| April 2006 Hawaii Retreat - Daily Entries The Heart of Meditation Flint Sparks and Donna Martin I have been leading the Heart of Meditation retreat with my friend Donna Martin at the beautiful and peaceful Hui Ho’Olana retreat center on the Hawaiian island of Molokai for the past several years. This year I decided to attempt an experiment and include the sangha back in Austin in the daily teachings during the retreat. Below are the daily messages I sent. Each participant was given a copy of Sharon Salzberg’s book A Heart as Wide as the World: Stories in the Path of Lovingkindness. We also gave each person a copy of a piece written by Ezra Bayda entitled “What is Our Life About?” from his book Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life. If you would like to read through the entries or use them as daily reflections or meditations, please do so. You can even use them to set up a self-retreat and include the books as your companions. These teachings are offered in gratitude for the teachers who came before us and for those participants who shared themselves wholeheartedly and demonstrated the truth of the teachings over and over each day. Without them, there would be nothing to share. Day 1
Dear Sangha, 7:00 - 8:00: Silent sitting and movement/yoga to start
the day This is obviously not a strict or formal meditation retreat. However, this is a rather intensive experience. This is a week of exploration of all that emerges as we sit, with special emphasis on the body and how it holds tension and our conditioning. We mindfully investigate and work to allow the release of all that we meet as we sit. In this setting we also have time to stop the hectic business and the violent speed of everyday life. We are living in a beautiful, quiet environment, deeply in touch with the earth, the sky, and the natural cycle of the day. The intent of the retreat is best expressed in Exra Bayda's "What is Our Life About" and we are using it in the group to provide a map for the unfolding of experience. We also have given each person a copy of Sharon Salzberg's book A Heart as Wide as the World. Remember, the retreat is called "The Heart of Meditation." Each day we will read/chant the piece by Ezra, and each day we will focus on one stanza of the piece. We will also read a story from Sharon Salzberg's book that reflects something essential in each stanza. This is the part I will share each day. So, to begin, the entire version of "What is Our Life About" is shown here. What is Our Life About? Our aspiration, our calling, our desire for a genuine
life, And what is the path? And what is the path? We are so much more than just this body, just this
personal drama. And when the veil of separation rises, Life simply
unfolds as it will. Time is fleeting. Don’t hold back. [Bayda, Ezra. Being Zen. Shambhala:Boston. 2002] Returning to the first stanza: Our aspiration, our calling, our desire for a genuine
life, Obviously there is a lot in just this first paragraph, and we spent 3 hours this morning, before ever reading this, in which every bit of it began to become self-evident as the participants spoke about what brought them to this week of practice and exploration. When we finally did read it, people were supported and surprised by the reflection they saw. Much happens in the group and Donna is a master at working with the body in ways that reflect these struggles even more deeply than words. We enter the teachings through our bodies as we enter the week together. We ended the morning with more sitting after reading the story on page 6 of Sharon Salzberg’s book. The story is called "For the Love of Buddha" in which she describes her first meditation retreat in India at age 18. When asked by some older participants why she was there she replied, "I'm participating so that I can have the love of a Buddha, so I can love people the way the Buddha did." At 18 who knows if she knew what that truly meant, but she goes on to say, "I was actually startled to hear myself make that statement, but knew it was emerging from a deep place within me. By wanting to have the love of Buddha, I was fundamentally seeking the ability to love myself, first of all, as I felt the Buddha would have - with clear seeing yet with undiminished compassion... Without sacrificing any clarity of perception, no being and no aspect of any being is left out of that space of love. This love is completely inclusive." She continued to talk about self-hatred, shame, and judgment that we usually meet as we meet ourselves in meditation, and how her teacher, Dipa Ma, had helped her start over, again and again, whenever she felt she was faltering in her practice. She finishes the short story with a reflection on the fruit of practice in which, "... we are no longer driven helplessly by the force of our own judgments. With the practice of meditation, we can develop the ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others, celebrating the love of a Buddha, which is also our own wondrous potential." You can see how this might be a useful story for the first day of a retreat in which people, many of whom are new to practice, are entering the powerful, deep waters of self-reflection. Aloha until next time. Day 2
