Buddhists die harder

At the weekly gathering of the Seattle sangha last night, guiding teacher Rodney Smith made a disturbing observation. He used to be a hospice worker, and he said, "The people who had the hardest time dying were the ones who thought of themselves as most spiritual. And Buddhists -- they were the worst of the lot! They'd be thinking that they should be balanced and equanimous when everything was terrible and what they really needed to do was SCREAM!"

Maybe Buddhist training, at least in America, isn't really accomplishing what we think it's accomplishing.

Why I feel more dedicated to practice than before retreat

I am trying to figure out why, after a very difficult and at times very unpleasant two months, I am inspired to be more dedicated to practice. Is it simply, as Eric quipped, something like the Stockholm Syndrome, where I developed an affinity for the thing that caused me discomfort?

I don't think so. But some of my motivation may be unwholesome, and I should face that squarely.

Contained within the unpleasant overall retreat experience were some very pleasant episodes, experiences of bliss and rapture. Now, after retreat, I have not felt what I'd call bliss or rapture, but I have found ordinary life to be unusually pleasant. Sometimes, just looking at a cloud, or the moon, or a tree, adds pleasure to the act of breathing. Meditation now routinely brings pleasant physical sensations whereas before it did not. So one draw is pleasure. This is not necessarily an unwholesome motivation, but it's worth being aware of.

I sometimes see people's facial expressions in greater detail than before retreat, and they seem more human and kind to me.

I can be entertained by watching my morning oatmeal cook.

I can let emotions pass through me quickly and easily in a way that previously was totally unfamiliar to me.

It made me very happy on retreat to be able to see certain thought processes very clearly, to see how they caused me suffering, and to be able to interrupt them. I like to see the truth of things. I don't see those processes in that detail anymore, but it's quite possible that I've created new habits of interrupting them and that these new habits are contributing to a happier life now.

So ... it's quite possible that all of the above effects are temporary, part of what I call retreat afterglow. I've never seen afterglow last longer than 6 weeks, and I've never experienced such intense effects, but then I've never before done a retreat longer than 2 weeks. What if these effects go away? Will I continue to be motivated to practice intensively, and, if so, what will motivate me?

I've been a seeker of truth ever since I can remember, since I was a young child. I first sought truth in Catholicism, with which I'd been raised. I so wanted to see truth there, and I kept looking and asking questions, but by age 18 I was completely disillusioned. It seems, though, that there is some truth to be found by following the Buddhist path, and I saw evidence of that on my retreat. Or ... I think I did. Hmmm. More pondering to be done here.

Becoming sensitive

Terry: "Since my retreat, I've felt like my head is in some kind of magnetic field or vortex that draws it forward and down. It takes constant muscular effort to keep it upright."

Eric: "The center of your head is in front of your neck, so it takes effort to keep it upright. You just weren't mindful enough to notice the effort before."

Minutes after this exchange, I broke into laughter. What I had been interpreting as a mysterious, mystical force field has had a name for hundreds of years: gravity.

I've been reading a lot of Buddhist literature lately. Catching up. Two or three writers have mentioned that, as a meditation practice develops, one's sensitivity increases. I realized today that this explains a few things for me. Besides the weird head phenomenon, I also am newly aware that I clench my jaw (on the right side only). I'm also aware of a whole set of sensations and reactions on the right side of my body that seem to be ready to respond to a blow from the upper right. And I notice myself responding with fright and anger whenever anybody enters the house, or when Eric enters our bed.

I think these are good things.

Continuing to learn to feel

On my retreat, my experience of sensation in my body, especially the right side of my body from head down to abdomen, became more vivid. This has continued to increase and develop since retreat. Last weekend I frequently had periods of an hour or more during which these sensations were not only vivid, but very dynamic, and closely associated with my experience of emotion. I noticed that every few seconds I'd experience an emotion primarily in terms of these sensations, and that with a small mental gesture I could let go of each one as it occurred, making way for the next one. What a gift. For the past 25 years I'd very strongly suspected that my experience of life, and especially of my emotions, was somehow frozen or blocked. I have had several openings over that time, but this one seems especially important and enjoyable.

Today I am having this vivid bodily experience of emotion while doing my work as a computer programmer. Work is usually a part of my life during which I'm especially shut down emotionally. It just has not seemed possible -- until now -- to do my work and experience emotion at the same time. It's remarkable that this beautiful, vivid experience of being alive while working comes immediately after a day, yesterday, when work was particularly frustrating and I felt at the end of the day that probably a lot of intense emotions had come up that I had just habitually suppressed.

I wish I could think and write more on this ... but it's time to get back to work :-)

Thoughts of superiority

I've noticed that judgmental thoughts of other humans have become more extreme since my long meditation retreat. Before the retreat, I had many thoughts of being a quite superior person. Now, the thoughts declare that I am even more superior, really just head and shoulders above the vast majority of humanity.

I've wondered how to respond to those thoughts. Should I scale back my spiritual practice so that these thoughts have less fuel? So that I'm more like regular folk and participate more in the activities of regular folk?

I was startled yesterday to realize that I've faced this conundrum before, as early as age 10. At that age, I was bored in school. I had the opportunity to switch schools and enter a gifted program. I declined for this exact reason: wanting to tame my thoughts of superiority.

I wonder now if that was the right choice. So well-intentioned, but probably misguided. Clearly, the source of the thoughts is not my choice of activity, but something deeper.

Integration

Life since retreat has been rich and satisfying. There have been many periods of doubt, but mostly my sense is that I'm on a very rewarding path that has just been given a huge boost by 2 months of retreat.

Every day I am very aware of strong sensation in my right torso, neck, and head. Each day it is a little different. Today I'm aware that my head is constantly bobbing and waving, like kelp in the sea, and I wonder whether it appears quite odd. Of course if I make my breathing more shallow and move my awareness away from my body into my head--which is still what I habitually do when in conversation--the motion stops.

Tomorrow I am going on a 3 day retreat at our local Theravadan Buddhist retreat center, Cloud Mountain. It will be taught by Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder, the two who first taught me concentration practice, at the same retreat center, two years ago. Their website talks about what they teach.

The more I practice, listen, and read, the more I see that the world of spiritual practice is both much larger than I'd been aware, and less diverse than I'd been aware. Larger: there are so many ways to practice, so many issues to consider, so many views of the path, so many perils and pitfalls, such depth of possible experience. The book THE POWER AND THE PAIN: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy, by Andrew Holocek, has lately helped me wrap my mind around these. Less diverse: the writings of theistic and non-theistic practitioners are more and more seeming to share common ground. I've lately been reading the writings of Peace Pilgrim; she liberally references God, yet her practice shares so much with Buddhist practice, and passages that had once repelled me now speak to me.

Some of my doubt is habitual self-doubt; other doubt is appropriate caution. This quote from An Application of Buddhist practice of Mindfulness in Contemporary Western Psychotherapy by Audrius Beinorius, which I happened upon accidentally, highlights an area where I must be cautious:

Empirical evidences display that sometimes spiritual practice can be motivated in part by the secret, narcissistic wish to be special, if not superior; a stance of non-attachment can rationalize fears of closeness and the anxieties associated with intimacy: fear of feeling exposed, vulnerable, humiliated, shamed, hurt, rejected, or abandoned.