Zen a religion? part 3: help from John Crook and TSE

Here writes the late John Crook, of the Western Chan Fellowship, and of Maenllwyd retreat centre:

"to go beyond words and experience the living moment non-discursively with a clarity of apprehensive immediacy in which the subject - object dichotomy may dissolve. 

Such experiences may be accompanied by moments of profound inner stillness, a rising sense of physical and mental bliss, and an awareness seemingly unlimited by previous imputations of self-regarding thought."

OK so that's writing about what could be called a Zen state of being, an enlightened or awakened state of mind, to use two almost useless decriptions. Some might be put off by John Crook's abstract language, but I think it's actually very helpful. "the living moment non-discursively" i.e. presentmomentness, in my crude shorthand, released from verbal concepts. 

"Subject-object dichotomy may dissolve," i.e. usually I (you too) live feeling there is me, and there is the world about me, a subject and an object. In the Zen state, there is a feeling of profound unity with - everything. This state of unity is the subject of writings by "religious" people e.g. Christian mystics, and TS Eliot:

 
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

                                 "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets

Writers often use paradox to suggest the break-out from dualistic thinking they are trying to get across; Zen is famously full of paradox, e.g. koans that make no logical sense - which is exactly their value.

"Spiritual" is so over-used that it's not very helpful, but some people might call such perceptions as Crook's and Eliot's "spiritual" rather than necessarily "religious." To approach this state of being, you don't have to belong to any church; you don't have to believe in supernatural beings or a life after death to understand, to accept this reality.

Or of course you could simply stop worrying about such dichotomies, such dualistic thinking - religious/nonreligious, enough already, let's just get on with it!

This extraordinarily acute awareness may be associated with feelings of profound gratitude, openness to others and compassion. Only a few experience this state in depth, but many discover a radically quietened mind in which self-acceptance leads to a loss of personal anguish, together with the emergence of a new view of life in which openness and optimism are characteristic. There is in particular a remarkable feeling of having shed a burden, and a consequent feeling of freed energy.

And here's John Crook, who set up Maenllwyd retreat centre many years ago, writing about certain kinds of retreat:    

  The prime initial feature of a successful retreat is simply self acceptance: the retreatant has discovered that being alive as ‘me’ is not so dreadful after all, that there can be mysterious joy in forgetting oneself, letting go into simple bare awareness of the present - whatever it is. We call this ‘self at ease’ and it is an opening to ‘clarity’. Deeper levels of this experience give rise to a sense of oneness with the world or cosmos in which the machinations of self are temporarily forgotten.

Forgetting the machinations of the self for a bit sounds like a good idea to me, probably worth the rigour of a few day's silence.

St Beuno's part 2

St Beuno's describes itself as an "Ignatian Spirituality Centre." Ignatian, as no doubt you know but just in case, refers to St. Ignatius Loyola, he who founded the Society of Jesus, aka The Jesuits. 

The shock-troops of the Counter-Reformation, seeking to purify Catholicism of those corrupt and worldly practices that had helped the Protestants to gain ground across Europe in the mid-16th century. Ignatius had been a soldier, and apparently his writings very much emphasize fighting evil, battling the works of Satan and so on. All very dualistic.

I don't know a lot about the Jesuits but I mention all this just to explain something of the ethos I found at St Beuno's. A "spirituality centre" sounds a little as though you might find New Age Pagans, Tibetan Buddhists, evangelical Christians, Druids, Hare Krishnas etc etc all  grooving away meditating, worshipping the sun, whatever path you're on. 

But the spirituality (increasingly woolly word, these days) is, of course, very definitely Roman Catholic. St B's used to train Catholic priests, i.e. it was a college, but now it is a retreat centre, and a specifically Catholic one. 

So what was it like to be a solo retreatant intent not on Christian prayer and Ignatian exercises, but on Buddhist-derived mindfulness mediation? 

