Offering

At the end of a painful retreat (about which, click here), Laurie came to pick me up.

She brought Echo, a rambunctious Samoyed, who, she informed me, was disappointingly not named Moksha.

We walked the dog around the outer grounds of Spirit Rock. Up the hills, through the winter-brown weeds and grasses. She tugged and jumped and played. She started at a tall, white marble Buddha standing in a grove of trees, was only wary of a small seated Buddha halfway up the hill, and by the time we encountered another figurine at the foot of the hill, she was
unimpressed, sniffing along the fringes of the dirt footpath.

Coming off this retreat, my heart was a bit raw, but relievedly open.

* * *

The first several days had been a painful, pain-filled retreat for me. The only relief I found was in walking meditations – under the overhanging eaves during heavy rains, under the bay laurel and live oak forest when the rains lightened. On one of the most difficult days, I found a stretch of forest trail to serve as my walking path. Fifteen slow steps from a young fir tree to a huge, head-level oak branch, covered in bright green moss and grey lichens. Then back. Then back. Then back. Then back.

The deep sound of the far-off courtyard bell signaled the return to seated meditation and the pain I was unsuccessfully struggling to overcome. I paused at the overhanging oak limb. Pressed my face against the cold, rough, damp moss. Inhaled the scent of cold, wet life. I turned my head toward the trunk, pressing my cheek against the moss. Deep in the moss-lined niche where the limb joined the trunk, sat a two-inch statue. But unlike the blissful, peaceful icons of Buddha-nature that dot the grounds of Spirit Rock, this one is rendered inexpertly in clay. Its face is more of suggestion than a rendering – eye sockets and a closed mouth. The effect is a gaunt and troubling figure.

That isn’t the Buddha. It’s a starved yogi.

* * *

I heed the bell and return to the meditation hall, rotely bow to the standing Buddha at the front of the room to acknowledge my effectless resolve to seek liberation, and resume my pain-filled and increasingly desperate sitting.

* * *

The next time the rains lighten, I return to the bit of trail for walking meditation. At the end of the slow slow slow walking, I look again at the clay statute. It is still gaunt. It still seems to say more of warning than of enlightenment. I walk. The distant bell sounds. I approach the tree limb end to my path.

I turn to walk away. Then I feel a slight desire well up. In the quiet, the mind turns toward the desire, and I see a want to offer something. “No. Foolishness.” my mind says. I turn to follow the bell’s call back to the meditation hall. The same up-welling arises. I look to the forest floor and find a bit of oak branch with tiny, ungrown acorns barely emerging from scaled caps. I place it before the gaunt little statue.

* * *

On our walk, Laurie and Echo and I approach the last statue of the Buddha from behind. As we near, we see strands of weathered mala beads hanging from the statue’s neck. We round it and stand, looking. Someone has clipped a barrette to a strand of mala beads. Someone else has hung a pendant around the statue’s neck. In the statue’s mudra-nestled hands someone has put a piece of flint, several have put coins, another has placed a smooth, red stone. At the base of the statue are arrayed impromptu offerings – more coins, a house key, a cracked nerf football, stones, bracelets, a corroding piece of folded paper clipped with a wooden clothespin, an earring. I bow toward the statue, feeling this time in my raw, open heart, the acknowledgement of the path, of the pain I’ve stopped resisting. I let go of the form, and gratitude wells up. The bow offers my complete awareness.

* * *

Fetters of I, me, and mine fall away, veils of time and place pull open and the gratitude of the mala-bead offeror is present. The gratitude of the house-key offeror is present. The gratitude of the barrette offeror is present. The gratitude of the bead-purse-offeror, and rock-offerors, and the feather-offeror, and the coin-offerors, and the football offeror is present. And the gratitude of countless people who have bowed before the statue is present. And all of us in that moment without ourselves are realized in one offering, one gratitude, one bowing.

And as I’ve done countless times on this retreat, I weep.

Laurie unclips a tag from Echo’s collar and places it gently beside someone’s house key.

(Cross-posted at dovesandserpents.com, which has some of Laurie's pictures from that day)

Emergence

I went to Spirit Rock a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes I retreat out of curiosity – to see what can be seen from silence and intensive meditation practice.

Sometimes I retreat for community – to be with people who sit quietly, companionably, as another messily pounds away at an emotional barrier.

This time, though, I went out of need.

