Curveball + Silver Lining

23 March 2011

3-23-2011 [Russia, Moscow/Obninsk]

On 2-26-2011 I stood in the Bangkok airport in shock and momentary despair, as my plane for Russia left to the MotherLand without me. My first missed flight ever. WHY?!?! WHY ME?!?!!!! I know it's all for the better. I know it's all an illusion. But HOW is THIS good?!!! This is what my panicking mind was telegraphing at warp-speed. I did not realize just how badly I wanted to see my family until the "candy" was taken away from me. I suppose, that is the basic human nature – "you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone...." [as the popular song puts it]. Fortunately, gone was only the plane.

In a day, though, an answer has come. While in Cambodia, a thoughtful Japanese globe-trotter has shared with me a word of a silent 10 day Vipassana retreat at Suan Mokkh Monastery [I didn't even know how to spell that at the time] that actually allows one to do movement meditation in addition to the ample sitting. Knowing my spine's aversion to sitting for any extended period of time, I knew that if I wanted to ever try a Vipassana experience, that would need to be the context. My body needs to move. More than that, the retreat she described was in a coconut grove amidst the lush Thai jungle and sitting right on a hotspring. My body did a little jiggle dance at the thought of that. I knew I had to go at some point. So, as I got back to my hotel [that happened to still have room for me – bless the Lub-D in Bangkrak, BKK] and washed off the sweat and tears I've worked up gearing for the Russian climate amidst the Thai heat and having my hopes dashed, I got on the internet and found out about the retreat details of the Suan Mokkh Dhamma Hermitage International Retreat Center.

[http://www.suanmokkh-idh.org/]

It turned out a retreat was held once a month, and one was starting the very next day! Moreover, there was a train leaving [that's right!] in 2 hours from the time I began my research heading for the Chaya station and arriving at 3:30 A.M. – 30 minutes before the first meditation! Synchronicity? Did I create this? Those rhetorical questions.... Need I say I was right on that train, trying my luck, even though the site said there is no electronic booking for the retreat, and one HAD to show up in person ONE DAY before the retreat [and I was showing up the day of the start – right before the first meditation]?

They let me in, those kind souls! I sat amidst the gentle cocconut-palm wind on a sandy floor of the meditation hall, surrounded by candles and making friends with the local mosquitos while meditating....right at 4A.M. on the dot. Magic, I call it, though, I'd like to think there was some conscious creation to it somewhere along the line. Monastic format indeed it was. I was a simple occupant of a tiny monastic cell just big enough for a wooden bed with a straw mat for a mattress and a Buddha pillow.....and happy as a clam to be there in silence and hermitage, clearing out the remaining cobwebs of my mind and slowing down its wheels in silence and inquiry. The day would start with a 4AM bell wake-up followed by a meditation and a 2 hour yoga session....then a "Dhamma Talk." We were to eat on a monastic schedule – 2 meals a day - a breakfast and a lunch, and nothing after 12 A.M. Though, to my surprise, my body was not hungry at all and has quickly adjusted to the eating/sleeping ways. A couple discoveries have arisen almost immediately – the first was that that much sitting made my joints cry for yoga and stretching, giving me a new look at this ancient art of a movement practice, making it vital to my surviving the experience [though I have practiced it for over 14 years, I've never seen it as a survival art].

The second discovery was that of the origins of Suan Mokkh and the nature of the "Dhamma Talks." I found out that the main Suan Mokkh monastery as well as the Dhamma Internation Hermitage Center were a successful attempt of one man, Buddhadasa Bikkhu ["Slave of the Buddha" in Pali lingo], to bring the Thai Buddhism to the roots of the teaching. As a young man, he was deeply saddened by the fundamental absorption of Buddhism in his country by ritual and tradition and an almost complete loss of the original Avatar's message: "Awakening + Freedom from Suffering/Dukkha are possible in the Here and Now for every person breathing, and it can be achieved through the breathing or "anapanasati" meditation." So he went on to learn the language Buddha spoke to the Thai people – Pali – and to translate many of his disciples' writings into Thai language. He grasped the simple timeless essence of the teaching and got that his contribution in this life was to bring this teaching to the people of his country in the same simple, unadulterated form as the Teacher brought it to the people some 2500 years ago. And so he devoted his life to this mission. That is how Suan Mokkh has come to be.

http://www.suanmokkh-idh.org/idh-wat.html

It has become a place where people came to study the "Law of Dhamma" – the Natural Law of Dharma, in other words. A way to live in alignment with the Greater Current of the illusion we all experienced as "the world" while recognizing the fundamental "nothing-ness" [the Void] underlying it all. He claimed, contrary to the thought of the majority at the time, that Buddhism is not a philosphy, but much more of a science of living in alignment with the Natural Law. He claimed that, contrary to the popular belief, Buddhism does have a God, though impersonal, unlike in many other religions: the Law of Dharma. He interpreted Buddha's teaching as a way to free oneself from suffering in the here and now by becoming fully present and accepting what is and living in harmony with the Law of Dharma.

Thus I got my up-close-and-personal to the Pali roots of Buddhism without expecting it at all. All that spaced with healthy doses of sitting/walking anapanasati meditation and hot spring soaks [some of them were discreet runs to the springs in the wee hours of the morning with my candle lantern just to help me wake up!

