http://www.westernchanfellowship.org/lib/wcf////coming-home/
Coming Home
By John Crook
Mahamudra Retreat 2005 - Session One
When we were introducing ourselves last night, several of you remarked
on how valuable you found it just coming to the Maenllwyd and how much
you valued the place.
Let us begin then by asking why that might
be so. I have a good story that helps us here. Some years ago there was a
practitioner, Jane Turner, whom some of you might remember, who used to
be a regular retreatant at the Maenllwyd, driving herself here from
north of Glasgow. One year she got the dates wrong and arrived here
after her long journey in the wrong week! She told me about it
afterwards. In those days the track, was largely undriveable so she had
walked up the track only to find the place deserted; there was nobody
here! The Maenllwyd was completely silent; not a soul! Locked up! Yet
she told me that she was so radiantly happy just being here that when
she went back down the hill and got in her car and drove back to
Glasgow, it was almost as good as if she had done a retreat!
Jane, perhaps, was a slightly extreme case, but a lot of people make
remarks along such lines, I myself sometimes arrive here and discover
myself smiling; and, as is my wont, I sometimes ask myself, "What on
earth are you smiling about?" I have often gone into that because I have
found that if I just sat and allowed the smile, as it were, to seep
into my bones, then I began to experience a move beyond smiling, into
something really very blissful. And of course on such occasions, it
isn't necessary to know why; Something is happening, which is bringing
about a feeling of bliss. And indeed that bliss ... that joy ... at
thinking about Maenllwyd or being here is, in many ways, a very
important component of Dharma. Many people experience bliss in the
course of meditation, but in this case it simply arises out of the smile
at being here, or maybe even just thinking about the place.
So
what is going on here? Well, Shifu gave me a clue to this many years ago
when I was talking with him about the fact that sometimes in meditation
blissful feelings arise. I had been experiencing bliss on retreat in
New York with Shifu; and I went to him and I said, "What is all this
bliss about?" So he said, "Well, bliss arises out of gratitude". "How
come?" I said. "Well, what it means is that, without really knowing it,
in meditation there has been a moment of stillness ... silence. You've
got yourself out of the way. And because you did that, you feel
gratitude; and gratitude produces bliss."
I have contemplated
those remarks of Shifu's ever since .... and tested them out. And I find
it to be true. When one experiences those moments of bliss in
meditation, it emerges from a process of which one is not fully aware.
One has dropped the cares of everyday life for a little while, and the
fact that they have gone gives one a freedom and a clarity. And
spontaneously, out of that freedom and clarity comes a feeling of
thankfulness, gratitude; and that expresses itself in bliss.
I
think something like the same thing happens when some of us arrive at
the Maenllwyd ... or perhaps when one even thinks about the Maenllwyd,
or maybe one does a visualisation which might involve the place. And it
is not, of course, only Maenllwyd. Those of us who travel around and
visit various monasteries or power places for meditation sometimes find
the same thing happening there too. In fact it has to do with the fact
that what we have been doing here is creating a little monastery. Maybe
not exactly a monastery as a place, but rather a monastery of the mind,
in that when we come here we practice a certain " dropping of
attributes"; we let go. Maybe we're not always sure about that, and
maybe some of us find it very difficult, but essentially the key thing
that happens here is the letting go of care. When you arrive here you
let go of something; you let go of the troubles of life. And you find
yourself arriving and you find yourself smiling, and you say things like
"coming to the Maenllwyd is like coming home". Many people say that.
Home, of course, is a place where there is no care because one is 'at
home'.
This is a very interesting discovery to reflect upon,
because we may ask what is going on when one "drops care"? What's
happening? One could say "Well, it's just that I'm away from the kids
for a bit", or " I've left the office and don't have to worry any more
about the bloody finances",., or "Thank God I'm away from him or her for
the weekend" .... a bit of rest from the relationship. Any of these
things might be, as it were, the stimulus, but that's a fairly shallow
response. Because, of course, in problems of relationship, in problems
of work, in problems of looking after the children, it is actually one's
own performance that one is most worrying about and monitoring. "Am I a
good enough Daddy?" "Am I a good enough friend?" "Oh, dear, I wasn't
very nice on the phone last night." "Oh, I'm always stressed when I go
to work; I'm no good at my job." Many of these things which we attribute
to outside calamities, pressures, strains and stresses, are really
actually internal strains and stresses. It is self concern.
