What to Pack for the Inner Journey
I’ve posted earlier about my upcoming trip to Burma in January. But before that, I’ll be embarking on what could turn out to be an even more ambitious adventure….a 6-week retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society) in Barre, Massachusetts, beginning September 10. The longest retreat I’ve been on so far is 10 days. This one will be 43!
This is actually just the first half of the annual 3-month retreat at IMS. (Who knows, maybe next year I’ll sit the full 3 months!) The teachers this year will be Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson, Guy Armstrong, Winnie Nazarko, Andrea Fella and Bhante Buddharakkhita.
Here’s an excerpt from the teacher’s letter:
“Based on the meditation instructions of Mahasi Sayadaw and supplemented by a range of skillful means, the course will encourage a balanced attitude of relaxation and alertness, and the continuity of practice based on the Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness. In addition, the meditations on the four Brahma Viharas (lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity) will be offered throughout the retreat.
“Ongoing guidance for all participants will include evening discourse five nights each week, guided meditations weekly and daily opportunities for questions about practice. In addition, every meditator will be assigned to a pair of teachers; you will meet individually with one of these teachers every two or three days.”
I’ve been going on retreats for many years now, so this is all fairly standard. Except for this little item, which appears on the accompanying sheet marked Essential Information:
“Laundry is done every two weeks, with the exception of underwear, which is done weekly. Since your laundry will be washed together with that of other yogis, please label all your clothing with a waterproof marker.”
Hmmm. I pretty much always wear black yoga pants when I go on retreat….as does almost everyone else. So I’m wondering: what kind of “waterproof marker” is going to show up on black yoga pants? And how am I going to be able to tell my black yoga pants from the hundred or so other black yoga pants?!
Maybe I Overdid It
Last night the Dharma Seed KM group listened to a great talk by Phillip Moffitt called The Metta of Awareness and the Awareness of Metta. It was the final talk given at the Nature of Awareness retreat at IMS earlier this year. This is the second time I’ve listened to this talk and, well, let’s just say I’m pretty sure I’ll be listening to it again and again.
Phillip uses poetry quite a lot in this talk, especially selections from the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. But he also uses more “conversational” poems, including this one, which I offer as an incentive to click here and listen to Phillip’s talk!
Phone Call by Tony Hoagland
Maybe I overdid it
when I called my father
an enemy of humanity.
That might have been a little strongly put,
a slight over exaggeration,
an immoderate description
of the person who at that moment,
two thousand miles away,
holding the telephone receiver six inches from his ear,
must have regretted paying for my therapy.
What I meant was
that my father was an enemy of my humanity.
And what I meant behind that was that
my father was split into two people.
One of them, living deep inside of me,
like a bad king, or an incurable disease,
blighting my crops, striking down my herds, poisoning my wells.
The other, standing in another time zone,
in a kitchen in Wyoming,
with bad knees
and white hairs sprouting from his ears.
I don’t want to scream forever.
I don’t want to live without proportion,
like some kind of infection from the past.
So I have to remember the second father,
the one whose TV dinner is getting cold
while he holds the phone in his left hand
and stares blankly out the window
where just now,
the sun is going down
and the last fingertips of sunlight
are withdrawing from the hills
they once touched like a child.
Well, Then What?
In an interview with Ajahn Sucitto (available here), Sally and Guy Armstrong ask: “We’ve heard rumors that you’re retiring. Any truth to that?” This question was of particular interest to me because as of today, it’s official: I will retire at the end of this month (from my “day job,” not from the DharmaTown Times!).
Then they asked this follow-up question, which seems even more pertinent: “Where do you think you might go? Will you go somewhere, or land anywhere?”
Sucitto replies:
We’ll see what causes and conditions come together. I don’t feel I want to be zooming around every which way. These are new topics, new areas for us, whether to stay in the monastery or leave for a few years and just come back and be somewhere in the background. I don’t know.
And as a practice, it’s good not to know. I mean, because you spend so much of your time just popping the soap bubbles of fantasy, that after a while you can’t really blow ’em that hard, thinking: “Oh, I want to be in the idyllic…” You know, we’ve been there. Pop. “This is going to be the answer to my life….” Pop.
So I don’t feel like blowing any soap bubbles of fantasies. And then I go to that place of, well, then what? And then I go, well….
Stop.
Let it be open.
“What’ll I do then?”
Stop.
Let it be open.
Because then it really is a change of gear. It’s not just another strategy. It’s just know that life will take care of you — and wing it. Life will take care of you. And then see… just see what seems to be the most beckoning causes and conditions that seem to lead onward.
**
Which is kind of what I have in mind. My last day of work will be August 30. On September 9, I leave for a 6-week retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society). Then in January, I go to Burma for a month.
And then what?
Let it be open.
You’re Here, You’re OK
The latest issue of the Spirit Rock News just came out and it’s got a great interview with Ajahn Sucitto. You can read it on-line by clicking here. In the mean time, here’s a peek:
“It’s pretty obvious in our normal experience that when we experience a strong passion, there’s a bodily sense as well as a heart-sense with that….As you begin to sensitize, you realize that the basic colorations of the heart have bodily references to them….
“In the suttas it says if your body’s relaxed and comfortable you don’t need to make any particular push [to focus the mind in meditation]. The heart will be happy. And when the heart is happy, it will be concentrated. So body, heart, concentration…yeah…and happiness.
