Skip to main navigation Skip to main content Skip to page footer
Western Chan Fellowship logo Western Chan Fellowship logo
  • Home
  • About
    • About the WCF
    • Lineage
      • Lineage
      • Lineage Chart
      • Chan Master John Crook
      • Chan Master Sheng Yen
    • Teachers
    • Liturgy
      • WCF Liturgy
      • Retreat Centre Opening Ceremony
      • Mealtime Ceremonial
      • Maenllwyd Mandala
      • Heart Sutra Transliteration
      • On Pursuing that which Leaves no Tracks
      • Exhortation, Benediction
      • Heart Sutra
      • Diamond Sutra
    • Donations
    • Contacts
      • Contacts
      • Contact WCF Administrator
      • Avoid the spam folder
      • Keeping in Touch
      • Links
    • Gallery
    • Membership
    • History
    • Documents
      • WCF Documents
      • Terms and Conditions
      • Constitution
      • Policies
    • Supplies
      • Dharma supplies
      • Make a Meditation Bench
    • Search
    • About this Website
  • Retreats & Events
    • Considering a retreat? Read on:
    • Retreats & Events Calendar Select a retreat or other event from our calendar
    • General Retreat Information Pre-booking information and advice
    • Retreat Booking How to book a place on a retreat
    • Preparing for Retreats Preparing to attend a retreat
    • Venues Venue information
      • Shawbottom Farm
    • More Events and Retreats Non WCF events which may be of interest
    • Retreat Reports Reviews and testimonials
  • Online Activities
    • Online activities
  • Meditation Groups
    • Local Chan Groups
    • Local Groups Map
    • Birmingham
    • Bristol
    • Cardiff
    • Derbyshire Dales
    • Forest of Dean
    • Glastonbury
    • Hatfield / Welwyn Garden City
    • Kent
    • Leek
    • The Lizard
    • London
    • Manchester
    • Mid-Wales
    • Newbury
    • Nottingham
    • Portsmouth
    • Scottish Chan
    • South Devon
    • Swindon
    • Warsaw - Poland
    • Winscombe
    • Other Groups
  • Resources
    • Dharma Resources
    • Selected Articles Articles for newcomers
    • Retreat Reports Reviews / testimonials
      • Retreat Reports
      • Western Zen Retreat
      • Silent Illumination Retreat
      • Koan Retreat
      • Other Chan Retreat
      • Other Retreats
    • Dharma Library Many articles on Chan Buddhism, meditation and retreats
    • New Chan Forum
    • Chan Magazine
    • Free Books
    • Books Sheng Yen / John Crook
    • Reading List
    • Good Reads
    • Audio Video
  • News
    • News
    • Newsletters
    • Mailing Lists
  • Login
    • Login
    • Set Preferences
    • Registration

You are here:

  1. Western Chan Fellowship
  2. Resources
  3. Dharma Library
  4. How to be Me?

How to be Me?

Lurching up the steep approach road to the Maenllwyd, I liked the feel of a cottage tucked up in the hillside - a Zen mountain temple. Perhaps, not so surprisingly, I instantly recognized one of the participants as an old war-horse from other sesshins. John appeared and made me feel immediately at home. He had a sort of swashbuckling pirate look about him which I rather liked, and an immediate warmth, without it cloying. We were soon invited to say why we had come and I threw myself into the ring saying I wanted to be in charge of my life and that maybe I still gave over some of the charge to my mother. I felt I had taken a step into the unknown, being so upfront, but felt rather rattled too. It felt as if everyone else was a spiritual person who had gravitated along for the joy of it all.

I was a bit staggered to find, even though I had been warned of this, that there wasn't a spare moment in the day - it was an endless treadmill of exercises, services, long hours of sitting and, thank God, meals.

I didn't sleep too well the first night, yet remained curiously alert, somehow knowing what it is like just to remain watchful of all the twists and turns of the restless mind -  like seeing through an open doorway into the room inside. I dreamt eventually of catching fat fishes - on a mackerel line.

