My Retreat
I just got back from my Metta retreat with
Marcia
Rose. Among other things, I have her schedule
for the
next year, and if anyone has a chance to
study with
her, I highly recommend it. She is very
experienced,
has taught around the world, and is open to
new ideas,
and so her teaching and practice is
constantly growing
and deepening. She also has a lot of
wonderful
stories, and closes each session with an
always
surprisingly relavent poem.
On Friday evening, she
gave us quite a long Dharma
talk, going through the phrases of Mettaa
(which she
always pronounced with the double t - it
sounded
aspirated to me - and the double a at the
end, which
gave the word a lovely, exotic sound), which
I found
deeply engrossing and also a bit confusing,
since I
didn't really know how these phrases were
used. The
meditation turned out to be mindfulness
meditation,
and as she was guided us with the breath, all
of the
things she said were along the lines of
"See where the
energy of the breath is." This was a
phenomenal way of
looking at it for me. I realized that in fact
I've
never watched the breath. I've always watched
a
location - the tip of the nose, the lungs the
rising
and falling abdomen - and observed what the
breath was
doing to it. I've never had a sense of the
living,
energetic, dynamic quality of the breath
itself. Now,
if I catch myself noticing the breath at odd
moments,
it's feels like a connection with life,
rather than an
observation of an object.
On Saturday she started
with a little history of
Mettaa meditation, which she said is
traditionally
known as (something like) the
Brahama-virayana
practices (couldn't tell how to spell it from
her
pronunciation), and have also been described
as the
Beautiful practices, because of the effects
it has on
the experience of those who practice them.
She said
that traditionally in Theravada these
practices were
not taught until the monk had completed a
full cycle
of Vipassana teachings (I don't know exactly
what that
means either). But as more ane more Asian
teachers
have come to this country, they realized that
we need
Mettaa practice earlier, to counter the
self-hatred
which is built into our culture. I usually
bristle
when people start talking like that, but she
explained
that we have such a strong emphasis on
producing, on
accomplishing, along with an equally strong
sense that
we've never done enough, which leads to a
strong sense
of inadequacy among us. I can buy that,
because the
benefits of the emphasis on accomplishing are
apparent
also.
She again went through
the phrases we would use. They
are all traditional phrases, although the
wording has
been to some extent has changed from teacher
to
teacher. They all speak to general issues
which matter
to all of us - May I be safe from internal
and
external harm, may you love yourself
wholeheartedly
just as you are, at this and every moment,
unconditionally. She says that sometimes we
are
tempted to be more specific, but she
recommends
against that, as anything specific to us
would be
included in the general that applies to
everyone.
She said that what she
called "radical acceptance" is
fundamental to Mettaa meditation.
"Radical acceptance"
is the knowing, the accepting, that what is
here now,
is here now, *whatever* that may be. I found
this
fascinating, because of my readings years ago
in which
this fundamental level of acceptance was
described as
essential for Mindfulness.
She said there is no
Mettaa without Mindfulness. If we
are presented with an insight, which may be
accompanied by a strong emotion, it may be
necessary
to stay with that emotion til it's run its
course,
which is hard to do without the practice that
mindfulness brings. Or if we find our mind
churning,
thinking about this and that, even though it
might
feel important, still, we need to let it go
and return
to the phrases, just as we leave thoughts
behind and
return to the breath in Mindfulness. For this
reason,
she says a strong foundation in Mindfulness
is crucial
to Mettaa practice.
Then we sat, focusing on
ourselves as the subject of
the phrases. I included my basic staples
among them:
May I be happy. May I be filled with joy. May
I be
safe from internal and external harm. May I
be strong.
May I be without fear. May I live with the
ease of
inner peace. May I love myself
wholeheartedly, just as
I am, at this and every moment,
unconditionally,
without judgement. May I accept everything I
do. May I
accept whatever gifts I have to offer. These
phrases I
repeated over and over, having a rather hard
time, at
first, trying to remember them all and get
them all
straight. I still don't have the one about
living at
ease correctly.
As I practiced I
realized what the process was. In
Mettaa meditation we go deeply into the
phrases, we
stay with the phrases and their meaning. We
are not
thinking "about" someone. We are
*being with* our idea
of them, with meaningful intention. It is the
staying
with the phrases in this manner that brings
concentration.
