So, did I experience any 見性 kenshō? (awakening experiences)

I certainly experienced something.

Did I attain 悟り satori ? (enlightenment)

What do you think?

Did I enjoy the 10-day meditation retreat experience?

No, it’s more like work than play and working on yourself is a difficult, tiring and emotional business. It was certainly a very rewarding experience though and I would recommend it to many.

Will I continue to meditate?

Yes, everyday without fail although perhaps not for ten hours. That was the first time and the last time. No more meditation retreats for me, life is to be lived not to be hidden from.

What comes next?

Now my nearly six years in Japan are over. It is a sad day and a happy day. Today, I fly to start a new life in Wellington and to renew my old career as a business analyst.

Enough of all of this zen tomfoolery. This is my last yamayamas post. Now is the time for writing reports, attending meetings and giving presentations. The more mundane pursuit of financial freedom will commence in earnest.

One thing that I hope to take with me to New Zealand and reciprocate is the kindness and generosity that I have received from so many people in Japan …

“Four ducks on a pond,

A grass-bank beyond,

A blue sky of spring,

White clouds on the wing;

What a little thing

To remember for years

To remember with tears!

~ William Allingham, ’A Memory’

So, why all of this need to watch the senses? Through direct experience of the transitory nature of all sensory phenomena, we can begin to understand the craziness of craving for positive experiences and aversion from negative experiences. This helps us to stop regretting the past or worrying about the future and to enjoy living fully in the present.

Three times a day, there were one hour long periods of special intensity where you were encouraged not to open your eyes, legs or hands. Basically, not to move for the full hour of meditation. This is much more difficult than it sounds. Try it! Put yourself in a comfortable position, within sight of a clock. Close your eyes and sit motionless. My bet is that you will either fall asleep or move and open your eyes before ten minutes are up. I found the first session really tough and had to move twice. I just managed to survive the second session without moving and each session thereafter building on the previous success. It was difficult but a great learning experience.

These sessions of special intensity generated strong sensations of pleasure and pain. The idea is to not enjoy and cling to the positive experiences and to not run away from the negative experiences. You just sit, watch and witness with the idea of developing perfect equanimity to the ups and downs and vicissitudes of fate. A bit like the ancient Greek philosophical concept of stoicism, the Vipassana approach to meditation gives a direct chance to experience what equanimity feels like.

“The real meaning of upekkha is equanimity, not indifference in the sense of unconcern for others. As a spiritual virtue, upekkha means equanimity in the face of the fluctuations of worldly fortune. It is evenness of mind, unshakeable freedom of mind, a state of inner equipoise that cannot be upset by gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, pleasure and pain.”

~ American Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi from bstonedesigns.com

I found myself not really agreeing with how equanimity was being described by this approach to buddhism. I asked the assistant instructor how equanimity helps one to make decisions, whether small, such as choosing between white rice or brown rice, or big such as changing careers. He said that the objective of the practice was to purify your mind and then the decision would be easy.

I prefer a more zen kind of response. I think a zen teacher would say that it doesn’t matter which choice you make, both are equally right or equally wrong. The choice simply needs to be embraced with an empty mind (無心) and followed full-heartedly with no regrets or looking back. That, I think, is equanimity.

I see too many yoga teachers who have caught the universal love bug and seek to be positive and happy and loving at all times, to all beings. They can keep it up for the most part but I think they are suppressing a lot of negative emotions which are bubbling below the surface and will erupt at some point in the future. We are not robots, it is natural to express emotions. This became clear to me when watching ‘A Zen Life’, a documentary about the life of Daisetz T. Suzuki:

Among the interviewees, especially informative for me was Albert Stunkard, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who had meditated at Engakuji immediately following the end of WWII, and shared many rare stories about Suzuki … Stunkard tells us that a group of people once asked Suzuki if a person of satori experiences suffering. To this, Suzuki replied: “‘When my wife died, I shed bitter tears.’” They retorted by asking what the use was of being enlightened, to which Suzuki replied: “‘My tears had no roots.’” Stunkard remembers that “he said it in a way that it really conveyed the kind of serenity and understanding that went way beyond the words.”

