Shamatha

I've just yesterday come back from a 6 and-a-bit day Shamatha retreat with B Alan Wallace. We were meditating for up to four hours a day, and my eyes have yet to adjust properly to the pixel-glow of the computer screen, or my ears to the harsh growl of traffic. Possibly one reason that yogis are so well preserved is that they are never really subject to these small stresses of daily life.

It's rare that I actually fall more in love with a teacher for having spent more time under their tutelage - I usually end up finding some sort of irritation which means I stop digesting, in a way, some of the content that the teacher so graciously makes available. This proved not to be so with B Alan Wallace. It's not just that the depth of his training in the Hindu, Theravadin, Vajrayana and Dzogschen traditions is profound, it's not just that the veracity of his intellect is breathtaking as he sweeps up the class into a rampant run through quantum cosmology. It's that rare quality in a teacher, where, addressing a student's question, he is able to attend to and peel away each layer, each point that has presented itself in the question that has been posed. While there is a sort of crusty outer shell that presents in the 'formal' version of the teacher B Alan Wallace, the man in the chair consistently displayed warmth, humility, honesty and sensitivity as he introduced us firstly to mindfulness of breath practices, secondly to methods by which we can settle our mind in it's natural state, and finally to a shamatha/vipassana crossover stepping stone, awareness of awareness meditation.

I completely failed at the mindfulness of breathing practices that were initially taught as diffuse body awareness practice, entailed in the savasana pose per Yogic tradition. By the time sitting was encouraged and we were focusing our attention on our 'gentle vase' breathing (holding the tummy out like a pot) I was getting the hang of it, which was just in time for all my affective responses to the preceeding tumultuous 3 weeks to clamber their way up my nadi channels and let me know the true state of affairs, as it were, in my psychosomatic energy field. That took a little while to calm down (actually, I'm still catching up with the remaining subtle sensations that send out little beacon reminders, every now and then).

We then visited the Hinayana Theravadin tradition to experience one practice path through to samadhi (shamatha), that is, single pointed concentration on the breath sensations arising under the nostrils. The idea is with practice, we become aware of the sensations of the air at this juncture even when we are not breathing, those that are occuring between breaths when we use pranayama control. Focussing intently on this point, the preliminary, acquired and counterpoint signs may emerge, with enough (read: many many and 12 hours a day, at that) hours of practice.

We then moved along to sample access to the first jnana achieved through settling the mind in it's natural state - focussing the mind on it's own space and watching the thoughts arise and fall from whence they came, with minimal attention to sensory stimuli. This practice is the most similar to the regular meditation that we do at Vajrayana Institute at the drop-in sessions - recognising when we are thinking, and laying the soft feather of recognition of thinking onto that thought, allowing it to dissipate by itself without shooting it out of the mind like a clay pigeon. This Vajrayana practice includes extending the felt sense of 'mind like space' in every direction, as far as it can be recognised as extended.

Throughout this practice B Alan Wallace began laying the seeds to cultivate achievement of access to the first jnana through shamatha via the next practice that he taught, awareness of awareness meditation. This practice, in particular has extended my meditative repertoire into a new and fruitful field (I think he would call this 'juicy'). I've found if I place my attention in the heart centre and focus on attending to the flow of knowing, I'm achieving previously unfoundered levels of stability in the vision free, sound free space that I get into when I'm in my most stable, and vibrant meditation. BAW did mention that the vision/sound free kind of state shouldn't really be achiveable until we're doing 8 - 12 hours of meditation per day, so I still don't know whether this ability 'thing' is just a mere distraction that I need to keep working through. An insight from this retreat is that maybe rather than dealing with it as a distraction, I can and should be actually focussing on stabilising my 'flow of knowing', the knowing of knowing, this way, upon it. Yum. :)

I have pages upon pages of notes about the difference between mindfulness and samadhi, Geshe Rabten's tips for dharma combat sessions on the madhymika that run straight through the night, methods by which mindfulness practices might be incorporated into aged care environments (woo hoo!) and a level of understanding of the system of Ayurvedic medicine that I would have been unlikely to have picked up anywhere else. Despite B Alan's pleadings that Buddhist epistemology comes philosophy free I've been left curious enough about the Yogacarin metaphysical baggage to begin to start digging around to find out what he was talking about, I've got enough glimmerings of the Dzogschen tradition to be welcoming the thought that maybe I 'do' need to pick up these teachings next via deepening my understanding of the relevant initiatory practices, and I've been inspired to think about the possibilities of leaving mundane life for 12-14 months to actually go achieve shamatha - achieve the first jnana in order to better be of service on the planet.

To top this great week off, the retreat was around the corner at the Sisters of St Joseph convent in Baulkham Hills. Before we hit 'silence', on day one, I got to catch up with Sr Katherine, who had just the day before moved out here to this convent, from Croydon. Carparks are vastly underrated as social/spiritual networking sites, and it was a blessing and a pleasure to see her smiling, pixie-like self, in the flesh, once again. :)

The picture above is the chapel which we were based in for eight hours each day. I took this photo because the sun was playing the role of our mind, so vividly, resting it's luminance in the space between things - here Christ, and Buddha, on Good Friday.

Brings a new sense to the word 'fitting', for me, for sure.

I feel privileged and humbled that I was able to take the time out to attend this retreat. Cheers to Ven. Chokyi-la and to Simon, for encouraging me to give it a go.