I approached the retreat with some trepidation owing to my being workmaster, my first time on a retreat of any size. Previously I had carried out this role, but only on smaller retreats and very much as an assistant. This time I had to get things organised and, most worrying of all, get up in the morning and get things started! Not only that, but make sure I didn't miss giving any signals and let the retreat get behind. The first night I slept badly, dreaming of not waking up. Having got through the first night, and the terrors of dealing with the dreaded Tilley lamps at 4.30 am, things settled down and I began to relax a little and even to enjoy myself.
I selected the koan in which Joshu goes to visit Linchi, who responds to a question about the Dharma by saying 'Just now, I am washing my feet'. Joshu leans forward as if to hear more, and Linchi looks up and says 'So, do I need to toss out another ladleful of dirty water'. Joshu then leaves. Something about this slightly edgy dialogue appealed to me, not least the apparently rather sour rejoinders of Linchi. In working on the koan, both reflecting and pondering on it in meditation, it became more resonant and personal and crystallised into Linchi's 'just now'. What was Linchi's 'now'?
In the day or so that followed I spun around this phrase, using it as a focus for meditation with increasing involvement and fascination, though with plenty of lapses too. 'Breathing is so interesting' I remember thinking at one point. By late afternoon on the third day there was a strong sense of presence and feelings of sweetness and even bliss arising within the meditation. By the time of my interview that afternoon, I was experiencing a very clear but warm state of mind, solidly established and quite steady. The interview however made it clear to me that, while the meditation might be strong, I had missed the point of the koan. What about Joshu? Somehow, I had neglected him completely. A bit cast down I returned to sitting, and later saw that I should focus more on what had happened between them. What was it that they both understood in that interchange?
The next morning, on the fifth full day, I had a strong image of a connection flashing between the two of them, mirroring their talk and gestures. This image seemed to be the trigger for the unfolding of a whole series of experiences, over which I had no influence or control; I just rode them as they washed through and took me over. During the morning service I had a powerful sense of understanding the 'form and emptiness' phrases in the Heart Sutra; I could not have said what I meant by understanding, it was simply a powerful experience of connection, that these lines were suddenly and briefly meaningful. The sense of connectedness then spread to everything. As I looked around the Chan Hall I felt that everyone and everything was responding to everything else in a continual interplay; in retrospect, almost a dance. I began to cry, deeply and steadily, from neither sadness nor joy, but just in response. The sense of interconnectedness then metamorphosed into something more. The phrase 'part of the sea' came into my mind. From being aware of everything being interconnected, I became completely immersed as part of the ocean. Everything was the ocean in an endless ebb and flow. After a while I emerged from this, only to be swept on into something entirely different.
Suddenly, explosively, with no warning or transition, I was looking down into a void, suspended over vast space as if falling. A phrase leapt into my mind - 'I can't find myself!'. Writing this now, it is impossible to recapture the absolute reality of this experience; the best I can say is that I had fragmented and was scattered like dust throughout this void. This experience was brief, as best I could judge, and I came to in the Chan Hall sobbing deeply and shaken to my core. I felt as if I had been in an explosion, as if a bomb had exploded next to me. I was dazed, disoriented and had a drastic sense of dislocation, as if everything in the world had changed. I sat through breakfast in a dazed state, not frightened or alarmed, but in no condition to take on the duties of a workmaster. The only comparable sense of dislocation I had ever had was after a major bereavement, when it seemed that the whole world was irrevocably and forever changed.
Fortunately I was helped by the guestmaster, who suggested I might go for a walk rather than try to handle the work period. I set off up the hill to find I had entered an extraordinary world. I looked curiously around, examining both inner and outer worlds. At full strength this state of mind must have lasted an hour or more, so I had the wonderful luxury and opportunity of time to observe and appreciate. I knew this was an opportunity to understand something, though I didn't quite know what. 'Tsan' I said to myself. This world was strange, not frightening but abruptly and absolutely different. What were its features?
The first thing that struck me, and continued to strike me, was that everything seemed 'right'. Everything was absolutely in its proper place, doing exactly what it should; every stream, every stone, every tree. The sense of rightness was like coming home after a long journey and seeing a familiar room, with everything in its place, reassuring and deeply satisfying. I sat and admired the wonder and perfection.
The second feature was that I seemed, in a way I could not understand, to be both present and absent at the same time. I had a strong sense of physical presence and I seemed to be able to think and reflect on things, if I wanted to. However, I was absent in the sense that I did not seem to be 'in the way'. Thoughts appeared with great clarity, but once past they left no trace and did not disturb the perfection. There was none of the usual fuss, random reactions and bothersome intrusions, though I only realised later how absolutely all this had cleared away.
Third, and linked to this, was an extraordinary clarity and sense of the aliveness of everything. Looking around, I responded to everything with immediacy and sensitivity. 'The thousand things enlighten me' I thought, and this seemed at the time to be not an insight, but just a recognition, a matter of simple observation.
