Notes from "What is this?"

Gathered notes

Retreat and meditation

• Silence on retreat is to support solitude and silence of the mind.
• Meditation is the centre of one’s practice in the same way as hub is the centre of a wheel.
• What we seek in meditation is already right here.
  • We might achieve anything special, or what we expect.

Awakening

• Awakening is the raw and immediate felt experience of being an ordinary, alive, person. moment.
• We can’t stop ourselves thinking, and we don’t aim to. Thoughts, good ones and bad one, will always be around to some extent.
  • We just try to open up some space, some non-identification, to less the power of thoughts over us.
• Emptiness as in: non-identification, nothing existing independently of what forms it, non-grasping, not identifying. It doesn’t mean no thoughts, no sensations, no emotions.

Methods

• “What is this?” practice is about questioning and opening and waiting. Not answering, not closing down, awaiting.
  • Asking tacitly affirms that we don’t know the answer.
  • A palpably somatic, “mass of doubt”, deep puzzlement and curiousity.
  • And settling deeper into it.
• Kongans are a means to connect you to the question, of bring the calculating mind to a halt.
• No method is sacred. What matters is what works for you.

Raw notes

Entering the retreat

• Retreats are a time of conscious withdrawal from the routines and duties of everyday existence in order to reflect on what really matters to us.
• What matters is allowing your life to become a question for yourself and being willing to dwell with and deepen that question.
• The silence in which we conduct this retreat is to support the cultivation of a solitude and silence of the mind.
• After a while iy may dawn on us that much of what we say to each other in the course of an average day is really not that necessary.
• … what we seek to achieve in meditation is already right here before our very eyes.
• [Enlightenment] is only ever experience in the very midst of what it means to be human in this moment.
• the mystery of simply being human.

The basis of meditation

• “Anchoring” rather than “concentration” because we have an unhelpful relationship with “concentration.”
• That boat isn’t stationary - it shifts a little according to the current and wind - but it’s not going very far.
• Just as we can’t stop ourselves hearing, we can’t stop ourselves thinking.
• Anchoring helps us open up some space, so it’s not so relentless.
• The choice we have: continue with a certain thought, or come back to our whole experience via the anchor.
• What works best for you is the most important thing.
  • No method is sacred.
• “What is this?” practice is about questioning; it’s not a practice of answering.
  • Not a way to define the experience of the moment, nor to fix it, but just as a way to open to it.
• We’re trying to balance elements of calmness and brightness.
• Draw the question down and ask it from the belly. Without tensing around it.

Questioning and responding

• What is this? By “this” - the totality of what you’re experiencing in this moment right now. Whatever that might be.
• If we are open to it, we realise that life itself in its gritty simplicity is profoundly and overwhelmingly mysterious.
• palpably somatic
• vital, embodied perplexity.
• … what we look upon as ordinary is, in fact, utterly extraordinary.
• The degree to which your practice resonates at a certain perplexity or doubt, that is the pitch at which your insight or awakening will also resonate.

What is This?

• Be careful not to narrow the sense of “this” just to what is palpable within the confines of your own skin.
• all the different kongans … are a means to connect you to the question of the great manner of birth and death.
• … how utterly strange all this is …
• felt-sense of perplexity
• “mass of doubt”
• Far more important than the words of the question is the psychosomatic resonance that the question evokes…
• deep puzzlement and curiousity
• … once you begin to sense this questioning or perplexity in a more somatic way, you don’t need to keep repeating the words of the question.
• Ask “What is this?”. But pay more attention to the silence that follows the posing of the question.

The tree symbols of awakening

• Each of them (incense, water, candle) evokes a different aspect of awakening.
  • Incense. Selflessness. Bestowing equally.
  • Candle. Brightness and clarity.
  • Water. Flows. Adaptable, flexible.
• When we sit we’re not trying to stop thinking. Instead we’re trying to open up some space within it, so that over time the selfing disappears and we’re left with the creative functioning.
• The beauty of selflessness is that it helps us to meet our environment, other people and animals, in a much more open and creative way.
• When we start to generalise, we amplify our expectations. The questioning can be useful as a way of counteracting that amplifying effect.
• When we sit in meditation, we have a tendency to wait for something special to happen.
• Appreciating and creatively engaging with the flow of conditions.
• “Let’s see what happens.”

Effortless effort

• We have to say aware that we need to balance calmness/energy and stillness/brightness.

Good snowflakes: they don’t fall anywhere else

• [Kongans] bring the calculating mind to a halt.
• Dependent origination - the utterly contingent nature of experience.
• No matter how mundane something might seem, from another perspective it is impossible to pin it down.
• When your mind becomes more still … you perceive the sublimity of the most simple, ordinary things.
• Keats’ Negative Capability.

I don’t know

• Processual “Unknowing”, not a blank-minded quietism.
• In asking a question, we tacitly affirm that we won’t know the answer.
• Now and again, replace “What is this?” with “I don’t know.”
• Our knowledge, certainties and convictions render the rest of the world flat, opaque, uninteresting, boring.

Emptiness

• Emptiness as in non-identification.
• Emptiness as in nothing existing independently of what forms it.
• Empty of self-existence.
• If we grasp, we identify, we amplify around it.
• Creatively engage rather than define ourself by.
• Empty means not grasping, not identifying. It doesn’t mean no thoughts, no sensations, no emotions.

Courage and questioning

• Great faith
  • Great confidence
• Great courage
  • Putting out energy for the practice.
  • Having the courage to creatively engage, to not get stuck, because we get stuck so easily.
• Great questioning
  • the actual sensation of questioning.

The four great vows

• The immediacy of the raw, felt experience of being alive, of just being an ordinary person and what that ordinary person’s life is like.
• Disentangle ourselves from these reactive fires. Not get rid of them or suppress them.
• Simply allow it the freedom and space to play itself out.
• It will come back again, probably sooner rather than later.
• What really matters is whether this practice makes a difference in how you live.
• Not identifying and fuelling defilements diminishes their power over us to the point where they fade away. But they’ll always be around to some extent.
• Free to respond with greed, hatred, egoism.

Waiting and listening

• Gently introduce the question in such a way that it does not disturb the surrounding calm.
• Settle into a quiet, humble acceptance of our bewilderment.
• Waiting, not expecting.
• **We have to be open to the idea that we may not achieve anything at all that corresponds to our preconceived idea of what the goal of practice might be.
• We’re not waiting for something, we’re just waiting.
• Framing as looking / seeing, creates a distance between an observer looking in and an object being observed.
  • Hearing is often the other way around. Open attention, sounds from every direction.

Practice in daily life

• A retreat is not done to devalue the everyday… .It is done so you can return to your daily life renewed and refreshed.
• Meditation is the centre of one’s practice in the same way as hub is the centre of a wheel.

Added 2024-11-17.