Another year ends. Another year begins...

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would share with you the below message that went out as part of my professional newsletter. It expresses some of my hopes and intentions as we end this 2016 and set our sights toward another year.

Dear Friends,

We are at the end of another year. For me, it has been a year of expansion and growth as well as hard lessons and immense challenge. Each year seems to bring something new. At the same time, the end of each year lets me step back and see the familiar patterns that seem to replay year after year. Sometimes these patterns are exactly what I want for my life. Other times, I see clearly that change is long overdue.

One thing I have always appreciated about the winter holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas is their attention to light at the darkest time of the year. It can be hard when, literally or metaphorically, things are very dark. It can be even harder to find and appreciate small moments of light in the midst of difficult or dark times. The religiously rooted imagery of these holidays is about light, and, in this hemisphere, we celebrate them both around the time of winter solstice, when the dark is closing in around us and the season is getting colder (as cold as we can get in Los Angeles).

The solstice has always been a time to go inward. To visit the shadowy parts of ourselves that we don't want to look at, and to make choices about what we want to do with what we find. It can be hard to go into those dark places, trusting that we might find light emerging through the darkness. The end of another calendar year affords us that opportunity as well - to reflect on a year gone by and ask ourselves how we might want to live differently (or the same) going into the year ahead. Whatever the reasons, this time of year offers us a profound opportunity to pause and look within, to recognize at deep levels what still needs transformation and release, and to take the honest steps to embrace difference where difference is needed.

One thing I am learning as a continually aspiring healer is that no healing is more important than my own. Attention to that is first and foremost, and any healing others receive requires me to do the hard work on myself that I don't always want to do. As we go into another calendar year, my resolve to continue this work of personal transformation feels renewed. I know the world around me needs it more than ever, but, much more simply, I know that I need it.

I invite you to continue your work of transformation and growth as well.

With all wishes for goodness in 2017,
Jonathan

A reservoir of love, mindfulness, acceptance and gratitude

It's amazing what stillness can do. One of the requisites to the experience of vipassana, or insight, is the practice of samatha, which is stopping.  Lately, I have felt overwhelmedly overwhelmed, and a little lost as to what to do about it.  Money hasn't been exactly flowing the way I want it to, logistics seem to pile up, organizing has taken on a life of its own and matters in my personal life feel sometimes sublime and other times as though the San Andreas fault has finally given way once and for all.  This past weekend, I hit a fresh kind of emotional bottom, and I began to take little steps to get myself back to healthy.  Monday night, I went to a 12 step meeting that put me back in connection with a certain type of spiritual wisdom I had been missing.  Tuesday morning, I got up and sat for 20 minutes.  Maybe because my intention had shifted or because I was so utterly humbled and overwhelmed, but the meditation had a different quality to it than I have felt in a while.  I began to feel the energy of fear floating in me, not as me, but as something in me.  Something that I could embrace.  I began to feel the energy of mindfulness rush to hold it, and I was able to stop being scared of it - stop running from it - start embracing it with love.  It was a kind and tender moment.  I realized how long it had been since I simply let myself stop and hold the things that move inside of me - the things that feel overwhelming.  I so often try to process through them so they don't overwhelm me, that I forgot to just notice what it feels like to feel overwhelmed - and then hold those feelings with compassion and understanding.  So I began to practice holding the fears of not be able to handle what is happening in my life, not being able to figure out what to do, not being able to.... etc. etc. When I simply sat and embraced those energies, it felt good.  Really good.  Like a release of tension on a very deep level.  I wasn't scared of my fear anymore, because I remembered fear is just something in me.  It is not me.  That took some recognition.  It took samatha.

I started to get an image of my consciousness as a reservoir.  A large pool with varying degrees of water in it depending upon my practice - my concentration - my diligence.  I saw that when the reservoir is full, many objects can be thrown into the water, but they are met with buoyancy.  They rise to the surface and are gently guided to the filters that allow them to move on to wherever it is that they go once they've moved on from my consciousness.  If the water is not enough, maybe they float but can't make it to the filters and they get stuck longer.  They hang around.  If there is very little water at all, then they hit bottom.  They make solid contact and stop being just energies floating in me.  They start feeling like they are me.  I start to feel like I am this fear.  I am this anger.  I am this defensiveness.  I am this overwhelm.  When I stop and breathe and see what it feels like to be these energies, I guess something happens.  I see that I can love even the really shitty stuff and hold it and let it be okay.  I can just acknowledge that it is there.