In recent months (and months) my meditation practice has led me to deep and wide pools of fear. Fear of loss. Fear of mistakes. Fear of inadequacy. Fear of failing my loved ones. Fear of not becoming what I most desire.

It’s hard to hold a fearful heart open. It’s hard to see clearly through filters of fear. It’s hard to love in the face of fear.

* * *

Snorkeling in shallow water over a tiny section of the Great Barrier Reef, I’m floating over a mosaic of colors and textures – whites, yellows, oranges, reds, purples, blues, greens. Anemones. Hard corals. Soft corals. Seaweeds. Fish. And giant clams (some of them not-so-big). The giant clams anchor the hinge of their shell deep in the reef, the sides of the shell extending upward, concealing all but the mantle’s edge.

Set like sparkling decorations, all along the fringed edges of the mantle are iridescent blue dots – light-sensitive patches that serve the clam as eyes. As I drift above a clam, my body obstructs the sun, my shadow darkening the clam’s day. Though it has grown far too large for the shell halves to close entirely, the two shells draw toward one another nonetheless, insufficient shielding contracting away from the threat of dark shadows in daylight.

* * *

So for the past months (and months), I’ve felt contracted. Agitated. Unable to open fully. Each time meditation takes me deep enough, I find the same fear pools. I practice. I work. I try to open to it, allow it. I find neither key nor door.

So retreat.

* * *

As I have come to expect, the first day is very hard. The mind jumps from one fragment of conversation, one shard of thought, to self-evaluation, back to the breath. From memory to analysis to reawareness and the breath. From physical pain to fear that it will worsen to despair to reawareness and the breath. From cramping muscles to planning ways to shift to alleviate the cramps to dismay at not holding still to how motion might affect those sitting on either side of me to reawareness and the breath. And so on.

As the first day moves into the second, I get up early. Very early. I make my way through the coastal mist and darkness of still-hours-away dawn to the meditation hall. I light the candles on the altar, and I sit. The body refreshed from sleep, the cramps and aches and pains are manageable. The mind is quieter. There are moments when there is more to the breath in and the breath out than I’ve ever imagined. But by the end of the first hour, the aches and pains crescendo. I struggle to keep the attention on the breath, finding both conscious and subconscious mind trying to problem-solve away the back pains. I concede and go outside for walking meditation. It is raining steadily. I find a sheltered space beneath the eaves. And I walk slowly slowly, sharing the attention of motion and balance with the breath. The fears of mind and body arise. I’m aware of the mist-laden darkness of night, unabated by stars or moon, yet not entirely imperceptible. I remember reports of cougars in the hills. I feel the pressure of body on the sole of my foot as I take another step. I pause at the edge of the eaves to turn. First I breathe the darkness, the mist. One curtain of mist shifts, only to disclose another behind it. I turn and walk.

I return to sit again. Same pains return, faster, sharper. I continue to struggle to find a solution to them, trying to dispel the pain. I change position. Wiggle. Make imperceptible shifts of breath and muscle engagement. The pain grows. I feel the right rhomboid muscle cramp solidly. The top of the right trapezius begins a burning sensation where it connects just below the occipital lobe of the skull. I weep. For the umpteenth time.

Sigh.

After a complete morning of this, unabated, I meet with Mary Grace Orr, one of the teachers leading the retreat. We talk about my current state, the continual arising of fears, home life, my current meditation practice. The frustration I feel. I tell her I’ve been stuck in this dark night for months. She asks some questions. I respond.

Mary Grace tells me she doesn’t think I’m stuck, just going through a hard transition. She recommends I moderate my vipassana practice by starting or ending with several minutes of metta – of lovingkindness meditation – directed exclusively toward myself. I groan, audibly, and remark that I’d rather do anything else. But the truth is, I’m willing to try anything. Even that.

So that evening, I start with metta, then sit in vipassana misery during the evening. But I notice an unexpected resistance inside myself to practicing metta. Resistance is interesting whenever it arises, because it signals that there’s something already trying to occupy that mind-space.

* * *

I dream that night. I'm working in an industrial harbor, and I'm assigned to go retrieve some equipment that is needed. I start off. It soon becomes clear that I'm going to have to go through the canals to get where the equipment is. I begin wading, chest-deep. The water is filthy.

I look to the banks of the canal, and I see raw sewage pumped into the water. My dreaming mind thinks, "Great. Shit. Just great." But the fact is, I'm a parent. I've dealt with fair quantities of it in my life. Not hardly pleasant, but no reason to stop. I press on.

