All Day Silent Meditation Retreat

 I have been to so many of Long Beach Meditation's silent retreats in the past two years, I forget how daunting it was in the beginning, to sit and walk and eat mindfully and in complete silence for hours on end. Now I welcome the silence. I am such a busybody normally, as if someone appointed me Official Helper and my role is to be ever vigilant, leaping to the rescue - never mind whether the person wants to be saved or not. As Victor wrote to me, "But when one jumps in to "save" someone, who are they really trying to save.  So many times, we just cannot stand the pain someone else's suffering causes us.  It is like the story of the butterfly emerging from it chrysalis - if you try to help it, you injure it permanently." I understood then that I am eternally trying to save my mother, who suffered more than anyone I knew, and since I failed to "save" her, I keep trying (unconsciously) with others, and of course that doesn't work so well either. What it does do is reinforce those feelings of 'not good enough.' The past once more reaching out a ghostly hand to stir the pot of the unthinking present.

Zeeba in a box

We did discuss this, HH, my therapist and teacher of a different ilk, and I, the day before the retreat. I told him all about Sasha's workshop and the uncovering of 'not good enough' and all its sad consequences. He gave me homework, something to consider over the next fortnight: "Do I matter if I am not being helpful or cheering people up, and if so, how?" Good question. How do any of us earn our place in the world - and why must it even be earned? It is something that so strikes me with animals: my cat who balances on my shoulder, leans down and gently closes my nostril with her paw to wake me up in the morning, makes her demands known as a matter of course, and trusts that the people in her universe will provide. Such huge trust our pets show us, that of course they have a right to jump all over things and act as if they own the place and we will look after them just because. How did we lose that same sense of belonging? I suppose because our universe, unlike our pets', is unstructured and unsafe - anything can happen at any time. Of course that is also true in our pets' world too - there are earthquakes and house fires and accidents that we can't prevent - but the illusion is that we can keep these creatures entrusted to us safe, and since they don't know any better, they play along so we can all feel safe, at least until it inevitably comes crashing down. We put our pets in a box of our own design, and take care of them perhaps as we secretly wish someone would take care of us.

So the first thing on Saturday at the retreat was to bring the focus out of the head, out of thinking mind and into the present. The effort involved makes it abundantly clear, at least to me, that control is an illusion. It is enormously difficult to keep the attention on what is happening moment by moment. Victor described our minds as computers, whose job it is to learn a procedure as quickly as possible so that it becomes automatic. Obviously a useful survival skill. But now, the effect of that hard-won automaticity is that we rarely look out at the world with new eyes; everything is filtered through the totality of our experiences to date: from the general - gender, nationality, religion - to the specific - our upbringing, childhood, schools attended - to the minutiae of any given moment - hunger, fatigue, even the bloody weather. An overcast day gives rise to a completely different state of mind than a bright sunny one.

So we slow everything down in a retreat in order to look closely at the robotic programming and break the pattern. This is especially apparent in walking meditation. Since it is so difficult to sustain concentration (and I'm talking the sort of concentration that causes you to break out in a sweat), Victor suggested trying to hold the attention for short intervals - maybe five minutes at most - and concentrating on walking, by slowly, slowly raising the foot, lifting it in the air, moving it forward, setting it down. He demonstrated what this looked like. His movements were incredibly slow, the minutest increments, aware every second what was happening in the body. Meditators in other traditions tend to laugh at Vipassana meditators for creeping about like robots, but in fact what is happening in the mind is anything but robotic. That's the whole point. To be aware of the tiniest sensation throughout the body, as it engages in something as ordinary as walking.