One would think that the conscious enlightened response to fear would be to know the way to make fear move through as quickly as possible so that it does not corrupt our peace, joy, love and happiness.  So that we can keep on living badass spiritual baller lives with everything in order. One would think that giving space for fear to hang around longer than absolutely necessary would be an idiotic response to the arising of fear (or anger, or doubt, or overwhelm) in us.  But in my experience, this is wrong.  When I am on autopilot, snoozing my way through a sleepwalking life, I typically try to get rid of unpleasantness and uncertainty as quickly as I can.  This is primarily because I don't have the capacity to hold the unpleasantness in that moment. Naturally, I want it to go away. My reservoir is not full. The balls of fear and anger and frustration that are thrown in just land on the bottom and that's who I am in that moment - fearful, angry, frustrated.  This is me.  And it is uncomfortable.  I want to get rid of that as soon as I can.  As absolutely soon as I can!



But when I let my reservoir start to fill a bit, and those balls of knotted up emotion and difficult experience start to float, start to be held by the energy of love and mindfulness and acceptance, then I am free to not be afraid anymore.  It doesn't really matter if they stay or not.  They way it didn't really matter this morning when a tiny little fuzzball of a dog got out of its front yard and ran up to meet my 80 pound pitbull.  I knew my dog was safe.  We didn't need to be afraid or panicky or overwhelmed. There was just the energy to meet the stimulus with compassion.  The more full the reservoir, the more discomfort can be buoyed and the less fear needs to enter into my interactions with life.  When I am at my best, I can understand the idea that Richard Rohor posits about the experience of Centering Prayer:  Everything Belongs.  There is nothing I need to shut out, because practice is about embracing the reality of what is with love and understanding.  Understanding helps me see that these fears and overwhelms are not me.  And, perhaps ironically for some, once we are no longer driven to get rid of the discomforts we face, we often find the appropriate ways to respond to them to help them move through us with grace and ease.  Once I am okay feeling fear, I become less afraid.  It's probably the most beautiful paradox I have experienced in life.  And it all starts with stopping. It all starts with the ability to just let myself be with what is, with who I am, with what I feel inside - and hold that person/feeling/energy/thought with a kindness and a love that just lets it be. Just sees what it feels like.  Just explores the sensations and drops the perfectionism that drives me toward thinking I should never have uncomfortable experiences.  The more I do this, the more I can hold myself... the more I can hold the world around me.  Its people.  Its uncertainties.  Its crazy elections and broken systems and all of those things.  It just starts with embracing the fear I feel in my own breath - embracing all the things I don't know or don't have answers to or can't figure out.  Just letting them be there in the pool of acceptance, while I run this hose of mindfulness to lift them higher and higher with love.

Coming home after vipassana

One more thing I have to say just because it feels important.  One thing that was particularly painful for me was coming home after the retreat and not knowing how to re-enter.  What had happened, in addition to everything else, was that my association with meditation had gotten mapped with the feelings of frustration, irritation, isolation and agitation that I experienced at the retreat.  If I had stayed the full ten days, perhaps I would have moved through this into some blissful experiences.  Indeed, a sangha sister who went on a vipassana retreat a couple weeks before I did was about to leave on day 5 herself, stayed, and felt like it transformed her world.  I think if I went back I would sleep through the morning 2 hour session and wake for breakfast at 6:30.  That's what I did on day 4 and it was my best day.

