Daily life at the Forest Refuge was much like daily life at any meditation retreat conducted at a Western retreat center in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition. For those who have never done such a retreat, I will describe a typical day.
The retreat center was a cluster of buildings surrounded by forest in rural Western Massachusetts (marker A below):
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Our lives centered around the meditation hall, dining hall, and dormitory, and a council house containing a library, yoga room, and rooms for teacher interviews. Also on site were an administration building, kitchen, staff area, maintenance barn, parking barn, and staff housing. Each of the 30 retreatants had a simple but very comfortable bedroom. Bathrooms and showers were shared.
The day officially began at 4:00 a.m. At many retreat centers there is a wake-up bell, but not at the Forest Refuge, probably because the Forest Refuge is primarily a place for self-guided retreats. This was a special organized, teacher-led retreat, but we still did not have a wake-up bell.
There were six sittings (meditation sessions) scheduled each day, each lasting 75 or 90 minutes. They were scheduled at 4:30 a.m., 7:45, 9:45, 1:00, 3:15, and 7:00. All were optional, and at a typical sitting about half of the retreatants would be there. Most of the others were presumably meditating in their rooms--or, during the 4:30 a.m. sit, sleeping in. During a sitting, people could gather in the meditation hall, sit on a cushion or chair, and meditate. Leaving in the middle was discouraged. Our main teacher, Pa Auk Sayadaw, sat with us at nearly every sitting, in the front of the hall, facing the Buddha statue. Sayadaw had a clock, and he would rise at the end, signaling to all that the session was over.
Breakfast was at 6:00. By retreat's end, it was still completely dark at that time. Breakfast was always the same: a buffet of various hot and cold cereals, breads, and fruits, along with butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, tahini, yogurt, raisins, and other toppings and condiments. And hard boiled eggs, and warm prunes. Warm prunes have been served at every meditation retreat I've attended. Presumably this is because sitting so much every day can slow peristalsis. Sorry if that's too much information.
Silence was continuous, including at meals. The idea is to be constantly aware of what is going on in one's immediate experience. So while eating, one pays attention to eating, or to one's meditation object, commonly the breath. My first day, I sat at an arbitrary table with some other people. A middle-aged Caucasian woman sat to my left, and a younger Afro-Caucasian man dressed completely in white sat to my right. Across from me was an old Asian man, and to the side was a young Caucasian woman with an angelic face. It turned out that these people sat in these same places for every meal, and I ended up sitting in the same place for nearly every meal, also--except for a couple of weeks when I chose to tour other tables during breakfast in order to spend time with some other people and offer them metta (good wishes).
Everyone had an assigned chore, and most of them were done right after breakfast. Mine was pot washing, which happened after lunch, so after breakfast I had a free hour. I did different things during this hour, but most commonly I went to my room and meditated until lunch. During much of the retreat I meditated almost exclusively outside the meditation hall--either in my room, in the library, outdoors, or in one of the walking meditation halls--because I would often get sleepy during seated meditation. When I got sleepy I would want to take a nap or switch to walking meditation immediately, but this was not possible when sitting in the meditation hall.
During my most intensive periods of practice, I would meditate in my room for over three hours straight. I'd sit until I'd get sleepy, then I'd walk, take a short power nap, or take a long nap, then go back to sitting again. Later in the retreat, I took mindful forest walks after breakfast, walking slowly on the trails while trying to maintain continuous attention on the sensations in my body. (or as continuous as I could muster--as every meditator knows, the reality is often very far from the ideal!)
The remaining activities of the day were lunch at 11:00, potwashing at 11:45, teacher interviews between 5:00 and 6:30, and bedtime. In keeping with monastic tradition, there was no evening meal. Lunch was two or three delicious vegetarian dishes plus a salad bar. Immediately afterward I went to the kitchen to wash everything that couldn't go in the dishwasher. Three of us worked together and it usually took a little over an hour. Pot washing was a highlight of my day, because it was very physical and not associated with any anxiety. It was also slightly social, even though we didn't speak except when necessary ("This pot needs a little more scrubbing on the bottom", "Do you know where the butter dishes get put away?"). At the end we did a little bowing ritual during which we'd each make eye contact with each other. This was the only eye contact we'd have all day except when talking to the teacher--"silence" includes keeping one's eyes downcast when passing another person. Kind of extreme!
