29.12.09

Back from retreat

...and thrown out into daily life.
Wonderful days with no structure at all and yet keeping the discipline. Settling into silent illumination. Watching what is working with the mind and working with the body and bodily sensations. Deepening into Sengcan, doing jhana.
Away from orthodoxy, self-confident.
Silence, silence, silence. Silence is the work. A retreat without silence is not retreat.



There was a ghost but I put his name away and didn't think of him anymore.
I wrote many notes in Spanish. I'll be posting them here as soon as they're translated.
Grandma passed away. Her laugh remains. I said goodbye and reflected on death.

13.12.09

Eleven months


December. Christmas retreat approaching, my daughter is already used to it: be happy, waiting the many presents and accepting her father retreating from the world in such a time. This year I'll spent only 3 or 4 days on retreat. I'm busy doing samu at my new house (well, it is because it's not new that I'm busy with it).
I begun this blog saying I was cutting off with Theravada. I made shortly after a good friendship with the founder of the Boundless Mind Zen School (BMZ) which we've maintained until now. I did also a 100-day practice period with the respected Soto Zen teacher Dosho Port, not because he was Zen, Soto, but because he was open to investigation and inquiry (qualities that I miss in the Buddhist orthodoxy in general). After summer, I choose not to follow him through another practice period (maybe because he was Soto?).
All in all my insatisfaction with the established Buddhism has been increasing through this year. Also with Danish Buddhism: Theravada buddhists in this country seem only interested in the immigrants, and do nothing to integrate with the Danish (or western) population; the Mahayana schools I'm more in contact with seem only interested in defining what Buddhism is (in their terms) insisting tirelessness in how important it is to have a teacher (themselves, by the way) to the point of being tired of hearing it all the time.
I'm happy to have found the people of BMZ, where one can question, follow his/her own way, be a wanderer  (a homeless if one should wish) and yet have a center, a meeting place, have a cup of tea, and then keep on wandering.
Remember that the important thing is not what Buddhism is or should be, nor even being a Buddhist or how to become one. The important thing is the practice (including reading, talking and questioning).
After these eleven months I'm going to retreat with the intention of cleaning up the known and leaving no-thing and no-one. One would say kill the Buddha (I will also kill the Buddhist) and again and again, start from scratch.

Don't be heedless. Don't later fall into regret.

23.11.09

Beyond the body

Going beyond pleasant bodily feelings
Breathing in and out aware of the mind
Not following anapanasati
Following no one
Wondering alone

17.11.09

Notes on Gotama's Noble Search (III)



Gotama had found out that asceticism would not lead to Nibbana neither would do formless states of concentration.
Gotama had found how to subdue fear and dread and to divide thoughts in skillful and unskillful discarding the unskillful ones and maintaining the skillful ones as long as these wouldn't tire the body and strained the mind.
Moreover he had found out that entering and abiding in a estate of seclusion from sensual pleasures and unwholesome estates, where there was rapture and happiness, as he had been when he was younger, was the path to awakening.
There in Uruvela, in the beautiful grove, praticing awareness of the in and out breathing he enter and remained in that estate of seclusion accompanied by applied and sustained thought.
Gradually this applied and sustained thought was quieten, but there remained rapture and happiness born of concentration. He was self-confident an possessed of singleness of mind. Then rapture faded also away and he abided in equanimity, mindful and fully aware, feeling pleasure in the body and, finally, abandoning pleasure and pain and joy and grief he abided in pure mindfulness due to equanimity.
There was his mind concentrated, purified, bright and attained to imperturbability. He directed this mind to the recollection of his past lives. He then understood how beings pass on according to their actions and finally to the knowledge of the destruction of the taints: 'This is suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering and this is the path leading to the cessation of suffering'.
And he knew and saw that his mind was liberated.

From Majjhima Nikaya, suttas 4, 36 and SN 54.8 (used translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Notes on Gotama's Noble Search (II)



