Rephrasing and Asking

Silent Illumination retreat report

I arrived to the retreat ill. Nothing really serious, just a sore throat and runny nose, but still I was a bit worried about waking up my room-mates with a cough at night. Moreover before the retreat I had neglected my practice, and now expected the first days to be rather difficult. But surprisingly everything went fine: beautiful sunny weather cured me within two days and I got into the practice right from the beginning. Meditation was accompanied by singing birds and the countryside was very beautiful this late spring. The quality of my sleep was excellent. I was feeling as if I were on great vacation. This state lasted for a week or so. I was sure that I would return home very well-rested, like a newborn.

After that week we had a repentance ceremony, after which I didn't feel anything particular, but later on that day my mood worsened dramatically. I started to feel discomfort and anger, the source of which I knew perfectly. It had shown up also on previous retreats. I was angry with my father who had left me when I was a kid. Since then our contact had lessened dramatically and our meetings were rather difficult.

I was inspired with two motives from the talks: one about investigating the source of feelings within ourselves, and another about making vows. So, I was asking myself: "What is the source of this anger? Where is it?" I was feeling very upset and energetic and on that day I decided to sit at night until I solve the problem. Around midnight when asking about the source of anger I saw my own face, which meant to me that I am all anger, or all I am is anger and it is pointless to try to separate it from me. I felt sad and annoyed with meditation, so I went to bed, but couldn't fall asleep until morning.

As the result of a sleepless night the next day I was feeling tired and depressed. I think that it is a pretty common pattern that after excitation and anger comes depression and sadness, which in my case was strengthened with feeling of loneliness. I wouldn't like to be in my wife's shoes if I returned home in this condition. Fortunately it was an interview day, so I got a chance to tell the whole story to the teacher.

I was even a bit surprised that he asked about the background of my feelings; before I thought that we would focus on the practice method only. It turned out to be a great relief – just to simply talk about my problem. On retreats people are all alone; they don't have friends or family around who could support them. This must have been the reason for my feeling of loneliness; after a talk I felt much better.

If it were a one week retreat I would go back home in rather bad shape, like a patient who gets up in the middle of operation and goes home before surgeon finishes his job. Fortunately it was a ten days retreat and the recovery was about to come.

Being so tired I slept perfectly next night and woke up fresh on the next day. During the first round of sitting I had an experience, which I have never had before. The method I was applying was following the breath and body awareness; I usually was able to stay focused but never embraced the whole body with awareness. Either I was following breath or feeling some parts of the body, but never everything as a whole. This time I started to follow advice which I was given in the last interview; it was to investigate my anger in the body in details on the physical level. Suddenly I found myself in a state of extended awareness, I felt my body as a whole. And moreover external sensations like sounds of birds or creaking floor were not distracting this attention at all. I was able to 'follow' both sensations from the body and external ones without distinguishing and categorizing them. Usually when hearing a bird I was moving my attention from the body to the bird, I was recognizing a sound, thinking 'aha, a bird' and then going back to my breath/body practice. This time it was different. Everything was just coming to me as one stream of sensations. But in the same time I was very aware of my body and its boundaries, so I wouldn't describe this state as 'unification' with what is external to myself. I would say that I was feeling like a center point of the circle which sets range of my awareness. And a circle was reaching as far as my sense of hearing. The amazing thing about it was that the state was very effortless. I was able to think about it – "wow, what a feeling" - and not lose it, while thinking. It lasted until the end of the round.

My next interview was also a very important one. I was given a koan which was very accurate to my life situation, 'How do I drop anger'? Just after the interview – even before I started formal practice with that question – I realized that there is no possible way to deal with this huge anger at all. There is just too much of it and there is no way I could go back in time and ease all these negative feelings accumulated over the years. So what I should do instead is focus on the present moment only and rephrase the koan to: "How do I drop anger in the present moment?" Immediately my following feeling was that I can't drop it, because there is no possible way I could be angry at all – in the present moment. This point between past and future is so tiny that nothing could fit in it, including anger. So, there is nothing to drop at all!

Although it seemed like an intellectual deduction (taken from one of the Dharma talks) in my case it was something more, a real feeling, not comprehension only. It was a relief and a comfort – there is no challenge of dropping, because there is nothing to drop at all and there is nothing to worry about.

But still – a strange thing – asking the question made sense. It didn't bring the answer, but it brought me to the still and peaceful place, where I was trying to get to before with the body awareness method.

Surprisingly I got there when trying to do something else – investigate my anger in the body. At that time I wasn't thinking about returning home at all.

The last day of the retreat I was very excited with my experiences. My "center of the circle experience" seemed so effortless that I was sure that it would be easy to reproduce. However it didn't occur again. In fact my excitation rather distracted my attention and latter practice. Then returning home was OK as I was neither depressive, nor enthusiastic.