 If you join a group of strangers on retreat who share sessions with you, it's a different experience, of course, from being solo. I found it strange to be alone and silent at mealtimes, knowing the other retreatants, also silent, were engaged in their own thing, not mine. I felt oddly self-conscious. All in my own head, of course.

Since it is a place of devout Catholic studies, it is hardly surprising that the corridors were full of literature for sale, sculptures of the Holy Family...and large crucifixes. I found a little of looking at a large sculpture of a man being tortured to death went a very long way, for me. But then good and brave though he may have been, and many truths he may have told, I don't believe Jesus died for my sins and was raised from the dead on the third day. So life-size crucifixes were a purely gruesome sight.

This isn't a grumble - how could it be? Their gaff, their rules. I expected it, and anyway, I was a guest, at a very reasonable price, of a centre that specialises in beliefs and practices that are a long way from mindfulness meditation. 

But what it does mean is that, despite the peace and quiet, and the friendly welcomes and goodbyes from the helpful office there, it's not really my kind of place.  Swarthmoor, the Quaker retreat centre in the Lake District, seemed much more neutral, plainer, lighter, somewhere I am more in tune with. Trigonos, for specifically mindfulness meditation retreats, was ideal, though I think retreats there are expensive.

What I did value greatly at St Beuno's were the gardens and grounds. In particular, there is a tiny building, the Rock Chapel, hidden by trees on a rocky outcrop. You collect the key, walk across fields, duck under the temporary farmer's electric fence (not very spiritual of him!) and walk up to this:

Inside it is lit by sunlight pouring through small stained glass windows of abstract design and lovely bright colours. It was a perfect spot for a peaceful meditation.

There was a crucifix, but mercifully, it was small and quite abstract so your squeamish reporter was untroubled by it.

There is also a labyrinth in the gardens, which I found very useful for walking meditations:

 Your feet crunch on the gravel. Less attractive than the grassy one at Swarthmoor, but somehow very conducive to some presentmomentness.

The gardens and woods were full of birdsong:

which was quite magical - beautiful and calming. Bluebells and wild garlic help a lot, too, and some wonderful beech trees.

In the distance, over the roofs of St Beuno's, I could see the A55, by way of contrast. There goes the world, about it's business - time for me to re-join it.

So I had found a place apart, a place for some meditation, for which I thank it and them; but perhaps not a place, I think, to which I'm likely to return - despite wonderful sunsets over the Clwyd valley towards the sea.

 

what the A55 said - en route to St Beuno's

Having decided to take a couple of days of silence at a suitable and not-too-distant retreat centre of some kind or another,  I trained and bussed to St Asaph, then walked the 3.3 miles to St Beuno's. Certain amount of leg-pulling at home about my private pilgrimage  - you can imagine..."no, I won't have to get up at four in the morning for matins, or wear a long robe, it's not a monastery, or eat gruel at every meal..."

But although I didn't see myself as a pilgrim, it did feel quite special, a new experience, to be approaching such a place on foot.

A pleasant walk at first; idyllic moments gazing at Afon Clwyd. 

The picture is deceptive. A few yards further on, over the river, and what's this ahead?

The A55. From the footbridge over it,  the blast of noise, the pressure of the speed, is almost overwhelming.

 Well, that's quite enough of that. If you've ever been stuck on  the hard shoulder, (bad luck - so dangerous!) you'll know what I mean. I'd rather listen to that river.

But there's no point in being self-righteous about this. I might be en route to a couple of simple and tranquil days' living, I might feel virtuous because I'm walking the last bit, but I've driven at 80 mph along this road myself, many a time. And being close to this horrible racket is a useful experience - makes me remember that it really is worth trying to drive as infrequently as possible. So what the A55 says to me is "keep off me as often as you can."

It hardly seems possible that this corridor of noise and tension should co-exist with that peaceful little river. The impact on its surroundings of a fast road like this is so much more than omnipresent noise for many many yards all around. It's a huge slice of the land, slicing through whatever continuities existed previously. It's all that exhaust gas. Perhaps the only upside is that motorway verges act as longitudinal nature reserves, and corriders for species distribution. Kestrels like to hunt them.