Fear and dread
Gotama decided to be alone and took deep into the forest. He realized that being alone is dangerous and can turn a man mad but with purified conduct in body, speech and mind the fear and dread that turns someone mad can be overcome.
So he went to the forest and other places that inspire fear and waited for it. If fear and dread came while he was sitting, he remained sitting; if it came when he was standing or walking or lying down he remained in the same position until fear and dread dissapeared.
In this way he arouse energy and established mindfulness with his body being tranquil and his mind concentrated and unified.
Two kinds of thought
On another occasion decided to divide thoughts in two classes: on one side thoughts of sensual desire, thoughts of ill will and thoughts of cruelty and on the other side thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of non-ill will and thoughts of non-cruelty.
Then if thoughts of sensual desire, ill will or cruelty appeared in his mind he reflected that such thoughts would lead to the affliction of others and/or himself and away from Nibbana. And so reflecting, these thoughts subsided in him.
If thoughts of renunciation, non-ill will or non-cruetly appeared in his mind he reflected that such thoughts would not lead to affliction, they aided wisdom and leaded to Nibbana.
Such thoughts were not a cause of fear. However excessive thinking could tire the body and in a tired body mind is strained and far from concentration so he steadied his mind, brought it to singleness and concentrated it.
In this way too he arouse energy and established mindfulness with his body being tranquil and his mind concentrated and unified
Uruvela
And wandering he arrived to Uruvela to a beautiful grove with a clear-flowing river and a nearby village for begging for food. He thought that it was a good place for striving.

From Majjhima Nikaya, suttas 4, 19, 26 (used translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

6.10.09

Notes on Gotama's noble search (I)

Siddhatta Gotama lived in luxury, not lacking anything. He looked for satisfaction and fulfillment in things subject to birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow and defilement. But being himself subject to these things he shaved his beard and hair, still young, leaving mother and father with tearful faces and he left seeking the unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless and undefiled security from bondage, Nibbana.

He put on the yellow robe. He didn't ask anybody for permission or refuge.

He visited two teachers and learned from them to enter and abide in the realm of nothingness and in the realm of neither perception nor non-perception. Then, seeing that this would not lead him to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana, he left.

Then he undertook the path of austerities: he went naked, rejecting conventions; or he pulled out hair and beard; or stood continuously; or used a mattress of spikes; or fed on the dong of young calves; and so on.

He clenched his teeth until sweat ran from his armpits and he was exhausted by the painful striving. He practice breathingless meditation, stopping in- and out-breaths and he was exhausted by the painful striving. He stopped eating, consuming himself, turning black or brown in color, bones exposed through the thin skin, falling over his own urine and feces, hair falling off by itself.

He took pride in his austerities; he was sure nobody had endured what he did, nobody had experienced the painful feelings as he did.

And yet he did not attain any distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones.

And there, alone, he asked himself: 'Could there be another path to awakening?' Then he recalled once, being young, he was sitting in the shade of a tree, he was secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states and entered upon and remained in the first jhana, which is accompanied by applied and sustained thought, with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion.

And then he asked himself again: 'Could that be the path to wakening?'  Then following on that memory came the realization: 'That is the path to Awakening.' He thought: 'So why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities?' He thought: 'I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities'.

He realised that to attain that pleasure was very difficult with a body so weak so he ate some food to regain his strength and the five recluses that were with him practicing austerities left him.
---
From Majjhima Nikaya, suttas 26, 12, 36 (used translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
Picture (click here)

17.9.09

Enchanted


Yesterday I said I was going to the gym at 14.00. It took me half an hour to get away from the computer. At 14.30 I looked out of the window and thought I didn't want to go and train, I felt like dumb, heavy and with lack of energy. I manage to leave however and, lucky for me, I got out of the enchantment habits have over oneself. Five minutes after picking up the bike I was wide awake, fighting against the wind, happy for being under the sun and the body saying thanks for the motion.

It's incredible to see how we fall again and again into habits, take a train of conduct and don't want to look around. 

The same has happened with meditation. I was sitting in that undefined state of no cultivation, constant letting go, not-doing and, without notice, I had fallen into the dark cave. Coming back to breath meditation has been like picking up the bike and start riding with the wind: immediate body well-being, peace inside, calm and space to investigate mental and physical events. Rediscovering the meaning of bhavana, the word Master Gotama used for meditation, which actually means cultivation, development and thus cultivating serenity and calm and, from there, investigation and clear discernment (yes, ignoring deliberately the widespread notion of samatha vs vipassana as two different meditation methods).

The other factor that pushed me into muddiness was the overdose of critical readings regarding buddhism and chan/zen. No doubt, doubt had found a place in my mind to the point of darkening whatever movement or inclination I had towards the dhamma/dharma. For this I've been working with metta meditation, which has left me in peace with the world, with the enviroment, with books, and with myself.

Metta meditation without forgetting the other 3 meditations of the Brahma Viharas and anapanasati, as taught by the Buddha in the Anapanasati Sutta, are my temporal means in coming back to a more active meditation and engagement in the world and in realizing the end of the world.

If you want to know how it feels to break the enchantment away, press play: