“First of all Nothing will happen and a little later Nothing will happen again” ― Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing
What have we here? Is my Teacher Shinzen Young grooving to some Leonard Cohen tunes? Sharing a Rinzai Zen Teacher, Shinzen was actually pals with Leonard Cohen, who once said, perhaps of Zen practice, “You either become the ocean, or you’re sea sick everyday.” I called Shinzen’s assistant Choshin, who is my pal, just to say to Hello Cho(shin) a few weeks back as well as inquire what she and Shinzen were doing vis-a-vis retreats in the new age of Corona. Happily, I found out the Ontario March retreat wasn’t exactly cancelled, but rather being offered online. Oh Joy! I’m certainly glad I made that call, as I was given an opportunity to Zoom in on Shinzen’s first live video retreat. And it’s been sublime, considering the whole inspiration behind building The Higher Haven was inspired by the bliss, purification, and permanent shifts in consciousness experienced over the last twenty years on retreat - transformation and work I’m riding on now.
Of course some of that momentum followed me back into daily life, but this was a rare first opportunity to roll in the deep with a whole Shinzen lead 7 day schedule all right before my own Altar, with my bed forty feet away. And while the bliss factor of being out in southern California and far from my everyday existence has been slightly dimmed, my practice has clearly been elevated. I know the following is a tad long, but it’s just so damn yummy, and after this we’ll give more thought to live or taped classes & of course the growing need for Private Lessons & personal healings, with a hopeful eye toward gatherings in June.
The Source of the Longest River is a knod to the space-time continuum by the the master poet T.S. Elliot, just one of a flowing stream (literally) of brilliant references by the mighty Shin. The alternative title to this story was When Shin The Eskimo Gets Here, Everybody Is Gonna Jump For Joy, a reference to the Bob Dylan tune Quin The Eskimo. but with my own Shin spin: “Everybody’s in despair, every girl and boy, but when Shin the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy, come on withOUT, come on WITHIN, you'll not see nothing like the Mighty Shin.” And you’ll not. The Big Mac Daddy of The Mindfulness Revolution says it all eloquently, with the below, his first night’s dharma talk, loosely based on what it means to have a meditation practice in light of our world’s current happenings. More from The Void to come.
“What constitutes someone who has a Meditation Practice? That’s someone who has one technique, and has a training regimen — retreat, a life or daily practice, get support give support. Ummmm… (Shinzen does these famous Ummmms where he sorta looks up and formulates his next thought, with the mental gears grinding, like the General Motors of Meditation is running in his head, and it all has to kind power up before it unleashes) mmmm…. one characteristic of someone who has a practice is that no matter what is happening locally, and locally of course is a relative thing, but locally could be with our own mind or body or our own small group or community, even our own country. Or it could include the whole world, but localized at a certain moment in time. Whatever is happening locally, for a practitioner, yeah, we’re not indifferent, we do and act as effectively as we can… but we don’t forget the global picture. The Big Picture is our Life, from cradle to grave, and how will it be summarized? And we know Big Picture-wise, there are optimal things to do, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in locally. And we do those things. And we are doing those things, heroically, all of us, now. A number of you have gone through enormous challenge to do this program. You are Heroes of Consciousness.
So we remember the Big Picture. We come into this world and everything is perfect and then not-perfect and then perfect and then not perfect again. And then at some point we sorta grow up enough that’s it’s… more in-between most of the time. We forget about the primordial contentment of the early months and early years, and we lose the ability to experience total freak-out with essentially impunity — the way infants can switch back and forth. We lose the primordial equanimity. And we sorta grow up and its sorts in-between. At some point, hopefully, we really grow up. And we realize that in order to complete the growing up process there’s some more work to be done. And that work is to go back to the place… like T.S. Elliott said, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” He calls it The Source of the Longest River. That’s the river known as the multi-verse, the space time continuum, and everything that is in its folds. So we go back. But know the place for the first time. As an adult. Human. And that gives us access to a Happiness independent of conditions.
