By Rio Branham

Welcome Home

I want to talk today about meditation and retreat. Yes I will talk specifically about our silent meditation retreat coming up, but I want to discuss these topics more broadly. Retreat means to take a step back, to withdraw from something, often something harmful or unhelpful. There are a few ways we talk about this idea in our readings and our opening. When we began, Kimmy welcomed us all home. It’s kind of strange for us to say welcome home to a space where nobody lives, especially if you’ve never even been here before. Even after I’ve been coming here consistently for over 3 years I still don’t know most of you, so why do we say welcome home, any thoughts? 

To me this welcoming home is an invitation to retreat from whatever might be weighing you down, to come back not necessarily to a physical space but a state of mind, an internal state of stillness and presence. It is an invitation to come back to our very selves, kind of a funny thought to think we could ever not be with ourselves but if you’re like me then most of our time is spent distracted, or engaged in our lives in a way that doesn’t always leave room for us to be in touch with ourselves. In our Sangha Opening we say:

The Sangha is invited to come back to our breathing

A retreat to the most basic awareness of our existence, our breath. I need that invitation and reminder to slow down and sit still. Every Sunday when the bell is run and we all quiet down, no matter where my head was at or where I was coming from, I settle in and feel welcomed home.

Meditation

But why? What do we do when we retreat and come back? This is the space for meditation. We don’t talk too much about meditation in our community because Pure Land Buddhism is not so focused on specific outward practices to attain enlightenment. We focus on the everyday, so when I say meditation I’m not necessarily talking about a highly intensive practice that you must be doing twice a day or else you’re not gonna make it to the pure land, but rather a simple, repetitious returning to the present moment.

I think meditation is often confused with concentration; to properly meditate one must be perfectly still and have no distractions and have the mind be completely blank and thoughts that never wander. I don’t know about you but that is nearly impossible for me. Moments like that can be beautiful and do sometimes happen with a consistent meditation practice. But I think it’s a mistake to think that that is what meditation must look like. I love this quote from painter and teacher Robert Henri that I think illustrates this point:

The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

We can reword this to something like “The object isn’t to become enlightened, but to be in that wonderful state which makes enlightenment inevitable.” I’m certainly no expert but in the few varieties of meditation that I’ve learned and practiced the direction is almost always the same. Return to the breath. Return to the mantra. Return to the present moment, the sensations and emotions that you are currently experiencing. That constant returning is the actual practice. It’s not a lack of skill or a failure of practice. Returning is the whole point. To retreat. Retreat from our thoughts. Retreat from our attachments. Stillness, presence, awareness, the flow of now, awakening, all of these are pointing towards the experience of coming back and returning, retreating from our busy minds, our screens, and the rest of our lives and allowing whatever is present to come to the surface. Meditation isn’t about striving for enlightenment, but bringing our attention and intention to the present moment where enlightenment can find us. 

The Reality of Practice

In Kelly’s talk a couple of weeks ago he defined enlightenment as seeing reality clearly. I like this definition. When we are distracted or caught up in our thoughts, attachments, desires and dislikes we are not seeing reality clearly. I’m learning that the meditation practice I need is a constant training of my senses to that which is real. This is difficult for me, to the point that I can hardly go a few minutes without having something to stimulate me and capture my attention. I’m distracting myself because there are uncomfortable or painful things under the surface and so I develop a fear of stillness. Meditation can be uncomfortable because it allows those fears and aversions to arise. 

I come in and out of consistency with my practice. So I go through this cycle often. Knowing that when I have a consistent mindfulness practice I feel more at peace but I create this resistance to jumping back in. I become so afraid that my initial boredom will be excruciatingly painful, and when I do finally decide to sit with myself I do often feel a lot of difficult things. The boredom hits pretty quick, followed by a clamoring of thoughts of self criticism, massive to-do lists I’ve left undone and all the things I need to be worried about. It is overwhelming at times, but usually only for a couple of minutes. It’s like opening the floodgates and a huge rush of water comes crashing through my mind, but as water does it begins to regulate and become steady. It doesn’t take long before I remember why I love my practice. The thoughts come and they go, they’re not fixed, I’m still bored, but I am also relieved of the constant effort required to hold those thoughts and feelings and fears at bay and I experience relief. I was afraid to look at my life clearly, but in reality the avoidance was causing most of the suffering. Once I come back to myself I realize that right now in this very moment there isn’t anything I can’t handle. Right now, I’m ok. I love this quote from Zen teacher Henry Shukman:

What if meditation isn’t an activity, but the opposite? What if meditation is just about being less absent from our aliveness?

