My experience started with three days of sitting in the meditation hall with the full assembly of monks for the first couple hours in the morning and for the last forty minutes at night, but working in the kitchen in between. I found that, contrary to my expectations, I loved that practice. I cooked six gallons of rice each day, and also ripped chard, sorted beans, chopped vegetables, and washed, dried, a put away a truckload of dishes. We worked almost continuously in silence, and I found the time to be mentally deep - I was unusually aware of body sensations welling up and thought-clouds floating through, working patiently and consistently through feelings of boredom and agitation. I also found that I felt good about my service to the meditators up in the zendo, and that afterwards I more appreciated the practice of the regular kitchen monks (all seven of whom sat this entire sesshin).
I have worked in the kitchen various times during my four visits here, and have usually had an unpleasant experience with whoever is Fukuten (food preparation supervisor). This time, however, the two rotating Fukutens were both friends of mine, and I had a notably pleasant experience working under both of them. One afternoon later in the sesshin, after I had left the kitchen schedule and joined the regular meditation sitting but was back in the kitchen getting food with my meal serving crew, I asked one of the Fukutens (Ed Masters) a question about where something was. He scrunched up his eyes sternly, looked at me for a couple seconds, and said, "Why don't you use your [smiling brightly] POWER of ZAZEN to find it!!" I laughed for a while.
Anyway, after the kitchen the six days in the zendo, following the intensive sitting schedule, were, well, intense for me. I was sleeping about five hours a night, lying there awake after the last period of the night and then waking up before the 3:50 am bell. I was however always alert and conscious during the day. My stomach was upset much of the time, as it often seems to be during intense spiritual transformations.
The last couple days of the sesshin were a little mundane for me, just digging the ditch, hard at work trying to keep my mind present and my body upright. But the middle days were full of altered states - at times, I was sad and crying, or wanting to put my first through the wall, or profoundly supernaturally bored, or profoundly supernaturally fidgety, or I looked around the room and never wanted to talk to anybody here again, and they could all go to Hell, the sooner the better. Other times, however, I was overwhelmed with an intense love for everyone else in the room, like they were all my newborn children, and I wanted to tell them how eye-wateringly beautiful they all are, and to do whatever I could to have them all be happy. I was often filled with great insights about my life. I sometimes felt alert and clear yet also placidly peacefully calm. Other times, I noticed that many of my bodily movements had a precision, certainty, and graceful smoothness to them that I am not used to. And still other times, I felt like, how do I put it well, like my blood had been replaced by ultra-pure nectar of the Gods that was as hot as the core of a star, and my flesh of body was aflame with heavenly fire, mammoth beams of wholesomeness shooting out of the core of my torso and off my skin and illuminating the farthest galaxies that hang over the edge of nothingness. That's how it felt to me on the inside, at least - I did not get any objective external reports as to whether that state was similarly observable externally.
I felt a lot of love for the teacher, Abbess Linda-Ruth Cutts. I had an intense dokusan (one-on-one teaching discussion) with her where I talked about what holds me back in life (see sections below) and cried a lot. Her daily lectures were moving and inspiring, I intend to buy a taped copy of several of them. I don't remember exactly what she talked about, however, because I am usually watching body sensations during lectures here so I end up hearing them on a different level than the remembering level. I guess some of it that I do remember was about not making micro-wiggles when in our meditation position so as to deepen our settling, and about how putting others before ourselves (as the Dalai Lama suggests we do) is not always about being nice and pleasant, and about how the only mind we have is our confused animal mind and yet how that is also the exact mind that is also the enlightened mind. Sometimes I would look at her while she lectured, and she was so beautiful to me, I was appreciating her sincerity and dedication.
I also found this sesshin, like my first one here, to often be burningly painful in my hips, knees, and ankles, but I suffered with it less. It occurred to me that this was probably because I was congested, feverish, and ill during the entire January sesshin, wonderfully conveniently starting on the first day, and equally conveniently ending on the last. This made me tired and achy, and meant that all I could muster was a cloudy sleep on the after-meal brakes (instead of doing yoga, which helps reduce pain during sitting, during those periods). Thus, being healthy this February sesshin, the pain was intense but less, and I suffered with what pain I did have less. I was also pleased to observe my leg pain and come to the conclusion that the main physical thing that is stopping me from sitting in half-lotus position for say eighteen hours a day in a some monastery in Asia some day is not my right knee, which is injured and will probably never be fully OK, but instead my left hip, which I have been and will continue to open more by yoga and stretching.
