I’m not quite sure why it has taken me until now to write this report, nor why I have decided this moment to do it. Maybe it will become clear as I write it.
The retreat was a Silent Illumination retreat at Maenllwyd with John Crook and Fiona Nuttall in July 2010. Today is 5th November 2010. Maybe the lapse of time is portentous? I can see this as I write it.
The weather was totally beautiful for the week. That must be important to me since I am writing about it. Warm, balmy, sunshine from Saturday to Wednesday, light soft drizzle then sun again on Thursday, persistent mizzle on Friday. In fact, at Maenllwyd, I almost feel that a visit there wouldn’t be complete without some wet from the sky, it is part of the whole that is the beauty of the place.
I have to add that I spent 6 weeks before hand preparing to wear ear-plugs. That made all the difference, as sleep is what makes retreats possible for me. I also invested in a box of Paramol which, whilst inadvertently starting a dependency I have since had to break, got me through feeling almost in perfect health.
So, yes - health plays an important role in my life. It’s hard to say whether this is old karma giving me an opportunity for me to transmute it into a letting go of body and self, or an attachment that supports the continuation of self. Hard to say or know about anything really - but I’ll keep going.
At this point in writing this report, I am plagued by many strong feelings. Why am I writing it? In part, having just finished reading the New Chan Forum, I have been triggered into doing so. I was both bothered and inspired by the degree of wisdom in the waking up experiences I had been reading. Does my ego feel challenged in its quest to get to the top of the mountain all-alone? Competition was both encouraged by my upbringing and discouraged by my parenting? Ambivalence is thus the hallmark of the experience of Me: noticed by John who appeared quite concerned by the degree of split I demonstrated on this retreat.
After the bothered feeling, which was mild and lasted maybe for an hour after reading the magazine, feelings of inspiration and gratitude arose and my botheredness subsided in fresh gratitude for everyone involved in the dharma experience. Then – relief. I sense, with an enormous outward sigh of letting go, that I am part of the whole caboodle that is the movement from ignorance to enlightenment - to going beyond all of it. Maybe reading the NCF magazine removed a blockage to writing this report.
The retreat seemed at the time to be uneventful. I had asked myself for an uneventful one, the last two had been so unbelievably full of action. (I asked myself to go gently, no big stuff please). Does this mean that no big stuff happened or that I hid it from myself, so that I could process it over time?
Other points of significance on this retreat: it was a new format with John delivering teachings on emptiness that were a new experience for him, I believe. It was wonderful to hear this Dharma being revealed, there was a mixture of confusion, spell-bound attention and a great heightening of energy in the room on the day he broached the new ground. The talk ran over from 45 minutes to an hour and ten and I was in agony as my bladder urgently pushed to release itself. In the end, I had to rush off and by the time I got back the talk had ended. I felt I’d broken a spell but the spell had not disappeared - instead it was lapping into the warm, sunlit air as we spilled ourselves out from the Chan Hall, a hum of unspoken conversation hanging between us full of undefined yet very potent possibilities. The whole life process was zinging so much within ourselves and outside of ourselves in the world - it was tangible, a touching of the beyond-life-and-death. Its enormous reality was revealed, and we experienced it each according to our ability.
I suppose that I should be talking about the “mummy’s curse’’, since from a practice point of view it was the big breakthrough of this retreat. It’s interesting how I am walking around it. It’s almost as though, although it was the practice breakthrough, it wasn’t any more or less significant than anything else and yet that would be to underestimate its impact. Are all things really this equal?
John helped me to discover that “mummy’s curse” was the moment a voice pipes up full of criticism, anxiety, imperious warnings, angry exhortations quite shattering the state of one-mind as soon as it emerges. I realised that it was my mother. As we discussed this and I continued to sit and observe it, it became apparent that mummy’s voice extends beyond my living mother - with whom I have had the grace and good fortune to build an adult-adult relationship. It includes all my conditioning. John expressed his concern at the profound split within me. He confirmed that the unbroken clarity of experience of the world was correct and to be extended through practice. We guessed that my internal “mummy” was freaked out by this and fighting it, probably because ‘she’ was rendered utterly redundant by it. We dubbed this dissenting voice the ‘mummy’s curse’.