After I got home, I had the hardest time sitting for at least a month.  Every time I sat I felt scared, angry, shameful, agitated, and ill at ease.  It was very hard.  It was connecting me to the retreat and the things I needed to process through as a result.  But those things were in my body, and they were connected to the same body positions, etc. that I typically would use to process through those feelings.  So i needed to meditate to heal, but I needed to heal to meditate.  It was very difficult.  And confusing.  And for about a month I felt lost and disconnected and afraid and isolated and scared.  Thank God for sangha.  And time.  I am so grateful to have other people to sit with.  To help me feel safe again.  To help me re-map the experience of sitting meditation so I do not associate it with isolation and go-it-aloneness, but, rather, community, supportedness and togetherness.  For me, that is what I need.  And needed.  It helped me heal.  I don't ever want to map meditation along the same neural pathways as feeling like I am all alone.  Our world is very fragmented.  In fact, I think fragmentation is one of the biggest problems in our world.  We already know how to go through life not making eye contact, pretending that we are all alone, pretending the people around us aren't really there.  I don't think that is the solution to our individual or collective suffering.  If I want ten days in solitude, let me find a cave, or a room where I can sit and meditate... where I can walk and explore, etc.  Don't put me around a bunch of fellow practitioners and ask me to pretend like they are not there.  That's not the world I want to rehearse.  Not the world I want to practice.  I want to practice a world where we see each other.  Where we look in the eyes.  Where we bow.  I do believe solitude has deep value.  Just don't ask me to enact pretend solitude, ignoring the people around me.  It feels dishonest to do that on the streets of Pasadena, and it felt dishonest at my retreat.

And thank you, to everyone who welcomed me back into the world with love and without judgment.  You are truly my family, and I am grateful.

Why I Left My 10 Day Vipassana Retreat, part 2

Hello again! Here I am to finish part two, largely due to the persistence of a very lovely human from Deer Park pestering me. :)  So thanks to you, dear sister!

I think I have a bit more clarity and spaciousness inside of me to write about this, especially coming off of a very nourishing five days at Deer park Monastery, and now having a beautiful almost three year old pup sleeping peacefully about ten feet away from me.  I am delighted for these and other reasons.

Going into my Vipassana retreat I had already been feeling a strong movement inside of me - something telling me to begin to trust my own intuition. To trust it on deeper and deeper levels - beyond what I had been. So by day three, when I began feeling like my desire to leave was a gut knowing, and not just a "this is difficult and sucky and I want to leave" it was difficult to ignore because I was practicing not ignoring. Trusting that I know. But also knowing how hard it was to be there, I didn't want to listen to avoidance masquerading as intuition, so I decided to wait and see. Days 1 through 4 were preparation for the vipassana technique, as I mentioned previously. Day 4 in the evening was the beginning of vipassana instruction. So here is some more of why I left, attempting to build on what was already there:

1) The chanting from Goenka annoyed the living crap out of me. As did his particular way of guiding the meditation. I have since realized how much repetition frustrates me. Especially when it feels SO unnecessary.  I know there are contexts when repetition really is the key to learning something, but I don't want someone to run through the list of every possible sensation I might notice on the surface of my body at my scalp... and then run through the entire list (slowly, hypnotically) again for my face.  And then again on my arms.  And then again on my chest.  And then again... and again... and again... and I am talking about a list of like 15 or 20 different sensations.  Numbness.... itchiness... scratchy... burning... tingle... pain... tickle... and on... and on.... and on.... See, I understood after the first two times... it was any sensation.  I got it.  Etc.

And the chanting.  I literally had to press the tongue to the roof of my mouth and bite down hard to not burst out laughing when he first started chanting.  I don't mean to offend any Goenka lovers, truly, but to me he sounded like a drunken homeless Indian man muttering to himself in the street with a little bit of cadence.  It sounded really ridiculous.  And it consequently became profoundly distracting and offputting.  I realize that annoyance is an energy that one can work with in meditation to great advantage, but when everything is already SO hard and challenging, it just felt like someone was blowing in my face amid all of the other difficulties.  It was not helpful.  But wait, there's more about this... and it's well beyond just my personal annoyance.  In fact, this might be my primary (more) objective critique about the retreat, and here it is:

