Голоса трёхлетнего ретрита: медитация три года спустя (2013, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
I was told that if I imagined everyone sitting in their underwear that this would make it easier to be here. So I thought it was valuable advice. Yesterday I got stung by a bee, and when I was walking here I realized why that happened.

And it was because I hadn't included something that I have thought about. And that is that this land is very beautiful land and it has lots of sharp, bristly, stingy things. And it's because it's so fragile and it's trying to protect itself like some people.

And there's so many different sizes of insects here. There are some that are gigantic and some so tiny. One time I saw a tiny flower that could fit on the head of a pen.

And there was a tiny bug that was flying around it. And it was a whole perfect little mandala. And it made me feel that I needed to be very careful when I walked.

So I didn't squash all of these little mandalas. And so I feel we need to take care of this land so well. It's so beautiful.

So I was recently loaned a book of poetry. It was by the poet Hafiz who was a Sufi master and lived in Persia about 700 years ago. And I opened up the book at random and I'd like to tell you about the poem that came to me.

A man comes to Hafiz and speaks to him for hours about his great visions of God. And he wants confirmation to know if these wondrous dreams are true. And Hafiz says to him, how many goats do you have?

And the man says, Hafiz, I'm speaking to you about sublime realizations, sublime visions, and you ask me about goats? And Hafiz says, yes, brother, how many? And so the man says, 62.

And Hafiz says, and how many wives? And the man is again surprised and he says, four. And Hafiz continues and he says, how many rose bushes in your garden?

How many children do you have? Are your parents still alive? Do you feed the birds in winter?

And to all of these things, the man replies. And Hafiz says to him, you've asked me if your wondrous dreams are true. And I would say they were, if they make you more human, if they make you more kind to every creature and plant that you know.

So it made me happy to read this poem. I think it was a sense of relief to be reminded to think of kindness, great visions of God, the goal of great visions of God can get so complicated. And so one aspect of the spiritual path is that it is a path.

And we expect to go along this path and get somewhere. We want to have some kind of happiness and we want to share it with others. And this is a good thing.

It's a goal. It's a good goal. Sometime ago, I was taking a walk.

I was heading in the direction of Two Boots Gate. That's our northern boundary or northmost psalm. And on the other side of the fence, there was somebody sitting.

And I stopped and I thought about this person. I thought, what did they think was happening on my side of the fence? What were their hopes and their expectations for this three-year, three-month, three-day retreat?

This 3-3-3 experiment. And I felt a responsibility toward them. I thought I must have something to give them when I come out.

And so this feeling of responsibility is compounded by how many people have been involved in facilitating this retreat. There have been our teachers, our caretakers, the sponsors, the volunteers, the Diamond Mountain Board, my fellow retreatants, our friends, and our loved ones. And especially for our loved ones, our close ones, they hadn't opted for retreat.

And yet, they are in the retreat. They are also doing a retreat. So for anyone who's been intimately involved in this retreat, there have been many trials by fire for all of us.

It's come differently for all of us, but it's come. And so I thought, I must really emerge with the goods. And it's not that you've been doing this for a short time.

You've been doing it for almost three years now. That makes it a completely different animal. And so I must really, really, really emerge with the goods.

And Geshe Michael's last public talk to us before we went into retreat, and maybe you were there, he said that the seven-year Tantra Course series and the three-years retreat was a start. And I never had the capacity to really have that register. The stakes from the beginning have been too high.

And so I thought today to try to talk about or to talk around expectations and realizations and about 25 years ago, I did my first retreat. It was a month long. It was solitary, silent.

I was in Thailand and I spent a lot of time sitting in Buddhist temples. And I loved the images of the Buddha. And I thought, well, the Buddha is sitting and I can sit.

I have the capacity to sit. And maybe I would have the same mysterious smile on my face that the Buddha would have. And so I found a place to do a retreat in Thailand.

It was in a temple and it was so easy to find a place to do retreat. That was such a gift. And there were Thai monks and nuns living there and they allowed a small contingent of foreigners to come and do retreat.

And so I did. And at the end of this month, there was a period, three days and three nights called the determination. And you continued to do your sitting and walking meditation, but you didn't sleep for that time and you didn't leave your hut.

And your one meal a day was brought to you. And so I did. I was doing that three day determination.