Most of my days were spent enduring the pain in my knees. Somehow this brought all my energy forth.  If I could hang on in there, I gradually discovered a steely determination to continue. I came up against the strength of the integral flow of energy which began to reveal in its depths the clarity and luminosity of something that makes it all worthwhile.

The next night I felt painfully clear, as if a part of me had been condemned to a hell too low for anyone to reach. I had been so glued to seeing myself through the eyes of my mother when I was a child, that I daren't trust my own heart mirror. I began to despair, knowing how many times in the past I could sit for long hours and yet be unable to give myself room enough to experience some of the flood of force from the core which longed to flow freely. I thought that John was probably too flippant to help me, even though I was also attracted by his humour and humanity. I felt a surge of energy and I began to growl softly - breathing a little of the fire of the dragon. Then I thought, "To hell with it all and how any of them see me" and I started to do some old bioenergetic exercises and felt a wave of the power surge down into the emptiness where so often in the past I had aborted its flow by disgorging it or by keeping it trapped down. With this I felt a touch of steel and the space I longed for. To have both together was my heart's dream. I stood there feeling a bit like the silent samuri in the Kurosaw film, like a heron on one leg, intensely alert, free and alone in the universe and on the metal of a warrior.

Later that day I led the exercise group into the field. I remember swinging my legs feeling my heavy boots acting like the weight on the end of a pendulum so I was literally goose stepping and feeling like a small boy, released into the joy of an undivided body-mind. I loved giving the exercises, feeling the energy to do that working through me, something I had stopped myself from doing in the past, as I habitually hid the energy I was ashamed of. The retreat unfolded moment by moment - moments of throbbing pain, moments of rebellion, "fuck you I am going to leave, I can't stand it any more", moments of surrender, feeling the world flowing around me, nothing left inside but the one who mysteriously knows it is all the mind.

For me the most potent medicine is the living through of previously disowned heart energy: of sitting in fear, feeling ghastly, not enough left of the conventional mind to even muster up a good intention to sit still, feeling the knots in my muscles being dismembered by the Buddha; weeping for the way I had cruelly tormented the Buddha in me, condemning the beauty, simplicity and atributelessness of my native being to a dark cellar surrounded by coils of suspicious thoughts hissing like snakes whenever something, the hero in me, dared to move to the treasure and declare it free of all the catastrophic judgements the little boy had used to surround my core.

I visualised plunging a dagger into my belly and committing the act of a Hari Kiri. This brought up a lot of fear - suddenly I thought "Perhaps this is mental Hari Kiri." It slashed through the story line with which I have kept myself tied up.

Interviews with J.C. followed smoothly, he soon caught on to where I was and I didn't feel that he at all tried to lord it over me. We discussed how I had interrupted his, to my ears, rather academic talk and he was honest about his irritation and his recognition that somewhere this had got at him. One time, I caught him looking at me after I had made an illicit joke in the Zendo as if he saw me from his heart and I felt touched and pleased by this non-threatening meeting.

I also loved, and not least because my knees were screaming with relief, going on guided walks, leaning into the countryside, becoming one with the trill of the larks, the shrill heart-touching bleats of the lambs, the deep and more resigned baahs of the adult sheep, the laments of the cows, and even the roaring of the farmer's motorbike and the scream of the RAF jets. There were times I asked myself "How would Dogen be?" Suddenly I was at the bottom of all things and everything flowed through me, yet I had the surety and the fullness of being at one with it all.

In a way, this resolved my deepest quest. How to be me? In touch with another, something I knew before but urgently needed reminding of, not by someone's words, but by that apotropaic testimony of the universe witnessing to the truth of oneself.

