I check in for a 4 day silent meditation retreat today. It is only my second retreat ever, and my second in 4 months. I found the last retreat transformative. I really did come out of the retreat with a sense of openness, a quiet knowing, and full of love.
But, as with all things, this too fell away. I wen't back to work, became cynical again, became frustrated with my relationship situation, fearful of my ticking clocks, time time time. And laziness appeared again as well.
But i also kept that tiny spark of oneness, that appears at strange moments. A recognition of our interconnectedness, compassion for the ones that irk me. So I suppose something stuck with me.
Zen masters always talk about letting goals and expectations fall away, and only then will you find enlightenment. Well I am not going for enlightenment, meditation is just cheap Adderall for me, and likely, no other retreat will ever be able to live up to that first intense experience of 3 days of silence and watching the mind. But I still ache for that feeling of secret peace, a knowing mind, that was so fleeting.
Maybe I will find something NEW, maybe something the same, maybe nothing at all. But I will try to be OPEN to it.
Open to life, the universe, and everything.
Day three of thirty and so far I am keeping to my vow.
Day 1: 30min went incredibly fast. Like a blink. I actually thought someone texted me when my cell buzzed as a timer.
Day 2: The cat (who was hiding under the bed when thought I closed out the animals) decided that my half lotus lap was the perfect spot for a curl up. I think she actually helped me through the 45 minute sit. I guess sangha can come in many shapes.
I am dealing with some doubt and insecurity about my path the last few days. It comes in many shapes. I was feeling like the 'weird' one today at work when talking about going on retreat, and a woowoo character on a show was being mocked about her meditation and yoga classes at Sedona.
Am I just being one of those sad people who goes through divorce and 'turns to God'? That I need to find myself because my only identification was with my marriage?
I guess it just points to the similarity of human experience. That people who go through similar change seek similar medicine. And that my judgement of those people only points to my selfishness, and seperateness.
I just hope I am not losing myself further in my attempt to 'find' myself. I mean, it isn't like I went anywhere. I am here right now, perfect right now. Why am I seeking? I cannot be anything different than I am right now. So why the pit in my stomach?
Dying-places are ordinarily in homes or in hospitals, but this poor fellow has neither a home nor a hospital in which to die. We are here in a vacant space near the river—a sort of common littered with refuse and scavenged by starving dogs. It has been named the Dying-place, because poor, starving, miserable outcasts and homeless sick, homeless poor, homeless misery of every form come here to die. The world scarcely can present a more sad and depressing spectacle than this field of suicides; I say suicides, because many that come here come to voluntarily give up the struggle for existence and to die by sheer will force through a slow starvation. They may be enfeebled by lingering disease; they may be unable to find employment; they may be professional vagrants; they come from different parts of the city and sometimes from the country round about. They are friendless; they are passed unnoticed by a poor and inadequate hospital service; they become utterly discouraged and hopeless and choose to die. Their fellow natives pass and repass without noticing them or thought of bestowing aid or alms, and here it is not expected; they have passed beyond the pale of charity; it is the last ditch; they are here to die, not to receive alms.
This far-gone case of destitution and misery is not the only one in this last retreat of human agony; you see another in the distance, probably a new arrive, as he yet has the strength to site erect.
~James RicarltonVia Pruned
What does it mean when one has a horribly vivid nightmare, about terrorists and fire and mass death and crashing planes. And you are the passenger in a fleeing vehicle as planes and buildings fall around you. And your dream self closes her eyes to the terror and begins sending metta to all beings. With a foreknowledge of imminent death, and with fear very present, my dream self could only send metta, to the terrorists, to her family, to the victims, to all beings everywhere.
Now, in a dramatic analysis, I could say that we are all these passengers, flying toward our deaths, there is no way to change or control our destiny with a hopefully peaceful, but possibly sudden, violent, or painful death. It is inevitable. And yet we calmly plod along, I will sit tomorrow, I will send out metta later, I can't send her metta she is a bitch, I am too pissed off for metta today. I suffer from all of these maras as well.
Here again I am pointed to the quote "practice like your hair is on fire". Why is it I see this, I hear this, I smell this everywhere, and yet I struggle so much with laziness?