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Near the beginning of sesshin, one early morning as sat on my cushion in the zendo I had a moment of clarity. I realized that I approach my meditation practice and teach my meditation class constantly aiming that I (and others) can and will get a benefit from sitting. The question is, will training in being present, letting go of the compulsion to think, and releasing all grasping and pushing away of experience that stand in the way of a pure untangled relationship with my internal energies get me good things in life? Will it help me to be on time, to be disciplined about to letting go of distractions and instead do the most important things in my life, to naturally behave in a manner that I later feel morally clear about, and to get and keep a good job? Will it provide me with unusual and deep insights into myself in specific and the human condition in general, give me a mystical social and sexual charisma, and give me clear direction in life? Will it bring me feelings of stability, joy, clarity, warmth, love, ability, peace, strength, and wholeness?
I can think of ways in which meditation practice could and should and actual times in which it has brought all of those good things to the lives of myself and others. But my Zen teachers (and some authors from other Buddhist lineages) repeatedly say that such benefits are not the goal, and it sometimes seems to me that meditating with those benefits as goals tends to subtly throw off my meditation, "defile it" a little, as they say. I do think that ending the meditator's personal suffering is a main goal of the path, and getting the bling bling listed above is part of that. I also think that what draws one to a spiritual practice is in the end irrelevant as long as one practices sincerely once there. But I also can see how the idea of "just sitting, with no gaining idea" is something that I do only after I have been on the cushion for a while, it is not what draws me there.
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Mostly during this last sesshin, I did two different practices. One was an old stalwart, jumping my awareness around to different body sensations, and noting (saying words inside my head) to describe where in the body it travels, and fully feeling the sensation there. The other practice was noting subtle and clear levels of mental imagery and talk, as I described in my last letter. With this thought-watching practice, I used the respiration as an anchor (i.e. I rested my awareness on my nostrils and my belly, and sat and watched my breath come in and out and be in-between breaths during the times when no thoughts were present). During thinking meditation, I also have taken to echoing my clear internal talk, which means repeating the words back inside my head, slowly and gently, syllable by syllable. While doing this, I try to listen to the words as pure sound rather than as meaning, and I try to listen for the empty silence that each syllable emerges from and departs back into.
A couple periods I also did mantra practice, where I internally repeated the phrase "Everything will eventually change, everything will eventually end" to myself over and over. Whatever the thought of something came to mind, whatever feeling I felt in the body, I would bathe it thoroughly in the fact that it would change and end. Traditionally in Buddhism, meditation on impermanence (which is kind of what that was) is something that one does when feeling attached. I accordingly did mostly do this mantra practice at times when I was feeling attached and clingy and wanting something besides sitting there in the zendo. It helped.
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I also created a whole new meditation for myself. To give a long explanation for it : a big thing (if not the biggest thing) in Buddhism is lessening suffering by loosening a solidified sense of self. This means, I think, eventually experiencing oneself and all other things as interconnected events rather than as separate and individually existing things (or as non-existent illusions, as some pastel colored New Age-type folks do). And I noticed during this sesshin that I would often have a loosened sense of self during the sitting periods, a solid and bulky "Adam Coutts, 33 years old, white, male, 5'8", notably good looking, etc." would dissolve into an always-changing stream of body sensations, thoughts, sounds, sights, and, occasionally, after my neighbor's furtive cigarette breaks, smells. But then when a sitting period ended and it was time for (silent) social interactions, at the line of people putting on their shoes outside the zendo, during serving the meals or being served, or passing each other along the paths between sitting periods, there would be my solid sense of self again, very solid, usually with a sense of worth - it was usually a "good self" or a "bad self". This reminded me of something that I have heard before - that a sense of self is most often created and manifested in social settings. I have read that all primates have social hierarchies, and combining that scientific finding with Buddhism, I believe that much of our human suffering comes from creating a solidified sense of self that fits in somewhere in an internally held-hierarchy of value and worth. The Chinese Zen Master Linji ("Rinzai" in Japanese) used to use the phrase "The True Person of No Rank" as a synonym for "Enlightened Person".
