First Day of the Retreat (partial day) - Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The retreat was a five day long retreat over Labor Day weekend 2007 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. Spirit Rock is in a very pretty, lightly wooded canyon (see photo, right). All of the photos in this entry were taken by dasenergi  , thanks for the use of your photos!

Second Day of the Retreat (first full day) - Thursday, August 30, 2007

During the second and next 2 full days of the retreat our time was scheduled from 6:15 in the morning to 9:45 in the evening, alternated between 45 minute periods of sitting (instructions in the morning), walking meditation, work mediation, three meals, one yoga session per day, and a dharma talk in the evening. The dharma talks were one hour presentations by the teachers of teachings from the central practices of Buddhism. There was also a group interview early on and a private interview later on in the retreat.

The first full day was trying and tiring. Vipassana meditation involves keeping the mind focused on the here and now, acknowledging any thoughts or emotions without judging them, and then returning to the present. The combination of this mental attention and the nearly complete slowing down is difficult as the mind is quite restless and the lack of activity makes you tired.

After breakfast, we were given eating meditation instruction. The purpose of eating meditation is to keep the mind focused on the present. The practice involves: considering the source and actions of nature and people required for the food to grow and it to make it onto my plate; mindfully drawing the food into the mouth; chewing, tasting, and smelling the food; and then swallowing the food. It can take 15 minutes or more to eat a bowl of oatmeal at this pace. I ate all of my first few meals while meditating. This became boring after a while, and so it didn’t seem to have much meditative value and I did less eating meditation with time.

I found eating meditation an effective way of staying in the present moment. However, meal times were rather odd and uncomfortable. I don’t consider myself to be a very talkative or gregarious, but I found sitting opposite somebody and not making eye contact, let alone not talking, a bit disturbing. I also found that during eating and other times I spent way too much time looking at other people and making up stories about them.

I received my job training after lunch. There was a group of 5 of us. We were to work together to clean the dining room and kitchen floors after lunch. One of the people is somebody that I had met a couple of months before at the Thursday meditation group. There were 2 other men and one woman. The work wasn’t that difficult and it was fun working as a team.

During sitting meditation I was very tired, but otherwise was able to calm my mind pretty easily by concentrating on my breath. Walking meditation didn’t seem to be doing much for me. Also, it was an eerie watching everyone doing walking meditation - it looked like they were filming a sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I tried sitting on a cushion the first day, even though my leg muscles were bothering me. Other than this discomfort, I didn’t have much problem sitting through all of the sessions. Later on I switched to sitting on a chair, seated forward with my back straight.

My mental state seemed pretty much the same as before the retreat, calm at times during sitting meditation. I did notice a marked change in what would arise in my consciousness. In addition to occasional, but not very strong, physical discomforts such as pains or itching, thoughts and emotions tended to arise. Before the retreat, it was almost always thoughts that arose (planning the future, reflecting on past, worrying about others or myself). These always occur in the head and are easy to identify if you are being mindful (according to vipassana meditation, the response should be "oh - I'm thinking a planning thought. That is interesting to observe and feels {fill in the blank}, but is not in the present. I will examine my response to this thought for a while without being judgmental about it and without getting lost in its story, and then return to concentrating on my breath).

During the retreat it was mainly emotions that arose in my consciousness. Emotions are almost always felt in the body (the chest, the stomach, the head or neck) and, for me at least, almost impossible to identify with any degree of precision. (It usually feels like a "bad," emotion and sometimes like a "good." From a vipassana perspective, it is judgmental to call emotions good or bad - you are overlaying your own response to the underlying feeling. That being said, during the retreat I was not feeling a lot of "good" emotions, and so most of what I felt was probably in response to fears, worries, or anxieties that I couldn't put a name to. The response to emotions should be "I am feeling the emotion of {fill in the blank}. It results in a physical sensation in my {fill in the blank} that grows/diminishes with time. I will not judge the emotion, but accept it for what it is."

I found that I was not able to put a label on most of the emotions that I felt when meditating. I looked up a list of emotions and realize that there is a vast array of emotions, and I am not adept at examining how I feel and attaching labels to the emotions.

In the afternoon I had a group interview with one of the teachers. Somebody mentioned that they were tired, and it was interesting to hear that everyone else was tired as well. Apparently the abrupt change in pace causes the body to get tired (not moving - must be time to sleep!). Many of my sensations during meditating here seem to be emotion-related. I would be sitting and feel some not very pleasant emotion arise. I asked how to deal with emotions, the teacher suggested investigating the emotions without judging them, and then moving on. He used the acronym “RAIN,” which, I remember correctly, stands for: Recognize, Acknowledge, Inspect, and Nonjudgmental.

I think that at some deeper state of meditation, you would realize, for example, that a "bad" emotion is your reaction to something that naturally changes with time, and that it is the clinging to a naturally changing state that causes you to suffer from the emotion.

The Third Day of the Retreat (second full day) - Friday, August 31, 2007

My meditating experience during the second full day was pretty much the same as that of the first.

On the second and all subsequent days, I went on a walk in the woods during the first walking meditation period of the day.

This was a very emotional day for me. It's my anniversary and I feel a bit guilty about being away. I have been very distracted all day. I break one of the rules of the retreat and steal away to the laundry room to phone home. Although I wasn't supposed to do this, it does make me feel better about being away from home today and I'm glad that I did it.

We've been warned that sometimes people experience "vipassana romance" where you become attracted to somebody at the retreat and, because of all of the time that you have to tell yourselves stories, you concoct romantic possibilities with somebody at the retreat. Maybe because I felt lonely, or maybe because of all of the pretty women that were there, I found that this did happen to me.

While I tend to think of what I'm doing as "meditating" - separate from any religion. But this place is full of Buddhists! Or at least Buddhist symbolism. While there is no requirement that you be a Buddhist to practice vipassana, the teachings are deeply based in Buddhism. So, there are statues of the Buddha everywhere. People are bowing all over the place. At first this makes me uncomfortable, especially any bowing or chanting. I am still separating "Buddhism" from my practice of meditating, but I am starting to feel that it is an artificial separation. If I do start to experience the insight that is said to come from this practice, I will have to reexamine my attitudes.

Fourth Day of the Retreat (third full day) - Saturday, September 1, 2007