In the yard, after the rain, every step makes mud. Why do I hate the squelching?
Mixed-up youth, far-out experiences. I first read about Zen, as a 15-year-old in 1966, in Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen". I was immediately attracted by the sense of the Zen masters knowing something that was wonderful yet ordinary in that it was always present. From that time, for perhaps 7 years, I read much about Zen and Buddhism, and began trying to meditate. During this time I left school and went to university, from which I graduated with a degree in philosophy and social sciences. Thereafter I entered a very "mixed up" period of my life. However, during this time I had a whole series of experiences of something that felt transcendent. I would typically be walking outside in wide-open spaces and suddenly, for a second or two, would have an acute sense of something that contained everything within its being. This "something" was experienced as being extraordinarily real.
Most of these experiences I've forgotten. One of the last I do remember though: walking home down a quiet road from my part-time job as a waiter in a busy cafe. Without doing anything special, my mind was relatively quiet - suddenly I felt a little audibly fizzing ball of mental activity and energy almost physically zipping out of my head and disappearing into the distance. As it went I realised that it was the immense amount of mental chattering and activity that had always been going on all the time... and a moment later I found myself looking over at some trees and a large hotel in the distance and knowing that it was God who was looking out through my eyes. (I wasn't a Christian, although I'd thought much about "God" and was acquainted with how some Christian mystics expressed themselves. In particular, the central technique recommended by the author of the "Cloud of Unknowing" struck me as being an exact functional equivalent of working on a koan.) These experiences made me realise there was a way of experiencing that carried with it the conviction that this was how things really were.
From about 1975 to 1982 I meditated with a fair degree of regularity, i.e., for about an hour most days. However, my mind in those days was a seething mass of mental activity, and these attempts at meditation were mainly not very effective, although I seem to remember that I eventually discovered how to use the physical act of breathing and sitting as a sort of handrail along which I could pull myself towards silence. But a change in my external life circumstance was taking place, and in the early 80s I abandoned zazen.
Money, lovely money! I had been interested in Japan and various aspects of Japanese culture from an early age, and as early as 1972 had decided to go to Japan to practise Zen. To this end I began teaching myself spoken Japanese. In my "mixed-up" period I stopped this, but in 1976 took it up again and was making good progress when Japanese friends encouraged me to start studying the written language. This I did, avidly, and an enquiry about a dictionary led to my going to Sheffield University, where I studied on an intensive 7-week course in reading scientific and technical Japanese. On returning home, I practised assiduously every day and began trying to get work from translation agencies. After years of being very poor, my new-found career as a technical Japanese-English translator began to take off. Annual earnings started to rise, and by the late 80s my increased professional confidence coincided with high inflation, and I raised my rates substantially year by year. I became enchanted with the whole process of getting increasingly proficient at what I did, building up my freelance translation business, learning more and more about interesting and cutting-edge technical fields (I had been an excellent maths and science student at school), and getting the large amounts of money I was beginning to earn. Zen and certainly zazen receded into the background of my concerns as I immersed myself in the world of work and upward mobility. However, I think that some sort of concern with the nature and quality of my moment-by-moment experience never completely disappeared.
Coming full circle. At the back of my mind was always the knowledge that I should take up the practice of zazen again, but for many years I put it off. Eventually, a few years after the break-up of a 17 year long marriage, I moved to Edinburgh with a new partner and learned of a Chan meditation group led by Frank Tait, who had participated in Maenllwyd retreats. I sat with this group several times, and thus got started again. However, my commitment was not yet mature, and any time that translation deadlines were pressing, zazen go omitted.
Another decisive experience, however, seems to have been a little insight that arose on a visit to Amsterdam. Sitting beside a canal after a few puffs on a joint I found myself acutely aware of a single thought as an almost solid object moving slowly through the space of my mind. And, looking at the canal and a barge and a man on the barge, I saw clearly that the world of my ordinary consciousness was simply the space in which everything occurred, thoughts as much as barges, and was somehow fundamental and absolute. On returning to Edinburgh, a few days later, I was walking down the many stairs from our top-floor flat when I realised that the mental silence I was aiming at in zazen was not something to be cultivated - it is actually always there.
