Newsletter 23

Summer 2005/06

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NEWS FROM THE STEERING GROUP

We could do with more people to manage retreats - Please contact one of us if you are interested. There are some prerequisites with regard to retreat experience. We are listed in a free Meditation Directory that is being distributed around Christchurch.

This is the pre-Xmas newsletter – a time which should be filled with happy holiday anticipation but is all too often a time of increased pressure and stress. In this edition we have shamelessly stolen from Martine Batchelor’s beautiful book ‘meditation for life’ to bring you some simple reminders of the practice of meditation and how by fostering a gentle discipline of present awareness we can free ourselves from many of the causes of anxiety and suffering and bring a more joyful appreciation of what is – after all a lovely time of year!

We also have an update on upcoming retreats. Notable amongst these is the retreat in January to be held with Finlay Gilmour. Those who attended the combined Qi Gong and meditation retreat at Staveley in September need no introduction to Finlay. This was a truly delightful retreat. It combined the physical presence and awareness fostered by the Qi Gong practice with the insightful and encouraging teachings that Finlay offered. AND some of the most beautiful spring weather that Staveley could come up with! Encouraged by such a positive reception to Finlay’s teaching we have invited him back to teach the retreat in January, which will run for 7 days, (with the option of attending for just the weekend). More about Finlay on page four.

If your New Year’s resolutions, include practicing more meditation – taking part in the January retreat would be an excellent way to begin 2006.
Please enjoy.

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Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
Transparent scarlet paper,
Sizzle like moth wings,
Marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
Lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
So little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
An absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
Only the things I didn’t do
Crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye from ‘Words under the words’

Our minds are never what we want them to be…
the greatest dualism we face is the split between who we are
and who we think we ought to be.
Sometimes that gap fuels our aspiration to follow Buddhist teachings,
sometimes it simply fuels our self-hatred,
and all too often we confuse these two notions of self entirely.

Barry Magid, Tricycle Magazine, Summer 2005

We not only believe what we see, to some extent we see what
we believe

...The implications of our beliefs are frightening.

-Richard Gregory

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WHY I GO ON MEDITATION RETREATS

A ‘retreat is a treat’. I remember Subhana, one of our best loved teachers who has compassionately supported the growth and practice of insight meditation practice in the South Island beginning one of her retreats with these words. A ‘retreat is a treat’ she said again laughingly. She was quoting one of her own teachers. She laughs because she knows that we yogis are settling in. Perhaps we are sitting for the first time, or at least the first time in many months. Stealthily placing cushions, stools and shawls about us in the hope that we can maintain a suitably tranquil façade on our anticipated discomfort. We are not expecting ‘a treat’. We are expecting cramped leg muscles, feet that will go to sleep half way through the sitting and have to be massaged back to life, aching backs and shoulders, agitated mind states, torpid mind states…horror of horrors - nothing mind states – just boredom! And yet we are here anyway because at some level we do know this is true. A retreat is a treat and we are lucky to be here.

I say this again to myself as I pack up to go out to Staveley. The truth is I do it somewhat reluctantly. I may be in the middle of something ‘important’ back at home. I will miss my partner and my big (very big) sooky cat. I will be gone a whole week so I have had to tidy up many lose ends before I leave. I wonder is it worth it. A whole week of my precious holiday leave. Holiday I could spend…well lets face it probably not on a beach in the tropics ­­- much more likely painting the south side of the house. But it feels like a sacrifice. A whole week to be spent doing nothing productive (I sneak in some work related papers to make myself feel better about this).

Although it doesn’t seem to weigh much with me at the time of heading off I have never regretted going on retreat. However difficult the time may be (and while it isn’t all discomfort, it isn’t always blissful mind states either) I have always returned home happier than when I left. Renewed in the projects I am working on and clearer about difficulties. Yet the promise of future happiness doesn’t seem to be the draw card. I once had a discussion about this with a good friend of mine – although it was actually about going to the gym. I asked him if, once he was there, he ever regretted it and wished he was doing something else. He said ‘no – this was never the case’. I then asked him if that made it easier for him to go to the gym in the first place and he said ‘no – this was never the case either’. Like choosing the salad option instead of the chips – we never regret it, often enjoy it but still find it a challenge to do it. Now knowing that does make it easier to go on retreat.

And once on retreat, it is easy to see why it is a treat. I once overheard a busy working mother describing her ideal vacation. There would be no decisions to make, no meals to prepare, no one else to look after, and nothing much to do. I thought at the time – “she’s describing a retreat”. Three meals a day – all heartfully prepared for me. No dishes but my own cup plate and bowl. No work to speak of and certainly no decisions to make. My time. My time most fully spent. My time, slowing down for me to savor each part moment of it.

