Month: December 2009

I’m back from my 11 day “meditation retreat.” So strange… Really, it was basically ten days as an initiate buddist monk in the burmese theravada tradition. Very strict, very intense. Very quiet — no talking except once-daily interviews between instructors and students. No access to computers, cellphones, music, books, paper, pencils or pens. Etc.

My friend Bob, before I left, said to me: “I don’t know what to say to someone leaving on a meditation retreat. Maybe: ‘Break a neuron!'” (analogous to “break a leg!”).

So, I broke a neuron. But just one.

Upon leaving the meditation center, my fellow meditator Richard decided to rescue the stray cat (see posts from day 6 and day 9). I offered to drive him into Chicago, where he lived, since he didn’t have transportation planned that could include the transport of a stray cat.

We took the cat in my truck, and we talked a lot as we drove down I-90 into the city. Richard lives in Hyde Park, which is the neighborhood in Chicago where I lived 24 years ago (24!). I only lived in Chicago for a short time, but it has always been one of my favorite cities and places.

We got take out from Harold’s Chicken Shack, which is a chain of Chicago south-side fast-food joints that I remember very fondly from when I lived there. The branch we went to didn’t exist when I lived there, but it was located in the same exact shopping center at 53rd and Kimbark where I used to work. Here is a picture of Kimbark plaza, and the CVS pharmacy at the far end used to be a hardware store, where I worked.

Here is a picture of the Harold chicken. Note the delicious slices of squishy white bread that are served to soak up the juices of the fried chicken.

Then we went to Richard’s apartment, smuggled the cat in, and had some lunch. The cat seemed very content. Richard lives on the 24th floor of a high rise near Lake Michigan. The view from his apartment is amazing.

I drove past 62nd and Kimbark, where I used to live, but the neighborhood is unrecognizable from 24 years ago — I think the Univ of Chicago has redeveloped the area substantially.

Finally, I drove back up toward Wisconsin. As I passed through downtown, it was beginning to snow. Chicago is such a stunningly beautiful city, to me. I found an old Psychadelic Furs song on the radio. I crawled through Sunday traffic on the Kennedy Expressway. I felt very joyful.

Here is a list of the entries I have written (or will write over the coming days) about my experience at the Vipassana meditation retreat.

Here is a picture of the retreat center, taken this morning after I got my camera out of storage.

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 10(c)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

The phrase in the title to this post is a Korean proverb:  “even a frog must crouch before it can jump.”

I never really could remember what else I meant to write here. That’s a disadvantage to “blogging in one’s head.”

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 10(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat. For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]
The strict rule of silence ended, and I felt a feeling of relief, sadness, and frustration. Relief, because I was feeling fed up with the program.  “Done.” Sadness, because I was, nevertheless, getting a lot out of it, and enjoying the focused, disciplined detail of the moment-to-moment. Frustration, because I had hoped I would have liked the program more… that I might have gotten more out of it.
Overall, however, I felt a sort of joyful equanimity. Not, perhaps, the sort of equanimity that Goenka would approve of:  I was joyful to be IN the world, living it it, experience its beauty and complexity. No non-attachment, for me. I guess maybe I still don’t “get it” ?
There was this bench that I would like to spend time visiting briefly, during the short breaks between meditation sessions. It was right outside the “men’s entrance” of the meditation hall. I would go out and lie down on it, looking up at the sky through the branches of the tree. Night sky, with clouds and distant Chicagoglow, or with stars, or day sky, cloudy, or blue.  But always quite cold. The warmest things got during the retreat was maybe low 30’s F.
I lay down on the bench and looked up at the tree. Snowflakes landing on my face.
Here is a picture of the bench [taken after I got my stuff back on day 11].

Here is a picture looking up at the tree [taken after I got my stuff back on day 11].

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 10(a)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

My problem with purity.

Purity is a problematic concept. It seems well and good. And it has all sorts of cultural manifestations, and seems close to a human universal.

But purity, and concommitant, oppositional notions like “pollution” and “defilement,” are dangerous memes. When applied to cultural and psychological constructs, they seem to lead down a slippery slope to intolerance and fanaticism, almost unfailingly.

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 9(d)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

This is a very grim title. But actually, it’s not a negative moment.  There’s a raucous rock song by a group called Zeromancer, entitled “Doctor Online“. It has the line “1-800-suicide” as part of its chorus.

It is stuck in my head, this evening, after a minor epiphany. I’d returned to my room, after tea…  after my weeping during meditation earlier. After my loss of equanimity.

And I somehow decided, or realized, that setting aside “desires and aversions” – losing my attachment to these things… this seems like a kind of “spiritual suicide.” I mean… its our desires and aversions that let us know that we’re alive, right? If we no longer have desires and aversions, mightn’t we as well be dead?

