Siddhartha, Hesse and What's Necessary

Herman Hesse was my guru when I was twenty years old.  Maybe he'll be my guru again.

I was standing behind the library at Union College in late 1968 when I met up with Neil Gordan.  We were both seniors but had not really talked since we were freshmen.  He asked me how I was doing and I said not very well.  The Vietnam War  was was raging and leaders were being killed and I was afraid of being drafted and I was depressed and I hadn't been going to classes and hadn't washed or shaved and generally felt lost. He smiled and said read Demian and walked away with a smile on his face.  I'm not sure what the smile meant but perhaps he had an inkling of what I was in for.

I ended up reading the book and not going to class for a week in its aftermath. It had a profound effect on me. It's difficult to understand it's power this far down the road.  I recently tried to reread it and it didn't click at all.  Back in '68 it was a different story. I think it's because gave me a new frame of reference to hang my confused craziness on. His novel depicting Abraxas, a divinity of both good and evil, gave me a rudimentary foundation for looking, again, at spirituality.

 I entered Union as a serious Catholic who vowed not to "lose my faith" among the liberal secularists.  It took about three months. Reading The Martyred by Richard Kim put the biggest nail in the coffin.   It asked a simple question.  How can an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God allow the slaughter of millions of innocents in war? Hmmm. So I ended up in this dead end alley and Herman Hesse helped me begin to find my way out.

As I was saying, maybe he will again.

I'm rereading Siddhartha which appears to be based on Hindu's first three stages of life. (the Wikipedia link is very interesting)  At one point shortly after Siddhartha had met the Buddha and decided not to become a follower he had the following thoughts.

"Both, the thoughts as well as the senses were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, neither had to be scorned nor overestimated, from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived.  He wanted to strive for nothing , except for what the voice commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice would advise him to do so. ...to obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary."


Next post - "Locus of Salvation" or "what I hope works for me when the shit hits the fan."

Faith revisited again

I keep riding this horse because for me, at this point in my life, it's the crux of the matter. I am looking for patterns of past thinking and behaviors which will help me approach the future with more skill, wisdom and resolve.

In my last post I noted that some of the happiest times in my life was when I was deeply involved in a cause or a project.  Something I could lose myself in.  (How does this jive with the loss of self goal of Buddhism and meditation?)  I don't want the mistakes I made in obsessive involvement repeat themselves by me losing myself on some spiritual path. This aversion to single minded commitment is reinforced by my conviction most of the evil in the world is the work of true believers.  But you're either on the bus or off the bus. Right?

This is difficult.  I want salvation but what price am I willing to pay. There is a part of me that has a strong desire to become deeply involved in Buddhist practice.  To go to  a retreat center and spend months in deep meditation.  Will I lose myself or find where I really reside?

I will soon no longer have a job.  I will wake each day and have to decide how to spend my time.    I don't want want to fade away but I want to be at peace. I want to feel as alive, awake and connected as possible but I don't want this desire to be twisted either by being mindlessly busy to fend off emptiness or by locking myself away in a monastery   So I want the perfect balance between contemplation and engagement, being and doing, having and letting go, stimulation and calmness, attachment and non-atttachment, belief and skepticism.  The Middle Way?  The Golden Mean?  Mindfulness/paying attention and acceptance may be the best operating principles. Easier said than done.  And what if it's the wrong choice.  Second chances may be running out. 

Too Long in Exile

I started meditating on a regular basis seven or eight years ago and I can unhesitatingly say that it has made my life better. I've experienced and am experiencing all of the advertised benefits of a regular meditation practice. Increased joy, peace, intimacy, awareness, gratitude, acceptance...decreased stress, worry, depression, fear.

I still struggle at times with day to day living but its not as difficult. I still take medications to keep my chloresterol and blood pressure down and my arthritis symptoms at bay. My hair is still thinning and neck waddles are wiggling. I have some very difficult days at work and often come home and get lost in mindless TV channel and computer surfing. But for me, in many ways, meditation has bee a life saver. I feel more awake and alive now than I ever have. I say that with some bitterness because there is a part of me that feels I wasted many years on automatic pilot.

Van Morrison singing Wasted Years with John Lee Hooker on the Too Long in Exile album.

I unsuccessfully attempted to establish a regular practice for a while but it didn't take until I started yoga classes. Yoga seemed to unbind something in me. It's difficult to explain but it gave me a glimpse of a calm mind. It helped me have the patience to sit still and not feel like I was going crazy. I resist theory. I know this stuff is good for me because it makes my life better not because it fits some theory I or someone else may have. Experiential not theoretical.