And by two and three quarters days, I was keenly aware that I was not enlightened. I didn't know anything about Buddhism at the time. I couldn't have told you the four Arya truths, but I thought that if I became enlightened, then I would know.

And so I got really pissed off. And so with a few hours left, I thought, well, enlightenment was supposed to come in a proper amount of time. And that seemed to me somewhere between two and two and a half days.

And so I thought, well, the abbot needs to hear about this. And so I left my room, I stormed out of the room. And as I left on the handle of the door on the outside was a little bag.

And I grabbed the bag as I hurried on my march to the abbot's room. And as I walked, I looked in the bag and it was a muffin. Somebody had kindly left me a muffin.

I didn't know who it was. People knew when you were going into your determination. And so somebody left me that.

And so I saw that and I'm walking quickly. And then my steps started slowing down and the anger started to dissipate. And then I stopped and I don't know why, but I just turned back and went to my hut and finished the time.

And I didn't really know what the muffin meant. And it was maybe 10 years later and I was taking the ACI courses when I realized what the muffin meant. And it represented to me one of the two wings of the bird that allow it to fly.

That was compassion and the other wing being wisdom. So the meditation I was doing was wisdom and the muffin that filled out the picture was the compassion. So I didn't get enlightened, but I did think from doing this that these Buddhists really knew something about the mind.

The fantasy and science fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, and I might be mispronouncing her last name. It was hard to find out in silence how to pronounce her name.

She wrote a short story and in it one person says to another, what would I do there? And the other person says, you would do what all students do. You would go into a stone cell.

You would go live in a stone cell and learn to be wise. It might not be what you dream it to be, but that too you would learn. So one of the things that I've been learning in this retreat world where the currency is high spiritual realizations, I've been learning the somewhat unglamorous surrender.

And that emerged, emerges for me in this way. At the beginning of each deep retreat period, because our time is divided into deep retreat periods and periods of breaks, and the deep retreat periods have gotten longer over the course of the three years. I would scrub my cabin from top to bottom.

I would do any kind of seasonal work that needed to be done, like putting screening on the vent of the heater in the summer so that the lizards didn't come in. Or painting the porch floor to protect it so the monsoon rains that flooded it wouldn't damage it so much. And I would do every scrap of laundry.

Everything would be in complete and total order. And all of it was so that during the period of the deep lay room period, I could just stay single pointed on my practices. And so the closing ceremony that one does to start a lay room.

Oh, so I would think that I had all my little ducks lined up all in a row. And then it became clear that I had that thought, but it would just be the preliminary to the chaos that would descend. And so the closing ceremony that we do seemed more like a clarion call to all the chaotic forces to congregate.

It was uncanny how the minute the ceremony was finished, the ants, armies of ants would start parading in through the front door. Or the woodpeckers would make a marching drum out of my cabin with me in the middle. Or the composting toilet would explode.

And so it wouldn't always be the same thing. But it would always be something. And then there were weird physical pains that would happen like, oh, wow, I never lost the use of my thumb before.

This is weird. Or my right eye is completely swollen shut. Is am I in an emergency situation yet where I have to leave the Tsam?

Or it could be pains I was familiar with, and they could be more intense than I'd imagined in had in years. But the worst and the most persistent were the mental things. Those would be perseverating on, going over and over and over again.

Something that someone said to me, some unkind thing from 20 years ago could just even have been five words. Or something unkind I said to somebody 20 years ago, worries, concerns about my close ones at home, doubts, moments of doubts, moments of loss of faith. Those mental things were the most difficult.

And so it would be a garden variety of mental afflictions. And so a mental affliction is anything that disturbs your peace of mind. And that's not anything special about retreat.

We have them in retreat and out of retreat. And out of retreat, when somebody says something to you unkind in the morning, maybe an hour later, you get a random phone call from somebody else, or you spend an hour or two checking emails, and maybe you make arrangements to go someplace later in the week. Dinner out with a friend in a restaurant.

So you would get a bit distracted from that unkind remark that you were feeling afflicted about. In retreat, I think it's life concentrate. There's nothing to water down those things that come into your mind that disturb your peace of mind.

You have to sit with them. You're, you have to, you have to penetrate them in some way. And it's a, it's like I've been doing a little bit of Anna Forrest yoga asana.

And she'll put you into a warrior two position with various reverse rotations and things like that. And then she goes out to dinner. And she leaves you in warrior two.

