A Visit with Ruth Denison

Ruth Denison, 88,  in 2010

 Ruth Denison is one of the pioneers of Vipassana meditation in the West. She was authorized to teach back in the 70's by the Burmese Theravada master, U Ba Khin, who chose her as one of only four Western Dharma-heirs (and the only woman). Another was Mr. Goenka, of the ten-day silent meditation retreat fame. Still going strong at age 90, she is coming to speak this Sunday at Long Beach Meditation. She was actually invited two years ago, when Victor was on retreat in Lumbini. I volunteered to drive to her retreat center in the desert and pick her up and keep her overnight, but the visit was cancelled due to her having broken her shoulder. In April 2010, my husband and I were visiting friends in Palm Desert and I got the bright idea to drop in. This is the record of that little field trip from 7th April, 2010:

                                                    *************************

I visited Ruth Denison yesterday! I thought it a shame to be so close and not pay my respects, especially since we had that slender connection of would-be driver and host had she come in March as planned, to speak to LBM. I phoned Tuesday and asked if it would be possible to come say hello since I was in the area, and whoever I spoke with passed on the word and called back a few hours later and said yes, come tomorrow; Ruth has visitors all day today, but they should be leaving tomorrow and she's always up for meeting new people. We arranged I would come between two and three Wednesday afternoon.

Before we left, I checked her website and found a list of things you could bring as a visitor - I wrote them down carefully and promptly forgot the list so had to rely on memory and ended up with bizarre offerings: biodegradable washing powder, Throat Coat tea bags, white vinegar, plus four pounds of strawberries, a KitKat bar and a hunk of smoked cheese for treats. Husband John and dog Snuffy came with me, which was just as well, because above Joshua Tree, you turn off onto rutted dirt roads and I needed a navigator. For all that, it was easy to find, if jarring to drive. Signs began to appear to 'Vipassana' which led us to an outcropping of little houses and huts and odd structures for dogs, stony stupas and Buddhas dotted among the scrawny shrubs and cacti. The place had that deserted air of nobody home - and sure enough there was a note on the door: 'Alison! Ruth and friends have gone out. Make yourself at home. They'll be back shortly.' So we found the outhouses (yay!) and a couple of chairs in the sun and settled in for a wait. It was very windy, and it was hard to tell what was wind, what was airplane or car. Not that there were many planes or cars going by - we were in the back of beyond. Nothing to do but wait. Very peaceful.

We arrived at two. Exactly at three, a big old station wagon pulled up: Ruth and friends. The car seemed stuffed with people: two young Asian girls, a German woman who spoke not a word of English, a Frenchwoman called Katerina and Ruth, who was fast asleep in the back, leaning against the window. I gently opened the door and she woke up instantly, instantly alert too, which was impressive. She bounded out of the car, wearing black stretch pants, a red woolly jacket, colorful sneakers and a beige woolly hat with a huge spider pin on it. You would never guess she is 87 or had ever broken a bone. She looked at me and said, "I am very tired, maybe this was not a good time." I said, "Would you like us to go?" She said, "Give me a few minutes, talk to Katerina..." 

She disappeared into her little hut with the KitKat in her pocket - the other supplies followed the German lady into the kitchen. John took himself around the corner with his book, Snuffy went back in the car and Katerina and I sat in the sun. She was fascinating, this Frenchwoman, slim, elegant, long white hair in a pony tail, one of Goenka's first 15 students back in India in the 70's. Shortly after India, she heard of Ruth and invited her to her house in France to lead a retreat, one of the first Ruth ever led; it sounded like a crazy wonderful time, people sleeping on the floor in this rustic farmhouse in the Pyrenees, come for the teachings of this extraordinary woman... Katerina lost touch with Ruth for some 20 odd years, until five years ago, she was speaking with a Buddhist nun in London and mentioned Ruth's name, who said, "Yes, I know Ruth, I've just come back from a retreat she gave five days ago in the Californian desert!" And Katerina has been coming every April since for the last four years.