Back

Related articles

  • Retreat Report: Awareness in the Everyday
    05-04-2025 Anonymous retreatant
  • Online Retreat Report
    05-05-2021 Anonymous
  • Chan Brushwork Retreat 2019
    15-09-2019 Anonymous
  • Reflections on Chan Taster Week, Derbyshire, February 2017
    01-03-2017 Anonymous
  • Working with a Master
    01-09-1999 John Crook
  • Immeasurable Sweetness
    01-09-1998 Anonymous
  • What has Happened to the Entity that was Me?
    30-06-1998 Anonymous
  • No Success, No Failure
    12-12-1994 Anonymous
  • A Nameless Dread
    30-06-1994 Anonymous
  • So Wonderful
    30-04-1993 Anonymous
  • Making Friends With The Universe
    30-04-1993 Anonymous
  • Wind and Silence
    30-04-1993 Anonymous
  • Mind In Flow
    30-04-1992 Anonymous
  • What Can I Say?
    30-04-1992 Anonymous
  • Raising the Doubt
    30-04-1992 Anonymous
  • A Guestmaster's View
    30-04-1992 John Crook
  • On Meeting a Monster
    31-05-1991 Anonymous
  • Contemplating Earth
    01-12-1990 Anonymous
  • Chan Retreat May 1990
    31-05-1990 Anonymous
  • First Retreat Experience
    31-05-1990 Anonymous

Related Links

  • Read more retreat reports Read more retreat reports, submitted by past participants of several types of retreat

  • Author: Anonymous
  • Publication date: 31-05-1991
  • Modified date: 30-07-2025
  • Categories: 1991 Chan Retreat Reports Anonymous
  • Western Chan Fellowship logo Western Chan Fellowship CIO
  • Link to this page
Person sitting on stone block overlooking landscape
Anonymous retreatant
  • Dharma Resources
  • Selected Articles
  • Retreat Reports
  • Dharma Library
  • New Chan Forum
  • Chan Magazine
  • Free Books
  • Books Sheng Yen / John Crook
  • Reading List
  • Good Reads
  • Audio Video

©Western Chan Fellowship CIO 1997-2025. May not be quoted for commercial purposes. Anyone wishing to quote for non-commercial purposes may seek permission from the WCF Secretary.

The articles on this website have been submitted by various authors and the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the Western Chan Fellowship.

Permalink: https://w-c-f.org/Q372-191

View our retreat programme August 23
Western Zen Retreat
Residential Retreat
5 Nights
September 7
Kent Chan Day Retreat
Day Retreat
 
September 26
Weekend Chan Retreat
Residential Retreat
2 Nights
October 4
Investigating Koans
Residential Retreat
7 Nights
November 15
Silent Illumination Retreat
Residential Retreat
7 Nights
November 29
Western Zen Retreat
Residential Retreat
5 Nights
December 7
Kent Chan Day Retreat
Day Retreat
 
Cookie Settings
X

We are using cookies.

We are using cookies on this web page. Some of them are required to run this page, some are useful to provide you the best web experience.

I accept

Individual Cookie Settings

Only accept required cookies.

Privacy Notes Imprint

X

Privacy settings

Here is an overview of all cookies used

Cookies for Statistics

Statistics cookies anonymize your data before use. This information will help us to learn how visitors are using our website.

Show Cookie Information

Hide Cookie Information

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a service which provides statistics and analytical tools that help us understand the activity on the website.

Provider:Google Inc
Cookie name:_ga,_ga_gtag
Cookie lifetime (days):365
Privacy policy:https://policies.google.com/privacy
Host:google.com

Save

BackOnly accept required cookies.

Privacy Notes Imprint

Sitemap

Contact

Western Chan Fellowship CIO

Office 7511
PO Box 6945
London W1A 6US
England

https://westernchanfellowship.org/contact-us

Contact us

Credits

Sun icon by gravisio from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Bed icon by IconMark from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Computer icon by Jony from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

  • Facebook
  • X
  • Instagram
  • YouTube