I have just gotten off of a long meditation retreat with SHinzen Young at Richmond Va. and wanted to catch up with you. It was one of those remarkable experiences that change how I understand the world and during which I was having experiences that change the nature of how I approach existence.
Allie and I spent the retreat together it was at the Episcopal center of Richmond Va. and we were meditating 6-8 hours a day ,she more than me.
Along with the meditation were the lectures that SHinzen would give. They were not well planned but so brilliant and in the moment that they would often transport consciousness into a vastly different realm .
After one lecture I came to understand a zen story that I had heard many years before but never grasped:
Two monks were arguing about a flag .The first monk declared that the flag was moving. He pointed to the rippling of the material and the motion back and forth of the material.
The second monk argued it was not the flag but the wind that was moving and that the flag was merely an effect of the wind.
My first impression was that monks really don't have to much to do if they can argue about such a subject.
But the story continues; Not being able to settle the debate they took the discussion to the roshi ( the head monk) and asked him to settle the question.
His response was that they were both wrong and it was the mind that moved.
I never got that story but it stuck with me.
After I listened to one of Shinzen's discussions on, of all things imaginary numbers ( which are the square roots of negative numbers). I walked outside during the break and looked out in the distance at cars moving on the freeway. As I stopped the motion by merely having a quick glimpse I realized that I would be able to tell the location precisely but I could not tell how fast the car was traveling . When I watched for awhile I realized I could judge the speed but not the location.
Then it struck me my mind had created these distinctions . These distinctions were the essence of what the monks were debating . The roshi had merely pointed this out.
To be able to stay in that realm of consciousness is to commune with the essence of being.
After another one of the talks I came to realize that Allie and I have different modalities of thinking.
Shinzen uses the three sense gates , seeing , hearing , and feeling as the modalities that the mind uses to perceive . In normal consciousness it is impossible to perceive without using one or all three of the modalities. It is conceded that taste and smell are modalities but arbitrarily placing them into the feel category is how SHinzen rectifies that observation.
Virtually everyone uses all three modalities but some favor one over the others. A default modality if you will , akin to being right or left handed or ambidextrous .
My default is to think in pictures quick sharp and fleeting. A picture emerges into consciousness and is replaced by another with the speed of the blink of an eye.
Allie's default is somatic. The body feels either with emotions or physical sensations and the distinction between them is overlapping crying is an emotions during which the chest can heave, the heart can ache, and the eyes tear.
To be the superb therapist that she has been throughout her career she has had to develop this capacity along with compassion , empathy , and loving kindness ,to understand the suffering of her clients and help them to recover their equanimity .
In Buddhism these are called the Brahmaviharas or the 4 immeasurables .
The somatic sense that she has is highly refined and I was always in awe of it.
What I got from practicing somatic(body awareness ) meditations ,was and understanding that in the modality of feeling there is greater and lesser, but it is always there. The awareness of my right big toe is always with me whether I attend to it or not. Feeling merely expands into and in consciousness or they contract back from and into non - consciousness .
Feelings expand and contract on the stage of awareness for a considerable time. Feelings do not leave as quickly as a picture does.
Armed with this understanding I spent an entire day paying attention only to how feeling moved through me, with their expansion ,contraction , resting, and absence.
The result being a sense of being present in the body . While this writes rather superficially , it for me was quite profound. The body is always in the present. Pictures and the other modality, hearing, can be in present ,past , or future . But the body can only be present. The body cannot feel in the past ,nor can it feel in the future.
Allie's world became open to me . The world of feeling was brought to conscious awareness. I softens the way I perceive. It is much more gentle and flowing but without clear stops and starts.
The most profound experience I had at the retreat was around death and dying, a theme that is becoming closer but is not immanent.
During a meditation at the retreat I had the experience of acceptance by the part of all of us that is divine, or if that language is off-putting then the part of us that communes with pure love . During which I felt a deep peace from having been forgiven for all of my failings , perceived or real.
What bliss!
The second part of the communing with pure love lead me to realized that death for me is merely coming home, like a small child who has played all day and it is growing dark.
Death is inviting and welcoming even if I want to stay out a play some more. It will be there when I am through and will call me home.
Home where I am cared for and loved as the beloved child of a loving parent .
This is what awaits me.
May it await all sentient beings.
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