I had two goals for this
retreat. I've been doing an
uneducated version of Mettaa practice since
last June,
feeling my way through the process, and
though I've
had some extraordinary experiences, I'd
gotten to the
point where I didn't feel comfortable
continuing. I
was feeling to some extent manipulative, and
also,
that I couldn't keep self out of it. I was
hoping that
I would resolve this problem on the retreat.
Also,
among my relationships is one of a number of
years
which has been both difficult and rewarding
for me,
and I felt that I was at a point at which I
could
resolve my part of it, and so I intended to
focus on
that person for the retreat, in the hope that
a
resolution would arise in my mind.
As I practiced the
phrases in that first meditation, I
realized that my practice of the past few
months had
ceased to feel comfortable because it was
unbalanced.
I never practiced Mettaa with myself, the
very idea
bored me, I was only interested in resolving
relationships and helping others. So I had a
terribly
hard time practicing Mettaa with myself; it
was quite
terrifying - which Marcia said is *very*
common. My
inability to sit still reached gargantuan
proportions
as I wrestled with the fear, and forced
myself to send
the Mettaa of the phrases to me. And so it
was clear
to me that the reason my practice had begun
to feel
manipulative was that I was practicing not at
all with
myself, and sending an exaggerated energy to
others,
which always implies an expectation that
others will
give me the validation I won't give myself.
As I saw
this, I was finally able to let the tension
go and sit
still.
In the next session we
were to focus on another
person. Marcia recommended that we think of
someone
who had done something kind for us, someone
who has
been a benefactor in some way. But i was
determined to
work with a certain person, so, although it
felt like,
disobedience, I decided to think of the
person I had
chosen in the way they have been kind to me,
intending
to work with other aspects of the
relationship as the
day went on. Later in the question period she
mentioned that one person can fill many
categories, so
I realized my choice was ok. I was all set
for the
session to begin, when she said, now we will
work with
the phrases, focusing on ourselves.
Ourselves!!!!!!!! Yet
again!!!!!!!! Wouldn't we ever
get to the good stuff??????? I was a bit
irritated. My
mind went all over the place, and stayed out
there for
quite a while, until suddenly I heard Marcia
say, Now
we will take the energy of practicing Mettaa
with
ourselves and direct it toward the person we
have
chosen. So there I was, with no energy to
apply, since
I'd been too snooty to do the practice. I had
to do
something. I struggled quite intently with
this.
Couldn't go back and apply the phrases to
myself now,
not without shortchanging the focus of this
session,
and I probably wouldn't generate much good
quality
energy anyway. Finally, I decided that I had
to bring
myself into the meditation as I did it. May
you, and
also I, be happy, I said. May you, and also
I, be free
from internal and external harm......May you,
and also
I, love ourselves completely, just as we are,
at this
moment and all others, unconditionally.....
As I repeated the
phrases I realized I was solving my
balance problem - I was giving to another the
*very
same* thing I was giving myself. It couldn't
be
manipulative, not for me, although doubtless
another
person might find a way to make it so for
themselves,
as they worked through their own path. But
for me,
this did the trick. I stayed with the
modified phrases
pretty intently for the full meditation and
walking
period, and when I sat down at the end, I
realized
that I had also resolved the relationship,
that in a
fundamental way, the aspect of the
relationship which
had concerned me, was history.
This is the major
learning I got from the retreat. I
continued to have some intense experiences,
but they
tended to be relationship sorts of things - I
don't
know how it is that I so often get into
intense
interactions without a word being said, with
the
entire contact being things like passing each
other in
the hall, but I do. However, the interactions
all
seemed to resolve on a different level. I
could see
that certain things were being thought about
me, and I
just simply let them be thought. I can still
be me,
here, and not be tied up in other's mistaken
ideas.
I've been getting to this way of thinking
over the
past few months, but during the retreat it
was
manifested with symbolically crucial people.
In the question period
at the end Marcia talked about
focusing on difficult people during Mettaa
practice.
She recommends that we do *not* start with
those most
difficult for us. It can create emotional
conditions
within us that we are not ready to handle. So
she
recommends that we start with the easier
ones, and
work up.
I know this is a pretty
long post, but I want to share
what happened to me: I had a wonderful
retreat largely
because I was so well prepared, and I was
well
prepared because of that wonderful
conversation we had
about concentration a week ago. I want to
thank
everyone who participated in it, and
especially Jack
for introducing the thread and persisting
with it.
love, liz
