gobbledygook of my own making

Through the magic of technology, I'm meditating with a master. It's amazing. I'm so grateful. I hear birds in England and birds in New York City. 

I feel so lucky to have stumbled upon an online retreat. I met him in person probably 15 years ago. He's probably not taken u turns like I have, and just keeps developing. My spiritual life was 10 years of deepening, and then a 10 year detour. I'm hoping to coming back. I try to gently let go of that story and inhabit the breath. 

The usual feeling of my head coming out of warp speed when I start to meditate a lot. There's so much mental chatter. Coming into the body and I can't help but cry and cry. I have made mistakes I deeply regret, and struggle to forgive myself. I forgive myself for punishing myself. I don't know how to right wrongs of the past, the harm I've done. Forgive, forgive. Inside not forgiving is impatience and unrealistic expectations, not accepting conditions, resisting reality. I feel heat, like I'm burning off impurities. 

Out on my mindful walk, I have a brief flash of nausea from the coffee I gulped. That's the story I tell, and I'm painfully aware of how important it is for me to tell a story. Keep wanting to remember things to write about and blog, because when I actually sit down to do it, I panic that nothing is going to come sometimes. Obviously something comes, too much, this blog is just mental chatter. The culture around Buddhism has some interest. Everyone should express their insights, and then we could put it all into an AI and we could have an interesting artificial intelligence. 

No need to force anything. I want to add the word naturally because I think that word cuts through a lot of metaphysical gobbledygook I've inherited in the USA, that's too abstract, there's more recent clutter of my own making. America were founded by religious zealots. Vigor in the spiritual life is important, but there are a lot of New England horror stories. In a way Poe, the biggest critic of Transcendentalism, expresses that horror. Concord Transcendentalism is quite hard to read, but I really like ending up with naturalists cutting through Puritan excesses. Go for a walk. The brief pink sky as the sun rises. 

Where is the breath? Soothing the body. Nothing to exclude. Aware of the conditions of the body. Sensitive to delight. Train myself to calm mental fabrications. They calm naturally. Relax.

Seeing restlessness as a hindrance makes me want to do something about it, but seeing calming, I just relax in seeing restlessness decrease a little bit. Patience. Training. 

I feel gratitude. 

You can watch the meditation lead through on Vimeo. Second sit Vimeo.

Kamalashila's website

The retreat that changed me forever

 

"Equanimity gives selflessness to metta; gives patience, courage and fearlessness to compassion; guards joy from sentimentality; and brings all the ennobling qualities of the heart together in liberation."

Christina Feldman in Boundless Heart, gives me the book of the Brahma Viharas I've always wanted. My first long retreat was on the Brahma Viharas and it blew my mind, changed the course of my life, enriched me immeasurably. I'm still living off those riches. I am so grateful I found myself to that retreat. 

Manapa led it. There were other order members and indeed Shrijnana led the shrine angels who created amazing shrines. There was a blind order member with the cutest dog. I remember hearing a really loud yawn in the shrine room, opening my eyes and realizing it was the dog, not a human.

At the end of 2002, the beginning of 2003 we meditated all 4 brahma viharas, and mindfulness of breathing and did pujas. It was at beautiful Aryaloka in Newmarket New Hampshire. Snow was all around. The two geodesic domes, on contained the kitchen, living room and library, with dorm rooms below. The other was dorms, another social room, and the shrine room above. I went on a zillion retreats after that one, and had more amazing experiences, but that first long retreat...

I sometimes feel stupid when I have insights that help me. In a way I think everyone's psychic ecology is different. We have different genetic inheritance, personality, childhoods and circumstances. There was one place I was hiding craving that was so sneaky to me, that I didn't even notice. To be a better self. Of course we need this urge to improve, but we can hold it the right way. 

Gratitude is revolutionary. Yes, you can write a gratitude journal every day and get psychic rewards. But real gratitude is rooted in not craving, you have to somehow get past the raging fires of desire, and stand with stillness and contentment where you are. It's all connected in Indra's net. And you can't just switch off craving--there needs to be mindfulness and a system of ethics, and a community (sangha) to support it.

going on retreat

I love retreats. I go deeper into my practice and become more healthy in so many ways. In anticipation of the retreat, I begin to talk to my friends in my head, and report in on the state of my practice. On retreat once someone said, "turns out we have our relationships often more than we're actually with people," quoting Proust. I look forward to my friends, not having responsibilities beyond being mindful, the healthy food, being more in nature away from the city.

