Returning to this

So, I'm back after two years of silence. I'm preparing some posts to try to bridge the years. Patience.

Śraddhā (faith)

Three types of faith, or three aspects of faith, covering three aspects of being, and three types of responses:

1. Trusting faith (emotional), "it is important"
2. Lucid faith (cognitive), "it is meaningful"
3. Longing faith (volitional), "it is worthwhile"

The three types of faith are (I believe, but my memory might be wrong) traditional, but the connection to the emotional, cognitive, and volitional is that of Sangharakshita's.

The things in quotes are what I have distilled as my own response to each of the types (or aspects) of faith. I was using these three phrases, that is, this is important, this is meaningful, and this is worthwhile, to describe that which I experienced as my response to faith long before I ever knew about the division of Śraddhā into these three particular categories.

Making these connections felt almost like assembling many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

State of mind

Freedom is a very abstract thing.

I read somewhere in one of the many books on ideology, political philosophy and democracy that I've been reading during this holiday, that freedom (or it might have been democracy, they seem to mean the same thing to many, and most of the authors were liberals) is a state of mind.

It seems like a reasonable thing to say. Likewise, going for refuge is a state of mind, not merely an intensity of external practice.

It's too late in the night to continue thinking...

Holiday in France

I'm getting back to writing after three months of not writing very much at all. In fact, I haven't even had decent time or space for reflection at all, and it's only due to this one-week holiday in France (with my partner and her sisters, mother, and a friend) that I've been able to stop and think for any substantial length of time (while the girls have been exploring the countryside).

It's interesting (scary) to notice how easily my energies are diverted. Extra responsibilities at work uses both time and mind-space previously available for reflection, study and other Dharma practices. Fortunately, the pressure from work is slowly decreasing, and this together with a planned solitary retreat in early September are the reasons I don't worry, at the moment. I hope to be back with my ordinary work load towards the end of the year.

It seems as if solitude and retreat are necessary conditions for intensification of practice, at least for me. For the future, I will need to make sure that I give planning for times of solitude the same weight as planning for other retreats or holiday.

Without the depth of practice that I know I can have during and after a time of solitude, my time feels wasted, which in turn makes me feel frustrated and agitated. It is enough to know that I've wasted much of my life wandering aimlessly, without any purpose, from one thing to the next. To know what needs to be done, and to not have the time, space, or energy to pursue it, is far worse.

The dream of the mobile phone

Another dream that I had during the Anapanasati retreat (on the night between the 5th and 6th of April):

I dreamt that for some reason or other had to turn on my mobile phone. I might have had to send someone an important SMS or something. In turning it on, it proceeds to receive all queued-up text messages and emails.

With a sense of frustration I realise that every message is being presented to me at once. I cannot see which ones of them might be important and which ones are not. In fact, can't even tell one message from the other,it just a blur of letters and graphics.

I woke up and spent a good 10 minutes feverishly thinking about how to go about sorting it all out, until I realised it had been a dream.

Be well!

Notes for meditation interview 5/4-2010

On the Anapanasati retreat, we had meditation interviews. These were opportunities to talk to an experienced meditator for 10 minutes every evening as a way of asking questions related to the practice, and to have the opportunity to verbalise experience, concerns, and other things that arose during the day. This was the only talking that we did during the silence of the retreat.

I usually took notes during the day. These would serve as the starting point for the interview in the evening. These are notes for the interview on the 5th of April that I jotted down in my notebook:

Dull in the morning.
Possibly too much sleep.
Cold and uncomfortable, sinking.
Restless shrine room.

Dullness leaves, replaced with alertness.
Happy and content.
Full of energy, but still settled.
(joy)

Starting to feel the flow of the practice, how one stage leads into the next stage.
Finding the contemplation of vedana liberating.

The practice is so much simpler than what I thought!
Need to build on Just Sitting.

That is all.
Be well!

Grandpa-mind

Ok, so I can't properly recall the story behind this one, but I found it most useful in meditation. It was mentioned during the Anapanasati retreat in early April. The thinking around this is my own, but the initial story was similar.

When meditating, try to meditate with grandpa-mind (or, as it may be, grandma-mind).

We usually meditate with mind of a worried parent, watching our children run around and cause all sorts of havoc, anxiously on the tips of our toes ready to intervene if the play starts to go badly. The children are our thoughts, and our thoughts come, go, and run around, just like small kids sometimes do.

Think of how grandpa would watch the children play and run around. He would not care too much about what they got up to. He knows that he doesn't need to watch every turn of their play and that they won't hurt themselves too badly, if at all. He can sit contently in his chair (smoking his pipe, as mine used to do), possibly just aware that when the kids are picked up to go home, or to be taken to bed, as they eventually will be, it will once more be quiet.

So, don't worry about your thought and worries, planning and memories. In meditation you can sit safely knowing that they will come, go, and maybe stay with you for some time. It's all right.

It's not only about you

On the Anapanasati retreat a month ago, on the 4th of April, our teacher (Satyaraja) related a story about someone going to Bhante Sangharakshita with either a question or an experience, I can't remember which or any details about the exchange of words, but it doesn't matter. The crux of the story was the response from Bhante: It's not only about you.

Now, it's not only about me just happened to be one of the attitudes to Dharma practice that I have found most helpful. As someone who struggles with being too wilful, keeping this phrase in mind focuses me on the real purpose of Dharma practice, which is to work towards the liberation of all beings. I found that constantly reminding myself about this simple fact gave rise to śraddhā, and with śraddhā there is no hindrances whatsoever in Dharma practice.

This is from my notebook:

Practicing the Dharma is not only about me. The Dharma is bigger then me. It existed before me. It is more profound than I can imagine.

Therefore, I should reverence the Dharma. I should make myself available to it so that it may work itself out through me.

Is this what is meant by going for refuge to the Dharma?

The dream of the girl who could see the holy grail

On the Anapanasati retreat a few weeks ago I had a peculiar dream on the first night (2nd-3rd of April). It is quite common to have all sorts of interesting dreams when one is on retreat. They can be due to all sorts of things, but often nothing more strange than sleeping in a unfamiliar bed in a dorm together with other guys that you may or may not have seen before (some of them possibly snoring).

The dream went something like this:

The Anapanasati Retreat 2010

On the 1st of April this year, I went on my second Anapanasati retreat at Padmaloka. The retreat is a 10 day long meditation retreat, most of it in silence, and quite intense.

The first time I attended the retreat, in 2009, I had never been on a long meditation retreat before, and I had a completely unhelpful approach. To cut a long story short, I was far too willful, which led to getting stuck, which led to frustration and ill will. Meditators will recognise this as an easy to make mistake, for some people.

So, this time around I approached the practice from the direction of the Just Sitting practice. One might say that I let the structure of the Anapanasati practice guide my Just Sitting practice. This was, for me, precisely the right way to practice at this point.

Lots of useful small and large insights made themselves known during the week, and I'm hoping to write a handful of shorter blog entries around them. Some of them might only be a few sentences long and mostly for my own memory's sake.

I'll start with the structure of the retreat.