April 27, 2014 Sunday, Emerald Isle Retreat, Aaron: First morning Instructions and Guided Meditation

April 27, 2014 Sunday, Emerald Isle Retreat, Aaron: First Morning Instructions and Guided Meditation

Non-duality of core essence and outer expressions; of stillness and movement; mundane and supramundane.

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all, and what a joy to be with you here on this fair morning, and with a whole week in front of us to share the dharma together. Such a blessing.

There is a beautiful prayer, not in our tradition but I'm sure you know it: Om Mani Padme Om, the jewel in the heart of the lotus. You are the jewel in the heart of the lotus, each of you. Have you forgotten? Most of you have forgotten. It's a concept to you. What does it mean to be that jewel? To bring it to life? To reflect that radiance out into the world, that love, that wisdom? You are the jewel. But you become so lost in the meanderings of the everyday mind, in the complexities of the ego and even of the intellect, that you forget who you are.

Then you come to a retreat like this with the intention to awaken to your true nature. And then are you going to go home on Saturday and go back to sleep? How can we help you to stay awake, and to carry that true nature through not only this week, letting it open and open—not finding it, not creating it, it's already there, or we couldn't call it true nature. But, “Oh, look what's inside! Oh, I forgot!” Wakening to it, bringing it forth and living it. Let that be your intention, not just to awaken to the true nature, but to deepen in the ability to sustain that radiance in the world of everyday affairs, everyday complexities and turmoil.

I have a gift for each of you. These came from John of God's Casa. Each is a stone with some radiance, some crystals, some other forms of stone. Each, I think you will find, has a real beauty to it. This is simply a symbol for that jewel in the heart of the lotus, for each of you to remember.

(giving stones to individuals)

These are symbols. They're something small that you can hold in your pocket or your hand. During the week when regret, when self-judging thoughts, when painful memories, when anger, or grief arise, let them arise. Don't try to stop them. They're simply arisen from conditions, impermanent, and not of the nature of a separate self. Can you greet them with kindness while knowing that while they have arisen, they do not identify the core of your being?

The waves breaking on the shore are not the ocean. If a thunderous wave 20 feet high rolls up on the shore and slams down, it's an expression of the ocean, but would you look at that wave and say, “Oh! It's destructive; the essence of the ocean is destruction.” Is the essence of the ocean destruction? Is the essence of the ocean creation? Is the essence of the ocean movement, or is it stillness? Is the essence of the ocean light, or is it darkness? Get past this world of duality. Use this week to wake up to the complexity of your being in which everything may be expressed, and in which you with your free will can choose what it is you most deeply wish to express through your bodies, your emotions, your voice.

You are love. You are light. Yet even in a clear crystal there are specks of darkness. Please find a shell on the beach today. We've done this before. At a different retreat I gave you each a broken shell and asked you to find the wholeness in that broken shell. So I'd like you to find a small shell to go along with your crystal, to remember: right here with the brokenness is the perfection, and right here with the radiance there is darkness, and there's space for it all.

In terms of your practice, this means being present with each moment, the arising of sensation, of thought, of emotion. You all know this. When conditions are present an object will arise. It is experienced through one of the organs. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, making contact, and consciousness arises. There's perception of what it is and a feeling - pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Sometimes perception and sensation come together; sometimes one comes first, or the other.

When they come, what is the next step? How do you relate to it? If you relate to it with, “Oh! Not that!” separating yourself, other-than, “I don't want this, I want that,” then you create suffering for yourself. When you relate to it with peace and spaciousness, there can be some sense of joy even amidst a challenging experience.

A question you've heard me ask before, what is the biggest thing in this room? Space, thank you. Space. People, walls, ceiling, floor—space. That old exercise, wiggling the fingers, do it with me. Let's call these fingers the five aggregates. All you can see is the aggregates. Now look through and see the space. The space remains. The aggregates come and go. One, another one, a different one, they fold and unfold.

Now if I were to come up to you like this,(flinging his hand in someone's face) there's a contraction, yes? Contraction. Objects come and there's a contraction. The issue is not that there will be a contraction. You are humans; this is written into the mammalian reflexes. The contraction is not a problem. But when there's a contraction and then the thought, “I shouldn't contract around this body pain, around this angry memory, I shouldn't contract,” that just is more contraction, more getting caught in the spinning wheel. Why should you not contract? (shouts Boo!) Anybody that did not contract? You are mammals. You live in a mammal body. It will contract.

