As I write this, two days after my return, I am fine tuned. My heart is brilliant, clear and unobstructed. Someone throws a ball for a dog, which charges across the park, a furry blur of mad energy with scampering legs, and I laugh out loud. The sky has a glow which takes your breath away. I respond to these things with delight and amusement. I hear about the school massacre and weep without anger. My neighbours are lovely. Shop assistants are charming. I find music buoyant and funny. The Buddha taught that all sentient beings have the profound and subtle dharma within them, but that human beings, because of their sticky attachments, don’t know it. All of us are perfect human beings with hearts that are brilliant, clear and unobstructed, if we can get past the sticky attachments.
I seem to have got fine tuned on the koan retreat. It did not always feel like it at the time. As usual at the Maenllwyd, there were certain inconveniences, plus the aches and pains of tensing up on one’s cushion, and frustrations over wandering thoughts. But Simon’s teaching was without flourishes, aimed directly at the clear heart, and very precise about how our mental machinations get in the way of clarity. He meticulously anatomised how mixed motivations, rigid expectations, fantasies about enlightenment, trying to recreate past experiences one is still attached to, hanging onto one’s favourite ideas, over-intellectualising, getting stuck repeating second-hand concepts, uncertain commitment, lack of confidence and so on and so on are all varieties of stickily attached obstructions to the clarity. We trick ourselves out of our own joy in living. Interviews personalised the theme. He homed in on my own particular favourite evasions, distractions and self-deceptions.
Anyway, somehow or other I have ended up like this, for the moment, for a few days: a perfect human being with an open heart.
