The One Seat

            Seven years ago, I lost my practice.  For all of those seven years, I’ve grieved the absence of my practice as one would grieve the departure of a dear friend.  Many times, I’ve “taken the one seat,” as one of my teachers called it, only to find I couldn’t sit still long enough to experience the magical and healing state of mind called Vipassana.  It has been very humbling to live with this loss.  And to see people seeing me as a person who is not the person I was.

            Today, I walk on the river path, in summer sun, sleep deprived, stressed out, but just a little bit okay, just for now.  My usual,for the last seven years.  And for the nth time, I decide to try a sit.  Even thinking of trying brings a tinge of desolation to my mind.  I’m afraid of failing, again, and of the humiliation and defeat that failure will bring to me, again.  It’s tantalizing, the state is so close, and so, so beautiful.  All you have to do is sit still for five minutes, bring your attention to the breath, to water, to your hands.  To anything, and just allow it to rest there.

            A narrow path leads off the wide, paved path, and down to a tiny clearing next to the water.  It’s an inviting place, whether I sit or not, and so I go down, picking my way carefully.  I find a wide, smooth stone to sit on, just inches from the water’s edge.   Get comfortable, sitting with back straight but relaxed.  And just look out at the water flowing by.

            There’s a little eddy current here, where the river seems to run backwards.  In reality, it’s running in a circle, upriver past my feet, then back down further out toward the main channel.  The water is slow here, and flat, in contrast to the rapids about a hundred yards away.  Ironically, I can hear the rapids in the background.  In the foreground of my attention, there are tiny lapping sounds, as the eddy current passes by next to me.  Brilliant yellow points of sunlight bounce off of tiny wavelets in an expanse of water spread before me.  At first glance, they appear to be static.

            But when I look closer I realize, they are constantly changing their location.  Just as the water flows and ripples, the sunlight flows and ripples on the water.  It has to, because it depends on the high points in the water for a reflection surface.  Both are in constant motion, and interdependent.

            Now I am aware of my breath, coming and going.  The rhythm is choppy, but I do not try to change it.  I just watch it come and go.  And I realize that for a few minutes, all of the discursive thought that usually plagues my mind is not sticking.  It’s still back there, chattering away, but I am not engaging it.  It is merely flowing by, as I watch.  And it has become the background.  My breath, the water, the sunlight, are now center stage.

            I’m there.  I’m in that most beneficial and joyous state of mind, where attention rests lightly and impartially on the events that are happening here and now.  A duck paddles by, a small female Mallard.  She looks like a baby, maybe only hatched this year.  I’m sitting so quietly, she doesn’t even notice me, only a few feet away from her. Oblivious, she paddles aimlessly by while she pulls bits of water plants from the river to eat.

            People go by in rafts way out in the channel, and from afar, I can hear them giggle as they fall down the rapid water.  I can hear them talking about their lives.  All in the background, all behind and beneath the sound and sensation of my breath as it comes and goes.

            My belly rises and falls, and I find I can literally taste the air, if I open my mouth a tiny bit on the in-breath.  In my nostrils, I can feel air go in, cool and smelling of summer.  And I can feel it go out, warm.  My mind wanders to a tense interaction I’m having with a friend and I begin to engage, thinking and planning… let me see, how shall I handle this…. How dare she do that to me… why can’t she just…

            I notice, and let go, return to the breath, the water, the sunlight.  It’s easy to let go, the moment is so pleasant.  The one that’s right here in front of me.

            I think it might be coming back, this thing I called a “practice.”  If there are more sits like this, it will be back.  They won’t all be pleasant of course.  I’ll have to sit with everything, so there will be hard ones, too.  Maybe it’s back though.

Maybe.

Drive Time

            Friday morning I’m on the road by eight am, driving out of Klamath Falls, headed for Willamette Pass, and the quirky little town I call home.  It’s been a long week, living out of a hotel room, working long hours.

            The long, blue span of Klamath Lake recedes on my left, and I am in the desert hills working my way north.  As I drive, there is only the hum of tires on pavement to keep me company.  The events of the week slip away.  I put on some music, turn it off after only a couple of minutes.  The silence is more soothing.

            Belatedly, I realize I am in a mindful state.  I am alert and aware, tracking the hazards on the road, but my mind is free of discursive thought.  I watch each mile tick by, one about every minute.  It’s almost like watching the breath come and go.  The highway is flanked on both sides by rolling hills covered in sagebrush.  Momentarily, I am startled by a deer standing on the side of the road, and I slow, my attention completely focused for just a moment.  When I’m past, the cruise control set back at 65, the mind state returns instantly, naturally.  This is where healing happens.

            I stop in a little town called Chemult and get a bottle of water, make a phone call.  And then, back to my two-lane, blacktop guru.  Up on the pass, there is a brief moment when the trees are mixed, Douglas Fir and Ponderosa pine.  And then, suddenly, they are all Douglas Fir, and the underbrush thickens steadily.  At about three thousand feet of elevation, I sight the first bracken fern by the roadside.  Internally, I cheer.

            I’m home.  The desert has its own beauty, but the ferns and high underbrush of the western valley are my home.  The air is pouring into my little world inside the car, and smells richly of wet earth.

            Home!