Dear Friends, Today we took up the second verse of "What is Our Life About" and read the story entitled "In the Beginning" which appears on page 16 of Sharon Salzberg's book. The first day (yesterday) was very deep and evoked a great deal of strong emotional material for a number of the participants. This provided the ideal environment for approaching this next piece: And what is the path? As we sat in meditation and did small, physical experiments in mindfulness, people began to open to the myriad ways in which they "block the flow to a more open life" and discovered in some cases that what they were opening to wasn't something to be avoided or erased, but what was actually the opening which could be used to awaken. We experimented with what it might be like to simply not use these automatic reactions to reinforce habit patterns, but to use them as pointers and opportunities for practice. We looked at how we are attached to our "stories" and how we create suffering for ourselves and for others in the process of clinging to them as "real." There were several participants who were stunned to feel the relaxation response that occurred when they actually got what it meant to "learn to reside in whatever life presents." Since so many people in this retreat are just beginning practice, and the rest of us always need to be reminded that we are beginners forever, the "In the Beginning" story was helpful and illuminating at this point. Sharon Salzberg tells the story of entering a three-month meditation retreat with the Burmese meditation master Sayadw U Pandita after she had been practicing steadily for 14 years. She says: "He was a strong and demanding teacher. I often took brief notes after each period of sitting and walking meditation so that I could precisely describe my experience to him. Every day, six days a week, we saw him for private interviews. The first time I went in for an interview, I carefully described one of my meditation periods. He looked at me and said, 'Well, in the beginning it can be like that.' And that was the extent of my interview!" Of course it continued to go that way for a very long time over the course of the retreat, even though she had been practicing for 14 years before arriving in front of this particular teacher! She also recalled how, at about this same time, Suzuki Roshi's book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind had just been released, and during a brief visit to the United States she had not bothered to get it because she knew, of course, what it meant. She recalls, "It is about, when you start practice, you have only what's called beginner's mind. Then you practice awhile, and you accrue all of these great experiences, until one day you become supremely accomplished and you have what is called a Zen mind." Luckily, a friend eventually gave her a copy of the book several months later when she was back in India and she said: "When I finally read the book, I realized that I had completely misunderstood it. It was not about transcending lowly beginner's mind and one day having a sublime and extraordinary Zen mind. If anything, it was the opposite: a revelation of practice as the movement toward more fully experiencing the ordinary, rather than grasping after the seemingly extraordinary. It is in the ordinary mind that we find our Buddha nature, when we stop trying to have something special happen." This was a very big point of discussion in our group today, as participants were relieved as they began to let go of their long-held sense of having to be a "warrior" and fight to attain something in practice. They begin to find that relaxing into what is already here - "whatever life presents" - ordinary mind with ordinary troubles - is the gate to awakening! One by one we began to examine and let go of the ideas that the participants held about meditation practice. Little by little we began to "un-do" and relax into a more spacious heart and mind. At the end of Sharon Salzberg’s story she recalls a similar insight. "Being a beginner means having a freshness of view and an unguarded openness to experience. It means not being burdened by ideas and concepts about what should be happening, what could be happening, what must happen next, and what I deserve to happen... With relief, I acknowledged to myself, 'I am a beginner, and I hope I continue to take joy in being a beginner.' Of course, on the very day I came to that understanding, U Pandita mysteriously stopped saying, 'In the beginning it can be like that.'" May we all learn to reside in whatever life presents, as a beginner, fresh and interested in our lives and in the lives of others. May we learn to attend to all the blocks we habitually hold in place. Curiosity and creativity are hallmarks of real practice, not dogged attempts to get something particular or be someone special. Of course, in the beginning, middle, and end, it can still be like that. But we can help each other wake up to something that is far more simple and more true. We are that big mind and big heart we seek, we just don't see it. May we surrender into that perfection and reflect it for each other. Aloha for today, Day 3
Hello Friends, This morning a participant came up to me and said that he thought he was finally present; that it had taken three days to feel like he was settling and could actually "meditate." Those of us who have sat longer retreats know the range of challenging experiences we encounter over those first three or four days of sitting. Another participant spoke in the group about how much “stuff” he had to move through each time he sat in order to finally settle down and feel calm. This, as you might expect, led into a very useful discussion about the desire for meditation to produce a particular state - to be useful and to get us somewhere - especially away from where we are (bad) to somewhere else, hopefully very serene and "spiritual" (good). For those of you at AZC who are studying Mu Soeng's Trust in Mind [link to my reading list where this new book is featured], this is an important theme. Remember, yesterday we focused on "residing in