I arrived at the farmhouse a complete innocent. I had not the faintest idea what I was in for and this was just as well or I would never have come at all! My only expectation was that the scenery would be beautiful. 'Experiencing a Buddhist Retreat' was one of the many adventures I'd decided to undertake. I thought 'It may as well be now'. There were intimations that it would be difficult but I wanted to do a 'proper' retreat and have the 'real' experience.
I never intended to do anything as odd as this: sitting in front of a blank wall with a straight back without moving hour after hour after hour. And the breaks weren't real breaks at all! Just a change of mode of the same thing. It was all one long extended happening with absolutely no relief. Oh yes, meals. Thank God for meals. But I'd have exchanged them any day for the deeper nourishment of looking at the scenery. I was shocked, appalled, that it was forbidden. I felt stripped of everything. I felt angry, and then frightened. To have such beauty only the lifting of an eye away, especially when deprived of everything else, felt like utter cruelty. And yet, given that I had landed myself in this catastrophe, I knew that I must give over to the madness and endeavour to do what I was told. I knew that if I cheated I'd have the worst of all worlds, because I also knew that I was not going to quit. I was too proud. The ego has its uses!
Everyone looked so at home, and practised. 'Proper Buddhists' I imagined - and I felt very alone. All I had to fall back on was trust. I decided to trust John, and the ancient methods - even while screaming against them. I decided to get through the ordeal, breath by breath. Except that I couldn't concentrate on my breathing for more than an instant! I couldn't even do the ABC of meditation. I felt utterly inept and stupid.
The first relief came when John gave some instruction about focusing on the body. I'd been avoiding being with my body because of the pain, but in that instant I simply sank into it. And, wonder of wonders, I didn't have to try and make my mind concentrate on my breath or keep up with my breath - my mind and my breath felt one. I was my breath. My breath breathed me. I couldn't not follow my breath because there was nothing else to do. I couldn't forget to follow it because I was it. I couldn't believe that I'd just fallen into it like this - it seemed too easy - I was suspicious of myself. Or rather I tried to be, or felt I ought to be, but it isn't very easy to be suspicious when you feel at one with yourself! So I began to enjoy it, me, the process, the happening - I don't know how to describe it. It was so simple, so pristine and exact in its ordinariness, and yet all the mystery of the universe was there. Those elusive 'gaps' that John had talked about on the first evening were simply there. The stupefying exhaustion - exhaustion such as I have never known, of body, mind and spirit - lifted and I was alive and awake.
There was often a deep emotional pain about a happening in my life that I thought I'd let go of. This was a real shock and a disappointment. However I accepted it and wrote the first day off as a clearing process. No, that isn't quite how it was. I allowed it to be a clearing and respected the need for that. I am used to handling psychological material and so was less inept in that than I was at 'meditating'.
The third day: I expected great things of myself. It was therefore fitting that I had a few very ordinary meditations. I was amused at myself and accepting - after a little disappointment. I felt the rightness of it. I had no difficulties. I was still 'being breathed'. I felt peaceful. But then I began noticing that following the breath had become so natural that I could think thoughts at the same time. They were sort of on the periphery of my mind but were gently and subtly drawing off my energy. How crafty I am! Later colours appeared on my wall, wonderful moving shapes and patterns. It was like a trumpet announcement in colour and shape, settling down into a melodious overture. I just gazed. I followed the movement and enjoyed the impermanence. And each meditation seemed about five minutes long - or rather, timeless - I could hardly believe it when the gong went.
Somewhere in the middle of the retreat John said "Let the universe do it" and another change occurred. Instead of extending out into the universe, the universe entered me. And again the sense of tremendous ease. I had a sense of being the shape of the universe: we were all dynamic, ever moving statues giving definition to the immense infinite Indefinable. And the shaping happened through emptying; through emptiness. The emptier I was, the more I allowed the universe to fill me and the more defined and unique and novel a shape I could give the universe. The emptier I was, the more energy I had, and the more intricately and freshly I could express the universe - or rather it could express itself. I experienced that emptiness was indeed form and form emptiness. One is born of the other in a continual dance. I and the universe are just two different ways of expressing the same happening.
And then the amazing treat came. We went into the field, created a bubble around ourselves which gradually extended into the universe, and were told to open our eyes to take in whatever they chose to light upon. This was the only time I cried - tears, and sobs, of pure joy. Emptiness has such a different quality from blankness. I expected this to be our only chance to look around - a special exercise - but then John said we could keep looking so long as we weren't distracted in any way from our stillness. The whole retreat now became a series of treats and joys. I was completely adjusted to the routine and so every time we did something different, which usually involved the countryside, I felt like a child who has been given an unexpected present. What completion, pure joy, worth all the early stark obedience.
Sometimes my body seemed to reshape itself into other bodies. It first became an old man's body, brown with a humped back. And I breathed as him. Many bodies came and went. An eskimo woman was another. I could feel my face change shape utterly - all alive and prickly with sensation - and I trusted my body knew what it was up to. The changes happened in a very imperceptible way - very minuscule in movement and slow. Also each person was utterly distinct in quality. And they all breathed very differently. One had a fish hook caught in his left nostril - very painful - but I had learnt not to fear pain by this time. That was a wonderful learning.
Again I began to be suspicious that I was simply entertaining myself, playing tricks with myself. But I decided; 'what the hell, I may as well trust it'. Later a meaning came to me. All these people, although they breathed differently, had the same space between their breaths - knew the same emptiness and allowed the same filling process, while at the same time manifesting utter diversity. I felt a new sense of presence in the space - a new power - it was Power Itself. And I knew the space, the Indefinable, was absolutely indestructible - that nothing, not even a nuclear war, could even slightly disturb it.
