Something of that timelessness ran through my
retreat. The clock carried numbers, but time was measured by the slow and
repeated change of light and of my own energy. There was no clear change of
season, the weather cycled through days of wet and cool then hot and dry and
back again. There were always some plants in flower, and with no leaf-fall,
there was no ‘winter’ as I know it. And when the external senses don’t detect
time in terms of moving forwards, the time of the mind becomes apparent. This
time is cyclical rather than sequential and measured in terms of memories and
anticipations that arise, push and, with practice, subside. Hence, marked by
aspirations as well as hindrances, the turns and stories of personal history
become the meditation theme. As my teacher, Ajahn Sumedho, famously said: ‘The
past is a memory, the future is uncertain, now is the knowing.’
Well after a few years, the searing and
poignant memories of my personal history have been sent through the ‘forgive
and/or let go’ mill so many times that they’re worn down and infertile.
Meanwhile, another feature of the samana life is that there’s not much to look
forward to (as Ajahn Sumedho also remarked, adding, generally with a big laugh:
‘except old age, sickness and death’). Hmm. This may all sound bleak, and would
be if the world described by personal history were the only one we have access
to. People certainly make a lot of it, with its status and events. But isn’t
that world always marked by wishing and regretting, meeting and parting,
gaining and losing and physical decline? Meanwhile, ‘now is the knowing’: we’re
always aware. This is outside of history and person.
Awareness is the centre of what we call
‘mind’, but normally of course, the mind is awareness plus regret, or longing,
or analysis, or sidetrack and rumbling trains of thought moving forward,
backwards – or anywhere except the simply open present. So it takes training, but
with guidance and effort, the meditator centres on awareness as the feature of
the mind that is constant, irreducible and needs no comment. Consequently, as
awareness releases from these associated activities, it is revealed in its
depth and warm beauty. It’s a given treasure.
However such release is a deep process. Even
as history and the longing for something to do recede, a long meditation
retreat still reveals the extent to which the mind refers to time. It might
manifest with the thought: ‘I’ll sit in meditation for two hours and then
walk.’ This seems harmless enough, or even a responsible commitment, but what
does ‘two hours’ – or even ‘two minutes’ – mean as a directly felt experience?
What lies behind planning and measuring? And how relevant is a time measurement
to meditation or awakening? Is it the mind’s attempt to derive value – as in ‘I
sat without moving for two whole hours’ – a value that rapidly devalued when
one discovers that some Master or another sat for three, four or five days
rock-solid in samādhi? And is that necessarily
a mark of awakening? When my mind plays that one, it seems more like conceit:
conceiving oneself to be better, worse, the same as someone else – and the
‘someone else’ is also just what the mind conceives. And this is just one of a heap of time markers,
along with the anguish of ‘progress’ and ‘failure’, that descend with every
attempt to create personal significance. So the humility of the practice is to
acknowledge limitations in terms of energy or pain-tolerance and relax the
mental stuff around that. It gets more useful to simply move around or sit
still, lie down, stand or chant in accordance with what is conducive to skilful
mind-states and their enjoyment, or what supports the allaying or penetration
of unskilful states. Natural boundaries arise, and they can flex.
Another time sense that comes up is ‘what
happens next?’ This could be the ‘waiting for a breakthrough’ syndrome, or the
restless mind’s search for something to do. As in: ‘It’s time to do X now, so
I’d better come out of meditation.’ Thus the mind searches for markers in time,
seeks limits and craves for its own bondage. Meanwhile what is most pertinently
occurring is the creation of benchmarks and highlights where none need exist.
So one of my meditation reminders was and is: ‘there is no next moment, so what
is this now?’ How does it feel? And
what triggers it? How important is that? As for ‘again’ – even when it’s in
terms of coming to this lovely monastery again – all that ever comes ‘again’
are time-marks tinged with suffering. But time-marks aren’t there until the
mind makes them. And it doesn’t have to; in fact it feels a lot better to not
make them.
So a good part of the practice was and is just
about feeling these marks and releasing them. Their images, ideas and the accompanying
mental pictures are saññā – which both
dazzles awareness and triggers the reactions that block wisdom. This is why it’s
been useful to work on ‘personal history’ all these years; that is all saññā. And who now, does all that happen to? Nobody
but a dream, a tale signifying … an arousal, a stirring or a locking, in the
nerves. So, with what has become as standard practice for me, I stay in the
body, feeling those effects, widen and soften attention and breathe through.
Not to get rid of or release or understand anything, but just because it’s the
natural response from awareness. And as the mark subsides, and the time sense with
it, there is a deepening.
Then – how does it feel when there’s no gain,
no failure, nothing to achieve or even understand? Can I open to that gift? The
sense of felt space then becomes very acute, and enjoyable. And far from
spacing out, walking within that open space (especially in the world of trees
and birds, where time is not created) feels about as real as it can get to
being on this planet. The nature of awareness is to embrace and share itself
among us.
This is what makes the practice, and all who
enter into it, generous. Dhamma shares our qualities with whoever can receive
them. And although personally I feel that I have nothing special or original to
say, the world of invitations to teach or visit keeps rolling on with gusto. So
that means time, appointments and logistics; visas, schedules and bookings.
Their absurdities mount up. I’m currently being asked by an airline what food I
would like to eat on a flight next June. They call this the real world? I can almost hear the gum trees laughing.