The thought occurs to my dreaming mind, "At least there aren't any alligators here."

I swim-wade around a bend in the canal and see a very slightly cartoonish-looking alligator slide off the bank and into the dark waters.

"Shit and alligators," my dreaming mind says, "shit and alligators." And I push on.

* * *

Just then I awaken. It's 4:20 a.m.

I return to the meditation hall. I practice metta, then vipassana, sitting for most of an hour. When the pains begin to arise, I practice metta. Then in the spirit of metta, I give myself a break and walk slowly through the darkness down the hill to the dining hall, where I fix some herbal tea. Then I walk back to the meditation hall and resume practice. By mid-morning, my mind is a curious blend of quiet and muscle-pain-shouting. I repeat metta phrases. The pain continues.

I go to lunch, then return. The pain resumes, amplified.

So after metta, I allow the pain to become the center of the vipassana practice. I evaluate for a moment whether the neck or the back hurts more. I decide that it’s the neck. So I allow the sensations of the neck to become the focus of my attention. I watch them. Surprisingly, they are not constant, but rather pulse with my heart, with my breath. Sometimes they feel like burning, sometimes like aching, sometimes like tightness, sometimes like cramps. For a few moments, they dull, then brighten.

And after most of an hour, something happens. My conscious mind is aware of a kind of subconscious shift. I can’t tell you exactly what occurred subconsciously, but consciously I realize that I’ve stopped resisting the pain, and that something deep that had been anchored to there being a way to become free of the pain has released, and now accepts that the pain is a part of the constellation of experiences of this meditation practice. "Shit and alligators," my mind says. The pain is just shit and alligators. It is most surely is not gone. Still there, just as bright as ever. But suddenly I’m aware of all the other stars in the sky of awareness, as well. And I’m ok with that.

I’m not free from pain. I’m free in pain.

Never expected that.

More tears. This time, of relief from the excruciation of resisting what is.

Off the mat -- Taking what is not offered

(Another in a series of dharma talks)

During a recent meditation retreat, the other participants and I each undertook to live by the five Buddhist training precepts during our time there. One of those precepts is this:

For the purposes of training, I will not take anything that is not offered to me.

This is a common sense rule for those who will live in close proximity to one another – no “borrowing” your roommate’s shampoo, no swiping someone else’s flip flops. It’s a basic principle that is embedded in social systems everywhere – in the yoga tradition as the niyama of asteya – non-stealing. God told Moses a version of the same thing.

It isn’t wildly surprising that the precept forms a basic part of so many different cultures: it’s a simple way to maintain cooperation and minimize friction among humans. The training precept articulates the Buddhist version of the rule: unless it’s yours, don’t touch it, and it’s only yours if it’s specifically offered to you.

So on the retreat, we didn’t need locks on the doors. We didn’t have to wonder what would happen to the shoes we left outside the meditation hall. We didn’t have to hide our stashes of candy bars. My stuff was my stuff. Others respected that boundary. Things stayed where I left them.

They were safe.

I was safe.

* * *

I get up early. It’s still dark. I move quietly to avoid waking my roommate. He rustles under his covers and resumes his quiet snoring. I make my way to the small open closet at the foot of my bed. By feel I find clean clothes, make my way out of the room, down the hall, into the bathroom. I shower, towel dry, and dress. My mind watches each action, notices its own intentions. I brush my teeth at the sink, gather my old clothes, and return silently to my dorm room. In the dark I trade out the toiletries and old clothes for clean socks and a hooded rain shell, and I make my way to the bench just outside the building where I left my shoes the night before. It’s freezing outside, and foggy, the damp wood planking chills my soles. My breath billows around my head as I slip into socks, then night-cold shoes. I pull the hood of my shell over my head, and I begin walking slowly the hundred yards or so to the meditation hall. My attention is on the sensations in my feet – lifting, moving, placing, weighting, lifting, moving, placing, weighting, lifting, moving…

None of that quiet concentration would be possible if I were fretting over a missing water bottle or a jacket that wasn’t where I left it.

* * *

On retreat, the word-silent lunch seems loud with chair scraping, silverware clinking, and washing noises coming from the kitchen, the gurgle of hot water into tea mugs. My chores are later in the evening, so I have 90 minutes before meditation resumes. I find a path that twists and turns and switches back-and-forth up the steep hills. It’s cool but not cold except when the wind picks up. After fifteen minutes of climbing, my heart is pumping loudly, my breathing is strong. I reach a level spot about halfway up. Old rocks protrude from the grasses beside a laurel tree. I catch a leaf and crush it, releasing its royal scent.