After the first two days I settle down. I am in the rhythm of life on retreat. I know when I will get up. I know when I will rest. I do this and watch myself at the same time. It is the regret for people who only do short, weekend retreats that they put in the hardest work. It gets easier, not harder as you fall into the days. Sounds become more singular, smells and tastes more delicious. I particularly love the crunch of stones beneath my shoes. I start to inhabit my body. My mind sheds anxiety and begins to be curious again.

In the end a week goes by all too quickly and I have to release from my new attachment – being on retreat. We break the silence. We pack up our holiday home. We return to our lives. And at the time I think “you always feel reluctant about going back but you won’t regret it”. Life is a treat.

A yogi

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Our True Heritage

The cosmos is filled with precious gems.
I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning.
Each moment you are alive is a gem,
shining through and containing earth and sky,
water and clouds.

It needs you to breathe gently
for the miracles to be displayed.
Suddenly you hear the birds singing, the pines chanting,
see the flowers blooming,
the blue sky,
the white clouds,
the smile and the marvelous look
of your beloved.

You, the richest person on Earth,
who have been going around begging for a living,
stop being the destitute child.
Come back and claim your heritage.
We should enjoy our happiness
and offer it to everyone.
Cherish this very moment.
Let go of the stream of distress
and embrace life fully in your arms.

This poem is from "Call Me By My True Names"
The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh.

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YOGA PRACTITIONER NEEDED

Finlay has asked if it would be possible, on the January retreat, to have a guided yoga session at the beginning of each day, before the first sitting. Is there anyone out there who would like to volunteer to lead this? You don’t have to be a certified yoga teacher, just someone who can put a suitable programme together and tell us where to put our legs and arms. Please phone Meg on 328 8052 if you could offer this.

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COOKERY CORNER

The last of our retreat recipes, these two dressings are good with any salad and very seasonal.

Mustard and Honey Dressing

Blue Cheese Dressing

Whizz in the whizzer.

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FINLAY GILMOUR

Finlay Gilmour is a gem. There is an uncommon authenticity about him, a simplicity and a gentleness that creates a very safe and relaxed atmosphere. His dry wit had us regularly roaring with laughter – and I’ve certainly never before experienced a guided meditation in which I was invited to imagine myself immersed in a vat of Revlon Liquid Moisturiser, letting it seep into my skin and plump out all the wrinkles until I was like a big juicy grape – and the emphasis of his teachings is very much on the positive side, on enjoyment of the practice, on okayness. Quite happy to drop the schedule when it suits, his style is particularly well-suited to beginners and those who haven’t had much retreat experience as well as being refreshingly different in viewpoint for those of us who already have calloused bottoms.

- Julie

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QI GONG CLASS

Mark Bouckom’s Qi Gong Class
Thursday 6.00 - 7.30pm
Drop-in class
Keep your Qi Gong practice going with a combination of standing forms, Healing Qi Gong and relaxation
All welcome
Yoga & Qi Gong School 42 Nayland St, Sumner ph 326 5255

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THE HEART OF MEDITATION

From Meditation for Life by Martine Batchelor

At the heart of Buddhist meditation is concentration and enquiry. When you cultivate these two qualities in meditation, you develop your ability to be quiet and clear and to offer understanding and love.

The Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama, the Indian prince who was to become the Budha­­­­ – or ‘Awakened One’ – was born around 2,500 years ago in northeast India. While still a young man, Gautama developed a yearning to know the truth of existence. He renounced both his domestic life and his princely responsibilities, and left home to study for six years under the great spiritual teachers of his time. Although Gautama became accomplished in various methods of meditation, he was ultimately dissatisfied with them all. For no matter how deeply he meditated, he remained unable to resolve the mysteries and challenges of the human condition, with its problems of sickness, ageing and death.

So Gautama decided to leave his teachers and go his own way. For seven days he sat under a tree, meditating continuously. He finally reached awakening at dawn on the eighth day, at the moment he saw the morning satr. In that instant, he became fully awakened. He realized the four noble truths: that there is suffering; the cause of suffering, which is craving; the cessation of suffering; and the path to accomplish the cessation of suffering. Gautama had completely dissolved the three poisons of hatred, greed and delusion, which are the causes of human anguish. From that moment on, he acted wisely and compassionately in his body, speech and mind. He saw that the root of suffering is craving, and the way to extinguish craving is through the practice of mediation, ethics and wisdom. During the next fifty years, the Buddha as he had now become ­– taught and helped others to see clearly and act compassionately. In doing so, he developed different types of meditation, each method suited to the needs of a particular person, group or circumstance.

Down the ages, great Buddhist teachers have developed many other methods of meditation, drawing on their own experience and understanding, and adapting the Buddhist religion and its practice of meditation to different times, places and cultures. Each strand of Buddhism developed in isolation, the practitioners largely unaware of any alternative approach. And, as is human nature, each school of Buddhist meditation became somewhat dogmatic and claimed that its method was the only true one.

The speed of travel and communication in the modern world, as well as the easy availability of books, means that we can now chose from a veritable profusion of Buddhist paths, each with their own meditation practices

A Choice of Paths

Different schools of meditation developed from the Buddha’s time onwards. All the Buddhist traditions focused on one aspect of his teachings and developed it further, so each school has its own emphasis and methods. In the West, you now find three main traditions. Tibetan Buddhism uses many different meditation methods, such as systematic reflection on death, visualization mandalas, recitation of mantras and dzogchen (‘great completion’), which puts the emphasis on awakening to the primordial buddha-mind within. The Zen tradition originated in China and spread to Korea and Japan….Then there is the Theravada School of Southeast Asia, which developed in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Burma. The most popular meditation of this tradition is called Vipassana (‘insight’) which puts the emphasis on seeing clearly into the nature of things. Since it is not possible to practice all the different types of meditation at once, you have to make a choice. And this choice might depend on an accidental encounter with someone, on coming across an inspiring book, or a rational decision based on common sense, or simply, perhaps, on a gut feeling.

However one does not have to be a card-carrying Buddhist to practice Buddhist meditation. Not all Buddhists meditate and not all meditators a re Buddhists!. You can find Christian-Buddhists, Jewish-Buddhists and even agnostic Buddhists, who all practice meditation. The Buddha was very pragmatic and his teaching experiential. None of the meditations described in the following chapters requires you to believe in anything special or to belong to any specific religious group. The only requirement for meditation is the intention to be more awake, more aware, and to develop compassion and wisdom.

Theravadan Meditation

One of the most popular forms of Theravadan meditation among Westerners is Vipassana (‘insight’) in which the main emphasis is on awareness. You concentrate on being as aware as possible of a certain object or sensation, such as the breach, a sound, a though, a sensation in the body. Enquiry is focused on the characteristics of existence that the Buddha pointed out: change, unreliability and non-self. For example, people tend to think that whatever is will continue to be for a certain amount of time. But in Theravada meditation you notice that, in fact, things change from moment to moment. Sounds, sensations and thoughts are never exactly the same for long but are in a constant state of flux. With practice you come to appreciate this fact and live your life from a perspective of accepting and flowing with change.

Concentration

Concentration is essential in Buddhist meditation and helps to calm the mind, although it must be emphasized that its function is not to stop the thought process. The aim of meditation is not to make your mind blank or empty, but to make it more supple and peaceful. Concentrating on something such as breath does not narrow or tense the attention. On the contrary, you steadily but gently rest your attention on your breathing, as you attune yourself to the breath and try to become one with it.

As you attempt to concentrate, you will find that your mind is easily distracted. It is important to remember your intention to be aware and awake, and to keep returning to the object of concentration. This focus will act as an anchor to the immediate experience, to reality. Keep returning to your breathing and your mind will become calmer as you give less power to your worries, fears, hopes and dreams. These are created by thoughts, which have a tendency to be repetitive, spinning faster and faster as they proliferate into a web of heavier, darker, more exited thoughts. By returning to a consideration of what sensations or sounds are in themselves, you can stem the flow of energy to the causes of agitation and let your mind rest in a more still and peaceful state.

You have to be careful not to criticize or fight the mind, since it is normal to think, hear sounds and feel sensations. Simply focus on the object of concentration while maintaining an open awareness. As you pay steady attention to your breathing, you will also be aware of sounds and thoughts. The trick is not to grasp or reject them. Just leave them alone and let them come and go lightly.

If you do become distracted, notice it and come back gently to your breathing. The aim of meditation is to create longer intervals of awareness. What is important is not how long you focus on your breathing but how soon you return to it from a distraction. When you start to meditate, you might find you focus for only a few seconds and then are distracted for ten minutes. After some practice, the gap narrows: a few minutes focused on breathing followed by a few minutes spend day-dreaming. Finally you will find that stray thoughts or images distract you from concentrating on your breathing for only a few seconds.

The better you can concentrate, the fewer causes of agitation there will be and the more peaceful your mind will become. If you chose to thing, you can do so – rigorously and clearly focused. If you want to let go of a thought you can do that too. Your mind becomes free and you will treat it as a friend, rather than a burden or an enemy.