Although we had no evening meal, hunger was never a problem for me. Firstly, I kept nuts, raisins, and later in the retreat, chocolate in my room, and had a small snack almost every day. Secondly, although the retreat was often stressful, somehow the stress was not the kind that prompts me to crave food. I guess my body adjusted to the two meals. The only time I felt hunger in a distracting way was at the early morning sitting. I learned to have a small snack upon rising if I was going to attend that sit.
At 5:00 daily, except Sundays, we had an opportunity to talk to Pa Auk Sayadaw. These interviews were always brief--between 2 and 10 minutes. For me they were always much closer to 2 minutes. This was because I was making no progress under his system, and also because he just didn't feel very chatty with me (to my surprise I learned after the retreat that he would get chatty with some retreatants).
Bedtime was always welcome to me, because the days were so often filled with anxiety. My bed was very comfortable and I almost always slept well. I had a skylight through which I could often see stars.
There are so many other details I would like to fill in, but this post is long enough, and I am tired. As always, feel free to ask questions!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The meditator's disease
Wanting to gain more understanding of why I suffered so much on this retreat, and why I made no progress in my jhana practice, I googled "long meditation retreat". The top hit of any relevance was a blog by someone who is planning to be in retreat for all of 2012. It appears that this blogger practices in a different tradition than the Theravadan Buddhist tradition I practice in. He points to a page on lung (pronounced loong), the meditator's disease.
Basically, lung is stress. There is nothing surprising or new in this web page. However, it is reassuring to see that my affliction is a recognized difficulty with a name and a recommended remedy (relaxing and easing up on the effort). It's remarkable, but perhaps not surprising, that my teacher, a world-renowned meditation master who has taught many, many stress-prone Westerners, did not recognize this and offer useful advice. His only advice for my affliction of facial tension while meditating was to be sure to place my focus closer to the lip rather than right on the nostrils. He had no advice for my aversion to the practice, except to continue practice.
The article states,
While I was on retreat, I frequently reflected on the lifestyle I had retreated from, and it was more clear to me than ever that it is a lifestyle filled with completely unbalanced busy-ness. Even when we think we are relaxing, we tend to be busy. My passion during this time of transition back to regular life is to find ways to step out of the busy-ness. It is hard; there are a million pressures to be busy. Being un-busy can look like being antisocial (because one is not attending parties or participating in the compulsive chatter that passes for lively conversation) or irresponsible (because one is not joining committees or boards of directors, or keeping abreast of current events, or recycling or freecycling every possible item).
Basically, lung is stress. There is nothing surprising or new in this web page. However, it is reassuring to see that my affliction is a recognized difficulty with a name and a recommended remedy (relaxing and easing up on the effort). It's remarkable, but perhaps not surprising, that my teacher, a world-renowned meditation master who has taught many, many stress-prone Westerners, did not recognize this and offer useful advice. His only advice for my affliction of facial tension while meditating was to be sure to place my focus closer to the lip rather than right on the nostrils. He had no advice for my aversion to the practice, except to continue practice.
The article states,
Geshe Rabten thought all Westerners have tsog lung (chronic heart lung). After he spent a year leading a calm abiding retreat for Westerners, Gen Lamrimpa said to us that he thought Westerners could never learn to meditate: Our minds are too fast because we grew up with machines and computers. In other words, we all have chronic low-grade anxiety or tsog lung. It is so ubiquitous that we think it is normal. There is an epidemic of depression and anxiety in modern industrialized society that is growing rapidly, even among children. Our lifestyle gives us lung. This same source of most of our health problems is also what causes us to have a difficult time in meditation retreats ….
