It was the first time in seven years that I had been back to Maenllwyd. I had not seen the new Chan hall and was very impressed with the conversion. Sleeping arrangements had improved vastly though the slightly hillbilly, unkempt hay barn look had sadly disappeared.
As to the retreat. Sitting was not bad at all. Slightly more formal than in the old upstairs room. But plenty of zafus. Not much wall gazing. Settling down not bad at all. Legs cramped at first. Kneeling with three cushions much better. Koan dropped in. Mind in various states. Drifting, chuntering, still and quiet. What is love? Ah well that would be telling... And the communication exercises? Somehow less intense than being crammed in like sardines, the group dynamic slightly more laid back but just as revealing, less explosive.
Many personal insights into the ground of one's being. Telling reflections about the past interweaving with the present. Visualisation of Tibetan paintings which appear naturally, Yab Yum, compassion and wisdom. The interconnectedness of it all. Love that appears in strange unexpected places, triggered off by small connections. The overflowing of one's being into a state of knowing acceptance. Acceptance with wisdom, the laws of impermanence, the compassion arising, love that knows no boundaries, a feeling of space and emptiness within which everything wells up. The good, the bad and the ugly... beauty that comes from small stories or anecdotes heard long ago, chance meetings, small fractions of life that meet for a moment, voices and expressions, the deep intense feelings of sadness that eat your heart out, the small shifts of perception, the letting be, the letting through, each insight deeper than the last, small recurrences that echo again and again the immeasurable depth like swimming in an ocean of awareness.
The fulfilling of one's life in small unexpected areas, childhood memories that spring back into life, memories that have somehow shaped our lives in unexpected ways, a glance at the Buddha, the gold gilt, the expression, the hands folded, or not as the case may be, the teaching pose, images of Bodhgaya, leaves under the bodhi tree, the endless kaleidoscope of images flowering, resonances that flow from one to another, the internal shiftings the siftings of the mind coming from the very core, the inner truths that are often obscured. The quiet spaces, the empty flow of outer and inner where the divisions melt, and there is no movement apart from an almost imperceptible breath and even that has its own small stream within the body of the room that does not move except with the wind, and through the windows the arms of trees flail amidst the echo of sheep who stalk the green, wet flanks of sodden hillsides that funnel the water ever more precipitously towards the small bridge that is almost swallowed up in the flood's insistence.
And the mind takes this all in, as the weather worsens. Rain is only rain and wind, wind. We pause and wait for it to stop but it never does except for a brief moment when the full moon rises up and the clouds race.
No words can possibly express the intense feeling of sadness that I felt from time to time at the ending of a very dear and wonderful relationship. And yet no words could also possibly express the intense feeling of love and completeness and compassion which also welled up when I thought about various events and landscapes and voices that had intermingled with my own small, personal childhood history in West Devon on the edge of Dartmoor - visions that lasted for half an hour. And all this somehow triggered by an association with Oxford and a meeting with Michael Aris, a card on the offering table that showed a picture of himself and Suu in 1973 in Burma perfectly at ease and in love with each other. So sad that he should die without them being together for so many years... Love, separation death. Impermanence. Impermanence.