Anyway, whatever the acuteness or accuracy of these little insights, they did have the effect of encouraging me to start sitting more regularly than for many years.
Anticipating my first sesshin. Having read so much about Zen in my earlier life, I now found myself with little desire to read about it. However, a book my sister had given me a few years ago ("Meetings with Remarkable Women") contained a chapter on Charlotte Joko Beck, and Beck's way of talking about Zen experience had impressed me. I bought her two books and appreciated her approach. I noted her repeated encouragement to combine daily practice with as many sesshins as possible, and on this basis I determined to take up Frank Tait's suggestion of trying a Western Zen Retreat.1 I visited the Western Chan Fellowship web pages now and then and was appalled by the amount of talk about Zen. However, I was encouraged by the first-hand accounts of retreats submitted by retreatants. I purchased "Space in Mind", a compilation of papers that includes one by John Crook outlining and analysing the WZR retreat. I felt that I had some preliminary idea of what this retreat would involve.
I was looking forward to lots of zazen, confident of having cracked the problem of sitting pain. My stool has a removable central leg, and I can interchange legs of different lengths. I experimented with these, and decided I preferred the shortest, since then I'm sitting nearest the ground and feel more grounded. However, I was slightly worried about the "communication exercise", since I knew that any answer had to go beyond describing facts about myself, and I was uncertain how I would deal with this question more directly.
The retreat process. I'm a bit late, but the retreat proper hasn't quite begun. People are still chatting and drinking tea. Everyone seems friendly, though there is an air of intentness. John Crook makes his introductory remarks and we all briefly say who we are and why we have come. Then the retreat begins.
I quickly discover that my anticipation of relatively pain-free sitting won't be realised. I've miscalculated badly! The short leg that had been great for one daily 30-minute sit at home is now useless in preventing excruciating pain in repeated sessions of zazen, despite each 30-minute session having a break of 5 to 10 minutes in between for walking meditation or just strolling outside for a breath of fresh air and a pee in a field. I ask the very approachable guestmaster about leg pain, and he suggests I try to view the experience as a pure sensation and observe how it changes with time. He also says there is no harm in changing my posture halfway through a sit, and notes that after a few days I may find the pain simply disappears. I have a little success with these measures, but on the whole the pain does not disappear, although by the last day there are periods when I can concentrate on just sitting rather than on the pain! And yes, when I do make myself just experience the pain in my knees rather than react to it, inexplicably - even when quite severe - it sometimes temporarily vanishes! Strange... unfortunately, it never goes away for long!
As a first-time WZR participant, I have to look into the question of who I am. My various partners in the exercise sit facing me and say: "Mike, tell me who you are... " At first, I just try to get a sense of who I am in the present moment. I'm uncomfortable with this!
I have a first interview with John Crook, our Zen teacher. For me, John communicates a sense of "no hesitation". What he does seems to flow very naturally. He blends seriousness, intelligence and humour. In the interview, his manner is not heavy - he makes me feel that what is going on and what we are discussing is very natural, and this somehow defuses the situation of most of the "Oh, I've got to be good for the Zen master" type of projection.
John tells me it's better not to short-circuit the communication exercise (CE) process by immediately trying to leave words behind. He advises me to start with some brief verbal outlining of who I am.
This I do in subsequent CE sessions, and now I find myself progressing. After a day and a half I find myself back trying to feel my way into who I am in the present, but this time it feels as if some sort of process of enquiry had been set in action.
By day 2 of the CE, I feel more focused in the present. I'm telling my questioners that I realise that I'm all that I'm aware of moment by moment... that I'm like a river of experience... When I'm asked the question, I feel some sort of emotional block arising in me. Emotional, since it has a thought component (something like "I should be able to say who I am. I'm bad because I can't...") and a body sensation component (which I variously describe as being like a solid, hard, opaque rock in my head). I say that this block is like a rock in the river, impeding the flow. Subsequently, I realise that this block is part of me, too, and this seems to take me a little step further.