A fourth feature, deeply puzzling, was the absence of my own personal feelings and responses. There was an immediacy and sensitivity to experience, but somehow without my usual personal responses and feelings. Did I feel good? Did I feel bad? I tried to understand this odd state of affairs. Feeling good or bad, normally such a dominating issue, did not seem to be of much account. Later, coming down the hill, I reflected on this again. Were my feelings important? They didn't seem to be at that moment. Well, if not, what was important? The answer came - walking down the hill. This again is hard to describe. The best I can say is that the raw, simple, complete experience of walking was primary, sufficient in every way. I had a strong sense that all my personal responses were still available, but had been set aside some distance away. They were there but not engaged.
Although I did examine and reflect on these experiences in turn, and it seems clearest to describe them that way, they were not in fact separate. Rather, I gradually noticed different facets of this world. The overall experience, was complete and integrated, powerfully and unarguably so, with all these features simultaneously present. Later in an interview, John asked me if the Dharma seemed obvious at this time. I had not previously thought of it in this way, but replied unhesitatingly that 'obvious' was exactly right. It may have been strange, but everything was just there for me to see and experience.
Sometime later, engaged in the retreat again, I was sitting on a bench and thought of the story in which the monk presents a poem in which the mind is described as like a mirror; practice is to polish the mind so that no dust settles. Hui Neng, responds in his verse to the effect that there is no mind and nowhere for the dust to settle. This seemed perfectly, almost casually, clear to me; a simple matter of description. In the void I had experienced there was obviously nowhere for dust to settle. Writing this now it seems almost arrogant, but at the time it was just as if someone was pointing out a particular kind of tree in the yard.
I was also helped, in an interview, to notice that the sweetness and immediacy had a quality of movement and flow. Did I understand the Heart Sutra in relation to what I was describing? No, I had not thought in those terms; intellectually the Heart Sutra had always seemed quite opaque although I understood it. John reflected back what I had been saying. "Oh, you mean the unfolding quality. Yes, of course". As he spoke I had a strong experience of fragility, of the fragility of the mind and of the world, one aspect of this flow and movement. Yes, John explained, remember the flower the Buddha offered to Mahakashyapa. Suddenly I understood; the flower is the fragility of the world, the sweetness, the flowing, changing quality.
These experiences continued to varying degrees the whole of that day and the next, and after the end of the retreat. Feelings of rightness, immediacy and sensitivity came and went. I began to also notice the sense of flowing and movement, which continued intermittently several days after the retreat ended. All of these were underpinned, by a strong, almost overpowering clarity and illumination which seemed to co-exist with my ordinary mind. The illumination that emerges from silence during meditation, may leave one feeling clear and spacious but the experience afterwards is not quite the same. Now however it was there in the background all the time. I only had to take my attention off my immediate activity, and there it was with an almost physical energy and brilliance.
Reflections Later
The experiences continued to echo and bring further reflections. I feel as if I have been given (and given is certainly the word) an incredible 'experiential tutorial' - in which many different experiences were presented for understanding and appreciation. Reading one of Shih Fu's books just after the retreat I saw a description of wisdom. 'Things are as they are, vivid and clear. You can respond appropriately and give what is needed. Clear awareness of things as they are, in this state of selflessness, is what Chan calls wisdom'. This was, for once, completely clear. Other things continued to clarify; the sense of rightness, it suddenly struck me, exists precisely because one's personal preferences are absent.
I had two interviews after the initial experiences, both enormously important. In the first, I very much needed to talk. I needed above all to share these overwhelming experiences with someone who would understand. I was still very much within the experience so much of the first interview was questions and checking, with my struggling to explain and describe. This interview steadied me and helped things to unfold further. By the next day I was able to reflect more and begin to assimilate the experiences to some extent. John drew much more from me than I had realised myself, expanding my understanding and helping me appreciate what was happening and how it linked to the many things I had read but not fully understood. It is not customary to write about these interviews in our reports, but these interviews strongly influenced the course of both the experience and understanding.
Now, writing again almost three weeks later, I am deeply but quietly grateful for all of this. At the time my sense of gratitude was oddly muted, which was puzzling as on previous retreats I have often had deep feelings of gratitude. I felt initially that this was because the experiences had the quality of being obvious and, in a sense, unremarkable. This may be partly the reason. However, on further reflection something else emerged - the raw fact of my own irrelevance in the face of this experience. This vision of the world, for all its beautiful qualities, was absolutely stark and uncompromising, like being in a wonderful but unforgiving landscape. I am grateful now, but at the time gratitude was perhaps not a possible response to being shown to scarcely exist at all.
What enabled this to happen? A gift certainly. There was nothing to suggest that I was working harder than anyone else; if anything I was struggling to maintain a proper focus. I was tired, and stretched. Being the work master though gave me an important outward focus. I couldn't fuss too much about myself; I was too busy. I am also tempted to think of this as marking a point in a long struggle over the last few years to get myself 'out of the way' in meditation. Gradually, I have more and more seen myself as actively creating problems within meditation and on a previous retreat to actually experience a real surrender. There is something else too, deeply precious beyond any of this. My mother had died two years before. For me, as for many people, a terrible and deeply unsettling loss. I was conscious, and a little apprehensive, that the anniversary would fall during the retreat. Many of my prostrations were in gratitude for my mother. The morning of this second anniversary was the morning of the ocean and the void. Perhaps my mother's final loving gift.
