Please Log in to Vote.

1 out of 1 members found this useful.

Seeking Feedback- tailoring a Zen retreat \ "Integralizing" it

Posted September 1st, 2010 by The World is Li...

Dear integral companions,

Soon I plan to go on semi-formal retreat at a Zen center, in nature, in Europe.
Semi-formal as in, there is flexibility regarding leaving and staying, as well as free time during the noon hours, no silent meals etc, electronics are allowed. The settings are rural.

I see it as a natural extension to my wish to practice, to my interest in Zen, my affinity with tenets of Buddhism and so forth.
It's has also been a very intense and emotional period, full with ambivalence and discovering very uncomfortable shadow elements within me and I know this won't end the day I enter the retreat.
I would really appreciate input as how to incorporate dealing with shadow elements- especially with hostility deeply felt, disgust with myself, and difficulty in feeling unburdened by 'my past'.
Also I fear making the erotic side even more uncomfortable\oppressed than it is.

Obviously it is personal, but actually sometimes with complete anonimity new ideas can come forth more easily.
I also add that, despite doubts presented here, this particular retreat setting seem really good and that I have no alternative plans.

yours with respect

Please Log in to Vote.

2 out of 2 members found this useful.

retreat: a misnomer

Posted September 1st, 2010 by Kerry Dugan

A semi-formal retreat? Sounds like an opportunity to clarify responsibility.

A formal retreat, with provisional structure relieving entry level participants of some kinds of discretionary deciding (or indecision), allowing them to simplify the context of focus, is, for many folks, easier.

As for dealing with ’hostility deeply felt’… if it is deeply felt it’s not a obstacle, not in the way that enshadowed hostilities are. The mosquito that we hear is not the one that will drink us alive.

It’s entirely possible to sit in the middle of our own hurricane of rage, gravitating to the eye of that storm, the very hub of tumult and torment, and witness the profound beauty of that gift of energy, that direct access to human condition, seeing through to the peace of heart that waits in the guise of tantrum. The most elegant justice is enfolded in the seed of pure anger. Pushing an anger away we delete a fruition of wisdom. We steal that justice from everyone when we maintain a gulf between who we, in totality, are, and what the anger, or disgust, or discomfort offers us.

Can you dedicate your rage to realization? How formal or informal do circumstances need to be before the relevance of anything but your own attention is dispelled and rendered moot to suffering?

The retreat can be a birth canal with every breath your first. It can be a war zone, past assailing future assailing past, or… it can be a gate into the earth that’s not cleaved into hells and heavens.

Avail yourself of the support of the sangha. Let all your faith and doubt and determination merge in self trust. Be honest with the teacher(s), allowing them to offer you all they can.

For all the private travails brought to retreats you may find that you open to one another in profound ways, sitting as much with the emotions of each as you might with your own. Make it all your own. A synergy of practice can compound the efforts (and effortlessness) present, propelling a deepening stillness, where a whole other process begins.

Welcome the shared space. Try not to isolate in detours of rut. You carry one another. Let yourself be lifted. Uphold those around you.

The smooth zendo floor is also a pillar, a towering volcanic mesa, forged of molten passion of generations of realizers. Feel it hold you. Rest in its ground. Persevere over the pitfalls of its slopes and fling your whole self onto its supportive strata, poised with interior vistas unbounded.

Whatever comes up, what’s-in-it-for-you will either keep your state fixed or fluid, intractable or traceless, moment to moment. How to exhaust an obsession without entertaining it? How to cue in to limitlessness from within finite anguish? The rote advice: pass from ignoring it… to seeing it… to being it, could be one of the most compressed shorthands in history. The rich process that leads across everyone’s no-ones-land of separate selfhood is always utterly case specific, uniquely nuanced and embodied individually.

The discomfort you notice around discomfort is a way home.

To refrain from continually packing baggage is to step toward belonging. Examine your contents. Choose the tools and toys that serve yourself and others. To lighten our load indiscriminately leaves us without what we need where we go.

Innate perfection isn’t a place we eventually arrive at. It’s what we bring.