After - Princeton Retreat

Couldn't sleep well for a few days. I feel as though I have been 'sparked' by the Company and beautiful setting. I've eaten only two small meals since I've been home as well... seems to go with this.

I signed on because I feel I'm able to write about perhaps the most personally moving of the excercizes we engaged in: You Seeing Being Seeing. The first time we spent only a few minutes. First, a minute "You Seeing", then a minute "Being Seeing",which sounds like not a lot of time I realize, but when I think about each excercize, I can honestly say that the ten minute excercizes were not more substantive or even 'longer' than the minute excercizes for me. This little excercize, in which I had a sensation of a suspended rubber band, was a kind of prep for a profound moment that would come around the corner... "Being Seeing" walking around the pond in the stunningly perfect weather.

So we set outdoors walking, and each of us seemed to find our own little spaces and distances. There was a symmetry about it I think. At some point I found myself at the edge looking over the pond, with SSL at the other side. Once I caught sight of her my attention expanded out without my moving and I could see everyone in a way... not see with my eyes, but see nonetheless. I began walking again. I came across a little ledge of stones and walked the edges like a child, had the sense of being looked out for, protected. Noticed the many leaves and scraped my feet through them until I had to grin. Noticed I'd turned a corner and others beginning to walk to the room, and then I was gripped from inside out ... a sensation I can't describe adequately but brings tears to my eyes every time I try. Great Love. I am in this Great Love and this Great Love is me... and furthermore this IS compassion. We'd had some discussion of tonglen before heading outside, and it is perhaps this residue which caused the flowing framework of my hearing so clearly "Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends", and I could hear the many bodhisattva and compassion teachings arise and knew that Jesus was talking about all sentient beings, whatever the translaters may say.

I remembered the unfolding lotus vision...
And knew that nothing was witheld...
Known, and beginning to know.

All this in bit of a flash. I couldn't speak of it for quite a while. .

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11/11

After writing the above I went for my notes, to see what else I might share with others. In the airport, still tasting Being Seeing, I wrote "Perfect Love Casts Out Fear" which is a Biblical line, next to "No Hinderance and Therefore No Fear" which is a line from the Heart Sutra.

Other notes from the retreat? I'll jot them down in hopes that the feeling may convey:

-Falling leaves and Tilopa's outline

The leaves shivering off the trees...some letting go, some nearly ready. There is a joy about it all. "Don't try to make anything happen." "Let go of what has happened; let go of what may come..." A burst of wind, just after the pause, and a mass shedding... a collective letting go. All Fall Together.

Sharing as surrender, touching/tasting authenticity... raw givenness.

-A discussion of dying before dying

...in that peace, I abide... I see you from the other side... (a nice little tune)

-Groundlessness 

Stepping out. Risks. Friends with turbulence.

"Relax, right now, and rest." Non-expectation is freedom. Nothing is missing.

_____________________________

Once, when my younger daughter was small, I was tickling her relentlessly. I began to hear all the voices of the relatives warning me against 'spoiling her" ... that I should hold back. As she laughed and laughed and I couldn't stop, I heard in a kind of wordless way "You are increasing her capacity to receive pleasure." 

That line probably changed the way I parented entirely.

Walking around the lake was similar to that feeling, except that it was for *everything* and *everyone*...even myself... inclusive, endless, and real.

A note was shared with me yesterday:

As the well-known contemporary Indian teacher Sri Nisargadatta, famous for sitting on a crowded street corner selling inexpensive bidis, or Indian cigarettes, once commented, “The problem is not desire. It’s that your desires are too small.”