I look forward to, and am also scared of all the meditation, because I can have some freaky experiences. I always cry. At some point on the retreat I get a kind of exhausted insomnia. The puja wakes me up and when we do it last thing I have a hard time sleeping. I'm afraid of my retreat exuberance, where I make all these unrealistic plans, shows my conflicts and lack of integration. I'm afraid of how I feel when I return to regular life and feel the mindfulness wearing off, and I cling to it.

Last year I wanted to go early I got so anxious, but I stuck it out, only leaving a little early. I worry about my family and last year I came home to find out there was a bedbugs crisis. There is a kind of feeling like I don't deserve this. My family will be fine, but I feel guilty for carving out what I know is essential to me. I think in part the guilt is a manifestation of my hesitancy and resistance.

I've started checking out at work. The trick is to stay present and mindful, and I'm all anticipation.

I want to ramp up my meditation practice, but I have to admit that I've been blown away by life at times, and my meditation practice falters, isn't daily.

I'm going on retreat! I am incredibly lucky.

Retreat

I'm off to a retreat tomorrow. I'm very excited. With work school and family, I don't do retreat as much as I would like, but then again I chose to have a family and work, I chose an intense profession. It's a great thing that my wife doesn't raise a stink about taking care of our 2 small boys while I'm gone. Not too much. I encourage her to go on retreat, but she doesn't want to be away from the family and thinks I'm a little crazy to do it.

I don't work at Aryaloka so it's fairly untainted for me. I have dreams where I'm trying to get there. The retreat will be 9 days, men only. I enjoy being with men. I like single sex activity. The retreat is also for men who have asked for ordination into the Western Buddhist Order.

My friend jokes, so you can marry people? People ask me if I'm going to open up a church? Here is what the F/WBO has to say about it. I don't think I'm getting ordained any time soon, but I feel impatient to join the order at times. I reported in, answering questions, in an e-mail. Ongoing work in trying to deepen my practice.

I'm looking forward to a retreat from electronic devices. I don't even really read much when I'm on retreat. It's going to be a lot of face to face conversations, meditation, healthy vegetarian grub, chanting, discussion, puja and confession. I hope to go for walks and look and appreciate trees and the river.

retreat

If you have not been on retreat I highly recommend it. My first week long retreat is the deep experience that made me want to be a mitra and ask for ordination into the FWBO. (btw here's a blog entry about becoming a mitra.)

So the retreat was lovely. Here is a brief post about the kalyana mitra ceremonies that were performed.

Here's a video of Sangharakshita promoting Jai Bhim!. He's a bit cheeky. Sangharakshita clearly enjoys reading the book.

So Aryaloka is a lovely place, I always enjoy everything: food, green spaces, friendship, meditation, Dharma. It takes me 4.5 hours to drive there alone from Queens NYC. I listened to some lovely Dharma talk on Free Buddhist Audio on the way up and down. Going up I listened to What Is Enlightenment by Jinapriya. When he talked about a friend's feeling of concentration as he flew threw the air, being in the moment, I thought of my own recent skydiving adventure. (Photos on facebook.) Anyway, it's a lovely talk that I highly recommend. I first listened to it on a solitary retreat at Aryaloka and well, what a lovely thing to listen to.

One thing I did on this retreat was to process past retreat, especially my last solitary retreat. Since then I haven't been able to wake up and meditate when I don't have enough sleep. Hitherto I'd forced myself to. I think I tuned into myself in such a way that I was no longer going to not honor my experience of being tired. I'd heard the advice to push myself, but I wasn't quite honoring my experience. At times I see that as a step back, not meditating every day, but reflecting on it in the company of spiritual friends, I see it's a good thing.

I think I also invalidate myself by expecting more from my circumstances than are really possible. I had that mirrored back to me a few time. It's especially hard, as I noted when I was reporting out, that I am susceptible to Mahayana hyperbole. The first two days were on the first three chapters of Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara

The final day was, as noted above, on spiritual friendship. We can gossip, in a positive way about people we know. Among other things about this news.

