Previous Western Zen Retreats have been enormously powerful and emotional experiences and I brought with me all sorts of expectations.
My koan was "What is life?" The aspect of my life that came up over and over again was to do with my work, specifically the job I am doing now, which involves four hours travelling a day and is turning out more and more to be not what I want to do.
Last summer on the Chan retreat I felt that for the first time I had begun to understand what is meant by "practice", and for the first time I was practising in the sense of working; working progressively and steadily, taking the 'good' meditation sessions along with the less 'good', in the knowledge that all is practice and it leads somewhere.
This WZR felt like a fairly steady progression. A deepening of steadiness in the practice. I felt a great love for the practice. For the things it teaches me. I feel confirmed now in the certainty that I can take whatever comes up in my life and sit with it with the Buddha.
The word that keeps coming up for me is "maturity". I am facing life issues that are to do with maturity - what to do about my working life after 20 years in the same line; about not repeating errors. It feels a very big and very serious thing.
So the practice is rooting itself very deeply. No youthful fireworks. I am continuing.