Less absent from our aliveness. When we come back to our breathing we come back to the very fact that we are alive.

For me mindfulness practice often is about actually sitting down on a cushion and doing a formal meditation for 10 or 20 minutes, but it is also driving in my car with the stereo off, sitting on the beach feeling to the rhythmic crash of waves, drinking my coffee while listening to the birds, or talking a walk and just noticing my thoughts as they come and go.

Time To Retreat

I’ve come to learn that time is a great gift. I’ve come to learn this very painfully because I’m extremely impatient. But as I’ve worked through my impatience and recognize my discomfort with stillness I realize that time is an opportunity. We have an opportunity to choose how we spend our time. It can be incredibly depressing to think about the amount of time I’ve wasted on things I wish I hadn’t, but that isn’t helpful. What is helpful is realizing that the time is still now. Right now we can choose what to do with the time we have. It’s a practice to learn how to appreciate the present moment, the only time we ever have. On a daily basis it’s useful to have time set aside for a silent moment. On a weekly basis it’s useful to have time set aside for this, a collective quieting and coming back. I’ve also found that having some kind of annual retreat is also extremely valuable. 

While we always have the ability to return to ourselves in the present moment, there is something special about intentionally setting aside a few days to take an even further step back from our day to day lives, to refresh our senses and remember the joys of simply being alive. This is why I’ve come to love our retreats. I want to be clear that this isn’t a sales pitch, there’s absolutely no obligation to attend our retreat. Just like there are many ways to meditate there are also many ways to retreat such as a vacation to Hawaii that I may or may not be taking this week, I just want to share my experience and the value that it has provided to me and why I’m happy to help provide the same space for others. 

This year will be my fourth time at our retreat. The first year I was quite anxious before attending. I was worried of what my mind might present to me in the noble silence we observe. I’m not going to say it was a cake walk but I can say I was truly surprised by how alive and energized I felt after our brief weekend retreat from everyday life. The silence, extended meditation, and chanting as a group has been healing and oddly connecting. My absolute favorite part is the open sharing we hold each evening around a candle (yes, this does mean that it’s not a completely silent retreat). Hearing others share about their experience there at the retreat and open up about their lives in general is such a moving experience. We do it every Sunday and it’s great, but when we have had a few days together to cultivate a collective stillness, you can feel the difference. We slowly begin to retreat from the stories we live in day to day, we come back to our true nature, we begin to experience reality as it is, less filtered through our delusions and attachments. I’ll stop short of promising you all enlightenment, but to me it is a rejuvenating experience and just like the reminder to return to my breathing, I’m always in need of an invitation to retreat, slow down, and just be.

How do you find moments to be with yourself?

To Return

Finally I want to discuss what we do after we retreat, which is to return. Whether it is a short meditation or an extended retreat, we are always faced with returning to that which we retreated from. This may be welcome if you’re looking forward to dinner or watching your favorite show, but it can also be hard if you have found some sense of comfort or sanctuary in the silence and solitude and may not be looking forward to re-entering the chaos of daily life. 

I like to return to the life of the Buddha. He too followed this pattern of retreat and return. After 6 years seeking higher and higher levels of meditation training, awakening found him underneath the Bodhi tree. In some tellings of the story he remained there for three weeks enjoying the bliss and freedom of enlightenment but was faced with a dilemma; should he life out his life enjoying the fruits of awakening and head towards his final nirvana, or should he attempt the impossible task of teaching the dharma to all beings. He felt that the reality he had awakened to is that we all contain Buddha nature and are not lacking anything in our own paths towards awakening, so it seemed perhaps absurd to try and teach something that was already inherent to all of us, but this is ultimately what he chose to do. 

Like all stories of the Buddha, I find them to be metaphors for how we can live our lives. After having profound and peaceful experiences it may seem fool-hardy to try and return to what we were doing before, but there-in lies the frustratingly simple mantra we repeat each Sunday: Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go, Noone to Be. We are already here so all we must do is return to the present moment and come as we are.

Namu Amida Butsu