Where's the Trick?

I was fortunate to be able to collect Shifu, Guo Yen Hse and Paul Kennedy from the airport. We broke our journey to Wales in Bristol in order to see my family for lunch. As we were leaving and my wife was wishing us well for the retreat, Shifu said, in reference to the retreat, "It's a trick!"

"Yes," my wife replied, "But it's a very good one, and a very necessary one," looking pointedly in my direction.

This brief conversation between the two Masters made it clear which of the three of us was most likely to fall for the trick!

The Retreat

This is the fourth Chan retreat (over three years) in which I have worked with the huatou "What is Mu?" Repeated failure creates powerful tensions in the ambitious and these have been a backdrop to these retreats.

For the first three days I worked steadily on attention to the breath, and whilst almost all of this was spent in a sleepy state the routine didn't feel too difficult. The Welsh hill farm environment was more challenging. I felt miserable and fatigued by the challenge of the cold wet windy weather, but this problem passed after two days. By the middle of day three (Easter Sunday) I felt steady enough to take up the huatou. Here a dilemma occurred. Four years before I had experienced what would conventionally be called a Christian conversion experience of great power. Being a Buddhist, raised in a Christian culture, this stirred up a lot of confusion. Considering my difficulties with Mu over the past three years it was tempting to work on "What is Christ?" and by-pass Mu altogether. After several hours of working with this question I experienced a rush of joy at the thought and feeling "Christ is in my heart", followed by the dilemma "but what about Mu?"

There was no getting away from it, Mu was pressing for an answer, and so the struggle began. Meditation in action became fairly stable and I was able, with very clear help on method in interviews, to contemplate the question steadily. All went well until the end of day four, when I began to fell restless and depressed. Earlier that day I had heard someone joyfully and loudly proclaiming their "experience" to Shifu. Of course, being quite experienced at this sort of thing, I took it calmly on the surface, but deep down the worm of anxiety, jealousy, disappointment and anger started to gnaw.

I went up the hill and sat under a tree and felt lonely. Then looking back down on the Maenllwyd, I suddenly felt angry. The whole thing is a charade, I thought. A quirky little group chasing shadows in an unreal world. This viewpoint gave me a surge of energy and I ran down the hill free of the weight that had been with me since I started to work on Mu four years ago. Nevertheless I kept to the method, but from a freer more rebellious standpoint. The doubt that had been forming over the last few years, which had led to practising less, wondering why I bother with Buddhism, wondering whether Christianity is my real path, had come right to the surface. As Shifu pointed out the next day, I was angry, because the work on Mu had not fulfilled my spiritual ambitions.

My approach to practice involves attempting to work steadily with the method until a significant difficulty arises and then finding a way of dealing with it, which may include attending directly to the feeling involved, or repentance, or some other creative way forward. When everything settles it is then usually possible to return to the method with a clear mind. On one of these occasions tears and repentance at my own hardness and impatience with my family became triggered by the thought "I've got Christ in my heart, but not love." This, as Shifu pointed out in a later interview, was "my problem". He told me "you have to learn to be compassionate to your family and friends."

That afternoon (day five) an old problem returned. Whatever I did with the practice, however much I tried to relax, each time I mentally asked "What is Mu?" a headache would come on. I felt blocked. I decided the only answer was to sit absolutely still and without thought to observe the physical feeling intently. Then it clicked: this wasn't a headache, it was RAGE and such suffering.

As a child I had an angry and sometimes violent father. I'd often felt rage at the way he treated us and at times had wanted to kill him. For the first time though it struck home how much more damage his anger had caused to him than to others and this recognition triggered overwhelming grief. Later I did prostrations of repentance for wanting to kill him. During this, it was as if Avalokiteshvara was present pouring forth compassion and kindness in the Chan hall, and for me a thirty year old grudge fell away.

Next morning (day six) the need for Mu fell away too. The question of which faith to follow had come up again and it became clear that the answer was up to me, assuming of course that the question was framed correctly. I became very clear about where I stood, the essence of which was an intelligible integration of aspects of the two religions in my life, with a viewpoint which would be more typical of Buddhist philosophy than orthodox Christianity. I was aware that the deeply engrained habit of grasping was going through its final contortions struggling to "get" enlightenment (surely I'd done enough now!) but the mind had reached the end of its subtle and disguised efforts to work out how to do it and had come to a depressed stop. For the first time very painful knees followed and then, with a rush of joy, the oneness of the two religions hit me with full force, and the story of a lifetime of religious searching, doubt, darkness, confusion and misguided ambition fell into place. In an interview that morning I was able to convey this with great happiness to Shifu. His response was that there is no contradiction and that you can use the Christian energy with the Buddhist method, which seemed to capture the essence of what I felt.

The work continued on into the day, but Mu didn't seem the relevant method now and I moved on to use silent illumination, the subject of the evening talks. It was a remarkably relaxed happy and productive day but in the early evening I became irritable. Something was wrong again, so I walked up the hill, a different way this time. The irritation was relieved when I recognised that my children need a father, my wife a husband and my friends a friend and it is my responsibility to fulfil these needs.

Later in the evening we had our group discussion and the energy of the group was palpable. That night I couldn't sleep for gratitude. In the discussion one person had reported an interview in which the distinction between emotion and feeling had been made, the former being egocentric (anger, sadness etc.) and the latter more universal (e.g compassion). Not being able to sleep and gratitude seemed an odd mixture so I assumed I was emoting the gratitude.

I was sleeping in an old barn, on a wet and windy night. I looked into the heart of this emotion of gratitude to see if it would settle. There was a gust of wind against the barn and at this point a shift of perspective occurred, and there was one not two. By this I mean the "I-it" perspective dropped for a while. It was still possible to think and the night with its sounds and darkness was refreshingly clear. It was just that there was no "me" aware of "it". The thinking process was very useful, because it was possible to understand what was happening and to realise in the experience that there is no ego to extinguish. This was not an emotional moment but deeply felt as a very welcome relief, a clarification and confirmation of Buddhist teaching. When the perspective of two returned restful sleep soon followed.

The day after the retreat, at home, it was my daughter's birthday and we all went to see "Hook". This is about a father who is tricked into discovering his true identity (Peter Pan), and in the process rediscovers his children, grows up and sets aside his preoccupation with his own success.

What a trick!