            Now I’m counting down the miles from Oakridge, now the short stretch of I-5, and there is exit 192, Downtown Eugene.  For thirty minutes, I can’t make myself go inside.  I wander the streets, people watching, feeling the aura of my hometown, putting it back on.  And then, suddenly, I’m so tired I can hardly stand.  I go home, nap for a couple of hours, and return to town.

            And have a beer with my lovely friend, Brittney, who regales me with tales of a summer festival here last weekend.  What a beautiful way to return to discursive thought.  If I must.

Aggregates

                This is a term that Buddhists apply to our inner environment.  Literally, it means “made up of lots  of little pieces.”  In reference to the mind and personality, it means that we humans assemble a world out of many, many thoughts and other internal events.  There are so many pieces, and they materialize so quickly, that we come to assume this isn’t happening.  We come to assume that reality is a river flowing past us.

                Today on a walk up the hill, I become acutely aware of the aggregates.   The walking is an ideal device to create some space around the steady parade of events in my head and heart.  I see there is quite a river of reflective thought about a situation at work.  There are other thoughts about getting older, my health, my social life, and more, but this one situation has taken center stage.  Belatedly, thanks to the walking, I realize that I’ve come to focus so intensely on this one thing that it’s come to define my whole life lately.

                There is also awareness of my body as another aggregate.  I experience the walking in a body that has transient pains here and there; my back is stiff, my feet hurt, I have a dry scratchy throat.  I’m also very pleasantly aware of the stretch and thrust of strong muscles in my legs, of a sense of balance finely tuned over many years of walking and climbing in precarious, windy places.  This body loves to move, and it feels so, so good.  There is an aggregate of feelings, too.  There is anxiety, about nothing in particular.  There is a celebratory sense of accomplishment about work.  There are a hundred other feelings running through me like a mountain stream cascading over cool, wet stones.

                At the top of the hill, I sit on a bench and watch the city go by.  And while sitting there, I begin to play hide and seek with the aggregates.  Now they are “out there” and I am examining them.  Now I’ve fallen in, and lost track of myself, and I am living them.

Happy

                This morning, I find Sue in the garden, weeding.  I sit with her briefly and chat while I write the monthly rent check, then I step into the car and drive off into a perfectly glorious spring day.  The greens in the Lorane valley are vibrant, a raptor wheels overhead, and bicyclists spin past me on the way, probably, to wine tastings up the valley.  This is all perfectly typical.

                Why is it then, that I feel so, so happy?  The world out there is not different, it’s been like this for weeks.  Of course, there is only one possible conclusion; my inner environment has changed.

                I find myself looking forward to every moment this day has on offer; a walk in the woods, a nice lunch, phone calls to valued friends, a cold beer on the patio.  Later, I’ll read myself to sleep.  All of it is savored today, because of how I am inside.  I find myself wishing I could live here all the time, instead of in the space I was in when I wrote my last post.  Wouldn’t that be nice, if I could be in this spacious, accepting, savoring place all the time, or even just more of the time?

                Spending time in silent contemplation certainly increases the average.

Mindfulness of Suffering

            I’ve struggled this weekend with a vast collection of emotions.  I believe everyone does this, but it’s another thing entirely to have an honest process with them.  I am not perfect at doing that, far from it.  I hide from suffering, as we all do.  In drink, in movies, books, sleep, a hundred other distractions.

            But at moments in the very difficult times, I also bring my training in mindfulness into play.  The thoughts come so fast, they are difficult to see sometimes, and when I don’t see them, then the feelings that follow are often a mystery; why is that particular feeling there, now?  The thoughts are a stream, they are driven, and a part of Self doesn’t know the difference between my dark imaginings and what is really happening.

            With perseverance, with kindness for myself, I bring my attention to bear on just the feelings.  What is the feeling that is hard, right now, in my body?  I check, and find a huge, hot presence in my chest.  It is almost sitting on me, it’s so dense.  It is also threatening, pushing its presence into my face, a thing I don’t want, a thing that scares me.  I watch, with all the equanimity I can bring to the process.  I just watch, with bare attention.  And the heat and weight subside somewhat.

            What are the thoughts that bring this terrible weight to me?  I watch the thoughts run past my point of attention, without answering any particular one, just greeting each one and letting is pass by.  Some of them are quite surprising: I’m old, I’m unattractive, no one is interested in me.

            All of these things I know to be untrue, and as I witness the thoughts, they slow down, and they become somewhat more realistic, somewhat more moderate.  Most of them are based on fear, on old habits of fear, based on things that happened long ago, or worse, things that did not happen.  As I watch, just watch, the feelings, the fear, the suffering, abate somewhat.

            I come away from the process feeling some relief, but more importantly, feeling like I want to do things that will make me feel better.  I want to go for a walk, eat something good, call a friend.  I want to proceed into the next moment and the next, to greet each one and experience it without reference to what was or what may be.  It’s difficult to focus on the now, when now is not very pleasant.  I feel an urge to rush through this unpleasant moment, to get past it, to get to something better.

            But doing that only increases the lack of attention.  Without attention, the thoughts flow unconsciously again, and then the pain increases.  The only real solution is to sit with what is, with courage, to greet it and watch it go by.

            There is still a huge, hot presence in my chest, a terrible weight.  But now the river path calls to me.  Just the walking will be good.  Then maybe a talk with a trusted friend.  Eventually, the Good World will return to me, and it will seem as if it had never been gone, but rather that I had gone away from it.

            That’s how it always is.