Everything is alive. Everything is participating.

Hogen says that an insight is worth $5 and a cup of coffee. I think he says that so we don't get too attached to our insights when they come. So we don't go around thinking we have it all figured out.

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No need to worry about that. I returned from my 10-day Sesshin knowing a lot less than I did before I went.

I have never practiced so hard. I was amazed at the ingenuity of my mind to engage me in thought, and always, before I knew it, I had slid off focus into a realm of dreamy thinking. Then bring it back to the practice: Breathe Buddha. Inhale 'Bu' and exhale 'Daaahhhh'. It was like heavy lifting -- repetitive weight training -- to build the muscles of mind-focus.

This was an active Sesshin. The Teisho, or daily Dharma talks, were calls to active focus and continuous practice in every activity beyond sitting as well. Hogen told a story of a rabbit in a woods, fleeing for its life, then accidentally running into a tree, killing itself right in front of a hunter who happened along. The hunter, pleased at his luck, thought they'd have rabbit again the next night, so he hunkered down in front of the same tree to wait for another rabbit to come along! The example was to illustrate that this was not the way to approach zazen -- passively -- but to be active and energetic in our practice.

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I find that I do tend to bring a lot of energy to Sesshin. It's hard to adjust to the schedule, and I gather as much determination as I can to punch through those first few days of struggle. It is like most of the time, we are operating on battery-power. We go to Sesshin, the batteries wear down, and then we realize we are actually plugged into the wall. Connected.

Chozen has described that the usual ratio of thinking : awareness is like, 90 : 10. And all that thinking is what is wearing us down. Retreat allows that ratio to reverse. Such increased awareness and decreased thinking requires a lot less energy. Need for sleep and food diminish, the mind and senses sharpen, and the ability to see more clearly emerges. Practice is powerful technology.

It was like being in a group of hard core, experienced mountain-bikers, on a difficult mountain trek. Most of them were way ahead of me going up a heavily wooded and steep hill. Then, as we all approached the crest of the hill, Hogen would encourage us to keep pedaling on the downhill, and not slow down and coast! However my personal downhill slope still had lots of trees and obstructions in the way, and I was feeling a bit freaked out. Like I was doing it wrong.

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Always I am pretty sure "I am doing it wrong." That is one of my greatest hits on the repetitive thought hit-parade. Although "What does everybody think of me?" has topped the charts, I believe, for decades now. "I am doing it wrong" is actually just a variation on "What does everybody think of me?".

In fact, I was able to organize an outline of the repetitive thoughts I experienced for ten days, they were so repetitive:

I. What is everybody going to think of me?
A. Oh My God, I'm doing it wrong
1. Rehearse
2. Replay
II. Judging
A. Making up stories
B. Guilt about judging
III. Miscellaneous
A. Repetitive songs
B. Sudden thoughts of hilarity
C. Sudden thoughts of catastrophe
1. Health status of geriatric dog at home
2. US / World politics and economics
3. Health / mental health status of husband currently working in US politics.

Every day at Sesshin, you get to go to Sanzen, a face-to-face meeting with the teacher. I think Sanzen means "reality-check" in Japanese (just kidding). On about day 3, I told Hogen I was feeling like neither the waiting hunter nor the chasing hunter, but the rabbit. He asked if I could feel my hands. Yes. Could I feel my feet? Left shoulder? Yes. Yes. Are you sure? Yes. Could I feel my breath? Yes. You're doing it. You're fine. It's nothing but this. He didn't say this, but I heard, "Don't even trip out."

So the next morning, what may have been one of the imports from China that had come to Great Vow Zen Monastery since our trip there had been to start the morning with fast walking, then bowing practice. Every morning we did 36 full-body bows, reciting the name of Kwan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion. Wonderful to have so much movement at 4:30am even to the point of breaking a sweat! Not only did that keep me warm for the first two 25-minute sitting periods, but it reminded me to be kind to myself as I was bringing my mind back to the practice.

