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January 11, 2004: On the Subject of Sticking With It
Last December I attended a seven day meditation retreat in Providence, Rhode Island, with Zen Master Soeng Hyang of the Kwan Um school. She is a powerful, feisty, smart teacher. I wanted to practice kongans (crazy Zen questions like "What was your face before your mother was born?") with her. The retreat started every morning at 3 am for me. It ended at 10 PM. Constant hard work.
In the Kwan Um tradition there is only one dharma talk, offered smack in the middle of the retreat. The night before the talk Soeng Hyang asked me, during an interview with her, if I would do the talk. Following a long jagged inhale of breath, "Of course." In that moment I knew what the subject would be. How I manage to stay until the end of retreats without running away. The topic could as easily have been how I stick with meditation practice without running away. Same truths.
After almost twenty years of attending or leading long retreats, there is always a moment when most of me says, "This so sucks. I'm gone." By now, I know it is a result of physical and emotional exhaustion and is a sign that the retreat is working its magic, although it doesn't feel like it at the time. And every time I hear myself saying the escape words, I know to kick in three antidotes: to lean into the retreat harder; to relax; and to remember words of encouragement from a monk or nun who has lived this path before me. And every single time, I stay.
The three antidotes work miracles. Leaning in is about looking at what I'm resisting and instead of being lazy, or trying to escape, I put more energy into it. Here are two examples from the Providence retreat. Right before I left Detroit for the airport, I fell hard on my left knee. It still hurts enough to distract me a month later. I knew that a sore knee meant that sitting would be agony by mid morning. We had the option of sitting on chairs. I also knew that if I sat on a chair I would fall asleep…..a lot. So I sat on a cushion. And when I couldn't practice for the pain; I stood behind my cushion along with beginners who weren't used to long sittings. And stayed.
Leaning in example two: When I went on a pilgrimage with my root teacher, Samu Sunim, to Korea in 1999, we ate seaweed soup more than frequently. It got to the point where I was afraid to look at what we were eating. Leaving Korea, I promised myself that I would never have to eat a seaweed based soup again, health benefits be damned. In Providence, for one of the lunches, I could smell the soup before it hit the room we were in. Seaweed based. Instant nausea. A cramped stomach. When the server came around to me, however, I stuck my empty bowl out as far as I could asking for a big serving. If we were going to eat seaweed soup, I was going to eat it with gusto. The great surprise? It was delicious.
Leaning in is a lifestyle that I brought home with me. It means that I work hard to attend to details, and to deal with small problems as soon as they surface. The benefits are enormous. One of the biggest ones is that leaning in has cut down neurotic worrying by so much that I actually miss it.
The second antidote is the gift of reminding myself that I have lots of time to answer all of the kongans that get thrown my way. There is no need to rush. This antidote grew out of a long retreat in Chicago that happened almost ten years ago. At the time I was a seminary student, working on the question, "What is it?" For months I had been wrestling with the question. Every answer I took into the interview room was thrown back at me with a ring of my teacher's bell, throwing me out. Finally in one interview, Sunim looked at me and said something like, "You have twenty four hours. Go into the meditation hall and don't eat or sleep. Just do your practice."
So I did. At first I shouted it. Then I cried with frustration. Then I whispered it, matching the rhythm to my steps. Then I lay on the floor and said it to the ceiling. For twenty four hours, only practice. Only questioning. At the end of the time period, nothing. I still didn't have a response.
When it was my turn for an interview the next day, I walked into the interview room and offered my resignation as a dharma student. I had failed. Sunim just looked at me. Then with the softest voice possible, he said, "P'arang. You have ten thousand years."
Ten thousand years. Suddenly all the pressure fell away. With ten thousand years I could just do my best in a relaxed, there is plenty of time fashion. So I did. And the response was right there. Since then, whenever I tense up at a retreat, I tell myself that I have ten thousand years. Because it is true. And just keep going.
The third antidote is to remember or read words of encouragement from someone who has walked this path in an earlier time. In Providence, my man was Chinul, a wonderful Korean monk who lived in the twelfth century and who had enough hardships in his life to make anyone want to run away to sex, drugs and hip-hop. But he didn't. Instead he became a great wise man, weaving different Korean schools of Buddhism into one beautiful tapestry. Along the way he gave advice to the monks and nuns that, in a word, rocked. Here's a sample:
"Strengthen your will; reprimand yourself; reprove your own laziness. Know your faults and turn toward what is good. Reform and repent your bad conduct; train and control your mind. Cultivate earnestly and the power of contemplation will grow; train continuously and your practice will become increasingly pure.…If you always remember your good fortune, you will never backslide. If you persevere in this way for a long time, naturally samadhi and prajna will become full and bright and you will see your own mind-nature; you will use compassion and wisdom like sorcery and ferry across sentient beings; you will become a great field of merit…I urge you to exert yourselves!" (From Robert Buswell's wonderful The Collected Works of Chinul, p. 138)
For this new year, let's exert ourselves, you and I. For the sake of all beings. And because, in the end, its a blast!
