from the hill top

I wrote this for Shabda -
I’m coming to the end of a three-week solitary at Vajraloka’s place in North Wales and I’ve not seen another soul, it is the most solitary solitary I have done. In the past some have been semi holiday solitaries, with one or two guests! This time I’ve been all alone. A while back I gave a talk on death, as one of the ‘Mind Turning’ reflections, and said I didn’t think I would be very good at being dead as I wasn’t very good at being on solitary retreat and I imagined it would be similar! I was talking soon after my dad had died and I’d been thinking about how it would be, having to go completely alone, having none of my familiar things around me, having nothing to do. Quite a scary thought.

Unlike if I were dead, I have my computer and a few books with me so I’ve been revisiting some themes, the main ones being the Yogacara via Subhuti’s ‘Rambles’ and Joanna Macy’s stuff on mutual causality. Our first retreat of the year was studying the first chapter of ‘The Survey’. I was aware that we would be doing the retreat again in May for Dharmacharinis so as we were going along I was making a mental note of things that I had questions around and wanted to follow up. So that is what I’ve been doing here.

It is a funny thing dharma study. The more I do the more it becomes both simpler and more confusing! Simpler because I realise over and over that it is all about one thing, pratitya samutpada, sunyata. More confusing because all the different schools and traditions say something different about that one thing! Do I need to decide on one view? Or is it maybe helpful to be ‘multi-lingual’, realising they are all just fingers pointing at the moon? In a funny way I’ve only just realised this, or at least I’ve only just realised that I have been looking for ‘the answer’. I can’t even decide to stick to Bhante’s viewpoint as he has too many! The effect being that I get so far and then am thrown back on my own experience. Either by having to reflect ‘well what effect does it have when I take this view’, trying out different viewpoints. Or when I give up all together and just watch the raindrops rolling down the windowpane.

Speaking of which I sometimes wonder if I have more faith in watching the raindrops rolling than I do in study and meditation. Those occasional moments of vividness that do arise, seem to do so out of nowhere; riding on a train past lilac trees and washing machines thrown over hedges; sitting on a chair in someone’s backyard with nothing to do; or in a dream.

The fact that significant experiences seem to just happen, unlooked for, does somewhat back up my ‘what’s the point’ theory, one of my own favourite views! I’ve been rereading Bhante’s memoirs and on this retreat read ‘Cave in the Snow’ where Tenzin Palmo is doing her three-year solitary in a cave. They are both uncompromising and wholehearted in a way that makes my own efforts seem laughable. Yet my response to both is “Oh, I just really don’t think I can be bothered”. (I had other responses too!)

On the night of my private ordination I dreamed that I had been called ‘Great Endeavour’. The next day talking with Mandarava, who’d been ordained with me, I explained how Dhammadinna had really emphasised the last part of the ceremony, the Buddha saying, ‘with mindfulness strive on’ to which Dhammadinna said how I had to keep making an effort. Mandarava told me how in her ordination Dhammadinna had really emphasised the positive precepts! Retrospectively I think the emphasis was ours!

I seem to have become much more disciplined since living at Tiratanaloka, more able to decide to do something and to follow it through. I guess that is the Great Endeavour side. But maybe the bit of me that ‘can’t be bothered’ is also the bit that is happy to sit in a chair doing nothing, or to stare out the train window, and maybe that is just as crucial. I realise I have a fear that I will end up lying on a sofa somewhere watching ‘Richard and Judy’ and doing word puzzles (no offence to R&J fans or puzzlers!).

All those reflections come out of a question raised by the first chapter of ‘The Survey’, is the unconditioned conditionally arisen? I think the answer is yes. And no. For me there is this rhythm to life. I like to clean the window then watch as a raindrop rolls down them. I like to study the Yogacara and then I like to make dumplings. I like to work hard, and then I like to lie in the bath reading Jaan Kaplinski’s poems –“maybe all the time I’ve sought and longed for a reality behind this reality; trying to get closer I’ve gone further away. For the first time I understood that transparency itself is nothing less than what you see through it: the evening sun shining through petals of wood sorrel”.

In a day or two Vidyalila will come to collect me, someone to talk to! Then on Sunday I’ll catch the train to London, buy the ‘Observer’, see bearded men and women in heels, be met by Padmadharini, see friends, watch movies, visit babies look into peoples eyes…sitting here with the howling wind, toast and marmite (having picked a bit of mould of the bread before toasting it). All that seems such a treat.