"Vipassana" means literally "clear vision." That I didn't know either before the retreat. Though, the irony of me being at a "Dhamma Hermitage" with a retreat dedicated to obtaining "Clear Vision" was not lost on me, given the intention of my Journey as meeting with my Dhamma path in clarity. The flight was definitely well-missed. I saw how "that was for the better" now. Funny how it all works. About day 8, when I've come to peace with my joint pains from sitting and got just the right timing of showering myself with mosquito repellent, during a morning yoga session I had a sudden, unexpected epiphany. After 14 years of practicing the movement art, I've finally gotten the breathing rhythm in sync with the body dance to where "all bodies" [breath + physical 'skin suit'] were dancing together in an animistic fashion of nature saluting the morning arising of the sun. The dogs, cats, warriors and eagles were flying through my body as I breathed and changed asanas....no 'shrooms needed in the experience ;O) And I got the joy and access that yoga could give people viscerally – "in my bones." It was a true moment of "clear vision." Now I knew why they called the practice "Vipassana."

I wanted to meet with my Dharma path. And here I stood being witness to the mystery of an ancient movement art blossoming in its essence before me. I wanted to go to India at some point even before this experience to spend a month in a Yoga retreat and learn the skill on a professional level. However, I have NEVER though of teaching it to the world. And something clicked in: I could still go to India to learn the practice with rigour, but I could also help bring the yoga art back to its roots – as a breathing spiritual practice that presences people to their true timeless nature and prepairs their bodies for meditation as well as unites them with nature. I could teach it as what I saw it in that moment: A DANCE OF ALL BODIES – breath, skin suit, nature, archetypes.....WOW. That vision made me grin and jump mentally with joy. My heart skipped a beat – the way it tends to when I recognize a piece of my elemental truth, when I see a stone of my Dharma path.

I smiled in clarity, knowing that when my heart is clear on what I want and I open fully, the "how" quickly works itself out. It always does. The clarity is the hard part, and it felt I had it now – even if it was not the full picture, I had some essential components of it. Enough to take the next step. Sometimes it's like walking with a flash light at night. I might not see a mile ahead. But I see enough to take the next step. I felt, I could trust that the one after that would become clear once I took the step before me.

What a yummy place! That moment when the pieces of the puzzle one has been randomly collecting begin aligning themselves organically into a comprehensible picture.....it's beyond words. It's magical. Remember that moment in Carl Sagan's "Contact" film, when the genius Hayden shows Dr. Aroway [Jodi Foster] the key to reading the 10 thousand pages of the Vegan message – just read it in 3 D by projecting it onto a cube! And all of a sudden the instructions made sense..... It's that thing Steve Jobs talked about – the trust that the dots will connect somewhere along the line.....it's simply about taking one step at a time – the step that can be seen at any one time...and trusting, trusting.... Sort of a surrendered action. Arrrgh, putting this in words is like squeezing a cream puff through a tiny keyhole. The cream leaks out.

And on day 10 [last day of the retreat] another piece of info has dropped in. While doing my "Annica meditation" of sweeping the leaves [does anything embody impermanence as vividly as that?], I've mindfully walked into a low-hanging concrete wall with my forhead at full-swing. My consciousness shifted in a blink of an eye, the blood shunting to the core......like someone has pushed a grand reset button. The neurosurgically aware part of me has wondered about a concussion and began barraging me with all the symptoms to watch out for and all the preventative measure to take. The immutable witness part of me, though, was enjoying the experience, watching as my skin suit was shifting around the impact and being at peace if I had to leave it now. And the other part really felt like, perhaps, I should take those preventative measures after all, since I did still have a role to play around here, in this illusion. Hahaha. So, lay down I did. And take lots of NSAIDs I did. And follow the invitation of the compassionate nuns to stay at the main monastery for a few days for recovery I did. They also took me to the doc who takes care of all the monks/nuns there. He checked me out and declared that the patient will live and that I did not have a concussion after all. Just was a bit shaken up and there might have been a mild swelling [I felt that part]. The funny part was that if it wouldn't be for that fortunate meeting with the wall, I would not have even seen the main monastery [as I didn't realize it even existed outside of the retreat!], and would have headed for some coastal town. Instead, I've spent some time in the thickest jungle of the banyan trees [the crazy natural sculptures of liquid tree matter solidified.....all the folds and swirls of root and branch, or else it's just some weird giraffes having large group orgies....giraffe syncytium of sorts..... some of them are the baobab size!!!!] and swing-like lianas....meditating under the stars during the early-morning Pali chants of the monks......sharing my humble abode with gekkos and elegant spiders. Really....it was quite a place to recover from a brain shake-up. Nature is the art of the monastery. Nature is its God. No Buddha statues to worship. Just Dharma in its fullest organic expression. SEE SOME BANYAN TREE MAGIC:

[http://www.google.ru/imglanding?q=banyan%20tree&imgurl=http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/banyan-tree.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wayfaring.info/2010/08/25/banyan-tree-park/&usg=__mNGciwDnNclqqoZSLzDKfemtCgE=&h=375&w=500&sz=213&hl=ru&sig2=ElqjVz5kP00J5vcYYaxpOw&zoom=1&tbnid=6n06Xm2fVrrqBM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&ei=3uWJTdngOIzKswaek42oDA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbanyan%2Btree%26hl%3Dru%26lr%3D%26newwindow%3D1%26sa%3DX%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&lr=&newwindow=1&sa=X&tbm=isch&start=0#tbnid=Pza7d45ocgR5LM&start=2] All is well now. Maybe, it was just the Universe's way of having my body integrate everything I've experienced at the retreat with the Journey up to this point. Grand Reset button. I felt 10 Lbs lighter....my mind did, anyways. That residue of "life experience" does weigh surprisingly much, though, it is hardly noticeable as it accumulates – sort of like boiling a frog by turning up the heat 1 C at a time. It creeps up on you. Though, boy, is it clear when the stuff is gone all at once just how much you had!

*"For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. "*

~ H. Melville