The Eye of Practice (Carter)
The place where I live is called Tornado Alley, and spring is the time when storms arise from intersecting cold northern air and warm air from the gulf. I’ve never been in a tornado, although I’ve seen one from a distance, and I’ve sat many a night in front of the television watching the meteorologist track their paths across our city. But, I have had plenty of experience within the eye of a storm, sitting in the center of swirling samsara, where peace, rest, and stillness reside.
It all started in the middle of my life, affectionately known as a mid-life crisis, when I walked up to the door of a small, very unpretentious ranch house in my very conservative, traditional home town and knocked. A young woman answered and led me into a small room with a large altar of all things Indian, not the Creeks of Tulsa, but East Indian. I found her in the yellow pages under Transcendental Meditation…seriously. I had just finished a book on Ayurveda, a contemporary version of an ancient holistic medicinal practice, and decided it was time to learn how to meditate. This was 1991 and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, known for developing the TM technique, was expanding his U.S. presence with centers across the country. Why Tulsa? Good question.
The young woman took me and a few others through a ceremony and gave each of us a “mantra” that was supposed to be a nondescript Sanskrit word. She gave us very simple instructions to sit upright in our chairs, and then we went into silence for a few minutes. Afterwards, she asked “was that easy?” “was it effortless?” After one week of daily meditation, I started experiencing the “vital path of letting your body leap” (Appendix I). At the time I thought I’d gone off my rocker to pay $400 for a 15 minute ceremony and a word, although my teacher explained that what I was purchasing was “priceless.” I have to say that after 30 years of daily practice, which I absolutely do not miss, she was exactly right.
Such a simple thing, to give yourself thirty minutes to an hour every day to go into silence. As Dogen explained,
“…you should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.”
I’m not sure about the appearance of my original face, but it must happen, when my body-mind drops off, which it does almost immediately. I wonder what it would look like in the mirror, or who I really am in those moments of sitting?
“Now sit steadfastly and think not-thinking.”
I sit in a chair, back straight, left hand resting in my right hand that is palm up, eyes closed. I tried full and half lotus, and was able to sit for about 30 seconds, until I thought I was going to split in half (maybe next lifetime for lotus contortion). So I sit comfortably and easily. I lengthen my breath for a few breaths, then breath normally, my mind still racing from the day’s activities and incessant ruminating or planning. As soon as I begin my mantra, the muscles in my face fall, thoughts drop off, as though they’re disrobing, the silence is alive, and I feel an expansion that is not unlike the “leap” Dogen mentions. I stifle a cough or a sneeze by just watching it. I can go into meditation with a cold and come out of it without one. Alert, but restful, sensitive to all noises, but undistracted, thoughts come and float off, and I return to my mantra. At some point I feel myself come back from somewhere and the thoughts begin again. Sometimes I refuse and begin my mantra again; sometimes I decide it’s fine to conclude, and I discover it has been 45 minutes.
“Revere the mind that goes beyond study and surpasses all doings.”
In those first months and years I realized that all my life I had never stopped during the day, until I began to meditate. Thinking or doing from the minute I woke until my head crashed on the pillow at night, I found myself constantly tired, frustrated, and anxious. “Was it easy?” “Was it effortless?” Yes and yes.
“It is simply the dharma gate of enjoyment and ease. It is the practice-realization of complete enlightenment. Realize the fundamental point free from the binding of nets and baskets.”
I have definitely experienced the dharma gate, a practice-realization, and a point free from the binding of nets and baskets. I have sat within the eye of the storm all around me – all of life’s trials and tribulations over the past 30 years of career, children growing up, nonprofit involvement, too many hobbies to list – in the complete stillness my daily practice offers.
The Maharishi explained that once you enter the unified field, you have touched perfect health, perfect love, perfect peace, and once you return, you have brought a piece of it back with you. I don’t know about the metaphysics of this, but it feels right. I don’t know where I go and certainly could not describe the unified field, emptiness, void, Brahman or God, and I’m completely reluctant to say I have attained realization or enlightenment, but I have “let go of all involvements and let myriad things rest.” Coming to that still place in the eye of practice is beyond all need to explain or justify, judge or measure, name or define. It is “just this.”
4/12/21 Blogpost
Beautiful! Who could add a single word to this? Thank you for sharing beauty and inspiring me to sit down differently.
ReplyDelete🙏 Thank you! It is truly life-changing. Shanti
DeleteBeautiful. So do you think that whenever we get absorbed in any activity -- that is, any absorption by which the sense of time disappears -- we are "leaping" clear of body and mind, or body and mind "drop off"? In other words, we forget ourselves. To do this is to experience our "original face," not the constructed self of time and space. It's also another way to understand "samadhi."
ReplyDeleteWhen talking to my new department chair (for the MFA program I'll enter in fall), I mentioned a gallery show I have coming up in Santa Fe and the work ahead of me to figure out what it means to exhibit poetry. He asked if I was a visual artist, to which I replied:
ReplyDelete"I consider myself a hobbyist when it comes to visual art. I enjoy painting and drawing, but I don't do anything novel, nothing that feels like a genuine expression of something urgent. When painting or drawing, I maintain a sort of critical awareness, thinking about the end goal (what I want to produce, how it should look), how much time I've spent, how close I'm getting to the idea in my mind. But with poetry... well I suppose I would say it is more of a "durative" experience (a la Bergson's Time and Free Will). Any sort of mental equation of time invested vs. output simply isn't relevant. Lingering in the work is always "productive" but I don't conceive of it in those terms. It just feels worthwhile... I think I am trying to say that while I do think I could include paintings, they would be derivative, works created because I have the opportunity to display them, not because I feel a drive to express myself or explore ideas that pique and perplex me on canvas. And I don't want to do that."
For me, the reason I am a poet and not a painter boils down to my experience with time and expectations of "output" in the practice. When painting, I'm aware of time as though a certain number of hours ought to equal a particular result. I remain in my critical, discerning self. With writing, I vacate that awareness, and the resulting practice is something truer to a non-critical mode of being.
You help expand and vivify my sense of this stillness, this non-critical mode that almost looks like lack-of-awareness, or maybe a different mode of awareness, in your description of meditation. I'm particularly struck by your line:
"the appearance of my original face, but it must happen, when my body-mind drops off, which it does almost immediately. I wonder what it would look like in the mirror, or who I really am in those moments of sitting?"
Perhaps we meet the meditative self with wonder because that mode of practice is so stripped of the "typical" cues of the everyday: time and scheduling, appearances, the frenzy of living. We quiet. Still and lingering. When set against the everyday self, the meditative self looks foreign to us--or, as you put it, we wonder what we look like and who we really are when inhabiting the meditative self.