Preparing for Silent Retreat

Tomorrow R and I are headed to the Bay Area for a weekend unguided silent retreat. There are 58 retreaters signed up!
As you might expect, to prepare for it, we have been trying to improve our concentration, trying to prevent distraction. What I have been surprised at is how much I have been focusing on trying to avoid noise in the meditation room. This is a truly silent retreat - like the kind they do at Tharpaland Retreat Center in Scotland, where Geshe-la did a 3-year retreat and I had the very good fortune to do two week-long guided silent retreats with Ven Tharchin.
KMC San Francisco (!), formerly known as Saraha Center (the first NKT Center in the U.S.), has been great about helping us prepare. As you may know, silence at Tharpaland means no whispering but also no eye contact or gestures. The solitary retreaters there typically pull up their hoods (which makes sense given the weather in Scotland) and wear sunglasses (in a climate that's usually quite free of sun) when they go for walks. You have to turn in your cell phone. The only person you can communicate with if absolutely necessary is the Retreat Coordinator, who you contact in a note.

As part of the excellent introduction to the retreat that Gen Choma gave a couple of months ago,  and that they kindly recorded so that we would be able to benefit from it, she explained how to prevent any distracting sounds in the gompa. As as Tharpaland, you are taught how damaging it can be if someone is deep in meditation and there is a sudden loud sound. I heard a story of an advanced meditator whose inner winds were messed up when someone dropped a pot; he had great difficulty meditating for months. If you have to sneeze or cough, you teach yourself to make a small preliminary throat-clearing kind of sound as a warning to others. At this retreat, water bottles in the gompa are discouraged unless medically necessary. You are supposed to have memorized your sadhana so that there is no sound of ruffling pages. Newer meditators were directed to create a one-page version of their prayers. We were encouraged to notice any habits we have that might bother others, including cracking your joints (which I never used to be able to do but a few months ago, I started cracking my neck in the gompa), wearing noisy nylon clothes, foot tapping, etc. Gen Choma read a funny list of annoying things that meditators do that came from a student. One of the other things I notice I sometimes do is sighing. I have stopped whispering my prayers.

This Summer at our annual Lamrim retreat, I started working with being more physically still and have been continuing to try to train in it during other retreats. (I bought my zabuton, the bigger meditation cushion that goes underneath the cushion you put your butt directly on, from a local company called Still Sitting - a good name I think.) I was noticing that I'd scratch my face or rub my hand through my hair (another new habit, probably from the delight of having hair) -completely unnecessary distractions for me and others.

Another retreat tip I hadn't heard before is to stop listening to music a few days before starting, because you are likely to hear those sounds in your head when you're trying to focus on something more virtuous. It's more pronounced now because, in solidarity with my brother's family, whose house was inundated with water from the big storm, and as a former Joisey Girl who is a long-time fan, ("Born to Run" in the migratory sense), I have been listening to Bruce Springsteen's "My City in Ruins," which has the rousing chorus, "Come on, rise up!" My sister sent our family a video she found that had post-storm photos of my brother's beloved shore town with that as its soundtrack, and it made me cry.

As you may have noticed, there are a lot of tangents here. It gives you an idea of how my mind's working these days, because the other twist in all of this is that I am taking a drug that really helps me feel better but that revs up my mind. The last two weeks we were dogsitting my sister-in-law's terrier, so I've named it my terrier mind - like a monkey mind but worse, darting here and there, refusing to settle down and rest. This drug also affects my memory.

In addition to summarizing some of the key information about concentration and training in tranquil abiding from Joyful Path, Gen Choma's introduction also included valuable advice from someone who's obviously a dedicated meditator. She was just here in Seattle giving us the highlights from the International Fall Festival in Spain and mentioned meditation tips there too, such as noticing her hand position in meditation as an indicator of her mental state: She said when her thumbs are pressed together too tightly, her mind is pushing too hard but that when the oval of her hands starts to collapse, her concentration is flagging. I also starred her advice about how to reset yourself when your meditation isn't going well, by backing up and requesting blessings, and if you need to, going back through the prayers, all the way to refuge if needed.