Later, while on one of the daily afternoon periods when everyone is free to walk over the very beautiful surrounding fields, paths and hills for 45 minutes, I find myself walking up the steep track away from the house, angry with myself for being so pathetic that I can't say who I am. For of course I sense that I'm just myself... but for some reason lack confidence in saying this. This keenly felt anger helps, and for a short while I have a vivid sense of just being myself! Here's what I jotted down quickly later that afternoon:
Sunday: walking up the hillside, angry at not being able to respond to 'Who are you?' Get serious, Mike! So later, in pairs, I realised that, although I had hesitation, there should be no problem, since I am always in the right place to answer it: I am where I am. My perceptions are there. The environment is there. Even my hesitation is there... It's all me. John said, not what you have, but what you are. Not having (an experience), but being one.
Later, back at the CE, I'm still fighting to be able to say "I'm me!"... my mind comes up with another image: I'm a large railway station. The station is happy to let anything pass through it. That is what it does. The block sensation that arises when I'm confronted with the question is just one more thing passing through the station. I wonder if I find it hard to deal with because it is so static.
Finally, on the last morning of the retreat, I manage some more concentrated zazen, and press on with my question, which increasingly I've found easier to keep "holding" in a very direct, felt way... and at some point, the words from one of the texts we chant every morning come to mind: "Look directly behind your face." These words become very meaningful, and then I experience a sort of stillness that somehow always lies behind my present moment. I seem to be this stillness. In my final interview, I describe this to John and he acknowledges the experience and gives me some tips on future practice.
A couple of retreat moments Against the blue grey sky of dawn the black tree sings. Little bird, filling space in your invisibility.
One afternoon. I find myself musing on interconnectedness. John has mentioned that the weather at Maenllywd is under the influence of the Atlantic. Where does the Atlantic end? Water molecules from "the ocean" are now scudding overhead as I walk over the hills above the house. The substance of the Atlantic is now here. And later, standing in the darkish hallway between the library and the Chan hall, I find myself looking at a small patch of intense sunlight striking the brown wooden wall. Seeing the shape of the illuminated patch change as the wind outside blows a tree branch, I realise that at the atomic level, the surface of objects must be continually interacting with photons in incredibly complex patterns. I have a keen sense of the unimaginable complexity of the interactions of this universe.
Post-retreat experiences. The day after returning home, walking to the local shops, I am getting that shifted perspective: everything I see is within me. I do not have to do anything: just let everything appear as it does. At one point I have this little degree of insight into who I am and simultaneously experience a particular desire. This is striking - for I experience the desire with a clarity and objectivity that is usually absent... what a fascinating physiological occurrence desire truly is!
When the shifted perspective disappears, I concentrate on letting my breathing breathe relaxedly just as it wants, and maintain a vivid sense of being centred, being me. After a while, I notice the expanded perspective again. I'm reminded of something Chogyam Trungpa wrote: he was saying that first you must practise being centred, and then gradually expand and realise there is no centre. I feel I understand this statement more directly now than before.
Retreat + 1 week. As the insight fades, familiar thoughts and feelings reappear. For example, the "My life is a succession of mistakes" roundabout, with the "Wasted time" and "All in the wrong order" phrases making their usual appearance. I'm amazed at how readily the non-insightful mind can get tangled up in itself... can spin a lace-work that by a complex interconnection and interaction of sets of thoughts and feelings actually manages to conjure up an "I". If enough interconnected thoughts point to a fiction labelled "I", eventually the fiction gains a ghost life that believes the thoughts and experiences them as truths about "its" "reality".
The small degree of insight that was present has more or less gone. I find myself trying to wriggle my way back into it, but I know that "whoever tries to re-create an experience is in the Devil's kitchen". Such efforts simply disturb the mind. The way forward is to continue practising letting the mind be. Zazen. Sit there, breathing naturally. Only now I seem to have this question as a viable additional technique.
It seems to me that insight is a natural faculty that will tend to arise when the mind is quiet enough. The quieter the mind/body, the more self-obvious its nature.
Already thinking of a next WZR.