I finish the climb, pause to admire the view, and begin to descend on a different path, past other outcrops. As I pass one, a tiny, perfect rosette of glaucous leaves catches my eye – an Echeveria – Hen and Chicks, but a kind I’ve never seen before – growing from a crevice in the rock. I think of the perfect spot for it in my garden in Colorado. I tug gently, the more firmly and the root pulls free, breaking off at the tip. I zip the plant into a pocket and resume my descent.

Then it dawns on me: who offered me the plant I’ve taken?

I can’t replace it in the crevice where it grew, so I try to replant it in a different spot, suspecting that the transplant won’t take without close attending that I can’t provide.

I begin to see more clearly that the training precept not only affects how others treat my stuff, but how I relate to the world around me.

* * *

Back at the meditation center, the Buddhist training precept of not taking what is not offered renders unnecessary my “I must protect my stuff” instinct. That doesn’t make it go away, of course, but it does draw the impulse into awareness: “Oh, I guess I don’t need to hide my water bottle behind the pile of zabutons after all.” And discovering how much of life has been devoted to protecting my “stuff” is at once a surprise, and a relief to be free of the worry. But after the initial freedom from the compulsion subsides, what begins to arise in me is an awareness of my raw attachment to my things – and my desires to be attached to other people’s things. And the closer I look at those impulses, the more they seem to be efforts to reinforce me, the one wanting, the one defining stuff as mine or wishing it to be mine.

At the heart of ownership, at the heart of property, at the heart of possession is the one possessed of the thing. For something to be “mine” is to define it in terms of a self. And whenever something is defined in terms of a self, that relationship also defines the self.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that a dear friend and favorite yoga teacher was moving away from Denver. She had enriched my life significantly, and I found I wanted to give her something to reflect my appreciation. For several days, I debated exactly what might work for the purpose. After inventing and discarding half a dozen ideas, I thought of the perfect gift – an old Tibetan singing bowl that had been given to me years earlier and that formed an important link in the story-chain that led me to discover, practice, and teach yoga. Once I settled on the gift, I began formulating exactly how to present the story to her so she’d understand it in context – so she’d appreciate it as a part of me and my story. I imagined in my mind how I’d see her before the last Sunday morning class she’d teach, how I’d present the gift, how she’d respond, and how we’d be connected by the gift.

Of course, the actual giving didn’t go anything like I’d imagined it. I did see her before the last Sunday class. She was rushed and harried, greeting not just me but dozens of others who were also there to practice one last time and to say goodbye. I quickly handed her the unwrapped and tarnished bowl and dented striker, and all I managed to say was “there’s a story behind this that I’ll tell you later.” The opportunity “later” never materialized, and I never got to tell my friend the story of the bowl. And she never asked for the story behind it.

So instead of the bowl connecting the two of us as I intended, it’s probably just one more thing that got packed and moved. If it’s being used at all, tarnished thing that it is, each time it’s rung, its vibration and pitch don’t tie anyone to my story.

And the more I realize how much that fact bothers me, the more it seems related to the Buddhist training principle I learned on the retreat.

Because, really, my little sense of offense has nothing to do with what I was giving, but rather with what I intended to take. Though my actions were giving a gift to my friend, some part of my thoughts were all about me. Instead of “I give this to you,” it was “I want something from you, and getting it involves me putting this into your hands.” When we give in order to be appreciated, we often are taking what is not offered.

* * *

Once I saw this clearly relative to the bowl, I started to see it everywhere – in my dealings with my children (I get unhappy when I give them my Saturday afternoons, but they don’t clean up the kitchen), with my co-workers (I resent covering for them when they had sick kids, if they don’t cover for me when I was out), with my friends (I make time for them, but they don’t reciprocate as I want them to) –everywhere. It became disturbingly clear how often I was interacting with the world not simply out of a sense of love and generosity (though there was some of that to it), but out of a desire to control things – to get what I wanted by being perceived as generous and loving. I’d attached my wanting to the objects and devised ways to give them in order to assure myself some benefit.

