Meditation: The Medicine
It was so lovely to feel the support of the sangha who gathered in consideration of COVID19 protocol but also with the keen desire to be together, knowing that it is in community that we heal. The lovely lady who led the chanting and beautiful visualisation was the first to offer sound healing in South Africa. This is a modality that is increasingly popular. Hardly a week goes by without a Flow client inquiring as to where they might do sound meditations. I'm looking forward to having a session with lovely Lindi next week to celebrate the end of my academic year teaching "at" Stellenbosch University. Of course it, like so much else during this global pandemic, has taken place in the ether.
I am grateful I got a jumpstart teaching online through italki because it definitely takes some getting used to. While I'm tremendously grateful for the beautiful students I have online, there simply isn't a substitute for being in situ with others.
Two years ago I undertook the grueling 10 day Vipassana Meditation retreat. It was...intense. Never ever did I think I'd return. The place itself was so drenched in my blood sweat and tears that the very thought of it filled me with dread. But sometimes you just have to face your fears.
I certainly wasn't brave enough to dive back into another full course, but I saw the opportunity to volunteer for a work period of 3 days between courses. It was exactly what I needed. Three hours of meditation daily, lovely dhamma servers or volunteers, including some who are long term residents and the place itself ceased to be the prison I remembered. Instead it became a light filled haven of peace.
Once again the fact that we create our own suffering was brought home to me. I distinctly recall feeling imprisoned and desperate when I was there a couple of years ago. Now I never wanted to leave. Granted it was a much more relaxed schedule and physical work is a wonderful place to hide from our demons. But the hour long seated meditations are still sufficient to remind you of how much pain we try to avoid moment to moment.
"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard," the poet Anne Sexton said and that is exactly what meditation permits. In fact it insists upon it. If you can call your mind back from it's merry dance, be with your breath, notice the subtle (and sometimes screaming) sensations that live beneath the surface, then all is resolved. Not quickly, not easily, but in due course. Change is the inevitable Law of Nature. Anicca. And in this certainty lies both the solace and the sorrow of life.
I learned on leaving this hospital of body mind & soul that my cousin had passed away from Cancer leaving her young daughter, her mother and sister who lost their grandfather, husband and daddy to the same punishing disease not long ago. The pain of life is inevitable. The suffering however is a choice.
There were many signs and wonders during my return to the site of the psychic surgery. My brother visits us as a particular bird and he was there and then very clearly as golden light the night of our cousin's passing.
Of course there is no Other. This is the great illusion.
The Medicine Buddha mantra speaking of liberating us from suffering -- physical, mental and then the Great Suffering of Illusion. This refers to the idea that we are separate. Or the very persistent notion of duality (just look at the massive hoo-ha over the American elections).
These false dichotomies get to the very heart of so much of our unhappiness personally, which is of course the hurt in the collective too. It's often very clearly visible in others, although we prefer to obfuscate it in ourselves -- playing the Blame Game, casting others as the Bad Guy, succumbing to Victim Mentality. These are ways of deferring the recognition that all is one.
Let's gently, moment by moment, show ourselves and one another a whole lot more compassion.
It's the medicine. And meditation is the way.
I'm grateful for this spiral way that brought me back to Vipassana. And for the Middle Way that this work period provided of meditation, movement and the great joy of being allowed to read & write (forbidden during the 10 day course).
I'm thankful for "The Snow Leopard" that had been resting on my TBR shelf for a long while and opened up at exactly the right moment, bringing together my love of walking in the mountains and spiritual questing. As Peter Mathiessen puts it: "In its ascetic disciplines and spare teachings, which discourage metaphysical speculation in favour of prolonged and solitary meditation, Karma-Pa practice is almost identical to Zen, which also emphasizes intuitive experience over priestly ritual and doctrine. Both have been called the 'short path' to liberation, and although this direct path is difficult and steep, it is also the pure essence of Buddhism, with all religious trappings cut away."
This journey is often arduous, some would even say foolhardy. In a lovely long chat with my 90something gran she admitted that she thought I was a very bright girl, but lacking in common sense when I took off for "that crazy America" as a young woman.
I remember feeling that all the terribly young people on Vipassana, many of them backpackers from faraway lands, were completely nuts to do such a hectic thing while so vulnerable, but I realise now that in youth we are more courageous because we know or care less for the pitfalls. It's also a lot easier to course correct in youth.
I am grateful that I get to parent and work with young people who are never shy to point out in how many ways I get it all wrong in my fuddy-duddy middle age. How excruciating it is to realise that you are no longer "with it." And what a relief. Although to remain alert to the dangers of a lack of attentiveness to habitual patterns requires extraordinary mindfulness.
At Vipassana this time I met a long time volunteer/resident, an elderly gentleman who really puts the gentle into that station. He was weeding the flowerbeds in his puffer jacket on a sunny mild day. The jacket was exuberantly patched with duct tape. His manner was so kind and I felt that we were well met. On leaving he presented me with honeycomb from a large bees nest. There is sweetness and the inevitability of a sting in this life.
As destiny would have it the very same Russian girl who sat right next to me for those excruciating 10 days happened to be back volunteering this weekend. We were two of very many first timers a couple of years back. Now two of only three volunteers. I just love how everyone and everything is here to teach us. I'm trying to be patient with how slowly I learn. More humble.
This meditation from Anne Wilson Schaef rang true:
So we take a deep breath. Come home again and again to ourselves.
As my darling Thay says: Breathing in I am aware of my body.
Alive. Full of aches and pains, pleasure and numbing down.
Breathing out I surrender to what is. Soften. Noticing always how much kinder I can get with myself.
There is hope. We can indeed develop more equanimity.
Which is another word for peace.
Family meditation time now. Please join us...
PS. The TMJ that's been killing me all year and the Depression that's truly life-threatening have been substantially 'cured' by this medicine. Although my brother appeared to me in a vision and told me it should be called by another name: "Solemnity and it is warranted."And please verify your email address (check your junkmail!)
Thanks :)
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