“So the connection there that the Buddha’s making is the body needs to be relaxed — open body — and the heart, the mind, needs somewhere to sit. Otherwise it’s going to have to keep jumping from this to that to find a basis. Now, because the heart’s affected profoundly by feeling and the body’s affected by feeling, they can meet at the feeling place. And if the body feels steady and comfortable, the heart will feel steady and comfortable.
“It’s not the case that by an act of will I can make my heart/mind steady and comfortable. I can’t say: ‘be quiet, be happy,’ but I can get my body to relax and steady. When we come into what we call classic deep meditation, the initial instruction is mindfulness of the body, and as you deepen into that, your heart will come to it.
“So then the body acts as ‘the parent.’ You know, the one that can hold the little heart when it’s frightened, desperate and needs things to hold onto. Says ‘you’re here, you’re okay, and then it does settle.”
(image from: Mother’s Kiss, by Mary Cassatt — detail)
2013
Passing Away
While I was away I received news that my DPP friend, Steve Young, who suddenly feel ill last month, passed away early on the morning of August 1. Steve was one of the resident caretakers at Spirit Rock. I am told that the staff there held a beautiful ceremony in which they rang the meditation bell in his honor 108 times.
All conditioned things are impermanent
Their nature is to arise and pass away.
To live in harmony with this truth,
Brings true happiness.
I dedicate the merit of my practice during this month for the benefit of Steve, and for all beings, everywhere.
Back in Dharma Town
I’m back from visiting with family in the woods of Wisconsin, but buried in emails and catching-up details. So for today, I’ll just say I’m back!….and leave you with another poem:
Toad
by Mary Oliver
I was walking by. He was sitting there.
It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge of the path. He didn’t move.
I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. the pleasure of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup we call a life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.
He looked neither up nor down, which didn’t necessarily mean he was either afraid or asleep. I felt his energy, stored under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.
I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the blue sky all around my head. I said, I wondered how it seemed to him, down there, intimate with the dust.
He might have been a Buddha–did not move, blink, or frown, not a tear fell from those gold-rimmed eyes as the refined anguish of language passed over him.
Relax and Be Kind
I’ll be away, visiting with family in Door County, Wisconsin, until Wednesday, August 7. So until then, I leave you with this quote from Tibetan master, Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche:
I would like to pass on one little bit of advice I give to everyone.
Relax.
Just relax.
Be nice to each other.
As you go through your life, simply be kind to people.
Try to help them rather than hurt them.
Try to get along with them rather than fall out with them.
With that, I leave you, and with all my very best wishes.
(image from: Summer Day, watercolor by Chen Lian Zing)
All Those “Others”
I’m getting ready for a family vacation next week, in which various siblings, cousins, nieces, grandparents, in-laws, etc. will converge at the house in Wisconsin where my parents live during the summer. In honor of which, I offer these words from Training in Compassion, by Norman Fischer:
“Dealing with others isn’t just dealing with others. We think of it that way, but that’s a mistake. Dealing with others is dealing with ourselves dealing with others. There are no others apart from us, there is no us apart from them. Our problems with others are our problems with ourselves and vice versa….
“Without our understanding that we have been doing this, we have been co-creating with others the conflicts and interpersonal hassles of our lives…
“When you keep in mind that your human life and the lives of others are rare and precious, that you and everyone else has to die someday, that no one escapes suffering, and that all of your words and deeds, and even thoughts and feelings, have big impacts on the world–when that is part of what you are aware of when you are aware of conflict with others, things change somewhat. These reflections may take the edge off your hurt or aggression and reframe for you what you are dealing with.”
Not that all family vacations are necessarily an occasion for conflict.
I’m just saying.
(image from: Steampunk Tarot)
Just Traveling Through
I listened to a beautiful talk last night by Jack Kornfield called Mystery and the Graciousness of Uncertainty. It’s a talk he gave after visiting with my friend, Steve, who recently had a stroke and as a result, discovered that he has advanced and terminal cancer. Jack begins with this quote from a poem by Hafiz:
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.
Jack talks about visiting Steve in the hospital and says, “…it was like visiting some saint in India…it was like darshan…we looked at each other…his eyes were just gleaming bright…and his heart was so open like some miraculous…” ……and here words being to fail even Jack.
In honor of Steve, here is the full text of the poem Jack quoted in his talk. Deepening the Wonder by Hafiz:
Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our sense and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that
We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.
Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.
The miraculous existence and impermanence of Form
Always makes the illuminated ones
Laugh and Sing.
(image from: Tarot Espanol)
Practicing Practice
We had a great discussion last night in the Dancing with Life KM group, where basically we acknowledged that in moving toward a life of less suffering, we often have to experience quite a bit more of it. Here’s the passage we discussed (from page 219 of the hardback edition of Dancing with Life, by Phillip Moffitt):
“Walking the Eightfold Path is a humbling undertaking. You will spend a lot of time on various plateaus where nothing seems to be happening in the way of less suffering or more insight.
“Sometimes, as you become more aware of your thoughts and actions, it can actually feel like you are suffering more. When you start to give up behavior that once stimulated, entertained, or distracted you, it can seem as if you’ve made the sacrifice for no good reason.
“Therefore, it is necessary that you learn to love the plateaus. I mean really love them.
“Practicing practice becomes the ground for your journey. Day after day, you find joy, or at least a sense of alignment, by simply practicing each of these eight factors as best you are able. You learn to laugh at the follies of your mind, to stop being self-judging, and to just get back on the path when you have wandered off.”
(image from: Kitty Kahane’s Tarot)