This article is one of a series of occasional submissions by long-term practitioners at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. The purpose of this series is to highlight the on-going practice sessions at CIMC and how these sessions are bringing new understanding and clarification to those enrolled in those sessions. These submissions have been approved by the guiding teachers at CIMC.
A member of our ongoing “Old Yogis” practice group at Cambridge
Insight Meditation Center (CIMC) recently told me that one of our homework assignments
had helped her overcome her aversion to an IMS work retreat job she had disliked
intensely. During the women’s retreat at IMS last March, she was assigned
to the kitchen, where most of her tasks suited her fine. But washing the floor
in the walk-in refrigerator was anathema. She dreaded having to drag out the
heavy jugs of oil, the cumbersome bags of flour, and the big boxes of fruit
and vegetables, and having to drag them back in when the floor was dry. She
hated the mop, with its long dingy strings; and she especially disliked having
to wring it out over and over again. When the job was done, she inspected her
work like a boot camp sergeant, judging herself a failed floor washer.
During sittings in the meditation hall, her mind often transported her to the
dreaded walk-in refrigerator, her aversion assuming the proportions that such
aversions sometimes do on retreat. She tried one of the practices we had focused
on in our Old Yogis group—ascribing equal meaning to each and every activity,
and engaging wholeheartedly in whatever one is doing. But to no avail—washing
the floor just didn’t measure up to eating a delicious lunch, or even
to her other kitchen duties for that matter. Narayan Liebenson Grady, one of
the retreat teachers and also our Old Yogis teacher at CIMC, suggested in a
group interview that the practice of “leaving no trace”--another
one of our Old Yogis assignments-might be helpful. (Our group has been focusing
on no-self (annata) for several years and on the aggregate of perception (sanna)
for some months.) “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely,
like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself,” counsels Suzuki Roshi
in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Our preconceived ideas about our activities
leave traces that “make our minds very complicated,” he writes,
as do our recollections of our activities. But, he explains, when we act “with
a quite simple, clear mind, we have no notion or shadows and our activity is
strong and straightforward.” When the yogi who hated the string mop began
practicing leaving no trace, “Washing the floor became a whole different
experience,” she said. “It was just another part of the job, and
I was able to do it mindfully and then let it go.”
Our Old Yogis group focused on Suzuki Roshi’s counsel for several weeks,
discussing its meaning in our weekly meetings and practicing leaving no trace
between classes. Several members of our group said they viewed “leave
no trace” as a fundamental reminder to be mindful. A number of us observed
what a powerful ally this practice can be in such relatively simple situations
as trying to let go of anger when another driver cuts us off, or letting go
of the pleasure of a good meal when it’s over. One yogi described his
efforts to leave no trace in interactions with others—attempting, as he
explained, “to keep conversations clean, so that when they’re over,
there is as little residue as possible, as little as possible for the other
person to deal with. When there’s “less self,” he said, there
are fewer traces in what you leave around, whether it’s a plate
or a hurtful comment.”
Another assignment that resonated strongly for many of us was being aware
of wanting to be seen in a certain way, or not wanting to be seen in a certain
way. One yogi I queried about this said he is very invested in being perceived
as “a nice guy.” He worries, for example, that because he is a man,
women are sometimes afraid of him, and he feels wounded when they are. “This
assignment helped me lighten up and let go and laugh at myself a little bit,”
he said. “How is a woman alone on a dark street supposed to know that
I am a nice guy and that she has nothing to fear from me?” Another yogi
said she recognizes that she wants to see herself as a good mother and that
her daughter’s behavior has been her measure of her success as a mother.
“We mothers have difficulty letting go of the notion that how our children
are doing in the world reflects on us. It’s hard to see our children as
separate individuals with their own Karma. I thought I was a terrible mother
when my daughter was a teenager. Everything teenagers do that parents don’t
like was a sign that I had blown it. Now that my daughter is a lovely young
adult, my perceptions about myself as a mother are much kinder and less judgmental.”
Because of our work with sanna, she added, she is increasingly aware that her
perceptions about being a good mother aren’t necessarily true, and she
is less inclined to judge herself as either a bad or a good mother.
In our class discussion about this assignment, a member of our group pointed
out how liberating it would be if we were unconcerned with others’ perceptions
of us—positive perceptions as well as negative ones. “It’s
tempting to want to just get rid of others’ bad opinions of us,”
he said. “But if we really want to be free, I think we have to let go
of our investment in peoples’ good opinions too.” In fact as he
noted, it’s not possible to let go of the bad opinions and hold onto the
good ones, since good and bad are interdependent.
In the months during which our Old Yogis group has worked with sanna, we have
also practiced being aware of perceiving experiences as good or bad, being aware
of seeing others as better or worse than or equal to ourselves, and focusing
on a person we are close to and noticing our perceptions about him or her. Shortly
before our late-summer semester break, Narayan read some of our past assignments
aloud and reflected that just hearing them is a teaching. One reason this is
so true, I think, is that she chooses assignments that invite us to be aware
of things that we do all the time, or of issues that come up for us constantly.
Most recently, we’ve been focusing on happiness. We’ve practiced
being aware of different sources of happiness and of things that we thought
would make us happy but didn’t. In class we’ve talked about how
the cultural model of happiness that exalts pleasure, achievement, prestige,
and material things is ultimately unsatisfactory. And we’ve reflected
on the revelation of a monk who wrote on the wall of a cave in Thailand, “Oh
joy, to find that there is no happiness to be found in this world.” The
monk had discovered that it is possible to find great joy independent of conditions.
A yogi who is a composer told me about an experience he had that fit the cultural
model of happiness but turned out to be quite fraught, as our monk could no
doubt have foretold. One of his pieces was chosen to be performed at a prestigious
venue with a top orchestra. “Everyone said how wonderful it was and how
happy I should be,” he said, “but I thought that there was going
to be a lot of dukka.” As he had anticipated, the rehearsals were stressful,
and he was anxious that there wasn’t enough rehearsal time. And although
the performance went quite well, “there was a lot of worry and suffering
throughout.”
Around the same time, he said, he was carrying his laundry home from the laundromat
when “this really deep joy welled up for no apparent reason. It was a
simple but profound sense of peace and lightness, and it was totally unexpected.
This is the happiness that comes from not being burdened with trying to get
somewhere.”
During our semester break, our assignment has been to notice the changing
nature of happiness. When we resume, it will be instructive to hear others’
insights. And if the work we have done in our Old Yogis group has not convinced
us to wholeheartedly share the monk’s exhilaration over his discovery
that worldly happiness can’t be found, it has surely contributed to our
collective well-being.