At this point Ruth appeared like a tiny little sprite, quick and efficient, and ushered Katerina and me into her little house. We went through her study and her bedroom to a covered porch in the back. She told us to wait, we would see something we had never seen before in our lives. She was right too! A roadrunner came right to the door of her room, demanding food. She gave it a ball of ground beef and it raced away, just like the cartoon. She feeds it a pound of ground beef a week. 

Then we went out on the porch and Ruth fussed over the seating arrangements - we had to be just so, me in a plastic garden chair, Katerina on a cushion on the floor - while Ruth darted about feeding the animals. This porch overlooked a garden fenced in with a low wire fence. Beyond it were more of the scrubby little bushes, more little rock piles and bowls artfully strewn about. Ruth threw birdseed everywhere, and filled an old saucepan with cooked rice then sat in her seat to my left and told us to be still and be quiet and wait and watch. And the animals came! It was 4 o'clock and that's their feeding time. First the little birds, then the bigger ones - quails with their funny little topknots; a rabbit with translucent ears and masses of cute little mice-y things - they were the size of mice but had much prettier tails, more like chipmunks. One of them dived into that bowl of rice and took out a lump bigger than its own head and tottered away with it.  She said, "Why would I want a television when I have this to watch?" I nodded agreeably, to which she said a little sternly, "There is nothing bad about television. There is nothing BAD about anything, as long as you are aware of what you are doing."

Time passed in this way - time being a very loose concept in Ruth's world: she had no clue about date or day although she did know that it was time to feed the animals. She expressed fatigue again, and talked about these annoying people who came back to her three times with questions after she had dismissed them. I told her that when she had had enough of me, she would have to tell me directly to leave, because I was very bad at picking up subtle clues. 

She said, "Well, we eat at five. You and your husband will eat with us and then you will leave." 

I thanked her for the invitation, but said our friends in Palm Springs were expecting us for supper, so we would leave at five. 

"That makes our life easier!" she said. She sent Katerina to the kitchen to tell these plans to the cook, and announced she would show me around. 

First though, she apologized for not coming to talk to us at LBM. It wasn't that she broke her shoulder - it was that she had scheduled a retreat in March that she had completely forgotten about. Her arm is much better now, although she has some arthritis in the shoulder. She said she would like to come sometime to 'redeem' herself. I said that wasn't necessary, although we would love to have her and she just had to say the word and I'd come get her.  She wanted to know what we were doing in Long Beach, was Victor back? She said he had amazing rhythm, he could make music out of anything: "give him two rocks and he could create a tango!"  I said our sangha meets every Sunday, and on Wednesdays too, to study. I told her we'd read the Satipatthana - "a good place to start"; and that we were just finishing up Victor's book. She looked puzzled - Victor's book? I said it was online, and it covered the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold path - thank god we memorized it, because later she took me to see the Eightfold path painted symbolically on a wall and I had to tell her what each picture stood for. Sitting still on her porch, she spoke eloquently and off the cuff about Right Thought versus Right Intention. I had my notebook and couldn't stand not writing it down. I asked if she could repeat what she had just said; Katerina shook her head at me: "She never says it again," she whispered. But she did, and in even more detail. Here is what she said:

"Some people call Right Thought, Right Intention. What is the real interpretation of Right Thought? Right Intention has to have Right Thought before. When you say you want to do something, how can you know it's right? Know your thought - am I angry, do I think I am right, am I being self-righteous - all these are not Right Thought. How do you factor in Right Intention? I try, I investigate my thought, but it has to be more investigated. The Second Factor of Enlightenment is Right Investigation. If you have good intention, you must investigate it. The thought I have will lead me to more anger, more opinion, and then I am stuck. If we use BOTH terms, Right Intention and Right Thought, we can ask ourselves, where is this leading to, this action, where do you intend it to go? It is an issue to investigate - then you get to Right Thought more safely. You cannot justify much when you see have Right Intention but did not have enough contemplation. For example, you have a friend who invites you to go to the bar with him. You say, why not, it will be fun, we'll live it up. Only your friend drinks too much, he comes home and picks a fight and it ends badly - just as it always does when you go out with this friend because he always drinks too much and it always ends badly. You did not fully investigate the effect of karmic reaction: 'when I go with my friend whom I like, I am easily enthusiastic, and I don't give much thought to where this is leading.' So intention is good, but it needs investigating." (Katerina threw in the proverb, 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' which is the same in French and which Ruth liked a lot: it illustrated this point very nicely).

