Friday, 4 August 2017
Just before leaving for my retreat to Noormarkku, a dear friend of mine – a Vipassanā meditator herself – told me: “Try not to go too deep, when you are there!”. She spoke out of her friendly care, knowing me well enough to imagine what kind of challenges I might face.
One thing is to take a proper Vipassanā retreat, scrupulously following the prescribed routine: that rigid structure works like a life jacket, allowing the meditator to dive deep into the practice without danger of drowning. A totally different thing is to jump into a free-style retreat like this one. Here I walk an uncharted territory. I have to be careful not to dig too deep without first exploring the surface.
When I arrived here, my only plan was to meditate and write. Little by little, some routines developed by themselves, out of my needs and interests. For example, I noticed that it is easier for me to meditate in the morning. Therefore, I sit three hours in the morning and only one hour before going to bed. I decided to commit to a daily minimum of four hours. Yet, it is up to me to choose if meditating the three morning hours in a row, or to take breaks in between.
I write a lot. Maybe too much, because in the evening I feel almost exhausted. On the other hand, one of the reasons I came here was to improve my writing. My overworking is a reaction to this unusual freedom: in my everyday life I never have so much time for just writing.
However, in these days I experienced a little conflict. Meditation centres me into my body, releasing physical and mental knots, while writing brings me into my head, where I dwell in intellectual reflection. If I write too much, I produce other knots and tensions in my body and in my mind. In fact, when I meditate after a whole day of writing, thoughts continue to haunt me in my head, and I constantly loose my focus and balance.
Initially, I naively thought meditation and writing to be two counterbalancing polarities: the first being the tool for insight; the second being the tool for self expression. I thought they might be like inhalation and exhalation in breathing: you go in with meditation, then you come out through writing. Meditation can be a way for reaching your core. Writing can be the tool for sharing your insights. I still believe in this theory, but I think my mistake was to match the two practices in the wrong proportions.
Paramahansa Yogananda advises: “If you read for an hour, write for two, pray for three, and meditate all the time!”. This sentence encourages spirituals seekers to prioritise intuitive wisdom over devotion, devotion over reason, reason over intellectual knowledge. I know for a fact that other spiritual teachers disagree, and put for example devotion over insight, but I will not enter in this debate now. What counts for me is my experience of these days. I think I squeezed my rational brain too much – there I should listen to my friend’s advice of not going too deep! But I still have the chance to reverse the proportion of the writing-meditating time in favour of meditation. Or maybe I will just take an extra walk, a few more pictures, who knows…
You know when kids start playing together without any premeditated setup? Play just triggers spontaneously. Eventually, some patterns emerge, a few rules get defined, but the atmosphere remains open to changes and surprises. Similarly, my experience in Noormarkku is like being a child, playing with the countless possibilities of shaping and reshaping this artistic and spiritual retreat.
I am aware that entangling artistic research with my spiritual path is a delicate business. I really want to take care not to loose myself in dangerous depths. I trust my experience and sensitivity. I trust that if I keep it playful, I will give myself time to get more acquainted with the ‘surface’ of such a mysterious land. But at times you just cannot avoid it. Depth reaches you unexpectedly. As my favourite Italian actor Roberto Benigni says, speaking about the masterpiece “La Commedia” by Dante Alighieri: “Nothing is deeper than surface!”.
August 5, 2017 at 11:32 pm
Thank you for sharing your retreat experience.
I have been attracted to both Yogananda’s SRF teachings and S.N. Goenka’s approach to Vipassana since my first exposure to each. I came across your blogs because, at the time, I had questions about reconciling what seem on the surface like fundamental differences (but my intuition whispered were not), and went looking for what others with this dual exposure would have to say. I remained following your blogs because your explorations and observations inspire me. Thank you for sharing your journeying and congratulations on being able, despite writing in a second language, to reach around the world and touch this heart.
I have been pondering the issue you raise in this post about the tension between meditating and writing in a retreat environment: “Meditation centres me into my body, releasing physical and mental knots, while writing brings me into my head, where I dwell in intellectual reflection.” I suppose this is why 10- day retreats as taught by S.N. Goenka do not allow writing. Beyond this, though, your post brought to mind observations from Tibetan teachers I’ve heard about the way that hearing, reflecting, and meditating support and amplify each other. So, for example, Mahayana meditation on emptiness (akin to anatta, absence of self, which along with dukkha, suffering, and anicca, impermanence, are characteristics revealed in the field of panna, wisdom, spoken of by Theravadins, including S.N. Goenka) needs a basis in understanding that comes from study and reflection even though study and reflection on their own are insufficient for awakening. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article on the relationship of hearing, reflection and meditation: http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Three_wisdom_tools
How might this conception of a braid of three reinforcing elements be applied to moments where meditating and writing seem to pull in opposite directions in retreat? What would happen if you reframed and refocused the writing as an exercise to reflect on the same field that you are exploring through observation of the breath and sensation, using it to focus on what your direct meditative observations reveal or don’t reveal about dukkha, anicca and anatta? Might this help the meditating and writing converge rather than diverge? I don’t have an answer, and realize this may be completely unhelpful for you. Sorry if that is the case. But this is the question that came up for me while reading your post and I thought I’d share it.
August 6, 2017 at 4:28 am
Hi, thank you very much for the time you took for articulating your thoughts. In fact, I am still believing that meditation and reflection should be friends, corroborating both spiritual and intellectual vividness in a meditator. If writing on my direct meditative experiences is the way, I do not have an answer either. Worth to try, though! Your observation makes a lot of sense to me. And mostly, I want to thank you for your constructive way of giving feedback. I feel your support.