I just got back from a 9-day meditation retreat with Ayya Medhanandhi. This is my 3rd 9-day meditation retreat. During the last three years I have been privileged to go on retreats regularly. I can feel the changes in my mind states. It's funny in some ways to observe the journey my mind has gone through in meditation over the last three years.
Reflecting back, I remember the first retreat in Sri Lanka in early 2009. I was so frustrated half way through the retreat. I remember sitting in the shrine room and wondering what on earth I was doing there. My mind was going bonkers....seriously bonkers and I just tried and tried and the more I tried the more it went bonkers. In the end I just gave up and then it settled somewhat. I learnt not to push myself so hard. Well, I have a bit of a stubborn streak anyways. I guess that's my mind showing up...so I finally encountered it first hand and didn't know what to do. Then out of desperation I gave up and realised how to handle myself. I do have compassion for those who try to trifle with me now. People must feel real frustration trying to deal with me at times!
Then I went on my second retreat with Ajahn Brahm. I had expectations. I struggled with them. I was away in Australia and my husband had spent quite a lot of money sending me there and I felt the pressure of my own expectations. Again I struggled. I also struggled with my breath meditation. I could not relax. I could not relax enough for the breath to appear strong enough. So it was a struggle again. Half way through the week, I had a major attack of hindrances for a couple of days. But I stayed calm this time round since I had learnt from the previous retreat. I also learnt to let go of my expectations and relaxed enough to get some meditations. Again I learnt. I learnt to be patient despite odds stacking up against me from minute to minute, I learnt the importance of kindness, gentleness and making peace and what a difference they make to a turbulent mind.
This time I when I went for the retreat I did not feel the burden of expectations. I was relaxed. I was clam. I was willing to settle into the moment no matter in what form that moment presented itself to me. I found my meditation taking off. It's taken me many years, months and moments of much struggle, pain, frustration but finally I feel as if I am having a breakthrough. Of course I am also mindful of the fact that this breakthrough can also be fleeting. After all, all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. But while it lasts I will appreciate it.
Last three years of meditation and following the path of Dhamma for me personally has been like a little science project that I have undertaken on myself. I didn't think it would last this long. I tend to get bored with things easily once I start them just because things start getting into a routine and after a while it's the same thing being done over and over again. But ironic as it is, my life is a routine like it has never been. I have a routine that I follow like clockwork (hardly do I deviate from it). In it is meditation where you sit in one place without moving for a couple of hours a day. Yet, I am still to find it boring. In fact the more I meditate the more curious I become and the more interested I am in doing more of it. It is ironic that such outwardly boring looking activity can be so interesting and can generate so much joy and peace.
Meditation is also an activity that takes your whole being. If you cannot give everything you've got without expecting, you will not get much back. It' funny isn't it. In our life we are prepared to give and take. We are taught to bargain, exchange, work for what you get etc but here is something that requires all of your effort and all of your being and also requires you to give it without expecting nothing in return. The highest form of generosity is taught in meditation. It took me sometime to get used to this and get my mind around it (but it is still a learning). I am constantly inspired by that very thought now.
Meditation also teaches you to walk a fine line (the middle path). You cannot be too greedy so that you can exert so much effort to get it. You know in this world we are told that if you try hard, work hard, you can get somewhere, be somebody etc. but in meditation if you try so hard, your mind will contract and shrivel up. All you are left with is frustration, like I was left with. On the other hand you also cannot just sit back and wait for it to happen to you or do half heartedly or when time permits or when it's convenient for you. No...you have to put in all the effort you have without too much stretching. Then it takes off. Isn't that wonderful. The path opens up...it's like hitting that threshold. You know when a plane takes off or a rocket takes off it needs to hit a threshold to take off...like that the mind too has a threshold to take off on to the middle path. In meditation we need to find that. But it requires constant effort, every moment of the day, every waking moment.
The more I begin to see these, the more I develop enormous love for the Buddha and for what he taught. His wisdom is beyond my wildest imagination, his kindness I cannot fathom even in my imagination. He truly was an incredible being unlike and incomparable to any other. I do not wish to travel the Samsara long enough to see another Buddha but I do wish to see the Buddha by seeing the Dhamma.
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