The Way of It

I want to tell you about a retreat I am putting together together with my dear friends at BKI in the San Francisco Bay area on December 12-14th. It is called The Work and Silence and it combines periods of sitting meditation with doing The Work with a partner. Silence will be observed between sessions throughout the entire retreat. It will be a weekend of silence, stillness, deep listening and open ended inquiry.

The retreat will take place at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 40 minutes north of the San Francisco Airport, in a valley that opens out onto the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful venue with hiking trails that lead to the shores of Muir Beach in only a few minutes. Green Gulch hosts a community of Buddhist practitioners that year round devote themselves to the study and practice of Zen as they care for an organic farm and garden, a guest house and a conference center.

We held this retreat for the first time at Green Gulch in March 2008 and it was a beautiful, intimate experience. I learned a lot and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible there. If this interests you, I strongly invite you to consider attending. Scholarships will be available.

The ultimate turnaround is to begin again, to forget what I’ve learned, to stand there, naked, hands to the side, and allow the fire to burn. I notice it burns anyways (sometimes). Resisting that only makes things worse (it seems).

But, wait. Why would that be a good idea? “I don’t ever want to suffer like I did before” turns around to “I’m willing to suffer like I did before” and “I look forward to suffering like I did before.” Isn’t it so that a sane mind doesn’t suffer, ever? Something doesn’t add up here, it seems.

Except for when it does. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running away from my thoughts, and I notice that I still do that, sometimes. So practicing being willing and looking forward to the worst that can happen allows me to catch up with myself, to recognize the parts of me that I sometimes miss. Once seen, they can be met with understanding. It doesn’t matter what it is: if it’s part of me, I want to love it. And what would escape the world of what’s for me to love?

Besides, I’m not superstitious. Inviting dread doesn’t bring it to my life. It just means I’m open to it, and when this is so what appears to be dreadful is simply not so. The whole thing is pregnant with paradox:

Resisting dread is dreadful in the extreme

So I welcome it, open to it

Then I can’t find any

Even as it comes and swallows me alive pinching my every nerve

I look around and it’s all open space.

What is there to fear?

As I write this my computer interrupts me to inform me that “new processes have been scanned” and that my computer is hence free from adware and spyware.

For now

Why would I want it to stop

and miss the lessons it brings?

Coming back to life

having never died

it is the strangest thing.

It is all of course a lie

yet a complete delight

Even when it does not appear to be so.

It really is the strangest thing.

To realize that I’ve been mourning the loss of what I never had.

What freedom!

There is no shortcut to honesty

Honesty is the shortcut.

Live without resistance

-then notice what happens.

The highest level is to be level with everyone.

We walked the streets of San Francisco, we visited Alcatraz, we played at the Montaña de Oro dunes, we hiked to the top of Cerro San Luis, we played at the San Luis Obispo rock climbing gym, we kayaked in Morro Bay…

But the most important part was that we were together.

Maya, Tad and Eduardo messing around in California … See my Tabblo>

To not leave anyone behind.