Yesterday was a good day for us. Went to Lance’s place and hung out with him for the afternoon. Went for a lovely walk down by English Bay. It was chilly but refreshingly so. Often we visit him on the weekend and then prepare a meal together. This is one of Tee Tee’s (3) favourite things to do. He may be only 10 years old, almost 11, but he loves cooking already. He especially loves doing it with Lance.
We wanted to talk about meditation for a minute. We know there are a variety of techniques people use when meditating and often us Westerners think that the goal of meditating is to make our mind blank. But we learned a different technique. Back in the late 1980s we went to a place called Dharmadhatu (think that’s the right spelling). It’s called something else now but it’s still there – on Heather Street and 16th Avenue. They taught two different things there. One was the traditional Tibetan Buddhism and the other was called Shambhala. Shambhala was meant for us Westerners.
We used to go to the Wednesday night sessions where you could meditate for an hour then someone would give a talk, you could ask questions and have a discussion about some aspect of the Shambhala teachings and then have cookies and tea and chat with people afterwards. They also had weekend workshops where you could do some more serious studying. There were 5 levels of learning and it was powerful stuff.
Meditation practice has really stuck with us because it’s so simple. We still have our cushion that we bought there and use it. They taught us to sit (meditate) with our eyes open and focusing gently on a spot about 6 feet in front of us. We were also taught to simple allow any thoughts to come up, give it a gentle awareness then let it go. The main thing was to be gentle. It wasn’t about rigidly censoring our thoughts and it wasn’t about trying to think of nothing. It was about awareness and letting go and coming back to our breath. As simple as that.
But not that easy to do.
Off and on throughout the years we pick up meditation again. We think it’s one of the most important things we can do for ourself, that any human being can do for themselves. It’s like facing yourself and seeing everything that you are. There is no place to hide.
We started meditating way back in the early 1980s. We had a severe stomach pain that took us to Emergency and they kept us in hospital for 3 days to do some tests. With nothing to do we began reading a book called “The Empty Mirror” by Janwillem van de Wetering. It wasn’t our first time to be interested in Zen Buddhism and all that. We were a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It seemed like everyone was reading things like “Be Here Now” by Baba Ram Dass and Krishnamurti’s “Think on These Things”. And David, Graham’s father, was big on this stuff too so we were naturally drawn to these ideas.
The Empty Mirror is about a young man’s experience in a Zen monastery and it inspired us. We decided then that we would start meditating and then we found Dharmadhatu. When we first started going there we felt as if we had found home. We took the 5 levels of Shambhala training and it was profound. Each workshop was a Friday evening, all day Saturday and most of Sunday. By the end of a workshop we felt transformed and enlightened. Meditating for that much time in a period of 3 days was very intense but it also prepared our mind for the Shambhala teachings. “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” by Chögyam Trungpa has these if you are interested. So much of the teachings made so much sense to us. There was such a simplicity to them and they felt so grounded. There is also a website http://www.glossary.shambhala.org/ that can give you an idea of the teachings.
But .....
Not long after “graduating” at the center, we began to have very strange and scary feelings especially when we meditated at home. It felt like we were lost in space, floating in a vast vacuum where there were no landmarks to tell which way was up. It was quite scary and we decided to stop. We wonder now whether some of us were trying to surface. But over the years we have returned to sitting (meditating). At times we just can’t do it anymore. Some Inside find it very uncomfortable. At other times we are able and are grateful for it. These days we try to sit for about 45 minutes and we can feel a lot of tension in our chest being released. If we were feeling depressed, that seems to lift as well. There is a sense of expansiveness and clearer thinking after sitting for a while. All because of simply sitting on a cushion and coming back to your breath, over and over, for 45 minutes.
It seems that meditating is a kind of surrendering to what is, to what life is about, and to letting go of trying to control any of it. It’s a leap of faith. A trust that you will make it through alright. It is facing your demons and fears. It is acceptance. It is not at all comfortable and it can be as boring as hell. But we strongly believe in it. That if more people meditated we might have a more peaceful world. We think it is something that we Webers should always do. When we are not meditating we keep telling ourself that we need to get back to it. Like we do with exercise. “You need to do this Caer. It’s important.”
“Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space through the simple discipline of doing nothing.” [The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation” Chögyam Trungpa]
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