It can be described a number of different ways. One way is we can say it’s a journey from surface to source. Surface being what we experience most of the time, the objectified sense of self and world and thing and place. Source I like to describe as absolute activity – expansion and contraction. Absolute rest. Cessation. Zero. But that’s just one way to talk about it. If we think of it that way, it’s not like we’re turning away from the world; we’re turning 90 degrees, and we’re auguring down into – spatially – into where things come from, but really we’re auguring into time… we’re either furtively sensing where something is coming from, or furtively sensing where it has gone to, which are of course exactly the same place. Uhhhhh ummm so (grind grind grind) … we’re… uhhh.. having an experience of being in the timeless. Or at the moment of arising, but there’s no interval between the moment of arising and the moment of passing because there’s so many arsings and passings in-between that time just collpases. The still point of the turning world, as Elliott said.
So really source if we say deep is a special metaphor, but an accurate description is to say just before, in time. A journey form surface to source is one way to think of it. We can talk about phenomena that may occur as we make that journey. For some people, nothing special occurs. For others, a pool of poison and pain is encountered, for others a magic world of archetypes is encountered. But as St. John of the Cross said, if you want to travel this road, you can’t stop to pick the flowers, or let the wild beasts scare you. So you may not encounter anything unusual or you might, if you’ve been given what I consider the right priorities you will treat everything the same, whether it’s banal or bizarre, subtle or intense. And so you just keep augering, and as I said you may not have any unusual things, strong pleasant or unpleasant, but some people do, and you keep on going down, down, down, which is back, back, back in time — space is just a metaphor. You keep going back in time until time… stops. One of the things about this metaphor is that it allows us to address the essential to source. Going from surface down is actually a training process. You’re training deeper and deeper levels of circuitry into non-self interference. The flavor of Mindful awareness seeps into the sense as well as the motor circuits actually. So by training our attention, we’re actually creating Happiness independent of conditions.
That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is when you contact the Source, or perhaps more accurately should be called the moment, you realize you never had to train. The effects of the training are just imitating the way the things have always been working down, down, down down all the way down. The rest didn’t need training; it’s always been there, for everyone. So that’s why some traditions are adamant about “There’s no place to go” The primordial perfection was always there, so… it’s like physics in its relationship to light — is it a particle or is it a wave? It’s both. Physics finally grew up. Is this path about cultivated improvement of our attention skills? Yes. We can think about it that way. Is this path about realizing that essentially nothing needs to be improved? Yeah. There’s a place to lookout it that way. As I said, Viva la différence. I think we can use this as physicists and engineers use the complementarity of the two sides of light. So having a practice means no matter what happens locally in space or time in our lives, we remember the big picture. What will be the global meaning in the end of my life? And we Work. We work to optimize that happiness. Because that’s the meaning. The extent to which we were able to experience all the dimensions of happiness, including the most central and deepest dimension called live at the source – live in the moment literally — that’s the meaning. That’s what it boils down to.
So of course anyone who has realized the primordial perfection will have a different relationship than most relative to issues like old age, sickness and death. Part of remembering the big picture is just remembering how it relates to say my own life; part of remembering the big picture is with respect to the reality of life. Did anyone who is on this path seriously think that time would keep going on and going on and on without some unexpected bad doo doo falling on everything and everyone? We don’t yet know what it’s going to be or how big it is going to be, yet Corona is big. Not as big as a thermos-nuclear exchange. It’s amazing to me we’ve been able to avoid that, as I’m one of those people who grew up in fear of a hydro-nuclear bomb. We had to duck under the tables in school. Some of you may remember that, and it’s pretty freakin’ scary. It’s amazing to me that I’ve so far avoided living through a reality like that. What we’re going through worldwide right now is not a small deal, but big and small are relative. The one thing for sure is that we would expect something like this to happen at some point, and now it has.