Breathing in, I am aware of the contraction. Breathing out, I smile to the contraction, and I bring myself into the uncontracted. Right there with the contraction is spaciousness.

I want to steer you away from the ongoing pattern of self-judgment and into resting in that spaciousness with a smile, seeing yes, sometimes there's contraction, sometimes there's body pain, sadness, negative thought, fear, grasping, aversion. These will arise. The conditions have not yet been fully purified. If they arise-- do you know the four parts of the traditional statement of right effort? Who knows that, who knows Part I?

John: To nurture the skillful mind states that have already arisen.

Aaron: Thank you. Based on that, who knows Part II?

Q: To abandon the unskillful states that arise.

Aaron: III? To nurture the skillful states that have not yet arisen. To help create the conditions for those skillful states to arise. Part IV? (someone asks for a repetition) We're not doing these in the precise order, but what we gave as Part III is to nurture those skillful states that have not yet arisen, to nurture the conditions for the arising of those skillful states.

John: To nurture the skillful mind states that have already arisen.

Aaron: and to nurture the conditions that will allow skillful mind states not yet arisen to arise. So what about four:

To nurture the skillful states already arisen. That's one “already arisen.”

To support the release of those unskillful states already arisen.

To support the conditions that invite the skillful states that have not yet arisen.

To release the conditions that would support the arising of unskillful, of unwholesome states.

Right effort: The energetic will to:

 1. prevent unwholesome mind states that are not yet risen from arising;

2. cause to cease unwholesome mind states already arisen;

3. Cause to arise wholesome mind states not yet arisen; and

4. develop wholesome mind states already present.

So basically we're looking at states already arisen, wholesome and unwholesome, states not yet arisen, wholesome and unwholesome. We're looking at the whole world of conditions. What keeps these unwholesome states spinning? What keeps us spinning on the wheel with them, in the mind, in the body?

There is one condition that really covers all of it, in terms of supporting wholesome states: loving kindness, the loving heart. This is the Brahma Vihara practice we'll be working with this week. I want to point out here how easily this traditional teaching can turn into a fix-it idea.  “Prevent, cause, develop.” “Oh, here's an unskillful state! How do I get rid of it?” “There's a skillful state—I want that!” Grasping at that.

So the core of our practice is to remember, right there with the unwholesome states is the loving, radiant heart. Right there with the loving, radiant heart is the mammalian reflex; the mammal, this animal that carries you around, into which sometimes fear and other contracted emotions arise. As long as you attack those contracted emotions or physical sensations, you pull yourself more into replanting the seed, over and over. We want to release those old seeds that have brought suffering, and to nurture the seeds that have brought joy and peace. It's as simple as that. When I say it's simple, conceptually it's simple, but of course in the doing it's not so simple.

A short guided meditation, and then we're just going to go from there into the sitting.

We're out there on the sea, all of you in small rubber boats, gliding gently up and down the softly swelling water. Soft breeze, warm sun. Occasionally a dolphin swims by, bringing a smile to your face. All of you floating, each in your own little boat. We have a light rope running from one boat to another that holds you together a bit. There are many other small boats. So as you drift on this sea, and your friends drift with you, one stretching the rope a little that way, and one coming up close, even with rubber boats gently bumping, and then pulling apart again. Relaxed, at ease.

In your boat with you, you have scuba diving equipment. You have been diving, and now you've come up to rest in the sun. You know how to use this equipment. You're very at ease with going deep underwater.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a storm blows up. The water gets choppy. The wind picks up. The waves that were raising to one or two feet, little swells without white caps, suddenly are frothing with white foam, lifting up 10, 15 feet and dropping down. There are many others out in these small boats-- women, children, and old people-- and some of them are afraid. You hear them screaming as their rubber boat lifts up 15, 20 feet and then plummets down into a trough. “Help! I'll drown! Help! Help!”

Hearing the cry for help, feel the part of you that's more from the ego, that says, “Oh, I must help.”  It truly wants to help. You have a life vest on. You feel very at home in the water. You are not personally afraid, but you hear this cry for help, and there is, on the mundane level, a self that says, “Oh yes, I can do that.” Now, that's a loving intention, but can you feel how it's coming from the ego? And can you really save them all? You're going to have to grab a boat, swim to shore with it and help them up safe on land, swim back out through the big breakers and into this turbulent water, surrounded by lightning and thunder, and grab another craft and pull it in. Honor that part of you that says, “I choose to save others.” But know at the same time the contraction that comes with the thought, “I will do it. I must fix.”