So I
put it to you that one of the things that happens when we arrive here,
when we find ourselves "coming home", is that we drop self concern. And
in dropping self concern, what does one find? Well, if you drop your
self, then you allow a great space to appear; a great space for just
appreciating precisely what's in front of your nose, namely: the yard;
the clouds glowing in dawn light; a kite flying over; the sound of
chanting. All of those things can then make a immediate and direct
impression because 'You' are not in the way. You're not worrying about,
for an example, "Am I meditating well today?", because you've dropped
self concern. There is then no worry about whether you're meditating
well or not! You're just sitting there. And if you're truly Just Sitting
... to use that Japanese expression ... if you are truly just sitting
and not being there as a 'me', then everything is present to you, for
you, of you ... in a kind of special freedom. It's what is called
"emptiness" in the Buddhist jargon, the psychological experience that is
thus named.
Unfortunately, 'emptiness' is also a technical term
in the Buddhist philosophical vocabulary and this may be confusing.
Whenever one wants to try to understand what emptiness is, one has to
say "What am I or what is it ' empty' of? What is it that's 'gone
empty'? And, if you've dropped self concern, that's marvellous: you're
empty of self concern. And that's well on the way to enlightenment! We
are smiling on arriving at the Maenllwyd because we have actually,
unbeknown to ourselves, dropped care. And particularly , for a little
while, dropped self concern.
So there's a very useful lesson in
this; because, of course, dropping self concern is precisely what the
Buddha was talking about in his first two Noble Truths. That's really
quite a discovery. If one has found, as it were, an indirect way into
understanding the Noble Truths, that's really very useful indeed. So how
come? Well, let's just remember the pattern of the Buddha's fundamental
thought here. The Buddha, as you know, was concerned about suffering,
and suffering, of course, is self concern ... or in a very large
measure, self concern. So suffering and self concern go together. So at
the moment when self concern is dropped there is no longer suffering ...
or, at least, a big alleviation of suffering. And Buddha called that a
dropping of "ignorance": we are ignorant of the fact of self concern and
the reasons for it. The Buddha worked out why. Self concern is usually
concerned with time. It is usually about something I did in the past, or
the fear of something in the future. Self concern is time bound. And
time, of course, is the measure of impermanence.
The Buddha
realized that absolutely the root for understanding suffering is to
understand impermanence; because it is the fact that things are
impermanent which causes us distress. Something beautiful happens, a
lovely holiday on a Greek beach, and then it's gone and Winter comes.
Spring comes, but then it goes again. The joyful love affair is over and
one is left by one's self. One gets older and one realizes that, as
somebody said last night, the idea that one is going to go on for ever
(which one takes for granted when one is young) begins to fade, and one
realizes that Time is shortening. It's all impermanence and, of course,
what we do with impermanence, through our ignorance, is to grab onto
things that we like and try to hold onto them and make them permanent,
because then we can be "safe" and 'happy'. The reason why that is so
ignorant is that we fail to face up to the fact of impermanence: things
cannot be made permanent; nothing is permanent. The universe itself is
not permanent; it's endlessly moving and God knows where it's going to
... and probably He doesn't either!
In our stupidity we try to
make the things that we like permanent and to annihilate or get rid of
the things that we don't like sometimes, even the people that we don't
like. And this is ignorance, and the root of suffering. The Buddha
called it anicca, But then the Buddha said, "Well, what is it that is so
worried about impermanence?" Well, of course, it's Me. I'm worried
about Me because I am impermanent; I am going to die one day. I'm going
to get old; God knows what's going to happen. As somebody said
yesterday, arriving on the retreat, "God knows what's going to happen
here!" Quite Right! Goodness knows what's going to happen here!