One of the things you must agree to is to suspend all personal spiritual/religious practices while at the retreat so that you give the vipassana technique a fair trial to see how it works.  They ask you to not say the rosary, meditate according to another practice, pray in any way, do yoga, tai chi, etc. They want you to purely experience the technique.  However, they explicitly explain that the chanting Goenka does is not part of the technique but something that is a part of the tradition and lineage from India.  When he chants in Pali "May all beings be happy" and the students chant three times "Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu" ("Agreed, agreed, agreed") they are very clear that this is NOT part of the Vipassana technique, but something additional and optional.  On top of this, the way Goenka guides meditation is basically hypnosis.  Now I'm not saying this with some kind of suspicion that he's trying to manipulate retreatants into an altered state, but I have had hypnotherapy on multiple occasions.  I can tell you that the cadence of his voice, the timbre, the way he speaks and repeats and directs, it is hypnotherapy. He is implanting hypnotic suggestions such as "work diligently, tirelessly, patiently" and "you are bound to be successful, bound to be successful."  The suggestions themselves are helpful because, as I've mentioned, the retreat is really freaking hard!!! Really hard. But the way his voice brings someone into a semi-hypnotic trance seems like it goes against the idea of just giving the technique a chance without anything else added.  Because being guided into an altered brain wave state is, in fact, something else added. So is the experience of listening to/responding to Pali chanting (which I can't stress enough how awful it was, to me).  It felt hypocritical, to be honest.  You must leave your traditional things behind because they will interfere with giving vipassana fair hearing, but we are going to inject our traditional things into your experience because... "it's tradition" (think Fiddler on the Roof).  This might actually be the biggest obstacle to my going back and the biggest frustration and critique I have that feels bigger than just the interplay of my own personal issues and the way the retreat is structured, though it is of course still that.

2) Now here's the really interesting thing, that was the final straw in my feeling it okay to leave.  I didn't go to the retreat to have a mystical experience.  I think I said that in part 1; I don't recall.  Regardless, that was going to be pleasant bonus, but what I wanted was a deepening of my meditation practice, and guidance into how to truly enter and engage my mind, body, feelings, perceptions, etc. in a new way that would create deep liberty in my mind and body. In other words, I wanted the technique to do what they say it is intended to do: provide a means to liberation of the mind at its deepest level.  Now I cannot say whether it is capable of that or not. Truly.  I can say that as I revisit the Satipatthana Sutta, I don't think that what they teach at Goenka retreats is an accurate translation of the meditation described by the Buddha.  And the teacher pointed me to that sutta as the primary influencing text for their technique, albeit with a slightly unique interpretation of the word "feelings."  (As an aside, as a former cult member and a scholar of religious studies, I am wary of groups that have private and unique interpretations of particular words.)  So I cannot say whether the technique can liberate the mind at its deepest levels.  What I could do was look around and ask the deepest question: "Is there anyone here who I feel has found the answer to suffering? Is there anyone here who has something I want so much that this feels worth it to stay?"  And, even more, "when I look at the things others have told me about their retreats, does it feel worth it to stay?"

And I want to be really careful and clear right now that I have deep love and respect and admiration for many of my friends who have done 10 day vipassana retreats.  There's no way for me to anonymously mention all of you by name, but I think you know who you are, and I hope you know how much I respect your spiritual practice, which is of course made up of many more things besides just vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka.  But I'm going to be honest - most of what would keep me at the retreat was fear of missing out on a peak experience, a dropping away of mind and body and dualism, a feeling of non-separation from the world.  But to be even more honest, I'm pretty sure I could have the same experience by eating mushrooms.  And that seemed far less painful (side note: I have not, in fact, eaten mushrooms, either before, during or since this retreat).  I couldn't look at anyone I knew who did vipassana retreats and feel like "I want what these people have!! I see in them something that makes it worth it to stay." And that of course starts with Goenka himself.  I really enjoyed his talks (except for one) and I think he has a lot of wisdom, but I couldn't say that he was evidence to me that this technique would fully liberate a person from suffering.  He did not seem like a fully liberated human being.  Or so tremendously close that I wanted to follow him.  The teachers there were, as I said in part 1, very kind.  Very very kind.  I felt a lot of love from our male teacher, and I truly want to have that same love towards others who come to my tradition and decide it is not for them.  I want to have that kind of awareness and non-attachment, and I think that, by and large, I truly do.  But the teachers were not carrying around this sense of spiritual attainment that made me feel the retreat was worth it at any cost.  And so many of my friends who I do admire have a spirituality that is a mix of so many things that it is difficult to say how vipassana informs it.  And other people I know who have done multiple vipassana retreats and they are still, if you pardon, basically assholes.  Well, not strictly assholes, but still fairly self-absorbed and not the type of person I wanted to be.  And I kept thinking of friends who have come away saying "I felt so clear after my retreat and it lasted (fill in the blank) amount of time..."  But it faded away.  That's not what I was looking for.  And then I thought about my teacher.  Thay Thich Nhat Hanh.  I saw that this was truly a human being who had what I wanted.  And, yes, I also know people who practice in that tradition who are still, at times, assholes.  That happens to.  That happens anytime there are people. And please, I say that tongue-in-cheek.  I do not believe people are assholes in a 2-dimensional and reductionistic sense. But we sometimes (often?) behave that way.  I am digressing.  When I thought of my teacher and many of the monastics in his tradition, I thought "yes, this is the energy of transformation I want to cultivate in myself."  I do not just want to be very present and aware when I sit, but also when I walk and when I eat and when I talk and when I listen.  I did not understand why there was no instruction in walking and eating meditation, as it is so clearly a part of the Buddha's teachings on the path and practice.

