Just finished a five day meditation retreat. Silent. And within hours, I was at work. Way too fast and strange a transition. The intensity of a busy Saturday evening grocery store. Maybe I won’t do that one again. Not the meditation. I’ve been doing that on and off for the last 40 years. Through the worst of my drug and alcohol abuse, I still was attracted to meditating. Strange how it works better when I’m sober.
But back to the retreat. I live in Portland, Oregon and there are so many opportunities here to sit. A quick Google search for meditation centers in Portland Oregon produced 471,000 sites. I’ve tried several and have settled into Zen Center of Portland. From the Ordinary Mind School of Joko Beck. I like it for its pragmatic and simple approach to Zen. Feels like American Zen. I’m comfortable there. Most practitioners have been at it for a while and tend to be a little bit older, like me.
So last week I sat. From sunrise to sunset. Meal breaks. A work break. 35 minute sits with ten minutes of walking. First time I’ve been able to make it without just bailing out at some point. My body is pretty beat up. My mind is pretty entrenched in getting things the way I want them when I want them. Quite a job to sit still through the aches and pains and the busy wandering doing mind. At each private interview, my teacher would ask. Are you aware of any physical experiences. “Yeah,” I’d say, “my body just hurts.” “Keep noticing,” he’d reply. “And try to notice your breath.” And off I’d go for more.
Did you know that with the right soft focus of the eyes combined with a certain head tilting, one can produce the effect of two dots rotating around each other on the wall? I know that now. My mind just has to have something to do it seems. At one point, I was following my breathing, eyes soft focused on the wall and bang. There’s this guy suspended from the ceiling. You know suspended, ( see Wikipedia for a look. ) like with hooks strung through his skin and wires hanging from the ceiling. I spent some time trying to figure out how, once you got the hooks set, how you could lift someone, in a superman flying position, off of the ground and into the air. Suspend him without tearing out the hooks or unbearable pain. It didn’t surprise me to see this apparition. I was just curious as to how one got it done. Lets guess twenty hooks. Twenty wires. Pulling with so much pressure on each wire. Lifting one at a time. Maybe. Interesting. My mind. Gotta love it. It’s the only one I think I have.
Apparently I have to have some distraction from the experience of life as it precisely is at this exact moment in time. The physical experience that is. I’ve lots of time spent in the mental experience. Lots of pain and suffering in that realm. I’ve decades of research to convince me that there must be an easier way.
In A Still Forest Pool, Ajahn Chah, a Thai forest monk of some renown says,
“There are two kinds of suffering; the suffering that leads to more suffering and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, you will surely continue to experience the first.” And I have extensive experience with the first. I’m spending more and more time these days trying to face the second kind. Sitting for hours and hours on end in silence. Nothing but my mind and physical experience for me to enjoy. Lol. But an interesting thing happens as I keep at it. My mind quiets a little bit at time. And over time, it quiets a lot. Despite the appearance of suspensions, my mind has quieted a lot.
More later. Tonight I go to sleep to recover from the retreat.
But back to the retreat. I live in Portland, Oregon and there are so many opportunities here to sit. A quick Google search for meditation centers in Portland Oregon produced 471,000 sites. I’ve tried several and have settled into Zen Center of Portland. From the Ordinary Mind School of Joko Beck. I like it for its pragmatic and simple approach to Zen. Feels like American Zen. I’m comfortable there. Most practitioners have been at it for a while and tend to be a little bit older, like me.
So last week I sat. From sunrise to sunset. Meal breaks. A work break. 35 minute sits with ten minutes of walking. First time I’ve been able to make it without just bailing out at some point. My body is pretty beat up. My mind is pretty entrenched in getting things the way I want them when I want them. Quite a job to sit still through the aches and pains and the busy wandering doing mind. At each private interview, my teacher would ask. Are you aware of any physical experiences. “Yeah,” I’d say, “my body just hurts.” “Keep noticing,” he’d reply. “And try to notice your breath.” And off I’d go for more.
Did you know that with the right soft focus of the eyes combined with a certain head tilting, one can produce the effect of two dots rotating around each other on the wall? I know that now. My mind just has to have something to do it seems. At one point, I was following my breathing, eyes soft focused on the wall and bang. There’s this guy suspended from the ceiling. You know suspended, ( see Wikipedia for a look. ) like with hooks strung through his skin and wires hanging from the ceiling. I spent some time trying to figure out how, once you got the hooks set, how you could lift someone, in a superman flying position, off of the ground and into the air. Suspend him without tearing out the hooks or unbearable pain. It didn’t surprise me to see this apparition. I was just curious as to how one got it done. Lets guess twenty hooks. Twenty wires. Pulling with so much pressure on each wire. Lifting one at a time. Maybe. Interesting. My mind. Gotta love it. It’s the only one I think I have.
Apparently I have to have some distraction from the experience of life as it precisely is at this exact moment in time. The physical experience that is. I’ve lots of time spent in the mental experience. Lots of pain and suffering in that realm. I’ve decades of research to convince me that there must be an easier way.
In A Still Forest Pool, Ajahn Chah, a Thai forest monk of some renown says,
“There are two kinds of suffering; the suffering that leads to more suffering and the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you are not willing to face the second kind of suffering, you will surely continue to experience the first.” And I have extensive experience with the first. I’m spending more and more time these days trying to face the second kind. Sitting for hours and hours on end in silence. Nothing but my mind and physical experience for me to enjoy. Lol. But an interesting thing happens as I keep at it. My mind quiets a little bit at time. And over time, it quiets a lot. Despite the appearance of suspensions, my mind has quieted a lot.
More later. Tonight I go to sleep to recover from the retreat.
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