~ H-Net Reviews

This to me is a beautiful description of equanimity. It is living a life with no roots. It is the art of eating when we are hungry and sleeping when we are tired:

“What is wisdom? … It is our life itself … When it’s cold, we put on more clothing, when it’s hot we take some clothes off … When sad, we cry. Being happy. we laugh … And this perfect wisdom doesn’t only pertain to humans but to anything and everything. Birds chirp, dogs run, mountains are high, valleys are low … The seasons change, the stars shine in the heavens … “

~ The Art of Just Sitting, John Daido Loori

To be continued …

The sensory deprivation of leading a very simple life and the continued meditative focus on watching and witnessing sense experiences proved to be utterly mind-blowing. All of the senses became acutely sensitive and were easily over-loaded by any kind of sensory stimulation. There were countless examples of when I was just stopped in my tracks with the thought, “wow, that’s just amazing.”

Sitting on my meditation cushion, I could feel and sense my heart beating deep within. I could sense the blood pumping all around my body. I was acutely aware of any sensation or change. My mind seemed to expand and then just empty, with no difference between the inside and the outside. If somebody sneezed or coughed it sent electric shivers echoing up and down my spine.

Outside the meditation hall, the sites and sounds of nature proved fascinating. Bird song in the morning was captivating. The loud droning of bees seemed to come from a different world and I watched spell-bound as a caterpillar worked it’s way up a chair leg, focussing on the rippling symmetry of the legs and the small sucker pads on the ends of the legs which stuck to the chair. The butterflies danced mesmerizingly and any hint of the perfumed scent from flowers carried on the breeze was intense.

In the dining hall, small amounts of spicy food like mustard or ginger brought me immediately out in a hot flush.

From my tent, the hall air conditioning sounded like Tibetan monks chanting.

Dreams were also particularly vivid, exciting and emotionally engaging. I’m not very good at remembering my dreams but I seem to recollect that some of the experiences may possibly have represented somewhat of a temporary departure from the confined strictures of monastic life …

One night, aroused out of a deep sleep at around 11 p.m., I could feel the tent shaking and there was an enormous roar overhead. At first, I didn’t know what was happening. It took me back to 1977, aged 8 when I watched the opening scene of Star Wars in a cinema and the sound and epic spectacle of the Imperial Destroyer similarly seemed to shake the cinema. In fact, it was just that the local flight paths had been changed but it felt so very different.

My senses have still yet to recover. I feel very open and aware to new experiences. I put on some high-tempo dance music when I got in and literally couldn’t stop myself from jumping and bouncing around the room. Perhaps I should go clubbing tonight. To be continued …

For the entire course, we all had to accept a strict moral code:

1. to abstain from killing any being;
2. to abstain from stealing;
3. to abstain from all sexual activity;
4. to abstain from telling lies;
5. to abstain from all intoxicants.

~ Japan Vipassana Association

In practice, precept 4. is so difficult that it translates into no speech or any other forms of communication. This is relaxed on the final day to help prepare to ease you back into returning to the real world. I found it surprisingly easy to keep this code of silence although I found it a bit rich coming from a meditation guru who so obviously likes the sound of his own voice [says the man who's written over 200 blog posts in the last year]. His discourses and meditation instructions (played from a tape) seemed to go on and on. He also enjoyed a good chant at any available opportunity. To be honest though, I couldn’t resist the temptation for a bit of self-expression, I had to jot down a few notes and musings in my diary.

Old students also had to agree to the following extra 3 rules:

1. to abstain from eating after midday;
2. to abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decorations
3. to abstain from using high or luxurious beds.

They say that you should never trust the cooking advice of a thin chef. I think that’s one of the reasons why the Two Fat Ladies Cooking shows with Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson were so popular. Similarly, I would suggest that you should be suspicious of the advice from a fat meditation guru who tells you to eat until you are only 75% full. Apparently, it is very difficult to meditate on a full stomach. I didn’t get the chance to find out. I followed the advice, eating two and a half vegetarian meals a day and lost a good bit of weight. To be fair, it is excellent advice, as a light, empty stomach seemed to promote space and lightness in the mind. It’s difficult to focus when you’re burping. As I lost weight from my body, I left behind mental baggage too.