Have you ever given a gift to someone, and then been disappointed by some aspect of the person’s response? When you gave a check to a nephew who was struggling to pay his college tuition, perhaps he spent all the money on iTunes, loading up on Italian goth metal music. When you gave your daughter a pendant for her birthday that you received decades ago from your grandmother, perhaps she looked at it briefly, said, “eh,” and dropped it on the table behind flashier stuff. Have you ever said (or thought) to one of your children, “You should do X for me because I gave birth to you/put you through school/fed you/sheltered you/whatevered you?” I have. And I was trying to take something that was not offered, just because I’d offered something – in theory – “freely” at some point in the past.

* * *

The Buddha taught Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine, and Jesus warned against doing alms before men.

* * *

All of it, really, is simply a lack of letting go, a giving only half-completed. There is no giving without letting go. So long as I attach strings to the gift, there is neither giving nor gift.

So here’s my resolve: in giving, to give freely and to let go; in receiving, to receive only what is offered by family, friends, and existence.

* * *

…the world offers itself to your imagination.

-- Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

Ideas Welcome

Two details regarding the Spirit Rock retreat last week that I haven’t figured out at all:

First, I experienced a lot of anticipation leading up to the retreat. I probably talked too much about it with colleagues and friends, but they were patient and indulgent with my unfocused animation. As a yoga teacher persuaded me a long time ago, it’s often best to set aside expectations before embarking on a new sort of experience. But I didn’t manage that overly well this time.

To get to Spirit Rock for the start of the retreat on Wednesday, December 10, I had to catch a flight from DEN to SFO. Nothing terribly unusual about that. I get to the airport in the morning, check through security, find the gate, login, and field last-minute office work by email. The gate attendant calls the boarding sequence. I board, find my seat, and settle in.

And sitting there on the airplane, my mind shifts a bit, and I see everything from an outsider’s perspective – to borrow Oliver Sack’s phrase, like an anthropologist from Mars.

No, wait. That’s too cold. More like the first-time-appreciation of Miranda’s “…brave, new world…” phrasing, before Huxley turned it dark and naïve.

The people walking down the center aisle of the plane are a varied lot, each remarkable, each strange, each new. That they are embodiments of consciousness is remarkable, strange, and new. That I can see them is remarkable, strange, and new.

After a time, the sense subsides, leaving new tracings in my mind.

How? Why? Exactly what?

Couldn’t tell you.

Second, as I mentioned in a previous post, three days into the retreat, I woke, showered, walked to the meditation hall and sat the pre-dawn meditation. When the bell rang gently, I got up, left the hall, put on my shoes, and began walking down the hill to the dining hall.

As I walked on a little dirt path down the hill, my sense of self turned suddenly transparent, and I saw from the perspective of something other than Sean. Not that there wasn’t a Sean – he was there, but he wasn’t the perspective I was seeing from. He was the perspective that something was seeing through. That perspective was filled with quiet, abiding joy – joy at the cold air, joy at the diminishing cramp in Sean’s neck, joy at the emptiness before eating, joy at the peace of the retreat, joy at Sean’s sore right knee, joy at the slanting sun, joy at the cloud of exhaled air.
The sense sustained itself for a time, then subsided.

It’s hard to find the right words for the completely natural sense of seeing through the self of that experience.

* * *

Ideas or references to others’ ideas about such experiences are welcome.

Red pill

In reflecting on my few days at Spirit Rock last week, I have to allow that I spent most of the nine or so sitting sessions each day in various degrees of discomfort, generally increasing from the first day to the second, from the second to the third. And also generally increasing from early morning to late morning to afternoon to evening.

Recounting this fact to a friend elicited this question: “Why would you think positively about such an experience?”

In listening to a dharma talk recording this evening, I think I heard an approximation of an answer to that question: it’s possible to reach a point where you’re no longer afraid of being afraid. You’re not averse to feeling aversion.

* * *

During the retreat, one of the teachers, Mary Grace Orr, read the following poem, though I don’t remember who she said wrote it. Unfortunately, as you’ll see, it doesn’t lend itself to google searches:

What is is
Is what I want –
Just that,
But that.

Word-less-ness: Being Silently

Three days in to a five-day meditation retreat, this was my situation:

I’ve taken and lived a retreatant’s version of the Five Precepts: no harming any living being, no taking what is not offered, no speaking, no sex, no intoxicants.

At three days of silence, I’ve lived wordlessly for longer than I’ve ever done since I began talking at (my mother reports) six months of age.

