Reflections from Lake Three: Noise Meditation

Even at places like Lake Three there are plenty of opportunities to practice non-resistance. Take noise for instance. I love few things more than to listen to the sounds of an undisturbed forest, the wind through the trees, the buzzing of insects, the birds chirping, a squirrel chirring. Even so, last weekend I was irritated I’d forgotten my noise-cancelling headphones in case I wanted to listen to a little music. I got over it, because I can never listen to manmade music long there while nature’s symphony is playing.

At the next camp site a radio was playing…not loudly, I admit. If you’re going to listen to a radio in a place like Lake Three, you can’t play it softly enough for anyone else not to hear. I not only didn’t want to hear it, I simply could not understand why people could turn on their radios at a place like that for hours on end. Were they completely deaf to nature’s music? Why did they even bother to come?

Not everyone sees life the same way we do, nor hears it in the same way apparently. It wasn’t so much the actual noise as the difference in our outlooks that played most loudly through my mind. If I couldn’t accept people with radios, then why had I come to Lake Three?

The next morning a couple backed a trailer into a site just up the road. A short time later the shriek of a chainsaw exploded through the trees. I gritted my teeth. The idiot! Could these people not appreciate the quiet, the solitude, the churchliness of this place? This chainsaw was working an absolute desecration. Why couldn’t they bring their own firewood? This was a new challenge. Every time I seem to have taken a step, I find another, higher one.

A short time later my wife and I went for a walk into the deep woods a good mile and a half down The North Country Trail. On the way back, we heard the chainsaw again. “I sure hope he knocks that off,” my wife said.

“I’m practicing non-resistance,” I said. “I’m not going to let it bother me.” Then I added, “at least until this afternoon.”

Was I really accepting the noise? No, simply because I was not willing to accept it unconditionally. Whatever comes. Let it be. But at least I was making some progress. For the moment, at least, I was dealing with it. It wasn’t as if a chainsaw was unheard of in the forest. Fires burned constantly, and this man was not the first man to bring a chainsaw.

By the time we got back to Lake Three, all was quiet and peaceful again. No radios, no chainsaw. Just the birds and the breeze. His sawing was done. I later met this man, who turned out to be someone I liked very much. He was 73 and retired but in very good shape for his age. A first responder. He and his wife were leaving the day after we were, because Wednesday nights he was helping to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. To him, the sound of a saw probably carried a melody all its own. I’m sure he had no idea the same sound had seemed a desecration to me. It still rang in my ears but by then I was coming to terms with it.

Talking to him was part of my meditation on acceptance. I had judged him by it. This man and his saw had not bothered me so much as I had allowed the noise to intrude upon my interior silence. I had let my mind run with it. No matter what goes on around us, we can cultivate interior silence. I know this. I’ve known this for years, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. The next time a chainsaw erupts at Lake Three, I might not like it, but I will find it easier to lower the barriers of resistance. Certainly, I will hesitate to judge the person on the basis of noise he makes or on the basis of any other single action.

Today I’m off again to Lake Three with my son. There will be noise. We’re taking the boat to do more fishing. When I fish, Murphy’s Law reigns. If anything creates more resistance within me than noise, it is fishing. I’m sure this weekend will bring challenges of its own.