Song of Realization Day 2

 

7 a.m. 

Morning meditation.  Feeling the flow of repulsion and attraction.  Surf this for a while and gradually it becomes balance and stillness. 

This is a precious few days where I get to just hang out in my mind.  I get to feel its power, and its entanglements. I let it sing its own song. 

2 pm.

You can try to know phenomena by knowing the nature of each and everything in the world.  Or you can know the mind, which is that by which we know each and every thing. 

4 pm. 

We practiced the three styles: 

1. Body style, which is a light looking at what is happening in the mind when thoughts arise.
2. Speech style, which is like a combination of analytical and noting. We name what kind of knowing or response is happening, and ask who the "worder" is. 
3. Heart or mind style.  We tap into the experience of simply knowing. 

I resonate strongly with last type. I felt very at ease just resting in the knowing. 

7 pm. 

Many reminders of the dangers of getting attached to blissful, clear and non-conceptual states. And reminders that the rough times are part of the process.

Tim spoke about the wisdom that is at the core of each of the three afflictions.  Craving = discrimation. Aversion = clarity.  Ignorance = non-conceptual. 

So I guess we can allow these to unfold naturally.  

Song of Realization retreat Day 1

Day 1:  

8 am.

I prepare.  This is a momentous event in the unfolding event that is the mind. I want to put into place the conditions that allow me to have a recognition that is going to take, a direct experience of clarity that is a tipping point.  

For this weekend I renounce all my wordly concerns and obsessions. I feel the craving, fear, resistance as support. Cloudy, muddy waters that over the course of the weekend will settle. Causes have outcomes. Non meditation will open the mind to clarity. 

But I need to stay devoted.

5:30 pm

Using space as a metaphor for the nature of mind, everything inside as well as outside feels empty. 

Earlier in the day I am reminded of my first lucid dream, and that sudden shock of total clarity and luminosity.  This is more subtle and gradual. 

At the end of the meditation self hatred rises up.  But as I explore it, I realize there is no real boundary. The heart is just space too. 

6:30

How do I live in this freedom? I want to be careful that I'm not asking "how do I keep living in this freedom." Yes, I want to sustain it, but I don't want to become fixated on maintaining states.  Just see this as a gentle exploration of the world outside the tiny box my mind has been shut up in. 

Open Awareness

 The moment you realize how tired your thoughts are making you. 

Truth body

The wisdom or truth body is the union of emptiness and clarity. The dharmakaya.

I am feeling the flow of this grounded groundlessness more and more every morning.  I feel the gentle urge to clean so that I can see the natural purity of my mind reflected back to me. 

But I feel the resitance. I worry that I'll lose my old, wordly self. I feel a certain nostalgia for my confusion. 

This week I turned 60.  I'm entering my golden years. 

I know what I want to feel: joyful wisdom.  Happy for no reason.

Maybe one path to the dharmakaya is being able to look back on our past confusion with gentle affection. Like being our own grandparent. 

Seriously

When I was a kid my family had a cottage in Maine on the beach, and the summer I turned eleven, one morning I was walking by myself on this beautiful beach, with the vast sky above me, and waves crashes and the seagulls swooping, and it was low tide, so I was far from people.  And I felt this massive huge connection to something, this vast energy, which as a 10 year old practicing Catholic, who had gone through all the rites of communion and confirmation and who went to mass every Sunday,  I understood as God. And I walked with it and felt it in every part being, and eventually it manifested in very clear vision of what I was going to do with my life.  I was going to become the first woman pope.

I didn't tell my family about this right away. I think I may have actually spent a couple of days planning it out, and visuallizing all the resistance I would face. I figured first I'd probably have to become a nun, but over time I would build a revolutionary army of nuns. 

But eventually I told my mother, and she laughed a withering laugh that cut to the core of my soul. 

I was so angry, because of course she was laughing at me. I didn't realize how she was laughing at the harshness of reality. 

This week Sinead O'Connor died. 56, only a few years younger than me. 

I remember how I felt when she tore up the picture of the Pope on SNL.  I wasn't a fan of the pope, and I'd long since given up my fantasy.  But it irritated me, because it felt immature and the wrong kind of danger. It was women taking themselves too seriously in a world where sometimes it's not really worth it. 

But she gave her heart. 

In the end that's what we need to remember about each other. 

Subtle Body Retreat

There are two paths into the subtle body.  The path through the body, exercise, body scanning, anything that nurtures, or throws into relief what the body is experiencing and feeling.  Then there is the path through the mind, visualization, deity practice, tummo. 

The first has many advantages. It is grounding. It is nurturing for the body. It is real.  But it is the body.  It is impermanent, it is relative, its joys and realizations will not last 

The second has the advantage of the absolute. It is the mind and as such is connected to the bigger mind that will outlast the body. But the mind is very powerful.  Enter first through this pathway, without a good foundation, without a healthy, skilled horse (body), and you can lose your way, become overwhelmed and disconnected. 

I come out of this retreat feeling deeply rejuvenated by the middle way.  I am doubly committed to resting in the nature of mind as my main practice, with tantra and tummo as the boosters. What is essential is the recognition of the union of emptiness and clarity. 

But I am also more enthusiastic about getting back to my tai chi and chi kung practices. And running. The body is impermanent. The window that I have for enjoying my strength, and building it to enjoy a healthy old age is closing. Next week I turn 60! 

The gros body needs attention too! 

What am I excited about? And who am I excited for?

Saw Elizabeth Gilbert a couple of months ago. 

She set a challenge to herself over her last book tour to ask everyone she met what they were excited about. The answers were funny, touching, but also insightful. Especially the answer from the cab driver in London, a stressed, angry despairing overworked father, who was insulted by the implication that everyone should be able or willing to answer that question. 

When she stopped asking that question regularly, she shut down. Stopped remembering events.  Stopped feeling present in life. 

I asked that question of myself that evening. It was my tantra practice, in particular White Tara. I want to make this my main practice. I want to see what impact that will have on my life.  I want to see what impact it will have on the lives around me. 

Other takeaways from that evening.  Write to one person.  And write for an hour every day, no less and no more. 

I'm trying to get my writing practice back.  So who would I be excited about writing for?