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i’ve noticed a ton of small ways in which I don’t react well to life’s minor challenges. i had no idea i’m so incompetant. mostly the reactions are habitual and subconscious. but i’m noticing many more than before thanks to this weekends retreat.
big examples so far:
- in meetings where people drone on and on, i just can’t avoid glazing over or fidgeting or reacting to status items in a variety of not too professional ways. at least i keep it all to myself. but internally it’s a peanut gallery.
- getting chai at a nearby cafe i just discovered, the reactions of all the people in the place was sad and my reactions to them condescending. i watched a little symphony of bizarre emotional reactions people had to each other and doing simple things like “buying coffee” and though: yikes. if this is so tough for people how do we all function at all?
- normally for lunch i go to one of about three places to eat, even though there are about twenty restaurants within walking distance. worse, if i’m tired of one of those places i actually have the gaul to complain to myself that i don’t know where to go or what to eat and that there’s nothing that sounds good. so today i went somewhere new for a change. progress…
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if you’d like to read more about my retreat experience this weekend, i’ve written a summary essay.
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this weekend i’m sitting a meditation retreat with my favorite teacher in the world, Ani Pema Chodron. she has been here for part of the summer teaching a commentary on the 8th century scholar Shantideva’s book “The Way of the Bodhisattva”, and she stayed on an extra weekend to teach a class on shenpa and meditation.
the class is called “doorway to freedom”. you could also call it “using the unexpected difficulties and suffering in life as doorways to understanding and workability” or something like that. Pema’s lineage of Tibetan Buddhism is known for using fear and anger and sadness as components of the spiritual path, as fuel and embracing them instead of trying to push them away. our natural tendency is to push away negative emotions, so that counter-intuitive instruction intrigues me. i’ll write more about the specific teachings and instructions after tomorrow’s class.
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seems a group from the north fork vipassana meditation center have started ten day silent retreats for inmates at a medium-security prison in san bruno. i love the idea, though it sounds like some prisoners thought it might be too cultish. the prisoners follow buddhist precepts during the session, and this group is in s. n. goenka’s school of vipassana so they’re also subjected to video tapes of his instruction - that might feel creepy even to me. not sure if the program is still underway, but there was an article in the sfweekly two years ago which i just found. i’d love to hear if this is still going.
the five basic precepts required during the course:
- - to abstain from killing - the inmates eat vegetarian all ten days
- - to abstain from stealing
- - to abstain from all sexual activity
- - to abstain from telling lies
- - to abstain from all intoxicants
personally, i wouldn’t require inmates to follow precepts during a ten day retreat except the intoxicants requirement. sure all the precepts are there to help avoid addictions and habits which get in the way of insight, but there’s such a barrier for people to even try sitting - why add even more of a barrier? i’d suggest saving these for a second retreat so meditators see how they help.
wow, i just found a treasure chest of buddhist lectures downloadable as mp3 files at www.audiodharma.org — weeks and weeks of lectures from local and some well known vipassana and zen teachers.
what hobbies would you pick up if you had to do hard time?
sitting monkey is place where