By practising concentration, the mind and body become more relaxed and at ease. But you need to be careful not to become lethargic or ‘spaced out’. You are not trying to escape into some sort of rarefied state of abstraction. On the contrary, to meditate you need to be alert and present in yourself. This is where the element of enquiry becomes important. Enquiry counterbalances concentration. It gives energy, sharpness and vividness to meditation.

Enquiry

Enquiry is not necessarily intellectual. It harnesses the mind’s natural ability to be bright, illuminating and perceptive. Enquiry involves looking deeply into your own experience, perceptions and thoughts, and recognizing and questioning them. People are generally set in their ways when it comes to perceiving the world and themselves. They tend to act and react in the same patter, which causes pain both to themselves and to others. Enquiry gives true insight into what is happening. It will make you examine how you are feeling, thinking and behaving, and lead you to question the causes and effects of your actions.

Enquiry help you to see that you are not as fixed and constrained as you often feel you are. It can free you from your destructive or negative habits and allow your positive qualities to shine through. Enquiry does not judge or moralize and force you to stop doing something. On the contrary, enquiry frees you creatively, presenting choices in a light, sparkling way. You will be tempted to laugh when you recognize your personal foibles, which will then become like difficult friends, who you accept and love while being aware of their ways and how to handle them. Or you will put your foibles in perspective instead of letting them grow into frightening and incapacitating monsters.

Whereas concentration settles you down and diminishes tension, enquiry brings a dash of zest to life. You will find yourself willing to experiment and play with your thoughts, experiences and circumstances. You will open yourself up to life and its potential. Together these two qualities are liberating. They help you to lighten your inner landscape and make you creatively responsive to your outer environment.

Excerpt from ‘Meditation for life’ by Martine Batchelor. This book contains chapters on creative awareness, wisdom, the role of a teacher, obstacles to meditation and integrating meditation into daily life. It is also beautifully illustrated with photographs by Stephen Batchelor. The guided meditation below is one of several offered in this book.

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Guided meditation: breathing

When people genuinely meet the dharma, they realize it directly within themselves. So the Buddha said that he is merely the one who shows the way. In teaching us, he is not accomplishing the way for us. It is not so easy as that. It’s like someone who sells us a plow to till the fields. He isn’t going to do the plowing for us. We have to do that ourselves. Don’t wait for the salesman to do it. Once he’s made the sale, he takes the money and splits. That’s his part.

That’s how it is in practice. The Buddha shows the way. He’s not the one who does it for us…if we understand the path in this way, it’s a little more comfortable for us, and we will do it ourselves. Then there will be fruition.

Ajahn Chah, from Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away

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Wednesday Evening Dharma Talks

Every third Wednesday of the month teachings are offered on the practice of insight meditation.  These are held at Ferndale school, 104 Merivale Lane, off Papanui Road).  The evening, which includes a guided meditation, starts at 7.30pm and runs until 9.15pm.  Donations are collected for the teacher and the hire of the room. All are welcome.

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Booking procedures

Please phone Paul on 381 0444 for a retreat registration form.  The completed form and a deposit of $50.00 should be sent to 6 Trent Street, Christchurch.

Please make cheques payable to Southern Insight Meditation.  Stamped addressed envelopes are appreciated when booking.  Further information will be sent to you on receipt of your deposit.

Refunds of deposits.

The deposit for retreats is refundable up to the closing date of the retreat booked, less a $5.00 charge for administration costs.  Deposits cannot be refunded after the retreat closing date, and the money will be put into the Top-Up Fund.

Top-Up Fund

The top-up fund is for those who are unable to afford the cost of a retreat.  Southern Insight aims to make retreats as accessible as possible to all, consequently it is possible to pay less than the lower amount in the sliding scale for a retreat.  We encourage people to make use of this fund, which thanks to the generosity of others who attend our retreats, is currently in a healthy state.

Contact Addresses for Southern Insight

E-mail: southern.insight.meditation@xtra.co.nz

Post:16 Ward Street, Christchurch

Website:http://insight.orcon.net.nz

Useful phone numbers:

If you would like to ask about our retreats, sitting days, or would like some general information about the group and insight meditation (including lots of opportunities to help with our work) the following are phone numbers from the Steering group – all of whom would be happy to talk with you:

 

Meditation Group at Diamond Harbour
Tuesdays 7.30pm
Phone or email for directions: Christine 03 329 4067
christine.dann@clear.net.nz

What you are looking for is...
What is looking

St Francis of Assisi.

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