While I was on retreat, I frequently reflected on the lifestyle I had retreated from, and it was more clear to me than ever that it is a lifestyle filled with completely unbalanced busy-ness. Even when we think we are relaxing, we tend to be busy. My passion during this time of transition back to regular life is to find ways to step out of the busy-ness. It is hard; there are a million pressures to be busy. Being un-busy can look like being antisocial (because one is not attending parties or participating in the compulsive chatter that passes for lively conversation) or irresponsible (because one is not joining committees or boards of directors, or keeping abreast of current events, or recycling or freecycling every possible item).
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Two insights
In this post I will describe two of the insights I experienced, and explain what a meditative insight is.
I had several insights into my habitual patterns of thought. One was this: sometimes (or perhaps usually), when I am neither happy nor sad, but just have a neutral emotional state, and my mind is idle, I react to this with the following thought: "Hmmm, nothing seems to be going on. But I know that there must be some kind of problem or danger somewhere. I will set my mind to look for it." I then review my environment for something that needs fixing, and/or review my recent actions critically to find something I could conceivably regret or be unsure of. And I always find something.
When I noticed this, I at first could hardly believe it. But when I saw it over and over again, it became clear why I never feel at peace in my life!
I was able to notice this because, on retreat, one's mind is very quiet, and one is not very busy, so thought patterns that are usually obscured by constant activity become noticeable. Also, on retreat we try to practice mindfulness constantly -- we try to be aware of everything we are doing, as we are doing it, rather than daydreaming or planning. Of course, the many hours of formal meditation we do each day contribute both to the quietness of mind and to the skill of mindfulness.
Once I saw this, I chose to be on the lookout for its occurrence so that I could practice changing the habit. I'd be walking down the hallway to the dining hall, for example, and I'd notice my mind jumping to criticize my past actions (did I embarrass myself in my last teacher interview? was I a slacker to choose walking meditation instead of seated meditation during the last meditation period? etc.). That was my clue that I might have just had a moment of neutral emotion combined with an idle mind. I'd then review the previous few moments and realize that, indeed, my mind had been idle and I did have a neutral emotional state, and indeed, that I perceived this as a signal to look for problems.
Now I will describe a second insight, quite different in nature: an insight into the reality of my impending death. This one occurred during a meditation session. I was practicing anapanasati meditation, trying to keep my attention on the breath as it entered and exited the nostrils. However, I was sleepy, and my mind wandered quite a bit. Once it drifted to an image of my grandmother's kitchen as it was when I was a child. Then, the following thought entered my mind: that kitchen does not exist anymore! It only exists in my mind and the minds of my relatives! As vivid as it is, it does not represent anything real! Then, in my mind, I saw a kind of vertical timeline, with earlier times toward the top. At the top was Grandma's kitchen, and it rapidly dissolved from top to bottom. Next was Mom and Dad. They dissolved, too. Next was my lifetime. It, too, dissolved in an instant. And all of a sudden it became clear to me, in a new way, that one day in the next few decades I was going to disappear without much of a trace.
In Buddhist thought, there are three concepts we must fully grasp in order to end our own suffering: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and "not-self". These three concepts are grasped through meditative insight. I had just had an insight into impermanence. Meditative insights are a kind of direct knowing, and much more impactful than insight gained through intentional reflection--although reflection is valuable, too.
I don't know exactly what happens in the mind to create this type of insight, but here is how I think of it: this knowledge is in our minds already, but it is normally hidden by various kinds of mental activity. It is hidden because we don't like to look at it. It reveals itself when we are ready to look at it, and when our minds are still enough to uncover it.
Insight into one's own death may sound depressing, but I experienced it immediately as quite uplifting and motivating.
I had several insights into my habitual patterns of thought. One was this: sometimes (or perhaps usually), when I am neither happy nor sad, but just have a neutral emotional state, and my mind is idle, I react to this with the following thought: "Hmmm, nothing seems to be going on. But I know that there must be some kind of problem or danger somewhere. I will set my mind to look for it." I then review my environment for something that needs fixing, and/or review my recent actions critically to find something I could conceivably regret or be unsure of. And I always find something.