Put on your scuba mask. You have a long rope attached to your boat. Drop it down through the water, through the turbulence. Dropping down and down and down... until you come to a place where the turbulence has ceased. Rest there in the stillness. No current, wind, or other turbulence is pushing at your body. Breath in and out, with gratitude for this stillness.

Now let the thought arise, “There are still beings up there being tossed by the storm. They are a part of me, and I am a part of them. So until they are safe, there cannot be true rest.” See how you tried to do it before, from the ego. “But how else can I do it? I'm either down here in the stillness or up there in the turbulence.”

You have an amazing capacity: you can stretch yourself to a hundred feet or more. Keep your feet down here in the stillness. Raise your arms and hold the intention to lift the whole upper body, the hands, the head. Go only at a pace that allows you to stay connected to the feet and the stillness. If you begin to lose that stillness, re-focus your attention back down into it momentarily. When you have regained the stillness-- and at this point although I use the phrasing, “You have regained,” it's not really you—when awareness has rested again in that stillness, awareness gives rise to the intention to come back up to the surface. Stretching the body—50 feet now, 60, 70, 90, and suddenly you're breaking the surface with the head, these huge waves crashing down, people still screaming. I want you to see that “I” cannot do anything, but stillness and awareness centered down there in that quiet deep water can then stretch itself, reach up the hands.

We don't have to swim to shore anymore; a Coast Guard cutter has come. All you have to do is push the boats up to the cutter and they'll lift the people out of the water. Go back and get another one. Any time you lose connection with the stillness, stop and bring attention down to the feet, or even shrink the body all the way down away from the turbulence. Eventually you gain the ability to be in the midst of that turbulence without losing the still space. But if needed temporarily, it's fine to drop down out of the turbulence, rest in the stillness until-- I'm going to differentiate the words awareness and consciousness, most of you have heard me make this distinction before-- until you are resting in pure awareness, in spaciousness and ease. Then consciousness reminds you people are still drowning. The intention is coming more from awareness, supramundane awareness, rather than from the ego and mundane consciousness. But you have to participate with the mind and body in the act of pushing the little crafts to the Coast Guard cutter, helping people up the ladder.

Fear may come up. Suddenly a giant wave is coming toward you. It's okay to drop down. If it looks too big, let it pass. Eventually you feel sure of your skill, to simply ride to the top of the wave and drop down the other side. But if there is fear, acknowledge the fear and reground yourself in this depth, in this pure awareness mind, this pure heart.

I'm speaking both literally and metaphorically, of course. As you sit, working with whatever primary object you use, other objects will become predominant, and some of them will be challenging, like big waves: a painful memory, a sharp stab of physical pain, grief, and more. They will come. Note the progression: consciousness and contact, perception, and feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. And then any follow-up: physical body contraction, a feeling of aversion or grasping or any other kind of mental formation or body reaction. This is just another object. Don't create something separate out of it. Everything is arising from conditions and passing away.

This week increasingly trust your ability to rest in the Unconditioned. At our retreats we don't speak so much of an instant realization of the Unconditioned as much as knowing the omnipresence of the Unconditioned and finding increasing ability to rest there while still responding to ourselves and the world.

Here then is my first day's instruction. John and Barbara will follow with related ongoing instructions, but start here. During the day it may help to literally take yourself down to the beach and sit, eyes open, on the beach, seeing the waves coming in. Rest in that calm depth. I would not send you into an icy cold ocean. I don't know how cold the water is. If it's of comfortable temperature, take yourself down there at some point in a bathing suit and sit in waist-deep water, letting the waves come in. Sit on the edge, where as a bigger wave comes in it will touch your buttocks and maybe up to your waist and then recede back to bare sand. Watch any contraction—“Wave! Wave!”, then it recedes. Here comes a big one, it comes all the way up your shoulders. And then smaller ones.

Keep your attention fixed on the simultaneity of the cresting waves and the ocean itself. The waves are just one expression of the ocean. What is the ocean? Your emotions and physical sensations are just one expression of your being, expressions of certain skandhas. What is the ocean? What is the true self? Get to know it. Use this stone I have given you, to help you.

Now let us sit.

(session ends)

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