In fact, I really appreciated the moral restrictions. The controlled environment provided an amazing opportunity to shed the distractions,stresses and obfuscations of the modern day connected world and made it much easier to travel within. I thought about Thailand where traditionally, all men used to join a temple as monks for 3 or 6 months as a temporary check-out from their normal householder lives. I think it’s a very good practice and would provide a much needed check on some of the excesses of modern day society if the tradition remained. To be continued …

There we all were. In the middle of a field. A bit like Glastonbury with all of the rain, mud, tents, vegetarian hippies and hallucinogenic experiences but none of the music or drugs.

I’m sitting on a cushion in the meditation hall, looking around me and I’m starting to get this sinking feeling that I’ve got myself into something where I’m soon going to be rapidly floundering out of my depth. I’m going from twitchy meditation sittings of 20 minutes every morning (well, most mornings, ok, some mornings) to 9 or 10 hours every day for 10 days. That and I was up against some shaved head, super meditators who looked like they’d been meditating since they were born. I couldn’t help but be awed by the steadfastness of their determination and the one-pointedness of their focussed intensity.

As it turned out, my fellow meditators were a great bunch of chaps. Lovely people. Here they are in order of seniority: (the people who had been on the most retreats sat nearest the teacher and then students were ranked in order of age)

1. Super Meditator – closest to the teacher for a reason. Impressive posture and unswerving in his commitment. Or so I thought. Mysteriously disappeared on day 9.
2. Mr. Pink – rain, wind or shine he wore the same pink sweatshirt. I used to project many of my frustrations onto him, especially when he noisily slurped his tea in the canteen.
3. Mr. Noisy – he slept in the tent next to me and could enter the 2012 Olympics for Japan if there was a contest for snoring. He would probably also make the squad for belching and farting without needing to put in too much training. Again though, an impressive meditator.
4. Freddie Mercury – another crack meditator. Seemed to exist on a meagre few grains of rice and had a faraway look in his eyes. He was going to some deep places. He lost half of his face when he shaved off his moustache.
5. Baby Face – a young university student who looked like he should still be at high school. His meditation put me to shame though. I wish I could have had that focus when I was his age.
6. Tom Cruise – or so Mr. Noisy insisted on calling me. Struggled at the beginning but began to get into his stride around about day 5.
7. Mr. Jujitsu – impressed me with active leg stretching outside the hall before meditating. From the get-go he seemed to be able to sit for the two hour early morning session without moving.
8. The Poet – seemed to be a calm and sensitive soul. He paints and writes poetry. He had a slow careful walk as one of his flip-flops broke and he had to fix it with string.
9. The Californian – another fierce meditator, he arrived with the callouses on his ankle joints to prove that he had put in some serious hours meditating in the zen halls across Japan. He looked very calm on the outside but different things must have been going on on the inside. He disappeared on day 5.
10. The Backpacker – off to bum around Thailand after the course, he’s been working part-time jobs off and on for the last 5 years to fund his travels. This nomadic, itinerant lifestyle was reflected in the restlessness of his sitting.
11. The Dealer – didn’t seem to fit the mold. He deals at a baccarat table in a casino, 6 days a week, 12 hours per shift. I can see why he needed to escape and think about what comes next.
12. The Yoga Instructor – more like the expected attendee. Long haired, skinny vegetarian yoga teacher who looked very comfortable sitting cross-legged. Very solemn on the outside when he was meditating but so friendly and warm on the inside when I got a chance to talk to him on the final day.

I’m not going to write about the meditation techniques on the course as there’s plenty of stuff on the internet and books written by people who actually know what they’re talking about. If you want to learn a little more about what a 10 day Vipassana retreat may entail, I suggest you check out the inspiring and thought-provoking documentary Dhamma Brothers, where the inmates undertake a Vipassana meditation retreat in a prison. The results are profound and very moving. If anyone wants to question the value of an intensive meditation program then they should watch this first. To be continued …