When I noticed this, I at first could hardly believe it. But when I saw it over and over again, it became clear why I never feel at peace in my life!
I was able to notice this because, on retreat, one's mind is very quiet, and one is not very busy, so thought patterns that are usually obscured by constant activity become noticeable. Also, on retreat we try to practice mindfulness constantly -- we try to be aware of everything we are doing, as we are doing it, rather than daydreaming or planning. Of course, the many hours of formal meditation we do each day contribute both to the quietness of mind and to the skill of mindfulness.
Once I saw this, I chose to be on the lookout for its occurrence so that I could practice changing the habit. I'd be walking down the hallway to the dining hall, for example, and I'd notice my mind jumping to criticize my past actions (did I embarrass myself in my last teacher interview? was I a slacker to choose walking meditation instead of seated meditation during the last meditation period? etc.). That was my clue that I might have just had a moment of neutral emotion combined with an idle mind. I'd then review the previous few moments and realize that, indeed, my mind had been idle and I did have a neutral emotional state, and indeed, that I perceived this as a signal to look for problems.
Now I will describe a second insight, quite different in nature: an insight into the reality of my impending death. This one occurred during a meditation session. I was practicing anapanasati meditation, trying to keep my attention on the breath as it entered and exited the nostrils. However, I was sleepy, and my mind wandered quite a bit. Once it drifted to an image of my grandmother's kitchen as it was when I was a child. Then, the following thought entered my mind: that kitchen does not exist anymore! It only exists in my mind and the minds of my relatives! As vivid as it is, it does not represent anything real! Then, in my mind, I saw a kind of vertical timeline, with earlier times toward the top. At the top was Grandma's kitchen, and it rapidly dissolved from top to bottom. Next was Mom and Dad. They dissolved, too. Next was my lifetime. It, too, dissolved in an instant. And all of a sudden it became clear to me, in a new way, that one day in the next few decades I was going to disappear without much of a trace.
In Buddhist thought, there are three concepts we must fully grasp in order to end our own suffering: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and "not-self". These three concepts are grasped through meditative insight. I had just had an insight into impermanence. Meditative insights are a kind of direct knowing, and much more impactful than insight gained through intentional reflection--although reflection is valuable, too.
I don't know exactly what happens in the mind to create this type of insight, but here is how I think of it: this knowledge is in our minds already, but it is normally hidden by various kinds of mental activity. It is hidden because we don't like to look at it. It reveals itself when we are ready to look at it, and when our minds are still enough to uncover it.
Insight into one's own death may sound depressing, but I experienced it immediately as quite uplifting and motivating.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Emerged
I emerged yesterday from my two-month retreat with Pa Auk Sayadaw at the Forest Refuge. This was a much longer retreat than I'd ever done before, and it was very, very tough. I suffered a lot. If I had known how tough it would be, I never would have done it.
What did I carry away? Experientially, I learned a lot about samadhi, or meditative concentration. Anapanasati meditation (attention on the breath as it enters and exits the nostrils) was my main practice for the first 6 weeks, and my mind became more concentrated than it had ever been. With the help of this concentration plus heightened sensitivity of mind and body due to silence, I experienced a number of insights about the ways my mind creates my own suffering. The insights seem to have the potential to bring significant freedom to my life, and I may write more about them later. Acceptance of my own death increased, starting with an involuntary insight (which I also may write more about) and continuing via intentional reflection on death. Through the evening talks given by the assistant teacher, Venerable U Jagara, through my own reading in the library, and through talking with other retreatants at retreat's end, my knowledge and understanding of Buddhist theory and practice increased. Finally, via the school of very hard knocks, I learned how to pace myself on a long retreat.
Much of my suffering resulted from a lack of confidence in myself coupled with an intense fear of straying from rules and teachings. This difficulty was magnified by the austerity and incompleteness of the instruction that was given. I also drove myself too hard, despite making a firm commitment from the start to be gentle with myself. It was tricky because I had a goal of mastering a deep state of concentration called jhana, and in order to even attain jhana, one must be exert a great deal of extended effort while simultaneously staying happy and relaxed. A tall order! But I had attained jhana -- imperfect jhana -- multiple times on my last retreat. I thought it would not be difficult to re-attain and perfect the jhana on this retreat. I was wrong.