But then she's telling you to think about, well, what happens when the intensity comes? Do you go unconscious? Do you run away from it?

Is the place where it's coming from, are you fighting and gripping? And, and so how aware are you of what's happening? And so the mental afflictions, the repeated happenings of them in your mind, it's becomes a little bit like what happens when they catch an octopus on the Greek islands.

They grab it underneath its head. And when it comes out of the water, the tentacles are all limp. And then they, they grab it and they thrash it against a rock repeatedly.

And the tentacles start to curl up and then it's tender. And so the, the thrashing of the mental afflictions is a tenderizing process. So the word surrender is a very appropriate word to describe what happens in this process, because it's, what happens in, it conveys what happens in battle.

You're forced to surrender. It's not like you're letting go or relaxing. You're being forced to surrender.

So I, I think surrender can be talked about in many ways. And, but I was thinking that it was to me, meaning I'm realizing realizing that I'm not in control of what's happening to me in the present moment. How do I know?

Well, I don't want the parade of ants through the front door. And I want sublime visions, but they don't seem to happen on demand. And so the only thing that we can do is be very aware of what our reactions to things are.

Like what's my reaction to the ants that are coming in? And there's all different levels and we need to work through those. Different levels, like maybe when they come through, you maybe think you'll kill them.

And then that's not good. And then maybe you think, well, I'll try to sweep them up and bring them out. And then you're doing it in a rough way.

Then maybe you think, I can sweep them up in a gentle way that doesn't hurt them. And then also not having any anger about them at all. And then maybe getting to the point where you can really think about saving them, even when they're not bothering you, but that they are trapped.

And they would be much better off outside and you want to save them. And so that's about watching our responses to things and the things that are happening that we don't want. And what about the sublime visions that I do want?

Well, it doesn't happen by force and I just need to keep doing my practice. And I need to be doing it without aggression and without roughness and being very gentle and patient with myself. And a big part of this is our intention.

So it was in the summer before the monsoons came and it was hot and dry. And I was interested in getting water to the lizards. And it was before I had developed my patented water delivery system to lizards on the side of the cabin.

And so I had a bowl of water. But I wanted to watch the lizards drink the water. And so they didn't just run to the bowl of water.

I had to entice them to the water. And I would splash them a bit and soon I conveyed water to them. And one lizard came down to the bowl and was drinking the water.

And I thought, oh, this lizard thinks I'm God. And then a fly came. And normally I would have shooed the fly away.

But I was feeling magnanimous and generous. And I let the fly stay. And before I knew it, the lizard snapped up that fly.

And all I could see were two little wings coming out of its satisfied little mouth. And I thought, now this lizard knows that I'm God. But it wasn't my intention for that to happen.

I was providing drinks, not dinner. And I felt bad about the fly. I mean, I realized lizards eat flies.

But I didn't really want to participate in it. And so intention, even with good intention, sometimes the result doesn't always go the way you planned. And so intention is really what we have.

It's really all we have. And we need to have very honest, careful, good intention. There's a science fiction writer.

I know I should be quoting root text on wisdom. But this writer, Orson Scott Card, I believe, he wrote a book called Speaker for the Dead. And he said this story that the only story worth telling is what somebody intended to do and what they actually did and what they regretted and what they rejoiced in.

And it's the story nobody knows, but it's the only one worth telling. So our intention is ours. No one knows what our real intention is.

And sometimes we can fool ourselves. So we have to be very thoughtful about our intention. So with this insurrender, when this wizard of Oz eye, this seemingly powerful eye takes a hit, a space opens up.

So I'm not in control in the present moment. And this eye gets a little bit weakened. And when the eye gets weakened, there's a possibility that other can get a little stronger in that space.

And when you or they get a little bit stronger, the possibility of gratitude can bubble up. And so I was thinking that gratitude can take the form of obvious gratitude or gross gratitude and subtle gratitude. So obvious and subtle gratitude.

I recently saw some, I recently saw a photograph. It was of mountains of used and discarded truck tires. The mountains of tires were so big that the two men in the photos, the two men in the photo in the valley of the tires was tiny.

And I felt a bit sad when I saw this photo. I thought this is the, this is our Earth's resources. And there's just so many flower pots you can make out of old tires.

