Happy New Year!

I'm back from the monastery, where I wrote a few blog posts that I'll be posting in a series throughout January.  

It felt a bit strange to spend most of December in a Buddhist monastery and then go through ConsumerFest (formally known as the birth of Jesus). All the advertisements and presents seemed a little bit surreal - I just couldn't get into the spirit of it.  Although, I did enjoy giving my three year old nephew his present - a teeny red recliner seat, so cute. (OK...I can do ConsumerFest as good as the next person!) 

I got a gastro virus three days after Christmas, which meant that I spent a whole night throwing up - but lost all those extra Christmas kilos.  I think whoever invented the saying 'every cloud has a silver lining' had been in exactly this situation. 

Before I sign off for 2009, here's a poem by the late Indian yoga master Swami Kripalu. I thought this was a lovely poem for the beginning of a new year. 

My beloved child, break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love, which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come. Your time. To live. To celebrate,
and to see the goodness that you are…
Do not fight the dark. Just turn on the light.
Let go, and breathe into the goodness that you are.

Happy New Year!

A month at the monastery

I'm off for a month's retreat at the Santi Forest Monastery - a Buddhist monastery located in the Southern Highlands of NSW (a few hours from Sydney). Santi doesn't run formal, structured, retreats but is a 'living monastery' consisting of a community of around 20 monks, nuns and laypeople.  

It's set in a large area of bushland; with alpine gums trees, craggy rock formations, caves, and wildlife.  The monastery borders the Morton National Park, a huge park which stretches from the hills to the sea, 80 kms away. It's a beautiful, peaceful place to have a meditation retreat.

Here's a few photos I took last year, the first time I went to Santi.  This photo is of a little meditation platform, wedged into a cliff face...

And here's the view you get as you sit on the platform...gorgeous huh? I can't say I spent much time sitting there with my eyes closed - I just kept my eyes open,  looking at the view and listening to the sounds of the wind, the birds, and the nearby waterfall.

There won't be any posts for December, because I will be sans internet (eek!).  But, I'm hoping to do some writing whilst I'm at Santi, so I might do a few posts and put them on the blog when I get back. 

Hope Begins in the Dark

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up. 

Anne Lamott

I read this quote yesterday and smiled grimly to myself, because it pretty much pins down how I'm feeling at the moment. If I had to draw a picture of how I feel there'd be a cartoon character hanging by one fingernail to the side of a cliff while a bunch of coyotes waited at the bottom (with a few buzzards circling in the sky too - just for good measure).

OK, a bit dramatic - and I'm not so sure buzzards can even fly - but I'm sure you get my drift.  I'm just hanging in there; stubbornly hoping, and not giving up.

This meditation caper aint easy!  True, there are occasional moments of insight and peace, but I'm spending an awful lot of time just feeling pain, feeling distress, feeling despair, feeling hopelesness. Just to make life a little bit harder for myself I'm also feeling that if I was a better meditator, if I just 'got this', then I wouldn't be feeling all this...this...CRAP!

So, it's good to come across quotes like the one above.  I just hope my stubborness will see me through. 'One more breath, just one more breath...'

  

An hour later... 

Well! Waddaya know?!  Buzzards can fly  - and here's one doing it...

Source: Wikipedia Commons

Staying tactics

It struck me last week that most of my meditation practice is about learning ways to stay with whatever physical sensation, thought, or emotion is presenting itself in the moment. I don't do a lot of meditation where I concentrate on a single sensation, such as my breath.  Most of what I'm doing is just showing up for the moment - being present. I think, in Buddhism, this would be called more a mindfulness meditation practice than a concentration practice.

 

Over the last few years I've developed some different techniques that help me to stay with what's happening.  The interesting thing about these techniques - which could involve words or images - is that they change all the time. Maybe for a week or so, I repeat one phrase - 'yes, this is really happening' - to help me stay with difficult thoughts or feelings. Then I listen to a meditation podcast and hear another phrase which resonates with me and I find myself saying - 'this feeling is difficult, but somewhere it has meaning for my life.'

 

At first, when I noticed that I was changing my little 'staying tactics' every few weeks I was a bit concerned.  'Don't I have to have steadiness in my practice?' I thought. 'Shouldn't I just be saying the one thing, and not jumping around all over the place?'  I thought this was yet another example of my impatient, easily bored mind.

 

Then I saw the bigger picture - that my little techniques might change, but what I was using them for wasn't changing. I was using them to deepen my ability to stay, and that ability was slowly becoming steadier, and deeper, and richer.  I could see that sometimes I needed the simplicity of just one word to try to stay with a feeling - 'yes, yes' - and sometimes I needed some support from outside myself -  perhaps the image of a kind person placing their hand on my arm and saying 'yes, this is difficult...just try to stay.'

 

It was good to see that there was some pattern, and some progression, in my practice. It was also comforting to just start trusting my intuition about what might help me stay present at a particular time - and to recognise that I do have some internal wisdom that helps guide me in this practice (however much I might second-guess that wisdom at times!)

Stealth Metta

Metta Bhavana is a type of Buddhist meditation that involves sending loving kindness to ourselves and all sentient beings.  In Pali (the language the Buddha spoke), metta means love, or lovingkindness, and bhavana is the word for cultivation - so this is a meditation on cultivating loving kindness.

I really like the use of the word 'cultivation.'  Its use shows that the Buddha came from an agrarian culture, where people related easily to language linked to their livelihoods. I think it's also a very gentle way to describe a meditation practice; we just plant the seeds, till the soil, water the plants, and protect them from harm, and one day we'll have some delicious food to eat!  It can feel awkward if we try to force feelings of lovingkindness, but this meditation encourages us to just take it slowly -  dropping a few small seeds of kindness and compassion into the soil at one time.

Metta Bhavana usually consists of sending loving kindness to yourself, then to a loved person, a neutral person, a person you have difficulties with, and finally, the whole world.  This is a link to a free audio podcast of a guided Loving Kindness meditation and here's a longer written description of the meditation.

There's also something called 'Stealth Metta' - which I heard Tara Brach talk about a few days ago in one of her podcasts.  This is where you use opportunities during the day to secretly send lovingkindness to people. You might spend two minutes while waiting at a traffic light to send lovingkindness to other drivers around you: 'May you be safe, may you be peaceful.' Or waiting in a doctor's surgery you could send the thought, 'May we be well, may we be happy,' to everyone in the waiting room.  If you're lying in bed listening to the radio you could send out feelings of lovingkindness to every talkback caller.

Like all meditation practice, a routine can be helpful. I had a practice for a while that involved sending feelings of lovingkindness to anyone I handed money to.  So, whenever I was in a shop and paying for something, I'd think, 'May you be happy,' as I handed the money over.  It can also help to visualise that person being happy while you say the words.  That seems to help connect the words to the feeling you're trying to cultivate.

If you're doing this type of practice and find yourself thinking, 'Actually, I don't really care that much about you. Why do I care whether you're happy or not?' - don't worry!  Noticing who we care about, and who we don't care about, is all part of the practice.  Just let feelings of ambivalence, or even dislike, be there as you keep going  with the practice. If you judge yourself for not feeling enough lovingkindness, just try to notice those judgements, but don't buy into them - this is also just part of the meditation.  Slowly, your metta muscle will build up.

If you have any other 'stealth metta' ideas, please let me know - I love to get your comments.