Walking meditation

In the second walking meditation (having already zipped far too quickly through the first, intent on the restroom and a cup of coffee, nothing mindful about any of that except to hurry up before the bell signaled time was up), with Victor's challenge fresh in mind, I happened to stand up on my zabuton, the larger cushion upon which my meditation cushion was perched, rather than the floor itself. Some of our zabutons are a heavy foam rectangle but this one was more like a pillow shaped like a square, stuffed with down. Because it is uneven, it proved to be extraordinarily difficult to stand and walk on mindfully. I tried closing my eyes and almost fell over. Lifting one foot in tiny increments was easy - any larger movement done as slowly and I would have toppled for sure.

I felt like a baby learning to walk, weight listing from side to side, trying to find a centered place of balance. That moment when the foot absolutely must leave the ground felt as perilous as jumping out of an airplane not knowing if your parachute will open. I had to fight the urge not to get down on hands and knees and scuttle to safety. So creeping in this manner off my zabuton and over to the door of the hall on two wobbly legs took an intense amount of time. I barely made it to the door when the bell rang and it was time to turn around and creep right back again. Seated once more on the cushion, it was interesting to transfer that same level of concentration to keeping the mind on the belly breathing. At one point I could feel myself flush with the heat of the effort and my scalp prickle with sweat. Of course the moment I was aware of it ("Oh look! I'm concentrating so hard I'm sweating!"), it stopped. And I was reminded of Victor's analogy of the mind when it stills being like a forest pool, and all the little critters feeling safe enough to come out and show their faces. Some of the critters are so skittish, they dive back into the undergrowth the second they have been noticed. Who knew sweat could be skittish.

The day continued to unfold in its untethered way. One of the best things about a retreat is the putting down of the paraphernalia of time. One person is the designated bell ringer and rings a small handbell to signal a return to our seats. For the rest of us, we are able to let go the whole concept. Like not speaking, not watching the clock is tremendously liberating. A whole day in which to do nothing but watch your mind and get to know it a little better. If last week's workshop was all about what Sasha termed the 'descending' (psychological) work, this silent meditation retreat was all about the 'ascending' (spiritual) work. I realized they are two halves of the same coin and must be done together. To do the psychological without being grounded in meditation and the body keeps the work too much in the head, at the level of thought; to do the spiritual work without the corresponding psychological work can become a New-Agey exercise in spiritual bypassing (meaning you sweep the messy emotions under the rug because all is now supposed to be sweetness and light). Pema Chodrun writes:

"... it is helpful to understand that meditation is not just about feeling good. To think this is why we meditate is to set ourselves up for failure. We'll assume we are doing it wrong almost every time we sit down: even the most settled meditator experiences psychological and physical pain. Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple direct relationship with the way we are."

This was the aim of both weekends, to begin to establish that "simple direct relationship with the way we are." Workshop and retreat demanded an honest exploration of self: the one through inquiry into body sensations uncovering deep emotions, the other through sensation in the body developing concentration and mindfulness. Neither had anything to do with thought.

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I wrote a poem after an All Day Retreat, in January 2010. I understand what I wrote a whole lot better now, and for sure it is much harder than I imagined then! But here it is - it does capture a little of the spirit of the thing.


Singular Heart  by Alison Cameron

The beautiful quote that inspired the poem:
“The wise enshrine the miraculous bones of the ancients within
themselves.”

We converge in the early morning,
singular minds and sturdy bodies
settling on our separate mats,
clutching our complicated stories,
social smiles pasted on wary faces.
We shield our battered hearts and
hide our collective eye.

As watery sun inches across pellucid sky
we sit and walk
and walk and sit
with measured step and even breath
training monkey mind.

Slowly, imperceptibly,
the marrow of our ancestors
infuses our bones as
we show our soft underbelly
stretched out like the dead.

Trust, says our Teacher,
Turn the Light within.

Sitting tall at close of day
the barking dog is still.
The sweet song
of a singular bird
calls out with her small clear voice.
As if in response,
our singular selves rise up and merge
to fill the room with one singular mind
thrumming like a tuning fork
to the communion of sorrow shared in our silent world.
Our light shines -
no, blinds -
through the cracks in our vulnerable hearts.

I am undone.