I had a couple of rapturous, as-good-as-really-good-sex meditation sessions, each lasting a couple of hours. I'd never experienced meditation quite that pleasurable before, and it was very fun and completely fascinating, but incidental to my purpose.
Although I never perfected jhana, my mind did become really concentrated, and during the last two weeks I applied that concentrated mind to the practice of insight meditation, using the mindfulness of body practice of Mahasi Sayadaw that has been my main practice for the last ten years. I practiced mindfulness on the cushion, in walking meditation, during forest strolls, and in daily activities such as walking to the dining hall. And it was in this way that I received insights about how my mind works.
As with any meditation retreat, the benefit to my experience of daily life will become apparent only after months, or perhaps may never be clearly discernible. Today, my first full day on the outside, I've experienced some new freedom from debilitating mental habits. However, I always experience greater freedom the week or so immediately after a retreat. It's as yet unknown how much, if any, of this freedom will be permanent. It is so delicious, I almost dare not hope that any of it will last.
I intend to expound on some of these topics in the coming days. Meanwhile, I welcome comments and questions. I most especially welcome extremely naive, "stupid" questions from people who think they don't know anything about meditation. Please don't hesitate to ask anything at all.
What did I carry away? Experientially, I learned a lot about samadhi, or meditative concentration. Anapanasati meditation (attention on the breath as it enters and exits the nostrils) was my main practice for the first 6 weeks, and my mind became more concentrated than it had ever been. With the help of this concentration plus heightened sensitivity of mind and body due to silence, I experienced a number of insights about the ways my mind creates my own suffering. The insights seem to have the potential to bring significant freedom to my life, and I may write more about them later. Acceptance of my own death increased, starting with an involuntary insight (which I also may write more about) and continuing via intentional reflection on death. Through the evening talks given by the assistant teacher, Venerable U Jagara, through my own reading in the library, and through talking with other retreatants at retreat's end, my knowledge and understanding of Buddhist theory and practice increased. Finally, via the school of very hard knocks, I learned how to pace myself on a long retreat.
Much of my suffering resulted from a lack of confidence in myself coupled with an intense fear of straying from rules and teachings. This difficulty was magnified by the austerity and incompleteness of the instruction that was given. I also drove myself too hard, despite making a firm commitment from the start to be gentle with myself. It was tricky because I had a goal of mastering a deep state of concentration called jhana, and in order to even attain jhana, one must be exert a great deal of extended effort while simultaneously staying happy and relaxed. A tall order! But I had attained jhana -- imperfect jhana -- multiple times on my last retreat. I thought it would not be difficult to re-attain and perfect the jhana on this retreat. I was wrong.
I had a couple of rapturous, as-good-as-really-good-sex meditation sessions, each lasting a couple of hours. I'd never experienced meditation quite that pleasurable before, and it was very fun and completely fascinating, but incidental to my purpose.
Although I never perfected jhana, my mind did become really concentrated, and during the last two weeks I applied that concentrated mind to the practice of insight meditation, using the mindfulness of body practice of Mahasi Sayadaw that has been my main practice for the last ten years. I practiced mindfulness on the cushion, in walking meditation, during forest strolls, and in daily activities such as walking to the dining hall. And it was in this way that I received insights about how my mind works.
As with any meditation retreat, the benefit to my experience of daily life will become apparent only after months, or perhaps may never be clearly discernible. Today, my first full day on the outside, I've experienced some new freedom from debilitating mental habits. However, I always experience greater freedom the week or so immediately after a retreat. It's as yet unknown how much, if any, of this freedom will be permanent. It is so delicious, I almost dare not hope that any of it will last.
I intend to expound on some of these topics in the coming days. Meanwhile, I welcome comments and questions. I most especially welcome extremely naive, "stupid" questions from people who think they don't know anything about meditation. Please don't hesitate to ask anything at all.
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