It's scary, very scary; impermanence is scary ... if one is holding onto
permanence. Of course, if one isn't holding onto permanence, it's not
scary, obviously. The two go together. But time flies, troubles come,
troubles go. Nothing to hold on to ...if one tries to hold on, it's like
trying to grasp the wind. You can't do it. The Buddha's truth however,
was to say "Well, who are you anyway? What are you? What is it you're
holding on to?" Well, the Buddha realized that he was holding on to
Siddhartha; I have to realize that I am holding on to John; you have to
realize that you're holding on to Rebecca, or whoever it might be;
Eddie. That's what we're holding on to. This thing which appears to be
here; John, which appears to be here, is what I am holding on to because
it is that which is changing, it is that which is fading, going away
... it won't be here much longer! So scary. But then, "What is this
John?", asked the Buddha. This is where he made a very important
discovery. Because when he examined himself through yogic meditation he
was able to see very clearly that, actually, what was going on, what was
called "John", was a process; not a thing, a process. And it could be
divided up into five different aspects. Very simple; very simple
psychology; but a very, very good model. It still works. It still works
better than a good many modern models.
First of all, there is
Sensation. Obviously, you feel something, a sensation; something
happens. You sit on a drawing pin Ooooh!: a sensation.
But then
there's Perception. Perception is "Oh, what's this? Have I sat on a
scorpion? ... Oh, no. No, it's just a drawing pin; that's not so bad."
That's perception. You perceive what the sensation is.
And then
there's Cognition, which is working out why there happens to be a
drawing pin on your chair: "Did someone put it there? Who could have
done that? Somebody hates me, and put a drawing pin on my chair so I'd
sit on it ... or is it just that I dropped one out of the box
yesterday?" Or if it actually is a scorpion, "Oh, my God: scorpions!
Better put down some DDT or something. Let's be nasty to scorpions for a
change." That's cognition: working it out.
And then there are the
so-called samscaras: we have to use the Pali word because it's rather
difficult to find an English word for it. The samscaras are, as it were,
the habit formations from all one's previous thinking, so you think now
"What about scorpions? Yes, I remember about scorpions; well, they are
supposed to occur in the South of France, so what is one of them doing
here in England? It must have escaped from the zoo. But I haven't been
near a zoo, so how can there be a scorpion here?" And so you start
working out, by referring to the past, by referring to karma, why the
present situation might be as it is. And of course it is these samscaras
which become what you might call the "habit formations", because they
determine what you worry about next. Thus karma is built up out of these
samscaras, these past habits. So a mind, this John, is actually a
complicated functioning of Sensation, Perception, Cognition, and habits
of the past, which as it were make one decide what is good and what is
bad. And all of it has a certain form: and that form ... bodily form ...
bodily presence, that is what we call "John". But John is just a name;
there is no John, there's just this process; the process of Sensation,
Perception, Cognition and habits, going round and round and round. Quite
temporary; moving through time, but no fixed entity, no John. John is
just the name. So if John is just a name, where is John? Is John the
perception? Well, no, that's not enough. Is it cognition alone? No, not
enough. Is it the history? Is it the past? No, that's not John. So where
is John? There is no John as a thing! It's just a name for the process.
The Buddha called that anatta, No Self.
So. We have
Impermanence; no self. Very radical; a very scary teaching. Because, of
course, what we want is John, this thing, to be loved by everybody all
the time (at least John likes that, to be loved by everybody all the
time); John wants to be permanently young, permanently beautiful,
permanently clever ... whereas, in fact, he is becoming increasingly
idiotic, falling apart and getting dotty, and generally becoming absurd.
That is the truth about John, it is the zen truth, total absurdity; one
big dottiness after another! But that's not how we want things to be:
that's because we get attached. So, ignorance is made up out of this
attachment to something, which is a flowing, ever moving, process. There
is no Thing to be attached to; there are just names. Language fools us:
technically it is called "reification"; the making of things out of
concepts. Just as another example, take the word Spring. We speak of
Spring as a thing; but actually, of course, it is just a period in time,
in which all sorts of other things are happening: we know there is
Spring because the flowers flower. But we can't actually see Spring;
Spring is just a word which refers to the period of time within which
flowers flower. There is no Thing called Spring which you can grasp hold
of. That's another example of reification. And me, John; you, Betty;
whoever it might be, are just like that.