whatever life presents." This includes all those things that seems to "block" meditation, and this includes all of our ideas which we cling to about what we think "meditating" will do. It was becoming clearer in our discussion that non-doing was the opening; not more doing called "spiritual" work. The first participant realized that all the "struggle" of the first few days was the practice, not impediments to practice. Remember Dogen's description of the awakened mind: "Intimacy with all things." The section of "What is our Life About" for today was: And what is the path? So, once again, there it is: exactly the issues that surfaced from the morning. As you might expect, this was a very challenging segment. What is expressed here is counter to almost everything most of us are taught from an early age. Certainly it is counter to the ways in which our culture shapes us every day. We are supposed to work hard to “be somebody.” Especially new was the idea that "seeking comfort" and "avoiding pain" in habitual and automatic ways might actually be the cause of their suffering, not the solution. This is a radical notion that calls us to practice non-doing. At the same time that the participants were attending to the ways in which they were struggling with all of this, we were also noting that "the relentlessly spinning mind" was beginning to calm down a bit. Our reading from Sharon Salzberg was, in fact, "Resting the Exhausted Mind" (p. 65) in which she recounts how one of the early teachers at the Insight Meditation Society, Steve Armstrong, made a mock brochure which had as its humorous motto: "It is better to do nothing than to waste your time." Of course, this never made it into the formal brochure, but Steve was trying to get to say something important that our insistence on business and striving in our spiritual lives (in all of our lives!), is a key impediment to realizing (not achieving) some peace and spaciousness. Salzberg states, "Basically we enter into mindfulness practice to learn how to do nothing so as not to waste our time or our lives. We learn how not to act out of the habitual tendencies we generally live by, those actions that create distress for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble. Doing nothing or what the Taoists call non-doing) does not mean shutting or minds off or going to sleep, but it does mean resting - resting the mind by being present to whatever is happening in the moment, without adding to it the effort of attempting to control it. Non-doing means being at peace." We spent the afternoon session engaging in small, interpersonal experiments in mindfulness [from the Hakomi Method][link to www.ronkurtz.com] which allowed participants to begin to actually see and feel, with some immediacy and precision, many of their core beliefs that fuel their automatic and habitual reactions. Seeing them arise in consciousness in these small ways, from the very beginning, before the entire story has had time to unfold, was very helpful. This is the beginning of "becoming," the ordinary, every-day version of how the self organizes and constructs itself out of sensations, perception, formations, and consciousness. As Sharon Salzberg notes: "When Buddhist teachers talk about letting go, or abandoning, or renouncing, they are talking about dropping the burden of becoming and returning our awareness to the natural center of our being, returning to a state of natural peace." As the great Dzogchen master Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche used to out it, "Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind." Please accept that invitation to practice doing nothing so you will not waste your life. Aloha, Day 4
Greetings, The segment of "What is Our Life About" that we focused on today is as follows: We are so much more than just this body, just this
personal drama. Even using the word "softening" in the same sentence as "the mind's incessant judgment" invited relief for some. The work from yesterday has helped participants see the reality of their being "so much more" than their bodily sensations and internal dramas. Over and over, people talked about how they were beginning to notice that they were not who they thought they were. All the categories and names and boxes began to be seen as constructions rather than dense realities. For some, the habit patterns that they used to define themselves began to seem like the stories that they actually are. Then we read the first of two stories in the Sharon Salzberg book. The first one, "Like the Presence of the Sky (p. 75)," begins where the participants were heading in the morning discussions following our sitting and yoga. In the story, a question was posed to one of Sharon's friends: "How has your life changed since you started meditating? Without a moments hesitation, he said that before starting to practice, whatever happened in his mind felt as if it were taking place in a small, dark, enclosed theater and that everything taking place on the stage seemed to be overwhelming and solid. He went on to say that now, since he started meditation practice, his awareness of what happened in his mind was like watching and opera in an open-air theater." She goes on to recount her own first experiences at the Santa Fe Opera and could understand the metaphor clearly: "Our seats were situated so that I could see both the stage and the sky all around it. In New Mexico the sky is so vast. Watching the characters struggling with the immense complexity of their lives against the backdrop of that open and spacious sky was a fantastic juxtaposition: however histrionic the event, however dramatic, however much despair