So I began observing the rise and fall of my social self. When I was aware of other's eyes on me, of times when I believed myself to be being evaluated, I would make a internal note. And when I looked at others, I noted how I was perceiving them. There were three different ways that I felt like people were seeing me or that I was evaluating them:
(1) Contemptible, vulnerable, low status, unworthy, incompetent, will not get good things in life because of a lack of a winner's worth talent endowment or effort, needy, not worth attention or respect, not liked or valued, patsy, fool, chump, jumpy, unclean, people only nice to our of toleration or pity, exposed, scum, have to give self away just not to be ostracized, inferior, clumsy
(2) Takes more than their share, inconsiderate, takes but does not give, asshole, needs to be taken down a notch, a danger and a menace, tension creating, arrogant, offensive, thoughtless, ought to apologize, creep, presumptuous, social climber, overconfident, rude, too into their own point of view, asks too much, do it their own way when they should listen to others, judgmental, pretentious, unapproachable, a show-off, unkind, invading other's space, defensive, aggressive, controlling
(3) Likable, cool, powerful, beautiful, esteemed, deserving, admirable, worthy, accepted, warm, in control, approved of, in the family, healthy, sexy, OK, in the flow, pleasing, talented, worthy of good things, lovable, good, high status, comfortable, successful, competent, calm, desirable, honorable, impressive, a winner, comfortable, relaxed and relaxing, just, sane, graceful and beautiful, a friend, trustworthy, appropriate
Besides these three numbers ("1", "2", and "3"), I would also use the note "s" for "self" and "o" for "other". So, if I noticed that I was looking at someone like they were a chump and I felt guilty for thinking that, I would internally say "s2o1". If I noticed myself feeling warmly with someone, like we were buddies, and comfortable with that feeling, I would internally say "s3o3". If I walked in front of someone and tripped a little and felt foolish, I would say "s1". I did this for hours, noticing the rise and fall of a solidified sense of myself as a social animal, and making these notes inside my head, until the solidity loosened up and my experience of selfhood was more fluid. Those words seem goofy to me, but, y'know, it's difficult to find words for these things.
I found the social meditation that I came up with to be so valuable that I am thinking of introducing it as a homework for my meditation class, even though it is not a traditional Buddhist meditation. I will recommend to students that they do it a social situation where they are not talking to other people and can safely go inside and watch themselves, like when riding a bus, when first arriving at a party, or in a class. You reading this shouldn't ever try it, however, this all has nothing to do with your life.
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On the subject of this meditation : in the Mahayana family of Buddhism (of which Zen is a school), we take the vow to "Save All Beings". I have never known what that means, exactly - that I am single-handedly going to create a charitable foundation that will make sure that everyone on Earth has a little house with enough to eat and a shelf full of Dharma books, and that no bugs get squashed in the construction of all of these houses? That seems like it could take some time. But I do have my own meaning for the "Save All Beings" vow, which is that I aim to not want to cast any beings out of my world, to not wish that they would disappear out of this universe, to accept and be at peace that they all exist. In my normal mind, that wish to get rid of is the way I feel about many people (you know, the bad people). When I was doing this 1,2,3/s-o meditation, however, it helped me to chill with the whole game, able to internally accept that all the folks exist in my universe.
I had a similar experience eating the last day of sesshin, but with food instead of people. The third bowl served at breakfast was a cooked carrot mush, and the server seemed to miss my hand signal indicating a desire for a small amount. So, as I began digging into the little pile of putrid vegetable, and found myself starting to do my usual way of eating food that I detest, scrunching up my face and trying to swallow it chewing as little as possible. But then I suddenly realized that although cooked carrots were a childhood nemesis, they actually wouldn't kill me. So, I slowed down, relaxed, chewed thoroughly, and just felt the waves of displeasure and revulsion wash through me with much less resistance. It ended up being peaceful and pleasant. Not like I am going to give up sushi and only eat cooked carrot mush when I get back to the city or anything, but sometimes unpleasant and unavoidable things do come one's way in life (if you haven't noticed yet ..).
In fact, Tibetan Buddhists apparently have a phrase "one taste", which they use to connote impartiality, equanimity, and non-reactivity. The idea is, whether something subjectively tastes good or bad, if one fully experiences tastes it with full awareness and with no internal pushing or pulling on the experience, it all tastes the same, it's all fine, it's all one (meta-pleasant) taste. Not to say that I am ready to be ordained a high lama or anything, but, for one minute at least, "rank-ass-cooked-carrot-taste" became "one taste" for me.
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