The bated breath practice did work wonders to quell the voice. I said to John that, now I had confirmation that the clear unbroken awareness meant things were going along the correct path, I would adopt the bated breath practice every moment of consciousness. He looked doubtful but sort of nodded.
Things settle down after that, with the voice chattering away sort of somewhere below the left elbow almost like a small child persistently and absently chattering away. Strange also that it is changing as I write about it from mummy to child. Interestingly, when consciousness broke into the experience of no-mind on the previous retreat, it was located in the same place. Hmm. Curious.
The end of the retreat arrived and we started to talk as the day opened up and we prepared to leave. I went to speak briefly to John and was struck by the change in him. I had seen it at the previous retreat at Gaia House, my first meeting with him; seeing it a second time, I wondered what it meant. He seemed sad in a resigned sort of way. It was as though for a week, the world and all its dreadfulness, its pain and pointless cruelty had been held at bay, maybe even reversed for a while as we way-fared together into the fullness and emptiness of it all; but that it was seeping back into his consciousness, unbidden and unwanted. I was bubbling away in front of him and, as he watched me, nodding slightly, I felt suddenly as though he didn’t believe that it would last, that once I was ‘out there’ I would forget to bate the breath, watch the self, practice and continue to evolve. Was he being a mirror to me? Was I being a mirror to him?
It felt as though something was piercing my heart but it didn’t hurt, didn’t bleed, didn’t even affect me right then other than to make me wonder and want to hug him forever. I wanted to continue to talk but I felt as though I was paining him and so went away, unsure of what was happening but not wanting to be causing anybody any harm. I knew perfectly well that he could have been suffering from indigestion or back pain from sitting for more prolonged periods than normal. My problem was that as soon as I had noticed and started to process what was coming in to me through my senses about another, my ego was involved and I didn’t want to take any chances.
Picking up life again on return seemed straightforward, particularly compared to the previous retreat. However, my body had been quite gutted by the regime and as the days became weeks, the impact made itself known. I simply couldn’t return to life quite as it had been before I went on the retreat. Some of my chronic fatigue symptoms returned and worsened. I continued to work but shut down any social activities, stayed in evenings and weekends, read, meditated in a chair or on my back, reflected.
So, this is life then? Is this all I can do? Is this the sum of my contribution? Am I alone in my pride and guilt at wanting to be a Bodhisattva, liberate innumerable sentient beings and feeling simultaneously that this cannot help but make me superior in some way as my merits and attributes increase, whilst feeling an utter failure at the task? Superior and alone. The two worst feelings I have to combat – pride and ego at their best. My personal obstacles are so familiar that I can locate and stroke them in the dark without even having to think about it, like a favourite pet. Perhaps our ignorance is our favourite pet since we will do everything within our power to feed it and keep it from dying.
After a while, I picked up Master Shen Yen’s Complete Enlightenment again and the notes I’d made on the Avatamsaka Sutra before I gave it away at around chapter 30. I found that all that business about saving beings for an eternity without wearying (it kept exhorting me), was depressing because I felt that, with this body, not being weary was something I was not likely to experience in this lifetime. Having this book in the house made me feel obliged to keep studying it and confronting my inadequacy to meet the Bodhisattva challenge. It was not helping me, so I opted as I always do in times of spiritual danger, to repeat the vows to protect intention and follow the breath to protect clarity of mind. Compassion and wisdom. The twin pillars. Keep faith and keep moving.
I had been trying to bate the breath at work and at home but my attention kept slipping. The clarity of the sky however is never lost, however many clouds may gather and grumble sometimes into full-blown storms. The clear sky is always there, the crucible in which it all happens. I decided that watching my ego play itself out in this clarity would have to do. Let go completely –
How far
Can I let go
And still function?