or ecstasy was happening onstage, it was all in the context of that hugely spacious sky." One after one, participants shared their shift in perspective that the week is allowing, so that they are not habitually creating, "as William Blake puts it, 'mind-forged manacles,' binding ourselves to limited perspectives." More space. This larger perspective seemed to be automatically inviting more loving-kindness. In fact, all of the four "Immeasurables" were in evidence in the group as they helped each other through whatever emerged: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, just as I reported at the outset. The second story ["Never Alone" on page 76] spoke of the practice of loving kindness and the experience of a particular student in a retreat who had just had a year of intense loss and disappointment. Sharon Salzberg reported that, "It would have been easy for her to become disconsolate - except for one thing: her recognition that somewhere in the world somebody was offering loving kindness to all sentient beings. By definition, that included her." She goes on to say that, "This was happening simply by the virtue of the fact that she existed; she was a sentient being, and that was enough for her to be a deserving recipient of the force of love. This recognition, she said, was the singular force that had given her strength to go on, to keep her heart from breaking during difficult times." In reflecting back on the study piece for today, people could identify where they were clinging to their views and how this got in the way of the free flow of their lives. Last night we had the opportunity to see two native Hawaiian's dance various hulas in ways that most people rarely are able to witness. These were spiritual dances born from their heritage, taught to them by their grandmothers, not the tourist versions at a Waikiki luau or some caricature of what others think Hawaiian culture is like. They were so wholeheartedly themselves and the free-flow of humanity was evident in every move, in the joy in that expression, in the smile on their faces, and the generosity in which they offered true aloha, which is their term for all of this. Full human nature; full of love, compassion, joy, and peace. Bodhisattvas dancing. May it be so for all of us,
Dear Friends, Today is our final full day in retreat and likely my last post from Hui Ho'Olana. The name of the retreat center, by the way, means something like "where inspiration rises up from the heart." I hope you may have felt a bit of this kind of inspiration this week if you have been following along. Tomorrow’s sessions will continue with sitting, mindfulness movement, and the completion of the group, integration of the work, and good-byes. Some of the group went to Kualapapa this morning, making a pilgrimage to the powerful isolation and incredible beauty of the leper colony (as it used to be called). A few of us went to the overlook, a park-like ridge about 1,600 feet above the peninsula facing east. We arrived before sunrise and stood in the cold wind and looked out over the vast sky and endless ocean and watched the lights of the colony come on below us, one by one, as we also witnessed the sun rise up out of the ocean and illuminate the tallest sea cliffs in the world. We could see the edges of them just to the south, poking their heads into the clouds, towering 4,000 feet above the breakers. This morning we ended "What is Our Life About" with the last two short pieces. And when the veil of separation rises, Life simply
unfolds as it will. In response to this piece, a woman in the group who was born in Teheran, began to speak about her father's intimate knowledge of the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi. How he would quote it by heart in the original language, of course, and how from a young age she knew there was something more than this "veil of separation" and that she yearned to understand it more deeply. She quoted a piece in the original language which expressed something about the lack of an independently existing self - about the veil. We all opened to that deep question, to which there is no answer, about what this is all about? What is this mystery we are living that is so apparent, present, and undeniable, yet so difficult to catch or hold on to. This dilemma is what we meet in practice. As we relax around it, "Life simply unfolds as it will," and that is what several participants are reflecting at this stage - a relaxation into the flow of life and a quiet settling into themselves. The story from Sharon Salzberg was "Selflessness (p. 111)." It is an accessible story with a humorous beginning in which she tells what it was like to host her Indian teacher Dipa Ma in the United States and how she would respond to modern life. She says, "At one point a friend needed some cash, so we walked to an ATM machine outside a bank. He pushed in his card, punched in his code, and his money came out. We turned to Dipa Ma, expecting an awed reaction. Instead, she shook her head and said, 'It's so sad, so sad.' Confused, we asked, 'What is so sad?' She said, 'That poor person who has to sit behind the wall all day long, with no air, no sunshine, and has to pick up people's cards, count the money, and hand it out.' Then we explained that there was no person behind the wall; it was just an interdependent process of component parts coming together. 