I think the more nuanced view is that it’s not that we’re to get rid of desires and aversions, but only that we’re to lose our attachment to the results of our actions that those desires and aversions engender. But Goenka, in his presentations and discourses, utterly fails to convey this nuance clearly. And the more blunt view (which seems to prevail in a lot of Theravada) that nirvanna (enlightenment) is all about letting go of desires and aversions altogether seems too shallow to me. Too much like quitting the world in the name of happiness. Too much like giving up.

So the song was stuck in my head.  But it restored my equanimity. Although it left me with a certain degree of apathy vis-a-vis the meditation program.

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 9(c)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

I am in the bathroom, and I notice an ant. The ant appears to be damaged. Wounded. The back legs don’t seem to be working very well. I worry that maybe I stepped on it accidentally, or hurt it some other way.

The ant is trying to climb up the wall. It will make it up one foot, maybe two feet. And then it will fall down to the floor.  It will walk a little way along the base of the wall, and the climb the wall again.  And fall down.  It did this 5 or 6 times.

Trying.

Trying.

Trying.

And then it walked along the base of the bathtub, around behind the toilet, where it stumbled into a spider web.  It struggled, there, for a short time. And then stopped.

Shortly before, I’d returned to my room after 5 o’clock tea. I was restless, and frustrated, and sad.  I was looking forward to doing push-ups in my room.  This was, perhaps, the first time ever that I’d looked forward to doing push-ups.

Stir-crazy: I did 150 jumping jacks, and 30 push-ups.

As I did my illicit exercise (it seems it’s not technically considered desirable to have aerobic exercise during the intensive meditation course), I thought about “the world pushing back.”

What does this mean, the world pushing back? We can’t stop wanting things. We can’t stop feeling aversion to things. Desire and aversion are things that let us know that we’re alive. That’s the world, pushing back. Just like being down, doing push-ups:  the world pushes back, hard. That’s gravity.

I’m not sure what I’m getting at. I guess I just feel that to speak of eliminating desires and aversions is ridiculous. It’s like choosing to be dead. You can only let go of your attachment to the outcomes (results) of actions brought on by desires and aversions.  But that’s important. I think about David White’s discussions of the philosophy of non-attachment as outlined in the Bhagavad Gita.

[This is a “back-post”; it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 9(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

..

I took some pictures after the course ended and I got my camera out of storage. This is the previously-mentioned cat, named Snort, coming out of her barn where she was hiding from the cold wind

This is a close up

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 9(a)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

Do I need to say more?

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 8(d)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

I am feeling pretty gloomy.

I have been putting a pinch of cayenne pepper in my tea in the afternoons. I like spicy things, and red pepper in tea (in tiny amounts) can be good.

I sat and looked at the dregs of my tea, and the little red flakes of cayenne floating there. It looks like constellation of stars.  The world is interesting.

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 8(c)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

One thing I spend my time doing, as I sit and let my monkey mind wander, is that I invent parables and stories and jokes. I made up this parable.

There was a class of children and their teacher.  The teacher was strict but well-meaning.  One day, he told the students he was going to give each of them a gift.  But he warned them:  “This will be a personal gift, just from me to each of you individually.  Do not share your gift with your peers or talk about it with each other.  It’s to be between each of you and me, alone.”

The next day, he brought a small, elegant box for each of his students. He passed them out carefully to them, make sure that each received the correct box.  Then he told them that they could look in their individual boxes.  “But you must look carefully and privately. Do not share the contents of your boxes with your peers. As I said, this is a personal gift, tailored and unique to each of you individually.”

The students all opened the lids of their boxes and peered, discreetly, inside.   There was one student, who always worked hard in class but didn’t always necessarily get great results. He looked into his box and realized it was  empty. He looked around at his peers, and saw all of them smiling happily, seemingly satisfied with their secret gifts. He tried to put on a smile, and imagined that some of them, too, might have empty boxes, and that they too were pretending to be happy for the sake of appearances.

The teacher began to talk again, and he described the types of the gifts he had given, in general terms. They sounded very wonderful.  The student felt more and more frustrated and sad, but he kept his equanimity. Equanimity was an important trait, according to their teacher.

Then the teacher said, “some of you may not have received a gift. If you don’t have a gift, you must not feel disappointed.  You should not become depressed or feel dejected. Someday, you may still get a wonderful gift, but for now, what you have right now is what you have. Keep your equanimity.”

The student suddenly felt overwhelmed by the exact feelings his teacher was telling he should not have.  He suddenly lost all self-control and equanimity, and burst into weeping.  It simply wasn’t fair.  And somehow, having his teacher insist that such unfairness must be borne in equanimity was a kind of last straw, and he completely lost it.  He wept and wept.

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 8(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

Or the real as just fantasy. Solipsism and all that.

I never really could remember what else I meant to write here. That’s a disadvantage to “blogging in one’s head.”