Big thanks to Gen Choma, Admin Cate, EPC Michelle and Retreat Coordinator Eva, who are making it very easy for us to attend. Eva was one of my roommates at Summer Festival and first told me about the retreat. The power of Sangha again! She thought training in tranquil abiding would be a wonderful offering to our Guru in Portugal next Fall.

I am very much looking forward to the retreat, even with these handicaps. I am not planning on doing every session, expecting that I may need to rest, being content to take walks and read Dharma, just trying to create good causes for the future. There's no reason I can't continue this training on my own, and we may even request a Tranquil Abiding Retreat in Seattle.

For fun, I tell myself The Dudette Abides ... or tries to. (That's a reference to the quotable cult movie The Big Lebowski, which stars Jeff Bridges as a pothead bowler. There's a car in our neighborhood that has "The Dude Abides" bumper sticker.)

Meditation Inspiration

This photo makes me want to meditate.

Does anyone know where it was taken?

In the classic meditation analogy, I look forward to feeling like an eagle soaring, rather than a sparrow frantically flapping its wings.

Try Softer

In preparing for a silent tranquil abiding weekend retreat in the Bay Area next month, I've been thinking a lot recently about holding the meditation object.

For ordinary activities we're usually told - and we tell ourselves - we need to try harder. But years ago I learned from a young woman who attended KMC NY to try softer. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I find it beautiful and enjoy contemplating it.
I think the idea is to put effort into our practice, but not to have a tight mind about it. We are happy with what we're attempting but don't grasp at results. They will come naturally if we let them, assuming we have a good motivation and are following the instructions.

Gen Tharchin of Tharpaland tells us that meditation is not like storming a castle. We need to hear that, because when we first start meditating, that is often our tendency. We think that we are going to master meditation the way we've mastered other skills, with brute force, via a frontal assault. In many ways, meditation is the complete opposite of other activities. It's like a shy animal that can only be coaxed out of hiding by being quiet and not moving (aggressively storming after it is going to backfire).
There's a kind of toy water balloon that's particularly slippery and elusive: If you try to squeeze it, it will jump out of your hand. The only way to hold onto it is to let it rest in the palm of your hand. Meditation seems like that. (By the way, I like the way that echoes Pabongka Rinpoche's Lamrim book, which was edited by Trijang Rinpoche, titled Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand; not surprisingly, it's a lot like Joyful Path, but not as well organized.)

I enjoy and often find illuminating the discovery of the thought behind the thought, seeing what I'm really thinking. I noticed that I was seeing meditating as like balancing, feeling like I was on a tightrope, which later turned into a balance beam, when in fact I could view it as being on firm ground. No wonder I was having trouble holding onto my object.

Gen Khedrub often talks about meditation as "spending time with the object" and "letting some time pass." Our minds tend to be so busy, you'd think they'd appreciate a break, but that restless mind is a deeply ingrained habit.
I was even wondering if it's a bit like hanging out with a friend, although there's not even talking, so that's probably a bit of a stretch, but maybe it's helpful insofar as it suggests a mellow way to relax in an enjoyable way.

A Closed Loop

While I was meditating today, I got an image of a chain of elephants, each one using its trunk to hold the tail of the elephant in front of it. I don't know where that image came from - I don't think I've ever seen it in my life. It sounds like something they train circus elephants to do. Anyway, as I was mentally repeating, "I must use my life to practice Dharma," this elephant image suggested to me to try to keep a link between the last word "Dharma" and the first word "I," so that my mind didn't wander off in other directions. I went from imagining the elephants in a chain, to the words in a chain, then to the words as a circle. I told myself it was a closed loop, which meant it was less possible for my mind to get distracted elsewhere. I found that helpful.

I imagine at some point, you lose the words and your mind just becomes the determination, but I never hear meditators talk about this, and I don't really know. I'm doing well if I can hold onto the words and keep paying attention to their meaning

It occurred to me that worry can be like this - there's some (unwanted) phrase that keeps repeating itself in your head.
When I worry, I find it easier to change the object of worry than to simply drop the worrying. For example, if I start to worry about running out of money, I keep the feeling but substitute a Dharma thought, such as being reborn as a pig. For some reason that switch is easier for me to make.
I read that "worrying is like praying for something you don't want." : )