The question that immediately follows this is always, “How far should I let go?”
What does mummy have to say about all this? Mummy says, “What sort of a monstrous ego do you have to even presume you could be anywhere near this point? It’s irrelevant to you! You’re ego is so large, its root so deep, you’re not going to have to worry about this for a few hundred thousand lifetimes yet.”
Sometimes, I feel as though I’m my own Shutter Island. Is Mummy right? Does she keep me from developing an even bigger ego? Or is she proof that I am in fact in danger of relinquishing ego (even Mummy herself) and she’s trying to build my ego up by making me believe I am not able to be a Bodhisattva and follow the path to the end which is no end but a total dissolving of self?
So, I keep repeating the vows, keeping the mind clear, and watching. This is all I can do. Reading the NCF made me feel for a moment wonderfully free. I am a drop in the ocean. This ocean has been filling and emptying with drops for years, forever, unwearyingly; drops falling in, drops evaporating out. This ocean of Bodhi is so vast it doesn’t increase or decrease in size. I am a part of this. I am safe. I don’t have to worry. That part’s over – if I can let it be.
To know, to see the illusory nature of everything doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything. To experience nirvana, doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything. To pierce the veil, to rip every last illusion away doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything. What needs to be helped? What needs to be changed? The bottom line is – what is it we are trying to end? Who is it that needs to end it?
Even confronting head-on the utterly shocking answer to this question doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything. Karma must still play itself out. This we cannot avoid. This is what Mummy holds on to. I’m guessing that after all the reading and reflection my path is not the fast one. It is the slow, painful, ‘walking without shoes up a very stony road’ one. Again, the Avatamsaka sutra comforts us with the notion that the long, slow, painful road is the more beneficial for the Bodhi ocean in the long run.
It strikes me as so sad that I need so much reassurance. I wish it weren’t so, I wish I could run blithely up that road without pain, saving innumerable sentient beings with no fear, no wearying of body. My mind is never weary – my God – how come I’ve never mentioned that until now? My body is weary. But I never weary of studying, reading, sharing, contemplating the single most important truth. I cannot get enough of it. When Mind is cleared so that it is like the sky, it contemplates its nature with the naked, unblinking, unswerving devotion of a lover. My whole life is devoted to it.
Is my weary body in fact my best friend, my ally? I am celibate. I do not drink alcohol or caffeine. I do not smoke. I can only socialise once, maybe twice a week. I eat a plant-based diet. I don’t have a television. I hardly use the internet. I do a full-time job that I can manage easily with little stress. All due to my body. And all I see is that I cannot sit on the cushion and rush around spreading the dharma and saving people and so have failed. Instead, I sit or lie for hours in silence, watching, contemplating, marvelling at – what? With unswerving determination, I deconstruct self-referencing thoughts, feelings, emotions that get in the way of and obstruct my view of – what? I don’t know. I can’t explain what I’m doing, why I do it. I can’t even tell what it is I am looking at. Just... Am I involved? I’ve no idea. This drifting through infinite space. It just happens. More than that I cannot say.
I feel bitterly inadequate in my ability to save others. I cannot regularly attend a teacher or a Chan group, nor am I destined to teach. Why does this irk me? Because Mummy is there, at my elbow, driving me on, reminding me of my failure to fulfil my aspirations. “Is it any wonder?” I say to myself, “You pick what has to be THE most difficult challenge in the world and then think you can achieve it!” Always I look for what more, what else could be done.
When am I happiest? Sitting in front of the fire or in the sun, at rest or reading a sutra. How can that possibly be enough all by itself? Mummy wants to know. I have no answer. I hope that this rambling has some value. It seems to lack that certain something that the other reports have. They are full of such incredible wisdom and worth. This seems to be a muddled musing of no real substance or conclusion ‘signifying nothing’. Rambling aimlessly on as I feel life does. I suppose it is a reflection of how I experience life. For what it’s worth, here it is, warts and all, wishing well to anyone who should read it.
Namaste …
