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Having
just returned from an 8 day silent retreat at a Zen monastery I am struck
so powerfully for the true need for stillness and silence in our culture.
In these challenging times we all face, and in a culture where words
like compassion and transformation have become new age buzzwords, I
can so clearly see the healing attributes and true need to transform
the cultural imagination in positive ways.
To be honest I am somewhat at a loss for words. Which may seem contradictory
or paradoxical considering the long essay I am about to write, but...I
have just returned from a silent retreat, and am overwhelmed with something
inexplicable, some glimpse of the ineffable, that I cannot entirely
describe. Yet there is something call out in dialog, in voice, that
requires I write this experience out.
I
have been practicing and studying Buddhism for over 30 years now, and
to be honest struggling terribly with my practice and resistance to
it, and then something happened in the stillness, and hearing the voices
of suffering and the commonality shared in those voices. All the language,
all the dialog started to sound like the same thing to me, both a question
and a statement at the same time: regardless of the content, the statement
was "I do not want to suffer this way", and the question I
heard over and over was paradoxically, "How can I prolong this
suffering?" My heart broke. And in some moment of surrender something
in me shifted into stillness that is still moving through me. I know
that is a strange image of stillness moving, but some floodgate has
opened, I am laughing and crying and tremendous energies are moving
through me, and I recognize that even this amazing and beautiful thing
of relief and of release requires that I let go and not attach, to relax
and just let it happen.
I drove home for 6 or 7 hours in silence and when I arrived home there
was my son waiting. and just when I thought it could not get any more
beautiful something else happened. I arrived home a bit tired and extremely
sensitive and quiet. Talking was actually somewhat difficult. My son
saw this. He told me that he had missed me and would not stop hugging
me. We are quite close as father and son, and I simply stood there quietly
hugging him. Then he said that he had missed me terribly and so had
spontaneously decided that week that since his dad was at the monastery
"doing Zen", that he would not watch tv or cartoons or video
games so he could see what stillness and quiet felt like, quite a commitment
for a little guy. I was very quiet listening as he told me all this,
told me all of his projections about Zen and what the monastery was
like in his imagination. I was still in a very quiet place and so I
listened appreciatively and when he was done all I could do was quietly
tell him how amazing that was and how proud of him I was. Now we are
very close he and I, but then he came over and cuddled in my arms on
the couch and it got very quiet and still and he said I love you daddy,
and I said I loved him, and then he said it again, and all I could do
was say reassurances, and he kept saying it over and over, so I kept
quietly responding with reassurances, and I quite literally watched
this amazing child melt in my arms. It was one of the most beautiful
moments of my life.
After leaving the monastery I was inspired to read Durckheim and found
so much resonance in his words as to be amazed that this individual
could so clearly outline and describe my experience: "Durckheim
begins his teaching by focusing on our rare moments of higher consciousness,
those numinous experiences which he names "privileged moments"
and "life's starry hours." These are unforgettable times when
something greater than our usual awareness breaks through and floods
us with unaccountable serenity, joy, or certainty. Such experiences
call us toward a new way of living and initiate us into a different
view of reality. Mystics, philosophers, saints, and esotericists of
all times have pointed to these radiant moments as proof that we are
meant to be more than we seem to be. These events have opened our eyes
to the higher influences present in our world. "
Something
shattered in me in surrender, and simultaneously moved into stillness.
or rather somehow got out of the way, and allowed stillness to arise.
Whatever happened, I am seeing the world around me in an entirely
different light.
Upon arriving home I was in a state of stillness and quiet that my son
saw and immediately responded to. It became so obvious to me, the ripple
effect that stillness has. When i arrived home, and for several days
after, speech was not easy, in fact my voice has actually physically
changed in tone and character as well as the tempo and meter. I realized
that as time was passing, almost like putting on a suit of clothes,
the busy-ness around me, which I was required to once again engage with,
was actually seeming to separate me from that precious stillness that
had created a tremendous energetic release in my being. Tears and laughter,
subtle sensitivities to movement and sound, sight perception. A picture
of myself as a young boy that I had always disliked now seen so clearly
as a sweet loving boy with bright eyes... But the requirements of the
world called me back. Having a very eager and beautiful 11 year old
son was very intense, and his needs to engage, even though the silence
and stillness were profoundly moving him, were still calling me back,
but now the relationship to that busy-ness had changed profoundly. Over
time I felt my body and spirit responding with irritation and a sadness
about letting go of the still space. Then I let go again, the relationship
to those assumptions and beliefs had changed, and realized that the
still space was not going anywhere, rather I was putting back on the
mantle of doing, the aspects of movement and content that obscure the
still moment.