So it was cool to be with just men. It's interesting to see how I feel as in comparison to being on a mixed retreat.

They have beautiful postings at Aryaloka and you can see this one which includes a friend's shrine on it.

And of course it's cool to dip into the library and read the latest periodicals. I read this article, about Harold Ramis.

So well done everyone, thank you for your hard work: Danakamala for his cooking, Steve Sloan for his organizational work, Steve Cardwell for his organizational support and the running of the book store. Thank you to Nagabodhi for coming across the pond. Thank you to Bodhi for dropping in to give a short talk. Thank you to Narrotama for his leadership and wonderful presence. Thank you to everyone who made the retreat so special.

I listened to a favorite talk of mine on the ride home. Manjuka talks about aping being a good Buddhist instead of being authentic. Buddhism isn't any specific content in the mind, it's an approach to that content. I'm not sure if emotions are givens that are exempt from asking of they are skillful or not. I think you can frame things in an unskillful way, and that that will lead to feelings, and you can change that dynamic, but I get his point that we really need to figure out what is going on before we work towards fixing it, and be careful not to pretend to be good while denying what is really going on. A lovely talk that I put at the top of my list of talks to listen to.

May you be happy, may you be well.

Practice Day

We had a lovely practice day today, and there was the question--what turned me on to the Dharma when I first got involved? What's my root of inspiration? I can use that to remind me in the difficult times.

I think a week long retreat on the Brahmaviharas, over the winter holidays of 2002 at Aryaloka. That much meditation really changed me in a way that I hope to changed the rest of my life. I'm not sure if I could write anything brief about why meditation is so revolutionary and important to me.

On the retreat, I read Bante's book on the puja, Ritual and Devotion, and for the first time entered into the devotional practices of Buddhism, which was a revolutionary thing for me. Hitherto I was an atheist (still am on that regard) who saw any organize spirituality as generally a way for ripping people off. To be chanting was a scary thing for me, to offer an offering and bow to the Buddha was very scary to me at first. Now it's quite natural and I love a good puja. I've collected alternate pujas as well.

I didn't really connect with anyone who is still a great friend, but I met some people who are spiritual friends and had an intense retreat friendship with someone who was a bit unstable and struggled. I think that's the weakness of that retreat, when I review it, that has deepened on subsequent retreats.

I remember being so tired one day, that I fell asleep on the couch in public. I remember the silence being challenging, so I went on a walk with the troubled teen and listened to her ventilate. I remember just feeling so very mindful and alive, the devotional and intellectual elements coming together. The food was really health and tasty. There were some people who were not so positive, and I myself wasn't always positive and harmonious.

There was also interviews with meditation teachers, and I remember that being supportive, and got me to talk with other order members, got very specific meditations support.

For New Year's Eve we chanted the Vajrasatva mantra (you can get it here), and like the puja I began to see the power of mantra. Driving home I could not help but chant the Padmasambhava mantra.

So on one level I really discovered the revolutionary power of meditation, but I also began to see the pieces come together (not quite all) and begin to see the whole program, including the devotional aspects to support practice.

From that retreat, I built on various GFR retreats, and feel like I have learned quite a lot over the years, and there's a lot more to learn. I think going on a week long solitary retreat was another deep meditative experience that is another root of inspiration. Feeling the power of deep meditation is one of my roots of inspiration in Dharma practice.

So what's the roots of your inspiration?

Retreat

So I asked for ordination into the Wester Buddhist Order several years ago, and they have retreats for the men about once a year. This year the retreat was held at Jikoji. It was lead by Dhammarati, who did a wonderful job. We studied the eight point mind training.

One revelation on the retreat was to find out more about Ksitigarbha. The retreat was on bodhicitta, and I learned a new meditation to facilitate that. Because my last retreat was solitary, I found it was easier to take refuge in the sangha.

The word vipaka was used a lot. It's the fruit of karma.

Also, I was mortified to find out I was the only one who didn't know what Quinoa was. Turns out it's nutritional content is good, it is a more complete protein.

Bookending the trip was a visit to my father and stepmother in Livermore. Tomorrow I fly home and I look forward to being reunited with my wife and children.