#8 DELAWARENESS

 CALM ABIDEN.   Wait, did I misspell that?  Calm abiding is the state in Buddhist practice also known as Samatha, sometimes considered synonymous with Jhana or Dhyana, a quality of mind resultant from concentration on an object such as the breath or a touchpoint of the body.   This quality is intertwined with insight (Vipassana) into how our relation with our world of perception leads toward or away from suffering.   And so I looked forward to a morning retreat with Luisa Montero, friend of the Insight Meditation Community of Lewes, Delaware. 

Luisa's topic was 'Meditation: learning how to rest,' which holds within it both calming and insight practices.  She began by distinguishing 'rest' from 'sleep.'   Perhaps both are elusive in our society because they are conflated.   She writes: In this fragile, uncertain, changing world, our minds take on this huge job of holding, controlling, constructing and/or narrating our experience.   This is both exhausting and in the long run, impossible.  What if we took a break?   Meditation, in its essence, is resting.   Through meditation practice, we can begin to see how we get caught in this inexhaustible ‘job’ and how we might let it go.  

Luisa's qualifications include completion of the three year Community Dharma Leader's training at Spirit Rock in California.   This training is a kind of compromise between an intensive monastic immersion and not having some standard for teachers of meditation.   There is a certainty, a radiance of immersion, a clear discrimination and dedication that came through Luisa's meditative guidance.   I find this universal to well-practiced teachers; they have access to the language of liberation because they have learned it, and when they speak, they speak from it.  It's not abstract at all. 

Our little retreat today, of 11 meditators, followed a common course of introduction, sitting meditation, a few prayers, and a talk.   Luisa mentioned the book 'No self-no problem' by Anam Thubten, in which he says that insight melds perfectly with resting, that enlightenment is letting go of our struggle to create a world that isn't there: “It isn’t when we find the secret ingredient. That is to know that this “I” is a fictitious entity that is always ready to wither away the moment we stop sustaining it.

Luisa guided us expertly through noticing tension in the body, and letting go where it is possible. Luisa mentioned that the various 'forms' of practice such as the 'body scan' can involve a lot of 'efforting' and she exhorted us for a time to 'not do' and 'not add' anything to the present moment.   

Luisa talked about stress and it's impact, how as a full-time worker she is often 'squeezing in' meditations which feel forced.   The morning went by quickly, quietly, and I definitely ratcheted down my pace for the day.  A headache I started the day with was gone.   Did I give up struggling?  Anam Thubten says:  "People always suffer.... because they mistakenly believe that if they fight against reality they will be able to achieve their fantasies." Perhaps the fantasy will go, leaving me to gently hold today's sunshine, rain, and a few crows arguing over our bread scraps.  Perhaps we too, are being gently held.