Metta

Some catching up and brief reflection on attending the Loving-kindness Sesshin at the end of June:

It was such a gift to be able to sit, sit, sit after the difficulties of our situation with Hannah, the 2 year old labrador. The first entire day, practice was about giving ourselves loving-kindness:

May I be free from fear and anxiety.

May I be at ease.

May I be deeply happy.

There may be a little trepidation about the way the phrases are used here. I was initially a bit nervous about actually invoking the words "fear" and "anxiety." Aren't we supposed to frame things in the positive? Verbalize what it is we want, not what we don't want? I attended a New Thought Church for a time, and learned all about that kind of practice with manifesting things through our thoughts a la The Secret (which always ended up being about having and getting more stuff aka prosperity, abundance, etc).

What I realized in this Metta practice though, is that not saying the words "fear" and "anxiety" is like walking around in a jungle and not saying the word "green." Fear and anxiety, however subtle, seem to permeate everything. So the first phrase is a simple recognition of that reality. Dispelling. I like to imagine one of those rough wooden brooms made of twigs passing through the body, collecting fear and anxiety like sticky, foggy cobwebs.

Not avoiding the grief and sadness of Hannah, it seemed to process quickly. That and the powerful container of Sesshin. I was able to simply be present with it as it unwound.

And then there was the event of the future: Shuso-Hossen. Scheduled for July 1, Shuso-Hossen is the exit ceremony for my year-long term as Head of Zendo. It includes a talk, given by the outgoing Shuso about the koan they have been working on. Then the floor is open for questions from every person in the room if they so choose, the purpose of which is to test the Shuso's deepest understanding. It is sometimes known as Dharma combat, but Chozen Roshi helped me reframe it much more gently as "two arrows meeting in mid-air."

Sometimes in Sesshin, I would realize that every minute was drawing me closer to this event. I was mostly able to ride the waves of fear and self-doubt. I did wipe out a couple times Saturday evening and Sunday morning with some brutal Inner Critic attacks and what is now the perfunctory sitting an entire period (or more) quietly and constantly weeping.

It was surprising to me to feel such fear on the last days of a Sesshin. Especially one so ostensibly full of sweetness and light -- Loving-kindness! But I was not the only one. Several of us ended Sesshin with deep stirrings of fear, anger, pain. Roshi says that Sesshin works and shifts things so deeply in the unconscious mind, that the conscious mind can't know what is going on. But it knows something is going on. So it launches a five-alarm reaction. The story it gloms onto is pretty much arbitrary.

Past or future, the mind seems to flee this moment. Why does it do that? Why does it take so long to settle it down and then it rears up all over again like a terrified horse spooked by a plastic bag.

Never mind. The medicine is the same.

May I be free from fear and anxiety.

May I be at ease.

May I be deeply happy.