Then Katerina went off on her errand to the cook and Ruth like a child showed me her place. "Here is where the dog sleeps, here is where I sleep, here is my closet, here are my clothes, here is my bathroom, these are my drawers, my things..." I was very moved by this tour. She was so open and guileless. "Look at what I have." She found an unopened package by her desk; she looked at the return address and shrugged, not recognizing the name. Then she shook the box and said quietly, "Sometimes they send me cookies." We walked all around outside, I soon learned I had to be on my toes: when we passed more of the little stone stupas and she said "Isn't it nice?" and I agreed, yes it was nice, sharply she said, "Did you see the Buddha?" Crap! Where was the Buddha?!! I spotted him, but several beats too late and got a slap on the wrist for it: "We say too quickly, "oh! this is nice!" and we haven't looked properly, we don't see anything, we miss everything! Look again!" After that I didn't say a word, and looked around like mad, trying to notice everything. I felt like I could be quizzed on any old random thing. Bit nerve-wracking! Do you know, sometimes she is up there completely alone? I thought there was always someone there, but that's not the case. And it's a big property. And miles from anywhere. And in need of a handy man!!

She has a funny little dog called Bingo, a Boston terrier with one blue and one brown eye. He belonged to a woman Ruth sat with when she died. He was badly treated and misbehaved. But after his owner died, he crept out from under the bed and fixed Ruth with his strange little eyes as if to say, 'What will become of me?' So, as she told me, what choice did she have but to take him? 

Katerina came out to find us, it being well past five o'clock by now, the Asian girls loitering hungrily around their quarters wondering where was dinner? Ruth was unaware of any of it, came to our car and peered in at Snuffy, wanting to know what was wrong with him and saying he's on his way out but liking the way I was treating (read 'spoiling') him. She said, "If you are interested in the teachings, if you are serious about your practice, come to my retreat on the 23rd - it goes on for 10 days? Two weeks?" Everyone was hazy on the details, price, dates, etc. Ruth said, "Come for one day, a weekend, the whole thing, whatever you can manage, it is my hobby and I call it Retreat for Real Life, you come when you can." I asked if it was silent - she said darkly, it was supposed to be, but you couldn't keep a group of women silent, though they were when she told them to be.  She said a bit testily, "I don't know how my retreats here came to be just for women. Anywhere else in the world, they're for men too." She said I could bring Snuffy if I was worried about him - one man came one time with his two cats (!). She said Snuffy was not a problem. 

She offers four retreats a year. Katerina says she is afraid every year it will be the last one, since Ruth has fallen down and broken something every year, for the last few years.  (Ruth had this to say about pain: "Bless your pain. Embrace your pain.") Katerina gave me her address - if ever you're in the South of France and want to meditate -! Hugs all around and we were off, and promptly got lost on those wretched dirt roads. But all was (eventually) well, when we finally found something we recognized as a landmark and we made it back to our friends in Palm Springs just as the oven timer dinged that our supper was ready. 

                                                     ********************************

Aferword: I never did go on a retreat with Ruth. She was right about Snuffy being on his way out - he died in July 2010. I do know I am lucky to have met her, and feel honored that she spent so much time with me. I'm looking forward to her visit this Sunday (2/26/2012) at Long Beach Meditation. It is anybody's guess what she will do with the two hours at her disposal!