Retreat Reports: Western Zen Retreat

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…

I felt very much at home sitting around the fire on the first evening, happy I'd come and ready for the retreat. I'd taken a bit more care than usual to prepare myself with additional meditation and tried not to arrive too tired. My wife and I have had a lot of sadness in the last few years, which has beaten us down, and the retreat was a chance to emerge from this. I also wanted to explore the…

I find I'm still struggling with my Koan. The retreat was a "great privilege". That is the expression I find myself using most when I'm trying to explain it for other people. The privilege lay in the opportunity to do such deep work and to be supported and feel quite safe and surrounded by calm and beauty while doing so. The greatest beauty for me lay in the lights, the assortment of candles, oil…

Teacher: Tell me who you are?
Participant: I am the answer.
Teacher: What is the question?
Participant: Moment to moment.
Teacher: What do you feel?

Participant: Space with no boundary or pressure. (THIS SPACE DID NOT FEEL VAST OR LARGE OR IN ANY WAY OVERWHELMING, YET ONE SENSED IT HAD NO END, WAS TIMELESS, AND HAD EXISTED BEFORE THE BIG BANG, WHICH WAS EXTENDING INTO IT.)

Teacher: What do you hear?
…

The silence becomes very palpable, solid. The quality of experience has been turned up. My koan becomes very distant. What first seemed like a fence, close and restricting, now, has moved to the horizon and eventually disappeared.

Everything seems wrapped in a profound silence which becomes as interesting as the sounds from the distant hills. Things become soft, fine and gentle. They all happen…