I read a lot more than I expected to, while on retreat. Eight books total, a mix of dharma, fiction and non-fiction. There are three libraries at Gampo Abbey, not to mention the book shop. Combine with no television, super limited Internet access (once a week on Open Days, only in the library, no streaming allowed) and one can’t really help but pick up a book or two, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But what drew me was surprising.
I found myself reading a book about Anne Frank or, more specifically, about the permutations of Anne Frank’s diary over time, from her own revisions to the stage and screen adaptations. I hadn’t realised that she had absolutely intended for the diary to be published, nor did I know about the many controversies that followed it through the years. I imagine it’s just one of those things that happens with time and distance from the original historical context. Of course, upon it’s first publication in Germany, it would have had a very mixed reception. But the way I learned it, as a child, in grade three, age eight or nine, it was not at all controversial.
It was my first introduction to the Holocaust, and my memory of learning of this particular human atrocity was the terror it brought up. We watched the film and when I learned how Anne Frank met her end, it was like a horror movie reveal. For months, I would get a spark of fear every time I looked at the oven in our kitchen. I remember thinking of people being shoved inside, the door sealed, and them being left to be burned to a crisp—lacking the comprehension of an ‘oven’ big enough to hold hundreds at a time, my childhood brain imagined the Nazi’s operated much like a wicked witch in the woods. I also recall wondering about shower heads, and if water would come out, or gas, and how a person could trust that it would be the former and not the latter.
So this book I read on retreat, called ‘Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife’, shook up a lot of what I thought I knew about this skilled and talented young woman who, like me, longed to be a writer, to share her words with the world. I'd not previously thought of her so much as a human being, than as a symbol of what we lose through genocide. Realising just how little I really understood about the diary and the human being who wrote it, I decided it would be fruitful for me to read the diary once more. Or perhaps for the first time.
Memory is deceptive. We definitely watched the film in school, but I believe the diary was optional reading. I recall some of my classmates reading it, one of them with tears in her eyes, and feeling a deep fear at the very idea of reading it myself. So perhaps I did, but perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps I have always remembered just the film.
Regardless, I found a copy of the diary in the annex library of Gampo Abbey, and proceeded to step into a different annex, in a very different time and place. This was in the second half of the Yarne retreat, five weeks into extremely full days with hours of meditation topped and tailed with service periods and meals. It is little wonder then that I related her experience to that of a retreatant.
Retreat is a very confined experience. There are boundaries and a set group of characters, other humans, bumping up against one another. Of course, Anne's confinement was out of necessity, rather than choice, and thus the restriction of her movements even tighter than any of ours, but, like us, she could choose to work with her mind, or not. She could choose to be aware of her humanity, and the humanity of those around her, or she could shut down. She could be open to a practice of noticing, of awareness, and cultivating kindness, or she could cultivate fear, hatred and animosity.
With any piece of art, there are as many ways of interpreting and experiencing it as there are audience members. There is no question that the diary is a significant historical document, and also a well considered piece of creative non-fiction. It is the story of human suffering due to oppression and can be read from a specifically Jewish lens as easily as it can be read from the lens of any oppressed identity or embodiment. But it is also a reflection of the noble practice of waking up.
Anne Frank was a great practitioner and her diary is testimony and documentation of this. She notices the ways she suffers and the role her perception and habits play in this. She sees her shared humanity with the people around her, and uses this as a point of reflection, contemplation and compassion. Again and again, she sets the intention to be kinder, more loving and open to those around her, and herself, as she sees how any other approach results in further suffering.
My heart grew incredibly tender, as I finished this book in the last week of my time at the Abbey. I thought of the woman she never got to be, but rejoiced that the young woman she was had gained such rich, deep insights at such a young age. I cried to think of what other grand contributions she might have made to the waking of humanity, while also feeling immensely grateful that this precious contribution survived against so many odds. I also felt my commitment to practice increase, as she acted as a model for me. I did not, in those last days, want to look ahead too much to my return to an uncloistered life. I wanted to keep being present, for her, as a gift to her, and for the sake of all beings.