And beyond all of this...

3) The suffering of my life didn't feel like it necessitated my enduring the treat.  I have a spiritual home.  I have a practice.  I have a community.  The most enjoyable part of the retreat was, before we went into silence, sharing with people about Deer Park and inviting them to visit.  Maybe I didn't need something else.  As my friend asked me "what are you looking for?"  Sigh.  Yes.  What was I looking for?  Am I not already on the path toward liberation of the mind?  Toward the end of suffering?  I kept thinking about the Buddha's journey toward enlightenment, and the time he spent with the 5 forest ascetics nearly fasting himself to death in his journey to find the answer to suffering.  And eventually he realized that they did not have the answer he was looking for.  He had gained a lot from them, but he had to go find a middle way - he had to find a path that actually resulted in what he was looking for.  And they judged him for it.  I kept thinking that maybe my leaving the retreat was my taking a bowl of milk (was it rice? was it milk? I have heard both).  Except my judgment was much more from my own self-doubts than it was from others.  Or perhaps it came from them, too, I don't know.  The analogy actually almost got me to stay, believe it or not.  Because the Buddha stayed until he had learned everything he possibly could learn from them.  And I had to be honest and say that I could still learn from staying at the retreat.  I knew I could.  I knew there would have been beneficial things for me to learn.  But here is where my own impatience set in.  I didn't want to do that.  Ultimately my attitude was an idealistic desire to stay and learn everything I could learn so I could build off it into the future, but, in the end "f*** it; I'm not the Buddha!"  And so I left.

And since I left I've learned a lot, from this and other contexts, about how impatient I can be.  How quickly I can give up on something if I don't see results right away.  How I have difficulty trusting and continuing on.  How much I always feel like I know "better" than others.  And how this can prevent me from benefiting from a path, because, again, I think I "know better."  I had a very humbling conversation with a mentor about this very thing - about how much I could stand to benefit from staying the course of personal practice even when it is not yielding immediate results.  At the same time, one still must be discerning of where to invest that energy, lest one continue on in Scientology indefinitely in the name of patience, perseverance and trust.  Ultimately I just didn't see evidence that it was going to be my personal practice after the retreat; I didn't see evidence that this was indeed a technique capable of fully liberating the individual.  And I really wanted a Berry Bowl.  So I just left.  Maybe that was mara.  Maybe I was tricked by the part of myself that is scared to transform.  Maybe.  Or maybe it just wasn't my place, my people, my practice.  Maybe I already have what I need here and now.

I have a couple more things to say, but I will say them in a new post....

Why I Left My 10 Day Vipassana Retreat, part 1

Why I went to the retreat:

I went to the retreat because I wanted to deepen my sitting meditation practice.  More, I wanted to learn a certain type of meditation - vipassana - in a formal, structured way, one that would force me through the disciplined steps of approaching the meditation practice that I would be far less likely to do on my own. And, if I am being honest, as much as I said that this wasn't my intention, I also think I wanted to experience one or two of those intense mystical moments people talk about where the divide between self and other disappears, the boundaries drop away, mind and body disappear. I was looking for some sort of unitive experience, perhaps as a peripheral but highly desirable effect of going to - and completing - the retreat.  At a deep level, I was truly searching for a practice that would inform my meditation going into the future, and inform my day to day journey of awakening, transformation and enlightenment.