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I often utilize a practice I heard from Pema Chodron, about the importance of a kind tone when reminding ourselves to return to this moment. Their practice often consists of "labeling." When you notice yourself having a thought, you label it, by saying to yourself, "Thinking." When you notice yourself making a judgment, you label it by saying to yourself, "Judging." And of course, our mind and its Inner Critic can turn this meditation practice into a bludgeon. You can violently castigate yourself for "THINKING!" And you can just about roll your eyes and seethe in disgust at yet another "JUDGING!" And don't even get me started about judging my judging!

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So Pema Chodron encourages us to maintain a kind tone. She tells a story in which she was teaching in Texas, and a man -- apparently a trucker -- came up to her and said he had taken her encouragement to heart. He would be driving long distances, practicing being in the moment, find himself thinking and then he would say to himself (with a gentle southern accent) "Thinkin' good buddy."

I use this technique a lot. So this is what I did. All. Day. One whole day. Thinkin' good buddy. Thinkin' good buddy. Thinkin' good buddy. And an occasional Judgin' good buddy for good measure. And it allowed me to settle into the practice. My practice, not anybody else's.

Then the next day that stopped working. The gentle touch was allowing my mind to slip and float and drift. I would find myself way way off in a complicated thought, or rehearsing! Geez, so much rehearsing! I would find myself rehearsing what I was going to say about my insights after the retreat. Never mind the fact that the retreat was less than a third of the way through. I realized I needed to bring a little more fire into returning to the practice. So I tried energetically saying "NO!" in my mind, and then returning to the practice. This worked, and was not at all a bludgeoning or criticism. It was simply what was needed. All. Day. That. Day.

I had housekeeping for work practice. I enjoy it. I actually like cleaning bathrooms (see previous blog post about cleaning bathrooms at Great Vow on my wedding day). We were all encouraged to practice continuously with the Buddha breath -- even during our work practice, noticing everything we could experience, every sensation, the hara and everything else, everything was Buddha.

I was able to breathe the Buddha breath out loud while vacuuming.

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I would practice while scrubbing the toilets. Even that is Buddha? The dead bugs at the bottom of the men's urinals? Buddha? The gunk I pulled out of the drain in the women's gym showers? Buddha? No separation. Everything. It seemed kind of a mental exercise at times, but focusing on the breath, there left little room for thought.

Then at some point, when the days began to blend together and the practice began to practice me, during zazen Hogen added some inquiry: What breathes? What is alive? What is the source of this breath? What is the source of this life?

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I remember sitting there and asking myself about this. What is breathing? Then I tried to stop my breath, and experienced the fact that I couldn't for very long. I would be breathing, like it or not. The breath breathes in spite of me. It breathes even when I forget to, which is most of the time. It breathes when I am sleeping. Something is breathing; something infinitely attentive and wise enough to take care of this amazing task and it's not "me". I began to get a slightly creepy feeling. I felt like I was in one of those horror movies when they call the babysitter and shout "The phone calls are coming from inside the house!" There's definitely something not "me" that's breathing, that's connected to and engaging with and welcoming life in this way. And then one day it will stop doing it in that way.

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What is alive? I wondered as I brought a spoonful of vegetable soup to my mouth. I could see the carrots. Are the carrots that have been pulled out of the ground and chopped up and boiled "dead?" My body clearly says no. My body says they are alive. My body takes them in and they transform into my body. Alive. If they were in the compost bin, the earth would take them in and transform them into some other life. But they are no longer growing. They have arisen, existed, and are now disappearing and becoming some other thing that is arising. When do they stop being carrots? When to they become "me"? Can we "kill" them? Can we kill anything? Or do we just re-route the way the life is being expressed? Can we create life? I can see that we can cultivate life -- we can plant seeds and water them and foster a particular expression of life. Are my fingernails "dead?" No. At some point they will disintegrate and become something else. Is the gunk at the bottom of the shower dead? No. It, too will disintegrate and join the life of some other expression.
Everything is moving in this dance. Everything is constantly inter-relating. Thich Nhat Hanh calls it inter-being, and I can see this. I can see this even in the large rocks in the back of the Monastery that are going to become a Zen garden. The evidence is in the water marks carved in their sides. Even they are moving and breathing and transforming and participating in this dance. The same thing that breathes my belly is breathing the little frogs is moving the rocks is digesting the carrots is decomposing the compost... and on and on. And it's all alive, and it's all participating, and I can't find anything that isn't.