This road doesn't even have proper motorway-type verges. It was a motorway on the cheap, dangerous and in places not well engineered. But it is an E route to and from Ireland. Everything on it is in a big hurry.

Happily, I'm not - lucky me. I plod on, alongside the noise for a little while, steadily up hill, getting hot - my backpack is quite heavy, containing as it does, in addition to the usual necessities, a couple of books and a Very Special (large) Notebook for Inscribing Great Thoughts. (It didn't exactly get over-filled...)

I pass through a very settled comfortable-looking little village, under the A55, and then I'm very pleased to be hauling myself wearily up the drive to St Beuno's.

Of which, more anon.


 

What are we retreating from on a retreat? Swarthmoor and me.

A friend of mine commented, when she heard I was going on a more-or-less silent retreat, that it was curious how the term "retreat" suggests something at the edge of our lives, whereas in fact it tends to put us at the centre of things. Nicely put.

A regular columnist in the Saturday Guardian wrote recently that going on retreat was part of a trend for people in flight from the realities of modern life. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, I'd say, if that's what you need, but for once he's writing nonsense.  A retreat I was recently part of was certainly a quiet time apart from usual preoccupations, but Quakers are well-known for their social activism, and I felt there was nothing about the retreat that was escapist.

My four-day retreat at Swarthmoor Hall near Ulverston in Cumbria is already being used by this collection of processes and awarenesses known as "me" to refocus aspects of my life and to work on how I relate to others.

 So I'm going to do a number of posts on Stuff from the retreat.

Briefly, Swarthmoor is pretty much where the Quakers started. It is an historic and lovely old place, easy to reach (10 minute walk from the station) yet very peaceful.  The accommodation was excellent, and we were well cared for. 

The retreat was called "Being in Silence" and it was run by two Quakers. I'm not a Quaker, though after this all I might drop by a meeting or two and see what's on, but I do value silence, and I meditate in silence fairly frequently. Quakers are technicians of silence, experts at it - well, certainly at some aspects of it. I thought it would be worthwhile to join them, and so it was.

Total silence quickly becomes utterly terrifying, I'm sure. There was input from the two tutors. We had the wind, the birds, the rain.... occasionally we had a little music to direct or focus our thoughts,

The silence was entered and emerged from quite gradually and we had an opportunity to go for guidance and discussion with each of the two tutors once during the three quiet days.

We had the customary Quaker silent meeting, in which people sit in silence and wait; when/if the spirit moves them (interpret "spirit" as you will) they speak. There were sessions with tutor input and/or written stimulus material, followed by silent time.  Before and after the silent days there was discussion.

We were urged not to read anything lengthy or distracting, but there were plenty of interesting books and pamphlets to use, and thought-provoking materials from the tutors; we also had a session or two using visual stimulus - a lot of very varied postcards. We were introduced to a walking mindfulness meditation, and they have a labyrinth in their delightful garden.

We met much of the time in a very pleasant conference room.

 Since I like meditating with others, it was good to drop by the room during unstructured time, and find a few people there I could join, sitting in silence. Meditating? Praying? Contemplating? I didn't know, of course, but it was companionable. 

We did some writing - journaling is the jargon term, I learned. I hadn't expected that, and too much of it would, I feel, disrupt a pattern of silent meditations, but I found myself writing quite a lot; I enjoyed it, and it was useful. It seems the Quakers - these ones, at least - value individual creativity and self-expression.

We had a couple of hours each afternoon to walk, think, write, as we wished, but not to talk. The Quakers are hardly spiritual fascists, so the silence rule didn't feel severe or punitive in any sense.

I went because I wanted a period of silence with plenty of meditation, and I was curious to see if there were overlaps, comparisons and contrasts to be made in the quality and uses of silence coming from Quaker and Buddhist/mindfulness traditions. I think a Quaker might say I was seeking the Light, the Spirit. And that's what I'll write about next.

The weather was rough - wild and splendid. That helped.