So, the Buddha's thought
is very subtle here. But the problem is the illusion that there is a
thing to which we can be attached, which we must be protective of. Now,
in common sense terms, of course, conventionally, we do look after
ourselves; that makes sense. But we don't have to be obsessively
attached to the ego in the way in which we usually are; that's where
self-concern comes in. Self-concern is actually illusory. Now this
message of the Buddha is not so easily taken on board, because we are so
easily convinced of the normality of John being John. This is why, in
order to really understand the Buddha's message, we have to investigate
the mind, to explore and find out whether these things are true or
whether it is just the Buddha's fantasy. That's why we meditate.
Meditation as it were is always the testing of a hypothesis. The
hypothesis is "Where am I? I exist. Am I here?"
Am I here? Well,
let's investigate it. And of course, what you find in meditation, as you
calm the mind, as you practice, is that gradually the attachment to
things begins to fade. You begin to find a kind of openness emerging.
Something which is much more difficult to characterise; you can't find
words for it. Language begins to fail because you're actually going
beyond language. You're going into that which language tries to express
but never entirely succeeds. Because it's just language; it's not the
thing in itself. So we work at that and in our meditation we begin to
test the Four Noble Truths for ourselves. In Buddhism, it is said you
should never accept things on trust. There is faith in Buddhism, yes;
but it's a faith in the method of exploration. It is not a faith in a
thing; it is not an attachment. Faith is often an attachment to a
concept. This is more like faith in an investigation, *an unending
investigation, because there is no end to it. The universe goes on; we
go on ... for as long as we're here. Then we disappear. But what an
exciting adventure!
And the moment of smiling as you arrive at
the Maenllwyd is a hint that there might be something in this. Because
if it's true that you're smiling and enjoying being here because you've
dropped your self, even for a moment, and just allowed the space of the
place to impact upon you directly, you've actually tested the
hypothesis. For when you drop attachment to self, the universe is there
in all its wonderful turning, in all its manifestation as a place:
Maenllwyd in December. "Christmas is coming and the goose is getting
fat" .... whether you're a vegetarian or not, the goose is still getting
fat!
So we have then in this very simple beginning; this simple
recognition of happiness at arriving home at a place we call Maenllwyd;
the being open to the monastery and all that the monastery is for, we
discover that we drop something. We can either investigate what it is
that we have dropped or we can just enjoy the fact that we've dropped
something, and let it take care of itself. That's fine also, although it
may not allow one an understanding of what one is actually
experiencing. So the letting go is an absolutely key thing in Buddhist
practice. The Buddha himself discovered his insight through letting go,
through the process of letting go. He didn't discover what eventually he
knew by adding , as they say in zen, adding a head on a head, more
ideas on top of more ideas, more philosophies on top of more
philosophies. Intellectual construction isn't it at all. You drop the
intellectual constructions and there It is the thing in itself; the
Thing In Itself, which can never be quite caught by language, or fixed
in philosophy. The experience of Being.
The experience of being
is the experience of flowing. Being, in fact, is always becoming. It is
never stationary; there is never a halt; there is never permanence. The
challenge of Buddhism, the challenge of the words of the Buddha, is
whether one can actually allow one's self to enter the flow of being,
the flow of time, without trying to grab on to things which keep one
safe. That's the challenge. And that's why an entry into Buddhism can be
quite painful.
* There are people who come in interviews and
meditation and say, "A strange thing happened today: I seemed to be
about to fall into nothing". So I say, "Yes?" And they say, "... very
scary". So I say, "Why?" "Well, I might not exist". And I say, "Yes, you
might not exist."
It requires a certain nerve to say, "Okay,
I'll fall into that nothing". So that, in your meditation, you let go of
your attachment to your little self, just let go of it, and then you
find the extraordinary freedom of the flowing of time without
attachment. But it is not easy to do. One has to have a certain nerve to
jump off the high diving board; as I know, having jumped off the top of
high diving boards. I've done it, but I must say it was quite
difficult! And I'm not talking about diving; I'm talking about just
jumping into the water: "Oooooh! All the way down there!" Big splash!
Yes, big splash, but rather nice.
So maybe out of this comes a key message for this retreat; in fact, for all retreats. Jump!
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