Trekking Up Spirit Mountain

I have been on a spiritual path now for close to 4 years, and this was my 3rd multi-day retreat.  I felt the least prepared for this one, as I haven’t been sitting very regularly lately.  The athlete in me was thinking, this is like running a marathon on a base of 5 miles a week.  Usually not a good idea, but having tackled some athletic endeavors with not much more than muscle memory, I was optimistic that I could pull this off as well.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my ability to concentrate during the retreat was very good, and I was able to spend a lot of meditation time looking at my thoughts.  This was a great retreat for me, and I’ll give an example of that in a bit, but first I’d like to outline the factors that contributed to greatness, with the hope that some of these things will be useful to others.
 
First, a disclaimer:  Who really knows whether these are the things that made the retreat click for me?  Also, maybe these aren’t the only conditions that work.  I’m too new at this to be able to answer those questions.  What I can say is that these factors, combined with my personality and “patterns” made for a good retreat: 
- The beautiful and remote surroundings
- Staying in a room by myself
- Sitting with an intimate group of people that I know, and a teacher I respect
- Coming into the retreat in a low-stress state

The Yokoji Zen center is in beautiful setting just off the Pacific Crest Trail.  The sights and sounds and smells are wonderful.  The stars at night will take your breath away.  Nature, including hiking, is not distracting to me; rather I find it to be very calming.  Staying in a room by myself was a first, and I’m glad I tried that.  I spend quite a lot of time by myself, so I think staying alone here removed a lot of distractions.  I can sit with a larger group, but I did enjoy our smaller more experienced group.  As for Victor and his dharma talks and our discussions, these things are invaluable.  As my mentor at work used to say, “If you want to be an eagle you have to go fly with the other eagles”.  Even though my spiritual journey is a very personal one, I get a lot out of hanging around with you eagles.  The last factor that was key for me is that I’m fortunate to be in a trough of low stress right now.  What can I say, life is good!

I wanted to share one particular experience I had while sitting during the retreat.  One bit of background information, I have water on the brain.  A lot of the symbolism in my mind involves water and boats. 

I often imagine while meditating that my thoughts are boats on a river and the Watcher is sitting on the bank watching them all float by.  There are boats of all sizes and shapes.  By Saturday, my mind was pretty calm, and I was watching boats go by during one of the sitting meditations.  There goes the husband boat, ahoy matie.  There goes the favorite son boat, the evil co-worker boat, the nature boat, the just happy to be out here paddling around boat.  Then I start to realize that the thoughts monster has moved out of the river and is sitting on the bank right beside the Watcher, providing a running commentary on the boats.  Talk about separation, there are now two of us on the bank!  Only the thoughts monster talks… “Wonder what hubby is doing now?  Do you think he gets how sad you were?  Sure hope favorite son does something useful with his life.  Wish evil co-worker boat would take a one-way trip to Moscow. Wow, have you ever seen so many kayaks all going in different directions”?  On and on it goes, and I’m lost in thoughts about thoughts!

That lasted the rest of the sit, and during the next walking meditation I sat on a rock, mulling over “frustration” and “confusion” which lead to tears.  Just sitting there looking at frustration and confusion, helped to make those feelings die down.  During the next sit I had the most amazing experience of watching all the thoughts drift off in a rubber dinghy.  An arm even went up from the dinghy and waved good-bye!  That was a when I felt this sort of spacious openness that Victor has referred to.  I don’t know if it lasted 30 seconds or 5 minutes, but it was something in that timeframe.  Of course when it passed, the first thing I did was to try cling to it…

Addendum.  The Ride Home

First diet coke:  Earl’s Bait Shop, Mountain Center (2 miles)
First phone call: also Earl’s Bait Shop.  “Hi Sweetie, I’m 5500 feet above Hemet, and my phone is dying. Gotta go, love you!”
First singing along with the radio:  53 miles.  I am in misery – There aint nobody who can comfort me- why won’t you answer me – the silence is slowly killing me!
First evil thoughts:  65 miles.  Knucklehead teenagers should not be allowed to drive daddy’s BMW

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Retreat Reflection by Alison, excerpted from her blog Meditation-cradlingthecryingchild

Friday, after the first walking meditation, Victor challenged us to break our patterns. We sit like statues, he said, hardly daring to move, trying so hard to be “good little meditators”. And then we go outside and pet the dogs, stare at the mountains, walk at our usual brisk clip. So the question is, can we take our meditation off the cushion? Can we break our patterns, so ingrained, so persistent? Victor suggested the only way he knew how to do it was to slow everything way down, walking especially.

So at the next walking meditation, I walked back and forth over the wooden bridge. Two boards’ width was exactly one foot length. Ten precise steps with each foot covered the bridge. Back and forth I trod, carefully, mindfully, placing each foot within the planks of wood, not lifting the one foot until the other was stable, synchronizing breathing and walking. After plodding back and forth many times, I noticed something sticking up between the boards: half of a butterfly wing, a beautiful wing, unusual, multi-colored, pink and blue and black. It was perfect. And I would never have noticed it if I hadn’t deliberately been walking so very slowly. I picked it up, examined it and wondered what to do with it. I carried it back to our zendo in cupped hands. We had an altar upon which people were encouraged to place treasures. I hadn’t brought a treasure, but now I had one. Later in the sit, I had to smile. Picking up the butterfly wing and putting it on the altar was such typical Ali behavior. “Look what I found!!” Even without words, sitting in silence, it is possible to get that message across. So much for breaking patterns.  The atypical thing would have been to have left the wing alone for someone else to notice in wonder, when they were walking slowly and mindfully across the bridge. I considered taking the wing and stuffing it back where I had found it, but thought that would be silly. Still, the whole little incident underscored how being aware of patterns - let alone breaking them - is a moment by moment affair.

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I went on the retreat without any expectations other than I wanted to help out and have some quiet time. Having been up there to visit prior, I already knew that I found the environment quite peaceful and the residents very pleasant.

All those observations are really outside of myself. What I observed within was painful: both bodily and mentally. It’s as if the emotion was stored in my body and sitting slowly worked its way to a lying down posture for much of the weekend.

What I found interesting was prior to the weekend I had been going through some very intense emotion in my mind - really suffering. The moment I arrived at the Zen center, it was if my head turned off and the emotion shifted into my body.  Usually when I’m experiencing suffering in my mind, I can locate sensations in my body and try to move to a safe place in my body, which helps to calm my mind.

It was as if this type of regulation fell away and I had only sensations in my body. I found it confusing; however somewhat of a relief.

I had my interview with Victor late Saturday night just before the last sit. I had a migraine, my head was congested and it felt as if a cold was coming on. My physical symptoms had taken a turn for the worse. I spoke little about meditation, but what did come out after a few words were tears. I needed to cry. Victor told me he thought I needed to be sad. It was like I needed permission. Somehow I wasn’t letting myself experience the grief so my body was expressing it for me. I took the last meditation that night, feeling worse than I felt all weekend. I cried myself to sleep with a migraine that had me feeling as though a vise was closing in on my head. Vise made of fear, regret, shame, guilt and loathing.

I gave myself permission to sleep a little late, shower and upon the first sit back Sunday morning, found I had missed it. Everyone was walking. I took it upon myself to sit alone. And I sat. I sat in my normal sitting posture. The pain in my body gone: I could breathe now. There was some relief that I wasn’t in pain, but I felt cautious and had difficulty remaining present. I felt uncomfortable with the intense sadness that seemed to surface. I was expectant of a readiness to put my guard up where I was used to having it.

So two things happened over the weekend for me. First I felt safe. I can’t remember the last time I experienced that. That was uncomfortable because it’s never been how I functioned in my life. I knew the release in my body was because I trusted the small group of friends I found myself a part of.

And the second: the time I spent with the resident mountain dogs left me feeling as if I had a visit from my old friend Cole (R.I.P. 9-16-2009… He took his last breath in my arms). And it wasn’t just the striking resemblance and demeanor, but my connection to the breath. I felt like I was being held.

And so a nap with the breath of a dog next to my ear and a few open hearts of good friends that gave me the gift of feeling safe enough to just be: seemed to cure all that was ailing me for the moment.

And for the moment I didn’t have to feel so alone afraid. Now I know what that feels like and how I may again have access to it.

Thankfully,

Adrianne

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Here are my retreat reflections:

This practice, the retreats, sitting, trying to be mindful with every passing moment in our daily lifes, is the kindest act we can do for ourselves and ultimately for others. Being at the retreat helps in wiring the brain’s mapping of skillful pathways. The key is that one takes the retreat practice in our daily lives after we leave the retreat. So this practice of being mindful & being present becomes more refined and with this refinement comes a sense of well being. Being at the retreat is a gift that keeps on giving especially after we leave the retreat. This yogi is grateful for the presence of Victor & the mindful and kind yogis that do the work of sati. It is the ticket out of samsara!

Metta,

cindy

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Grateful for a wonderful weekend and surprising myself.

Grateful for being moved to write regularly in my journal again. My last entry was in June.

Grateful for silence. Grateful for how much love can be communicated in the silence with thoughtful action if I paid more attention. Wendy passed me a fork and napkin without me asking or expecting it, I swear I was so moved by that small gesture. But it wouldn’t do to cry over silverware, now would it? So I sucked it up.

Grateful for amazingly warm weather and no hail (we were informed that there was a deluge and huge hail the day before we got there). For clear nights of absolutely amazing stargazing and nature watching. I was just fascinated by the butterflies, birds and animals frolicking.

Grateful for tea with the perfect amount of milk. (poured by you.)

Grateful to be transported by the Welsh and Irish accents I heard this weekend. I have too many wonderful local things happening to even consider traveling internationally this year so just that helped ease the wanderlust a smidge.

Grateful for working on “division” by simply attending the Zen service. The upside? It made me even more grateful for Victor and his real humility, and that he tries to make things accessible to us but doesn’t ever talk down. He really believes in us.

Grateful for homemade curry with my family tonight after coming down the mountain. It wasn’t in my original plans but I welcomed the invite and made a detour before heading home to my wonderful Holly.

Grateful for the box of fruit waiting for me when I got home. Grateful for friends who watched Holly!  She’s laying next to me purring as loudly as a farm tractor. I think she’s glad I’m home too! She’s all over the journal as if she could make an entry!

Grateful for my parents tending a wound I had. It was so funny. One of those you had to be there moments - considering how old I am. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was howling from both the pain of the wound and the pleasure of their ministrations. Aw, regression or maybe just the universe giving me a piece of my childhood back. Either way, thank you. I’m truly blessed.

Grateful for just a few bruises and scrapes. No broken bones! Hooray!

Also, grateful that I responded to my mother with extreme patience. Amazingly, something I said came out with no edge even though in the past it would have. Same words but different tone that I wasn’t even aiming for. No one even blinked, but I knew that I had meant it to come out sarcastically. What a difference tone makes!  I don’t know how that came about,  considering how restless and irritable I tend to feel and am feeling the night after a long meditation (ironic, isn’t it or maybe it’s just the realization that I Am The Problem). I blame the peaceful tone on three continuous days of meditation.

Grateful for being with what is.

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Selected readings from the January 2011 retreat and Victor’s dharma talk on the two truths doctrine.
Link to readings.

...only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.

Third Mundaka Upanishad, Chapter I

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“Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.”

Nirvana.pdf

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When I first started meditating, I thought it would be like an extended savasana (corpse pose) in yoga, deeply relaxing and centering, only lasting longer. I did it for an hour a week, 20 minute meditation, 40 minute ‘sermon’, sitting on a chair, in the gorgeous setting of the Lakeshrine Self Realization Temple in Pacific Palisades, and it was exactly that:  a zoned out, mellow, calming experience. I kept that up for over a year, and then discovered LBM, so much more convenient, five minutes away versus three hours round trip. Now I could spend the saved travel time in additional meditation and get a Dharma talk as well, not that I knew anything about that. Meditation continued to be a grounding tool.

All of that changed with the three day retreat last September. The Monday after the retreat, a powerful insight came out of apparently nowhere, an understanding that had eluded me for 50-odd years, and I thought, Whoa! Stuff is Coming Up!! From yoga, I understood the importance of finding my edge, sitting with pain, and staying with it; of not giving in to my usual distractions and escapes. Now I was burning with a desire to KNOW - what else was there to discover? And how exciting at this stage of my life, to be forging out into uncharted territory. From that retreat, I vowed to sit every morning and I do. When VB left for Nepal, I added an evening sit. Stuff continues to come up, as to be expected with all that time and space and silence, and I imagine it always will.

I’ve been to five All Days now, I think, and each time the experience deepens and further layers are exposed. From this latest one on Saturday May 1st, this is what I learned:

VB had said in the Wednesday class that we are ‘relentlessly turned outwards’  - eyes, ears, etc. So, first, a retreat is a time to firmly close all the sense doors facing outwards and shine that light inside. Let go hearing the eternal barking dog, the birds, the whoosh of traffic, the wind creaking against the doors and windows; let go tasting and touching and smelling; let go studying the white gazanias with purple center and dusty dots of orange pollen; let go the mind which loves to play with words (‘dusty orange dots?’ ‘orange dots of pollen?’). In fact, close and bolt all the doors facing in OR out, and just stay with one sense, an inner feeling: what is it like inside this body today? Leave aside the aching knee, the cold feet; turn rather to the sensations of belly clenched with dread, of salty tears clogged in the throat, of the vise that squeezes the heart so tight I think I can’t breathe and maybe I’m having a heart attack. The whys of all this are less important than the sensations themselves. The whys really only matter to me. But these feelings that are their legacy are the things I share with the whole human race. They represent the whole sad litany of what it means to be alive. It is rare I allow myself the chance to simply feel. Especially such sad, physically distressing feelings. But when I thought I would die Saturday, cold tears splashing all down my front, how comforting it was to hear our teacher say, “If this is hard, know that you are not alone. Others are going through the same thing right now.” And I knew he was telling the truth because I could hear muffled sniffs somewhere behind me; I could see the wadded up balls of tissues on people’s mats. There is a feeling of communion at a retreat when we share such intense emotion, even if we never speak of it directly. A hug at the end of it all says without words, ‘Yes, I know.’  It helps.

Life is hard, life is suffering, changeable, impermanent, says the Buddha.  Every happy beginning is doomed to end in tears. Death in some form will change everything. EVERY thing, says VB. The hard work is to drop the self that clings so fiercely to experience however painful, hugs it to its chest and calls it MINE. SO, I thought, perhaps we are missing the HUGE point of all this suffering: Life MUST dole out its share of hurt. It is designed in this way to make us wake up! If every day were a picnic, why would we want anything to change? (The astonishing thing is that every day is far from a picnic, and still we pretend it COULD be, if only….  and off we go, searching outside of ourselves for whatever will make us happy.) We MUST be hurt in order to grow. If Life were without suffering, and therefore without potential for growth, of what use would this gift of Life be in the first place?

Perhaps what ‘they’ thought - whoever came up with this system! - is that the human experience is like those seeds in nature that must undergo death by fire in order to be reborn - the California hillsides that must burn… Perhaps we are supposed to reach a point where it is simply too bad, too much, the impetus to do something drastically different, and we have to jump up and shout, ENOUGH! Or perhaps that’s too energetic. No jumping, no shouting. Just sit quietly, hands open, quiet mind, receptive to surrender. And die to this illusion of self who imagines it is possible to control this life, who believes in the pursuit of happiness and goes chasing after it in all the wrong places.  Only, the thing is - and here’s the fatal flaw and where we have been mis-programmed - we don’t allow ourselves to die. As W.H. Auden said so eloquently (and as VB quoted during the retreat), “We would rather be ruined than changed/ We would rather die in our dread/ than climb the cross of the moment/ And let our illusions die.” We equate change with annihilation, we believe in the illusion of self and hang on to it in spite of the suffering it inevitably causes us. We assert, “THIS is who I am” - even if who we believe ‘I am’ is deeply flawed and scarred; we cast blame, it’s always someone else’s fault that ‘I am as I am’. And we replay our horrid histories in a continuous loop in the mind, and think ourselves powerless to do anything about it.

If we try to bury our stories, and either don’t remember them or sort them out, they will pop up under disguise and sabotage our lives until we do. These things must be looked at and assimilated and folded in. Once our stories have been told, they lose their power, and we can finally put them away - all that suffering transforms into compassion. I realized I can’t fix anyone, or control anyone, or save anyone. Everyone must go down this road by themselves and examine their own demons. All we can do is love each other. Of course we can meet each other half-way and support and encourage each other. The Dalai Lama says, “Our prime purpose in life is to love others. And if we can’t love them, at least don’t hurt them.” Life is going to be bad enough just by virtue of everything changing and dying: let’s not make it worse by treating each other badly. When we have embraced our own tears, our rejections, our loneliness, how can we not reach out in understanding towards another living being - animal or human - and not show it kindness when we see it suffering? Some people seem to do very well without needing other people; I’m not one of them. So it helps me to try to see, underneath the makeup, the smart suit, the tough attitude, the little kid we all once were. That whom we call ‘other’ is a facet of our own self.

The most enlightening thing I took away from this retreat was this little waking dream I had at 3:33 a.m. Sunday morning. I was half awake, looking at the clock and enjoying the symmetry of all those 3’s, when I became aware of a little story playing just below the surface. I started to pay attention, turned on the light and wrote it down as fast as I could before I forgot. This is what I wrote:

I dreamed I was in prison.
A big shadowy man, jailed for life.
Word came down that the big man was to be ‘married’.
He would be the ‘bride’.”
Really he knew he would be killed.
But who could he complain to?
He was already in jail…

As far as I know, I’ve never had a dream that didn’t figure myself as recognizably Alison. Yet of course this shadow man is my shadow self, big and male because it is frightening to me, and big males are intimidating when you are small and female. Jail is the mind. Tricia said at the Sunday sit when I shared this dream that it must have been inspired by VB’s talk of the Big Death (that Buddhists talk of two deaths, the death of the body and the death of the ego. And the hope is to experience the death of the ego (the Big D) before the body death). VB said Jung says to dream of a marriage is a sign of unification or integration.  So it is good. . I thought it was interesting. Make of it what you will!

So what’s the point of an All Day Retreat? An All Day Retreat gives me a glimmer of hope, that it’s possible to put the brakes on and just STOP. And look and feel. When I shine that light inside, oh, there’s plenty to look at and listen to and feel… Very slowly, I’m learning not to get caught in the play as an actor, but to watch it dispassionately and see the patterns: Here’s me doing my thing, here’s me reacting the way I always do. That little bit of distance is the beginning of the end of acting like a robot, jerked by the nose by life.

So then what???  Trust, says our teacher. Keep going, but with awareness, mindfully. Let go of that to which we cling. Trust that there is time and we’re on the right track. A track anyway that is far better than blindly carrying on as if life were a picnic and the bad bits are temporary glitches.

This is just the beginning. I am still very much a beginner! Meditation IS the centering thing I thought it was - but it is so very much more.

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Reflections of a New Year   (Wendy Block)

When the light of the blue moon
Shines through that glistening orange tree
Just ripe for picking.

When we walked together silently
to greet the New Year
Arms open
to embrace the heart of another,

I ask you
is it possible
to hear all things that could be said
and all things
never uttered by man or woman
on a dark clear night?

As foot steps boldly
into New Year
surrounded by moonlight
We laugh loudly
and then meet again in silent embrace.

Oh dear one,
A prayer for this old new year:

Question everything that is thought,
Shake free of doubt
Howl if you need to
Wake up.
And then,
bow at the door of gratitude
for this one wild and precious
thing
called life.

What else is there to do?
By light of day
Or by dark clear night. 

Singular Heart   (Alison Cameron)

The beautiful quote that inspired the poem:
“The wise enshrine the miraculous bones of the ancients within
themselves.”

We converge in the early morning,
singular minds and sturdy bodies
settling on our separate mats,
clutching our complicated stories,
social smiles pasted on wary faces.
We shield our battered hearts and
hide our collective eye.

As watery sun inches across pellucid sky
we sit and walk
and walk and sit
with measured step and even breath
training monkey mind.

Slowly, imperceptibly,
the marrow of our ancestors
infuses our bones as
we show our soft underbelly
stretched out like the dead.

Trust, says our Teacher,
Turn the Light within.

Sitting tall at close of day
the barking dog is still.
The sweet song
of a singular bird
calls out with her small clear voice.
As if in response,
our singular selves rise up and merge
to fill the room with one singular mind
thrumming like a tuning fork
to the communion of sorrow shared in our silent world.
Our light shines -
no, blinds -
through the cracks in our vulnerable hearts.

I am undone.

 

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