What the retreat is:

I'm not going to say much about this.  You can search for "Goenka Vipassana retreat" and read all about them. They are free, which is nice - supported by the donations of course alumni. They are 10 days, and they are completely silent. This means no talking, no gestures, no nonverbal communication and preferably no eye contact. They also ask you not to read, not to do any writing or journaling, and to abstain from any and all religious/spiritual practices that you may do as a part of your regular routine/lifestyle. The schedule is this, more or less:

4am: wake up
4:30-6:30: meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-7:15: breakfast
7:15-8: rest
8-9: formal meditation in hall
9-11: meditate in room or in hall, depending on instructions and preference
11-11:45: lunch
11:45-1: rest or questions in hall with teacher (1 on 1 - this was the only situation where talking was allowed, unless you had to talk to the manager about a logistical concern)
1-2:20: meditate in hall or in room
2:30-3:30: formal meditation in hall
3:30-5: meditate in room or in hall, depending
5-5:30: tea break with the option of fruit and/or milk in tea for first time retreatants
5:30-6: rest
6-7: formal meditation in hall
7-8:15: dvd discourse from S.N. Goenka
8:15-9: meditation in hall
9: rest (lights out by 10)

I won't expand on this except to say two things: 1) there were generous breaks in between sessions so that people could stretch and go to the bathroom.  2) no one was watching over you to smack you if you used any of the room meditation times to nap or sleep in.  That was not encouraged, but it was an option.

Last thing to sketch the retreat itself - there is no exercise allowed except for stretching and walking in the designated walking paths (about 1/8 mile loop) during rest times. They ask you not to run, do yoga, etc.

One request.  Don't pre-judge the retreat and say "that's so stupid" or "what a ridiculous expectation," etc. One thing about actually going and making the struggle-filled decision to leave: my reasons for leaving feel very deep and vulnerable and difficult.  Superficial criticism of the retreat structure seems rather off-putting after engaging with it at a very deep and challenging level. I don't know if that makes sense or not.  If not, that's okay.  It's also fine if you think these rules are stupid and bonkers.  After wrestling with them I've had less objective judgments about whether they are good or bad.  I do have a lot to say about my own relationship to them, to which I now turn my attention.

Why I left the retreat (I can't promise that this will be short. In fact, it might end up being quite long):

I can't quite say "I left because it was hard," thought it was. It was painfully hard. Literally. Schedule meditation time was 10 hours and 45 minutes. There is an encouragement to spend as much of this as possible in an upright posture, either kneeling with support or cross legged on a cushion. There is only so much postural adjustment one can perform before the same muscles are exhausted to their core.  The silence was challenging, but more than this, the boredom was almost suffocating.  There was absolutely nothing to do.  Nothing.  During the rest times I could nap, walk, or lie on my bed and stare.  I could also meditate - were I insane.  I could also stretch, if I had a bone lick of energy left in me, which I rarely did.  And the silence insofar as it meant "not talking" was relatively easy.  The "no acknowledging others in any way including eye contact" was what really punched me in the gut.  It felt awkward, forced, and incredibly distracting.  After three days of meditating I was so powerfully aware of the people around me.  To ignore them felt forced.  It felt awkward and uncomfortable.  It also felt isolating and difficult.  I understand in my head, and even in my heart, the notion of why this is done.  It is such a painful thing to be left with ourselves sometimes.  To be forced to face the discomforts we find in our mental activity.  To be left without ALL of our typical escapes.  I understood the notion behind it.  Which is why I can't say that I left because it was hard.

More than anything, I left because I lost faith that the meditation technique itself was worth it.  In fact, the most powerful and transformative meditative experience I had while there was when I went "off script" and did my own thing.  You are, as you can imagine, absolutely not supposed to do this, but I was so damn tired of trying to focus on my breathing while my legs were screaming at me because they were falling asleep that I let myself be with that agony and move into it, body and mind.  It was powerful.  When the meditation period ended I had to come back to my body.  I had the most profound feeling of "what just happened?"  But I digress.

