Shinzen Young retreat in LA 3

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

            I am last so long and then things begin to change. Today I arose at 4 unable to sleep. There was a general sense of well-being but tiredness. The cold that I have been struggling with seem to coagulate in my sinuses and made sleep difficult. Did do the mantra Om Mane Padme Om with everyone but noticed that I was not able to get to the low notes that I love since they reverberate in the heart.

I am getting the hang of his talks and I take lots of notes in the pictorographic format. That seems to b his style and I love it that it makes me think in pictures.

He makes pennants for things like concentration clarity and equanimity and how the mind works to deal with each one of these states going shallow or deep if there is an equality of one with the other and how the mind tastes each in which he uses a symbol of a mouth from Hieroglyphics.

           He quoted from a teacher of the 19th century named Mahasai Sayadal who formulated the idea of having the labeling of mental processes be part of the Buddhist practice.. He also discussed and showed in hieroglyphs of the breakdown of the system that he has been amalgamating, it divides any spiritual experience and by the process of breaking it into constituent elements allows for the whole the be reassembled so as to be repeatable and comprehensible for reintegration into the personality.

I speak of this very dryly but what is happening to me is anything but.

           The elements consist of see, hear, and feel, and they are noted in the forms of in, out, rest, flow and gone. When I am looking at this screen I am seeing out. If I form a mental image in my mind of the screen that is see in, when the image does nothing or stops in my mind it is at rest, when the image transforms in the form of words appearing it is flow when I look away it is gone. The same is true of hearing and feeling.

In general the process that I have described happens all the time to each of us and we accept as totally natural, which it is. It works continually it is just that as one becomes better and better at observing it the results from the behaviors that emerge from personality begin to change.

So to give powerful example, which I am being hit with quite often, let me exam shame. The drugs that I am taking make my body, tired, among other things and sitting in meditation in a comfortable chair has the effect of putting me to sleep, much more than before. I snore so that I disturb my fellow meditators, most have been kind but it happens. This coupled with the fact that I am alone in that this is a silent retreat brings this type of activity and the resultant emotions to the fore. I am proud, and to have to be awakened in these circumstances feels shameful. If you agree or not is not the point. What I am feeling is the reality in that moment.

The technique is to note what is happening in the body. Tightness in the chest and throat wetness in the eyes by feel out and be aware in real time what I am describing to you in these pages. In a flat sonorous voice the mind recovers and regains its equanimity the experience is fully participated in and the power of that shame has been diminished to the degree that I have consciously experienced it.

           Shame is in the human condition and it certainly is something that I have experienced in the past in situations that are embarrassing and hurtful there will be more to come I am training in letting go of the grasping of not wanting to experience what I am experiencing. I can either do it mindfully or not mindfully is the path of freedom or not is the path of suffering unconsciously.

           I did go hiking in the local hills and they are quite beautiful, Catalina Island is near and the ships ply the channel between them and the mainland.