On the first evening John told us that he was going to teach silent illumination. This is a method that I have felt affinity for, and have begun to use on previous retreats. I have had glimpses of serenity and silence but I have found it difficult to sustain and use at home. Should I stick to my plan of "raising the doubt" as I had set out to do? I decided that the only thing to do was to go along with the retreat the way it was and not the way I wanted it to be. I suppose from the very beginning I had to accept that it was no good having any expectations.
I started off watching the breath. Things that I have learned on previous retreats proved helpful. I relaxed. I gave my body to the cushion and my mind to the method. I watched my breath and watched thoughts coming and going. I found that I was able to let them through, let them be and let them go. I was not becoming involved in great long trains of thought. I understood the metaphor of the feather and the fan.
By the second day I found that I was enjoying myself. Sitting was going well. I did not find the pain in my legs too much of a problem. Space had somehow opened up around me. I was in it and part of it, but not bothered. It was light and airy and gentle.
During the evening talk I felt like I did as a child listening to a bedtime story. It was simple and it was OK. There was a phrase from Thich Nhat Hahn that kept coming back to me and that John used during the talk. It was "Shining the lamp of awareness". The middle day of the retreat was difficult. I wanted to find the serenity that I had experienced the previous day. I wanted to be in the space that I had been in before. I found that I was fighting myself. I was tense and my legs were painful. I knew that I should drop wanting and drop resistance, but couldn't. I began to wonder what on earth I was doing here. I thought about going home and abandoning Chan completely. Was I just conning myself? Wouldn't I be better off just getting on with life instead of trying to find all these spiritual experiences which none of my family understand anyway?
My job was dealing with the firewood. After the load of logs had arrived from the farm James got me shifting them and splitting them. They were tough logs and I couldn't split them. The axe got stuck and I felt angry and helpless. After a while, Frank, (who had been taught log splitting by a Canadian lumberjack) took over. I pottered about tacking the logs. I was then asked to split the little logs into bundles of faggots using a little chopper. Making kindling requires mindfulness but little strength. The logs just split themselves. It wasn't me splitting logs, it was logs splitting. During the rest period I noticed a quotation on the wall of the bedroom:
When we wish to teach
and enlighten all things
by ourselves
we are deluded.
When all things
teach and enlighten us
we are enlightened.
Genjo koan
Dogen Zenji
The logs taught me to tackle the things that I can manage. To chip away at the edges. No heroics. I went back to watching the breath.
During an interview John spoke to me about how the method of silent illumination is sometimes likened to gardening. Preparing the soil and carefully cultivating the plants. It's gentle, it's careful, it's mindful, but it doesn't need a bulldozer. A garden is something that needs regular attention. Sometimes enormous weeds grow and choke the plants, but with correct cultivation and creativity a garden can be a place of peace, serenity and joy. Instead of climbing a slippery glass and ice mountain I was sitting at the bottom waiting patiently. Gardening on the lower slopes.
The retreat continued but I find it difficult to write about. I was sitting in the Buddha room, but I wasn't. Everything was just there in the sunlight. Quite OK, just there, no worry, no hassle. Shapes presented themselves. The buttercups glowed in the grass. I noticed what it is like to be present with presence.
Time sped by. Yet what is time? There is no time. At one level I have an intuition about this. At another level I find reason takes over. Of course there must be time. Time, on the other hand is just a fabrication of humanity and of the mind. It is impossible to reason about the intuition. The intuition is so much at odds with the time that we have learnt to live by. Yet some everyday experiences we call "timeless". I can sit on the rocks by the sea at home. It is timeless. It is always changing and yet has not changed for thousands of years. I found "freedom and ease of body and mind". Indeed it had always been there. "What is this anguish of seeking in the future that which is already lying in the palms of our hands?"