When we got to the end of day 4 they began to teach vipassana meditation.  Insight meditation.  Before this we were building our concentration by attending with one-pointed focus to the breath itself as it entered and exited the nostrils.  I understood the benefit of this, though three days of 10 hours a day breath focus was one of the most boring things I've ever invested in.  Rewarding and beneficial.  But oh so boring!

When the Vipassana instruction commenced I thought, "Wait, is this it? we are just doing body scans?  JUST BODY SCANS?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???"  I can't even begin to tell you of the let down I felt inside.  I had intended to go to the retreat and "empty my cup."  Learn meditation as if I knew nothing about it whatsoever.  Drink from their instruction as one would when one is a complete beginner.  But when they started teaching us how to go from head to toe, part by part and notice sensations in the body briefly without judgment and then move on to the next part of the body... something inside me just sunk.  "This is so disappointing," I thought.  I don't know if I thought it in those words, but it was in my body, my heart, everything.  I don't know what I expected, exactly - but something different. I met with the teacher to say I was thinking of leaving. That I needed him to talk me into staying.  He told me what was coming up.  His first words were about the next day's instruction: "You are going to learn how to not just scan down the body, but back up."  This was not encouraging.  Part of my frustration was that this type of body scan for subtle sensation was painfully easy for me.  I do massage and energy work.  I practice taiqi, qigong and yoga.  I am very familiar with noticing subtle sensations in my body.  His progressed map of what the rest of the retreat looked like did not encourage me.  When I asked about why we were simply jumping from one sensation to the next instead of staying with sensations long enough to observe "the arising and passing away of phenomena" (a common Buddhist idea) he answered me.  His answer was fine, but not satisfying. He said it had to do with how we are prone to cling to or reject sensations based on whether they were pleasant or unpleasant.  Forcing ourselves to move on helped us avoid that trap.  I got it, but it felt like there were other ways around that conundrum.

He told me that they don't broaden their meditative focus to include the thoughts and feelings, just the body.  This was disappointing.  He said that when you observe the subtle sensations of the body without any judgment, attraction or aversion, you begin to disentangle the suffering and knots of the mind at the deepest level.  The idea is that those sensations are linked to the mind through the body (this is how I understood what he was saying) and so when you can observe the body without reactivity you become less reactive to what passes through your mind and emotional body.  I wasn't going to disagree with him, per se, but this really did not introduce anything new or profound into my practice.  I had been noticing and observing my body and working to defuse the reactivity and judgment for a long time.  I would often broaden this to encompass the feelings that arose as I noticed things in my body.  Or even the thoughts.  Letting them pass without judgment.  Noticing them.  Relaxing the bodily tendency to tighten, grip, control or reject those feelings or thoughts as they arose.  Just letting them come, letting them go.  I just keep thinking "maybe I've already been doing this??"  Maybe I wasn't going to get anything from this?  Maybe I'm further along in my practice than I thought?  All disappointing questions to entertain.  Funny that they would be disappointing, but they were.

A friend asked me, about a week after leaving the retreat "what are you looking for?" It was a broad brush question, but it encompassed my going to a retreat, obviously seeking something.  I listened to the question with this translation: "What is it you are seeking that you think you don't already have?"  I think that is a koan that took me deep into silence.  I had no answer.  Why did I even go to the retreat?  What was I seeking?  What did I think I didn't have?  How amusing that I was disappointed by the realization that possibly I already had what I needed.

But I left on day five.  I kept thinking about how I had six more days off from work and I could spend them on the low-feeling probability that I would get something profound from the retreat OR I could do something that I knew would be enjoyable and meaningful, though with less possibility of helping me have some profound and life-altering spiritual breakthrough.

So I drove home, spent the night in Los Angeles, called my godparents in Sedona, Arizona, and made plans to drive to see them the next day (Tuesday).  I went to Berry Bowl the next morning, packed up my car, and went to Sedona.....