And nobody wants to live in a tire dump. And if the Chiricahua foothills were made out of tires, Diamond Mountain might lose a bit of its cachet. And when I was thinking about the tires, I was thinking about deliveries.

And when I was thinking about deliveries, I was thinking about all the kale that I've ordered every two weeks for weeks and months and years now. And how many tire treads did that bunch of kale use? And how well did I appreciate that?

And then I started thinking about, well, how did the kale get into my refrigerator anyway? Who has the vegetable run? Who got it out of the store?

Who put it in a truck and kept it cool in transport? Who made sure it didn't get smashed? Somebody put it in my insulated bag.

Somebody, and I know who that is now, filled the propane tanks and carried those propane tanks that would flow into the stove that cooks the kale. And how'd there get to be a stove? And how did there get to be a person to cook on the stove?

And who did a sponsor in Singapore pay for the kale? And who taught somebody how to be in a cabin and do holy practices that would be sustained by eating kale? And who said that while you're meditating and eating kale, I'll manage your life and I'll maintain your email?

And somebody long, long ago showed me how to use a fork to eat kale. And so, I'm sorry, this can go on. It really can go on.

It's a really fun meditation to do, actually, is pick something that someone's given you, something that you have, and trace it back in every possible permutation. And in a finger snap, that hour of meditation will be finished. And so, all of these kindnesses here in this three years and throughout our lives, these are obvious gratitude, should be obvious.

And so, the logical, if you will, extension of obvious gratitude is into subtle gratitude. Subtle gratitude is when the obvious permeates your being. And that's what a realization is.

A realization is something that you know on a visceral or a gut level. It permeates who you are. A realization is embedded in silence.

I think that's why the silence of this Diamond Mountain and the silence of retreat is so beautiful. It mimics that quality that is in realization. And a realization is not contained in the world of words.

It's not contained by the world of words. And a dust-sized crumb of realization is a Mount Sumeru-sized beacon of light. I thought something like the direct perception of emptiness would probably make your head explode.

And so, to the extent that subtle gratitude suffuses us, we can see our life as a gift. And so, what does a bunch of kale look like to subtle gratitude? I thought it looks precious.

Its earthy scent and its springy texture and all its qualities were a pleasure. And we feel careful and gentle about it. So, if a bunch of kale is like that, what then to say of how with subtle gratitude do or those who teach us and those who sustain us and those who have raised us, what do they look like?

How do they appear to us? And I thought that we feel very precious about them. Their qualities are a pleasure to us.

We feel careful and gentle about them. And so, without subtle gratitude, we're in the dark as to how special our world and our life are. With subtle gratitude, we can recognize that the things around us are not ordinary.

We're in the middle of something special happening. And there's contentment in that place. We begin to be anchored, grounded in the divine.

Within the first six months of this retreat, in one of the wonderful meetings with Geshe Michael, he told me to think about how I could serve others by having done a three-year retreat. And seeing as it was within the first six months of the retreat, I thought, well, I haven't done a retreat yet, so I can't really address that. But then I thought I had to try.

And so, one of the things, so I started making a list. I started making a list and one of the things was, I thought, oh, it should be some kind of business plan. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have yoga studios in airports?

It could be called Yoga Air and that would be nice for people. Then I went to programs and I thought, I like the idea of the New York City summer program called Dancing in the Streets. I thought, that'd be nice for people.

But then as I thought about it more, I thought it really came down to submarine movies. My husband, Ken, likes submarine movies. And I avoid submarine movies at all costs.

When was the, I mean, I don't know what's happened in the last three years, but when was the last time that a submarine movie was a blockbuster? And the Titanic doesn't count. And I thought in all our years together, I've never initiated watching a submarine movie.

And so I thought, when I've done the three-year retreat, as soon as I get out, I want to be first online in the submarine section of the video rental place. Marikpa me, marikpa sepa mepane, gache me, gache sepe bardo yang me do. There is no misunderstanding your world.

There's no stopping your misunderstanding. There's no old age and death. There's no stopping old age and death.

Dunya wadang, kunjung wadang, kokpadang, lamay. There is no suffering. There's no source of suffering.

There's no stopping this suffering. And there's no path to stop this suffering. Yeshe me, topa me, matopa yang me do.

There is no knowledge. There's nothing to reach. There's nothing not to reach.

Thank you.