rhythm of the meditation retreat. Where were we again? Oh yes, mindfulness of mind. Skull marrow. But actually, the overarching theme of the retreat is the state of absorption known as jhana. It starts with piti — a physical experience of rapture or glee — and sukkha, mental happiness. I certainly feel a sense of relief. Perhaps I’m halfway there.
The Zoom session over, I ponder where to meditate. Indoors or outdoors? The Buddha said that to practice jhana, go to a forest, the root of a tree, or to an empty dwelling.
It’s a nice day, so I go the “root of a tree” route, settling myself onto a bench under an old Russian cottonwood.
Above me is a canopy of branches and a wide open sky. Before me is the stubble of a recently harvested grain field. Behind me are bushes, trees, milkweed, and the flutter of the occasional monarch butterfly. Below me is mother earth. And within me is an open heart.
I give thanks for Tashi’s safe return and for the people who helped find her. I reflect on the sense of safety and ease that I feel in the village. And then I feel it. Waves of warm feeling ripple through my body, tears of happiness run down my cheeks. The experience lasts just a little while and then settles into a sense of profound ease. Was that jhana? I don’t know. But I think it was in the neighbourhood.
This place is indeed suitable for dharma practice. The people living here now and in the past made it so. The village and the property I am staying on is the result of good karma — the good actions of people.
Neubergthal’s earliest settlers were Mennonites with a long history of persecution for their pacifism and other beliefs. Uprooted from the steppes of Tsarist Russia in the 1870s, they brought seeds from their homeland and planted them here, turning this patch of flat treeless prairie into a lush cottonwood forest. A sacred grove. A shelter from the storms of the world.
Yes, a historic Mennonite village is an unusual place for a Buddhist meditation retreat. Yet it turned out to be a perfect refuge.
—Nelle Oosterom