(more to come: a little about my time in Sedona, and a lot about my reflections on the retreat itself once I had removed myself from it... a bit of subjective objectivity, if you will... including that feeling I finally had of "I am home" when I had my first walking meditation with my Wednesday night sangha in Pasadena....  Oh... and if I forget to put it in my next post, I really need to say that when I decided to leave, the teacher at the retreat was incredibly kind.  He was caring, compassionate and loving, without a trace of judgment or shaming.  This was so meaningful, and to me is the one thing that truly moved my heart to deep gratitude.  I can't forget to say that, so I am saying it now.  To be continued...)

Letting it be enough

I have noticed a pattern lately in which some of my MOST unhealthy behaviors seem traceable to a simple inability (I think I ought to say "difficulty" rather than "inability") to let things be enough, as they are. What I mean is this - I go for a short walk and I enjoy it.  I think I should walk farther, because if I enjoyed this short walk, I should extend it and walk even more. I watch something funny or inspiring online and I want something that increases that feeling even more. Something even MORE inspiring and/or funny.

As little of a thing as this can seem at first, I have noticed that it leads me down paths in my thoughts and actions that are quite disastrous. As I sat observing my simple, ordinary experience today, the thought came to me, "why isn't this enough?" Why can't I let this be enough? And then I could. At least then, in that moment. The strange thing is to notice that I'm looking for some kind of capping experience that alters ordinary life into something always marked by some kind of completion. Instead of allowing the experience of a moment to be what it is, I start seeking ways to make it "better" or "more."  I am, if you'll pardon expression, seeking some kind of emotional orgasm. Something to bring me to a satiated, almost drug-like state. Something to push me beyond the realm of "ordinary" and into something I think is more complete and sublime.

It makes me think of the times at Deer Park when I have had that textbook eating meditation experience: I sit down, the bell is invited, and we start to eat. As I take a few bites I realize I really want some soy sauce on my lentils or rice. But the practice is to stay seated and be with the meal in front of me. I can't get up and "fix" it. So I have an opportunity to let the meal in front of me be enough. To not need to improve it, build upon it, make it better, etc. To simply dive more deeply into the experience of what it is, rather than seeking to make it into some penultimate ideal of what I think it should or could be. When I do that, I realize that it really is enough - as soon as I let go of the story in my head saying that it "should" be something better, more fulfilling, more intoxicating.

I suppose I could even play that game with this blog post. Perhaps, in light of this realization, and because it is late, I will simply let this be enough.

Spiritual Ego

Lately I have been pondering my plans for how often I will go to Deer Park this year.  Last year at this time I was going down 1 or 2 times per month, which lasted the first seven months of the year until the monastery closed so that the monks and nuns could travel and lead retreats around the country.

This year I am anticipating being there with less frequency, which gnaws at me a little bit.  As I've reflected on it, however, I have realized that part of the reason it bothers me - perhaps a way too big part, is that I've gotten used to feeling this strange ego boost from my relationship to the community at Deer Park.  I go there often enough and feel at home enough there that people ask me if I live there.  I have friend who are monks and who are nuns.  Some of them I correspond with, collaborate with, organize with, etc.  And I have begun to realize how much a part of my spiritual ego identity it is when I am here in Los Angeles or Pasadena to talk about my nun friend this or my monk friend this or my other friend who used to be a monk, etc.  I feel special and unique.  I have this set of experiences that others do not - I am unique and interesting and fascinating and special...  and somewhere in my reflections upon this I have decided that I want to stop holding up flashing neon signs that say "I am friends with nuns and monks at a Buddhist monastery...." and so forth.  I want to just practice.  And I can do that at home OR at the monastery.  I can do that with friends who have never been to Deer Park.  I can wear my connection to a place with much less ego and pomp.  I can just be a person in the world.  Like Rilke's beautiful verse:

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing—
just as it is.

I think it is easy to to want to be more than what we are, just as we are, in any given moment.  Because my practice is about a practice, not a place.  And it is about a spiritual community, but not as a sense of ego identity, but a place and a way of being together to call home.  And that is something that can be nurtured everywhere and anywhere.  It doesn't need to be in the mountains of Escondido or at Plum Village in the south of France.  I can just be who I am in any moment.  To simply be in the presence of something holy.  Myself.  My steps.  The earth.  All of you.

Every day.