'Ah,' she said, 'It's like anatta.'" [no self] In other words, there is no "me" behind the wall. Everything arises out of causes and conditions to form this "self-centered dream" that I call "me." It is easy to forget because it is so apparently seamless and solid. It is only through practice that it opens to us. Recently a student at AZC offered me a quote from Trungpa Rinpoche in this regard: "Even though everything is impermanent, constantly changing, no self, and based on profound shunyata... it persists... continues... and has continuity!" Another old Indian teacher, Nadargadatta Maharaj said, "Wisdom tells me I am nothing; love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows”. As Sharon Salzberg describes it, "The basis of the Buddha's psychological teaching is that, given the truth of inherent insubstantiality and interdependence, trying to control that which cannot be controlled will never give us the security we all wish for. It will not give us happiness. When we let go of trying to control, when we instead fully connect with our experiences, then we can be drawn through the transparency of all things and arrive at our fundamental interconnectedness. In this way, understanding anatta, selflessness, allows us to enter a state of equanimity that is like vast space: rich and vivid and dynamic. It contains everything; it does not struggle with anything; it clings to nothing. Looking at others with this kind of equanimity allows us to love everyone as ourselves." Remember, "Time is fleeting. Don't hold back. Appreciate this precious life." Flint Postscript
Aloha, The story that begins on page 168 is "The End of the Path." I'm not sure if we ever reach the end of THE path, but we certainly have completed this particular week together in which we asked ourselves each day, "And what is the Path?" One of the things that often happens as we return is that we confront the contrast between the week at the Hui and our lives at home. This contrast can trigger comparisons and confusion. The questions from our family and friends can also invite doubt and uncertainty about the truth of our experiences. It takes time to integrate the experiences of a retreat and it requires some commitment to ongoing practice in order to deepen our understanding and maintain the spaciousness and freedom we may have tasted. These same questions came up for the original followers of the Buddha just as they do for us. They were likewise stimulated during the time in which Sharon Salzberg and others were studying in India. Many of the western students with whom she studied were interested in as many experiences as they could accumulate and she was surprised at the openness of her meditation teacher at the time in Bodh-gaya. Munindra was very clear as he responded to the students' desire to search out other teachers and forms of meditation practice. He would simply state, "The Dharma doesn't suffer from comparison." Sharon Salzberg goes further: "Truth is truth. There is no way that it can be divided into little pieces and claimed as an emblem of belonging, or of private, personal excellence. We suffer from comparison, not the Dharma. We suffer from being proprietary about the truth, from feeling exclusive and competitive. The teachings are not something to hold on to, defend, or prove superior. We don't need to be attached to them, as if they were a commodity we could retain as 'ours.' Ultimately, there is only our own life and the choice that the teachings offer to live wisely or to remain in ignorance. This is the heart of the Buddha's practice: our heart's release from suffering, not the adoption of a sectarian identity." Your experience is your experience. The truth of your "heart's release" is what is true, not any ideas you may have about what happened or any challenges or questions others may have about what you tell them. Remember the italicized phrase in the text of "What is Our Life About?" It was "... and where, at this very moment, do we cling tour views?" You might notice a tendency to feel shy about your experience, or find yourself clinging tightly to what you may have "gained." It is also easy to get caught by an "us and them" mentality, which, of course, separates us rather than connects. Sharon Salzberg echoes this: "To let go of clinging to views, we first have to openly acknowledge the fear giving rise to this tendency. When we face our own fear, we can trace it back to our inner confusion. When, through practice, we perceive the truth of existence, and see impermanence, suffering, and emptiness of self, we no longer feel it necessary to defend or tenaciously cling to dogma. We can freely rest in the truth. Our hearts are moved by our suffering and the suffering of others; we do not want to cultivate a feeling of separation from anyone." Please continue to practice. I would recommend finding others to practice with. You have already tasted the truth of community practice and community support. Watch how you automatically move back toward old habit patterns, not with judgment, but with patience and kindness. Remember the words of Dipa Ma: "That's O.K. Now you can start again." Sharon Salzberg ends the chapter with a continued encouragement to practice. She states, "The Buddhadharma offers a way to live that proves its own validity, just in the practice of it. Thus, it is not a belief to be defended but a guide for transformation. On our personal journey of discovery, we see that attachment to the way that we walk is not at all the point; it is the truth itself that is the purpose of following the path. Then end of deluded attachment to all things, including the path, is the end of the path." And that is asking a lot. Yet we taste its truth over and over, and we are reminded over and over, as we make our way through life together. May we continue to make our way together in loving kindness Mahalo for a wonderful week,
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