My practice has led me to go on a series of retreats. Most have been at IMS. The last retreat I went to was at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne, MA. This is one of the more tha 120 centers worldwide offering courses in Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N.Goenka and his assistant teachers in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. IMS is also based on the Vipassana tradition but the meditation technique taught by Goenka is strikingly different especially in his use of body scanning.

These silent retreats usually last from 7 to 10 days and can be extremely intense and rewarding. I strongly recommend them for anyone interested in deepening their practice.

IMS has a three tier charge system with the minimum for an extended retreat usually being about $500. You're also asked to provide a donation to the teachers. There is no charge for the Goenka retreat but you are asked to make a donation and the daily schedule is more demanding. You must follow a strict monastic routine that includes minimal food after mid day and meditation sessions from 4:30 AM until 9 PM. At IMS no one checks if you're in a session. At Shelburne a moderator comes looking for you. At IMS there are usually three teachers who give Dharma talks and who you can meet with individually. At Shelburne teachings are via videos made by S.N. Goenka about fifteen years ago. You do have the opportunity to talk face to face with assistant teachers. At IMS participants are asked to volunteer to do a job i.e., wash dishes. At Shelburne "old students" volunteer to serve during retreats. Both places strongly discourage people from leaving early. At Shelburne, Goenka referred to an early exit as comparable to a patient getting off of the operating table during brain surgery. If that's not enough to scare you into staying they also ask you to turn over your car keys at the beginning of the ten day session. For some reason I wasn't asked for my keys and if I was I'm not sure I would have stayed. (I was told no one would force you to stay they just want a chance to talk to you before you leave)

While on retreat at both places you are not to read, talk, use a phone or look at others. You sit across from other while eating but don't make eye contact. The only person you're supposed to communicate with are brief sessions with teachers. You also agree to no stealing, killing (including insects) and sex. Men and women are separated at Goenka facilities but mixed at IMS. I found the separation of sexes helpful. By the third of fourth day at IMS the lack of other stimulation seemed to heighten sexual awareness and this could get distracting.

The Shelburne retreat was very different and for me a more powerful experience. It was in many ways so personal that I'm not sure how much I want to share in this blog. But it was very important to where I am now in my life. In fact when I retire, part of my evolving plan, is to spend time at that center doing volunteer service. I have some reservations about this as well which I may share in a future blog.

One of the first books I read on meditatioon was How to Meditate - A Guide to Self-Discovery by Lawrence LeShan. On the opening page he writes "We meditate to find, to recover, to come back to something of ouselves we once dimly and unknowingly had and have lost without knowing what it was or where or when we lost it." These were originally just words for me. Now, they are the truth.

Simple

I've just finished meditating after completing the prior blog post. While meditating I made the obvious connection between my fear of retirement and my self-worth issues. This simple, direct relationship is so glaring that it's almost embarrassing to write about it. (There's that embarrassing embarrassment stuff again) I'm afraid of retiring because my sense of self-worth is tied to my job. Duh. I think I've always known this but now I feel it. There's quite a difference and somehow it helps me feel more ready to make a move.

Living with clarity

In my first posting I seem to be setting goals for this whole operation. I want to be more accepting of myself and what I do. I want whatever I write to not be too constricted by a perceived need to have it be well-planned or thought out. And I want my writing to help me try to connect with guiding forces which will help me through the "tricky end game."

One of the things I'm trying to accept is that this blog is mainly going to be about me. I find this repulsive. It's not that I think I'm repulsive but there's an alarm bell that goes off when I turn the camera around.(My new iphone has a lens on both sides so all I have to do is push a button)

This reaction will hopefully help me come to terms with the egocentric bogeyman. It's frankly embarrassing to say too much about myself. What the hell does that mean? I hope it's more of a function of a belief that communal issues are more important than personal concerns. But I'm afraid it has more to do with feeling and thinking that there's fundamentally something wrong/embarrassing about me. That's truly fucked up and something I want to somehow get beyond. Easier said than done.

After typing the above lines I went to my book rack looking for my copy of Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach.Tara was one of the teachers at a retreat I attended at the Insight Meditation Society and her teachings and her book have been very helpful.

Well, I couldn't find her book but I picked out a book by Rodney Smith called Lessons from the Dying. He was a teacher at another retreat I went to at IMS. I opened the book to a random page and here is the first thing I read....

"There is an opportunity at death to give up all self-images, positive or negative. For peoople who have a low sense of self-worth, negative qualities can be more tenacious than positive ones because we believe in them more strongly. We often believe that we deserve to suffer, given how badly we feel about ourselves. We can even feel guilty for being happy."

He gives examples in the book of people who were successful in "working through ...negative self-images and dying with clarity."

Dying with clarity.
I want to live with clarity.

The opening quote of the book is apropos.
"Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." - Seneca, Letters from a Stoic