The next day out and about I was still quite still, (funny to write
that.) But I could again see so clearly the ripple effect on others
as i changed my relationship to my projections and allowed my silence
to be relaxed and at ease. People and things responded. At one point
we arrived at a large fountain in a beautiful modern courtyard. One
of those tall open fountains with timed water ballet apertures. My son
remarked that he wondered what it would be like to walk through, and
without hesitation I said " let's find out" and so we did,
laughing and getting soaked and in the fountain. It felt great to see
his wonder at the possibility and openness.
I feel that the turning point for me, in retreat, was hearing all the
suffering in speech, in questions, in the constant ongoing dialog about
the details of doing, and the contrast of having had some glimpse of
the clarity of not-doing, My heart burst, and for the first time in
my adult life I felt joy. It was not just the sangha and the voices
communally suffering, but also the echo in my own experience of the
repetition of the content obscuring the opportunity to actually surrender
and experience for myself the stillness of not-doing. I look at my path
in life again, and rather then complaint for the challenges and suffering
I have endured, I find Gratitude for the pummeling, as it allowed me
to reach a place of surrender that perhaps otherwise I never would have
seen.
" A conscious being is one through whom the divine life radiates.
The personality has been made entirely permeable and obedient to essence,
the subconscious has been cleansed and liberated, and the way is cleared
for our higher centers to express themselves through our state of openness,
receptivity, and presence in the moment.
To be released from our misconceptions and buffers is not merely a mental
effort but requires dissolving the physical knots and distorted postures
which express these attitudes. Clenched jaws, cramped stomachs, raised
shoulders all keep us outside of the realm of essence which is the only
threshold to our true becoming. Letting go also means "forsaking
the brilliance of the rational mind and entering the semi-darkness of
another form of consciousness" (8). The tyranny of the intellectual
center and of a cultural worldview reduced to the surface of the five
senses can be a powerful barrier to the reception of divine inspiration.
"By letting go in the right way, we learn to 'let in' and 'let
happen' that which, in spite of all our ideas, projections, desires
and prejudices, meets us directly in the shape of the world and comes
from the constantly stirring essential being within." (9) "
My experience of this description of physicality, especially related
to tension in the body, and my jaw in particular, so resonates with
Durckheim's description I was in shock. Again Durckheim: "This
work on oneself is not centered on self for the sake of self. Durckheim
has a much wider panorama in view. Our efforts are meant to prepare
us to reach a state where life in the service of transcendent Being
becomes second nature. In discovering our own essential self, we participate
in the manifestation of what can only be described as divine, the source
of mercy, compassion, and conscious love. Such a possibility requires
work on all parts of our nature. But Durckheim is especially insistent
on the body as a key to breaking through to a greater consciousness.
"Whenever a wrong posture has become deeply ingrained it blocks
the redeeming, renewing and preserving forces that arise from the depths
of Being." (2) Durckheim
respects it as an expression of transcendent Being in a particular form
and calls upon us to seek our right center of gravity within it. This
requires work on posture, tension, and breathing. The primary practice
to achieve such centering is meditation. This fundamental exercise,
however, is not to be confused with the various methods used in our
New Age culture. Durckheim tells us that "the purpose of correct
practice is not to bring man to a state of tranquility but to keep him
in a condition of constant watchfulness and prevent him from coming
to a standstill on the Way." (3) "
"Durckheim
identifies this center as a state wherein a person moves continuously
toward his innermost nature. It is not a place but our driving force
calling us home. From this center we are able to acquire a clear sense
of inner direction, and above all, a "self-confidence that is independent
of the world's praise or blame." (5) Without this center, we are
the plaything of inner and outer forces. "Practice on ourselves,
in the physical and spiritual sense, is always of two kinds. It involves
both the pulling-down of everything that stands in the way of our contact
with Divine Being, and the building-up of a 'form' which, by remaining
accessible to its inner life, preserves this contact and affirms it
in every activity in the world." (6) Durckheim insists that if
we have become conscious of our essence, we have become conscious of
our union with transcendence. But to achieve this, we need to have the
courage to meet the unknown, and to "endure the mystery that cannot
be conceptually comprehended--in short, to pause and inwardly dwell
in that to which we are all too unaccustomed, the radiance of Divine
Being." (7). Durckheim calls upon us to risk over and over again
all that we think we have understood, all that we hold onto as security.
" I know now that this retreat allowed me to experience the truth
of those words, and my life path is moved to so clearly embrace that
possibility, that I can serve from a place of stillness.
What I see so clearly now is the unspoken communal yearning for the
still place, the place of rest, the center of the still lake before
the ripples of intention move out. Those ripples are also yearned for
because, in experiencing that stillness we so clearly see our own innate
quality, and penchant for compassion and release, and the beauty and
joy that that state evokes in, not only the being who is still, but
also those who are experiencing that stillness in action. Again a paradox
in language but not in experience.
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