Leap like a tiger while sitting

15 Dec 2013, Sunday

I missed being at the retreat almost immediately after having left it.  I only went to 4PM Friday; the retreat went on to 3PM Sunday.  I didn’t expect to be missing it, nor did I expect the impact it had on me.

Monday at 10 AM we sit for the first time.  I hate it.  “What a giant, gigantic mistake you have made” says my mind to itself, finding multiple ways to be redundant. Five months of the joy of retirement, unloading the condo, road trips, and even the stay at the Las Vegas Zen Center where the practice times are not that much really; and what, you are going to do four sits a day, with chants, walks, rushed meals, and a prescribed schedule from 4:30 AM to 9:45 PM each day?  What were you thinking, dear mind?  Escape plans are my primary focus. 

I’m wearing a face mask to filter out the incense.  I’ve brought my own food to replace what I can’t eat in the standard menu.  I wish I could be more transparent and just do together action. 

One participant gives an exciting rendition of the Evening Bell Chant.  Her voice fills the room with a voice as clear as an organ pipe, and toward the end she adds semitones to a descending pitch section that gives it a definite Arabic music effect.  I never thought I would use exciting to describe any musical performance, but this was it (overriding any technical flaws, which were there, but were rendered irrelevant).  

Tuesday:  My knees hurt.  My butt hurts.  I find that a gel pack for the knees and folded up fleece pants for the butt fix those issues.  My mind is running around in the Kasbah of consciousness, sampling all the vendors again and again, and no way to get out.  I can count breaths up to 3, if I start at 2.  I thought if I started at 2 that it would give some momentum, some thrust. 

By the evening the HDT tells me the incense will be lit briefly and then put out.

Wednesday evening:  My commitment is weak and I doubt the usefulness of the retreat. Soon comes an unbearable muscle spasm in my upper back.  I have to skip a sitting period and find ice and heat.  The Head Dharma Teacher reminds me to tell him when I’m going to disappear. 

Then something switches.  I can count breaths to 108, sometimes even slowing the breath. I start over but soon the chug-pi is slapped and ends the sitting part of the day.  I have a plan now, I will be in a groove tomorrow. 

By the end of the day no more face mask, as the bar-like ambiance begins to clear out of the room.

Thursday:  Where is that groove?  Not really there.  It comes and goes.  The longer valley of a measured walk is now a set of short ones separated by cols and ridges that I have to climb over.  Sometimes I’m wandering in high scrub, sometimes I’m pushing through dense brush, sometimes I follow a peaceful river in the vale. 

Today I sit in a chair so I can relax my arms in my lap; the back spasm goes away.  I decide to stick with the chair for the rest of the time I am there. 

I run low in my own essential food supply but the head monk allows that I can use food in the fridges to prep something for myself; this works out fine.

Friday: I’m five days on the cushion and I’m gonna make it home tonight.  I’m in a Kenworth sleeper cab, its long hood pulling me to the conclusion.  Sometimes I focus hard on the road right beneath me and push the throttle to spin up the turbo; sometimes I back off and project into the setting sun where my trip is complete.  The breath-o-meter gets reset frequently, but with some cycles on it each time.  Some doubt returns and ambivalence sets in.

…….

Post-retreat: The cycle and rhythm of the retreat beckons me.  My head seems clearer than usual; factoids and names come to me more easily; emotions are more accessible.  I think of my companions and the Zen Master and what they are doing at that moment in time, and that I have sort of abandoned myself by abandoning them. [My early departure was planned but only about a week before the retreat.]  I feel a new confidence that I can do this kind of retreat again, but I’m certainly not over the conflict between the pleasures of life in the physical world vs. the preciousness of life, and how can I help, made stronger in a meditative world.  Those worlds connect; in meditating one exercises the mind to make it more useful and less controlling and distracting, a better tool for the mundane world.  I don’t plan on becoming enlightened in my lifetime, lamenting that I have to resist a very tempting attachment to a specific outcome.  I may not save all sentient beings.  But I am very grateful, at age 65, having survived accidents and cancer, to still be here on this planet, so I can ask, how can I help?  Of course there are no clear decisions on one’s path.  What is my path?  Just walk.

P.S. The retreat is called a Yong Maeng Jong Jin, which translates to the title of the post, Leap like a tiger while sitting.