I think most of you are pretty clear what this means for the world of practice — it means two things. People ask: how can I accelerate my practice? Duration training, motion practice, trigger practice, and what I situation training. These are the accelerators. So what is a situation? What does it mean, or rather what does it mean to look upon a situation as an accelerator to practice. So we… strategize. I may have to take effective action in this situation but in addition to that, I’m allocating some time and energy to think it through, how am I going to utilize this situation as a training ground for my practice. Some of you may remember back in the 60’s there were these books by an anthropologist from UCLA originally, Carlos Castenada. They were about the teachings of a Native American Shaman who was living right where I’m now living, in Tucson, Arizona. Who he named Don Juan. The Teachings of Don Juan a Yaqi way of knowledge. And part of the knowledge that Don Juan imparted was the notion of what it means to be a person who can “See”. So he said, he being this Yaqui Indian, most people think of situations in termas of fortune and misfortune. But the person who can See looks upon every situation as a challenge. Because it shifts the accumulation point of the Universe. The accumulation point of the Universe is the fixated center, of the self, that releases into the expansion and contraction of the source.
So that was Don Juan’s way of talking about all this. So it’s another situation. What techniques am I going to use? What practice modes? If one cultivates this attitude throughout each situation of life, it’s a powerful accelerator for this practice. That’s the first point, for us as practitioners. The second point is actually kind of practical, and is probably be talked about. I hope people in the practice community are talking about how this is a premier opportunity to help others who may not yet have a practice. Or who have a practice and have forgotten about situation training and are freaking out. This is the perfect time to assist others with these internal skills — people are shut in they don’t have anything to do, they’re realizing the Big Picture reality that happiness dependent on conditions, pardon my French, sorta sucks. This is a great time, of course in a gentle and kind way, not in a triumphalist missionary sort of way (Lol), this is a good situation for spreading this practice around the world in places and communities where it has not been spread before.
So that can be a bit of a positive. Historically, Buddhism came into China during the Han dynasty, which was at that time very powerful, more or less corresponds in many ways to the Roman Empire about four hundred years, which was also very stable, expect for a little glitch in the middle. But pretty stable period for China, but then afterwards there was a horrible period of instability called The Three Nations (or Kingdoms the Sānguó)) and then after that North South dynasties, glorified in Chinese fiction. It was a horrific catastrophe that wiped out a portion of the country and then was followed by centuries of civil war basically. But under those circumstances, that’s when Buddhism really took off, as people were ready for change, people realized The Big Picture. Periods of stability and prosperity are great. Let’s enjoy them. Let’s try and preserve them. But, sooner or later…
Now people are talking a lot about isolating. There’s isolation. But another interpretation was we’re in seclusion. Some words translate from India, that also have reflexes culturally, that one secludes for a period of time in order to complete the maturation process, and then of course, comes back. If we sort of reinterpret isolation as seclusion, this is a way to language it for those of us who have a practice. It’s interesting that the word for seclusion, one of the words, there’s actually a number of them, but the one I like is Kevala. You can look it up if you’d like because it’s both the practice and the goal of the practice in one word. Kevala means seclusion in that I am going off to be by myself to do sadhana, to do practice. Kevala – I’m by myself. But it also means by myself in the sense of independence — I have a connection and a contentment, and a safety that cannot be taken away. My happiness is independent of conditions. So, if you go into seclusion, you become independent. But not indifferent. It’s even more than that, Kevala means integrated, whole, in the sense that all the parts are fully connected. And yes, that’s what it’s like. One’s being becomes integrated, you become one point, yet connected. Profoundly. Integrated. Independent. As the result of seclusion. Could be a more positive way to think about isolation. There’s a poem I think I can remember it.
Mitte aller Mitten, Kern der Kerne,
Mandel, die sich einschließt und versüßt, –
dieses Alles bis an alle Sterne
ist dein Fruchtfleisch: Sei gegrüßt.
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
This is a poem by Reiner Maria Rilke, a poetic genius. It’s his salutation to the Buddha. And it’s called Buddha In Glory. It’s his salutation to the Buddha, congratulating him after his all- night sit, congratulating him on his liberation. I don’t know how he knew about expansion and contraction. They say poets can see in the dark. Ummmmmmmmm… but Center of all centers. Core of all cores, almond that enclosed itself to sweeten, all of this to the furthest stars, is your fruit-flesh, hear my greeting.” (Deep bow).