The days are filled from before dawn to long after sundown with sitting and walking meditations, alternating. All in silence. After the first two hours on the first day, sitting meditation becomes progressively more uncomfortable – excruciating, if you listen to my ever-suffering mind. Briefly, the lotus blossom opens and transcendent clarity opens without notice, without words. It sustains and then subsides, its space and openness re-cloaked, re-filled with the muck of pain and suffering.

Late in the afternoon of the third day, I take a pen and write this note to my meditation teacher:

Howie,

I’m a bit frustrated with myself. I had one of those peak experiences this morning, and I spent the rest of the day in aches and pains and aversion and samsara.

Is this really the path? Does it get easier?

Sean

I fold the note and pin it to the section of the bulletin board for notes to Howie, and I go outside for a period of walking meditation.

The simple framing of my situation in words reignites my conceptual mind enough to allow me to see a space between the seeing and the suffering. My suddenly-word-re-enabled mind crafts responses from Howie to me:

Sean,

Yes, it’s the path. Easier? No.

Duh.

or

Sean,

Yup. Now go back to meditating.

I resolve to retrieve the note, as the very forming of the words has created the space I needed between the pain and the suffering. When the bell in the courtyard signals the end of the walking meditation, I return to the bulletin board and find that Howie has already collected the note. Ok. I return to silence and wordlessness.

The next morning, I find his response folded around my note, both pinned to the board. His note, of course, is much kinder than any I’d have written to myself:

Hi Sean,

Some days are dukkha days. Some days are sukkha days. Learning how to find our composure with both is the way… The by-product is more ease and consequently more pleasure. Hang in there. It is actually a sign of deepening when things get crazy.

Metta,

Howie

A most kind response to a problem that had resolved itself as soon as words were reintroduced into my mind.

* * *

I’m fascinated by the wordlessness of my time there. I became acutely aware several times of how much word-ing intervenes between experience and comprehension, how much dualistic word-ing shapes experience to fit dualistic models and understandings.

The longer I lived in silence – even for just the few days I was there – the quieter the word-ing part of my mind became. That was useful as it allowed me to see a bit more clearly what words would otherwise have obscured. But when the word-ing part of my mind subsided, I lacked the usual tool set that allows me to maintain a separation between my body’s pains and my mind’s suffering.

Makes me wonder what might be built with intention and awareness in such a space.

Retreating

A week ago, I drove up to Shambhala Mountain Center for a tantra yoga-and-meditation retreat. Sally Kempton taught and led the tantra meditation sessions (of which there were lots), and Jeanie Manchester taught and led the Anusara yoga sessions (of which there were some, but not enough for my appetite).

I'll try to spend some time with my notes and write up some more in the next few days, but here are a few take-aways:

1. At this point in my life, retreats are good more for discovering obstacles and practicing techniques for engaging them than for getting some surpassing peace or whatever. Felt distinctly like hard work, and hard work of the sort that I typically avoid.

2. A wonderfully interesting question to ask whenever obstacles occur in daily life: "What would I be like without this particular thought?"

3. When breathing into the back body, we don't have to stop with the confines inside the rib cage. Breathing into the back of the heart, I find it possible to combine physical, mechanical breath with consciousness as I draw in and through the heart and into the back and beyond. Is that an approach toward deity?

4. When meditation ends by another's instruction or by a timer, rather than by my own top-of-the-ocean awareness re-arising, it can be important to take a few minutes to intentionally draw awareness and consciousness back into the body. (Yes, that sounds weird. Maybe I'll find something useful to say about it later.)

5. Mechanically, my knees sit with greater ease if I practice Half Pigeon pose on each side for a few minutes before sitting. Also, breathing into the back body and allowing the back rib cage to expand and the shoulder blades to separate on the in-breath seems to relieve the chronic rhomboid cramping that I've experienced for the past five years or so. Who knew?

6. It's easier to sit longer after the retreat than it was before, but things are more jumbled.

7. I'm still on the fence as to the utility of mantra practice for me at this stage. Sometimes it seems to help manage the meditation (when Sally led us in hum-sah meditation, I found it to be powerful and subtle) and other times it seems a distraction from the experience of Witness. Maybe I'm just not very good at it yet.

8. Tonglen meditation, especially when combined with breathing through the back of the heart, is powerful.

9. For walking relatively safe trails, star light is plenty.

In December, I've decided to spend five days at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, north of SF to see what I can see from there then.