The Home Practice Program

I enjoyed a great little weekend of spiritual practice, inspiring a couple posts on both my teacher John Ashbrook's quarterly class and Shinzen's Home Practice Program. Kicking it off on the Friday night 10 p.m. to midnight call, Shin's monthly weekend home retreat allows easy access to his colorfully engaging approach to sitting practice,  as people from around the world meditate via conference call. After my weekend experience, I’ll be doing these with regularity, as, according to Home Practice Program site, the improved consistency of practice increases the likelihood of exponential growth, home delivery enables extended retreat time without the expense of travel, and Shinzen’s variety of imaginative offerings foster broad and deep psycho-spiritual transformation. Five independent programs are offered each practice weekend, each organized around different focus techniques, with special themes offered regularly, such as managing physical discomfort. The good news too vis-a-vis Shinzen's somewhat elaborate dialect used to map the inner world is that each month includes one or two programs that require no previous experience whatsoever.

Friday night’s focus explored a phenomenon called Don’t Know Mind. “There’s this idiom,” Shinzen opened with, “the biggest idea I know, which is the merging of contemplative practice and science in a mutually evolving relationship.” Naturally fostering one another, this dynamic fusion unifies the past while offering a bright future to the human species. In Shinzen's world, “The Spirit of Science” is what should inform the efforts of a modern mindfulness teacher. Don’t believe anything not based on logic. Be precise, be nuanced in your presentation. We then defined the phenomenon of Don’t Know Mind – that is, the urge to know something – and structured a scale based on this state's presence, absence and intensity.  Shinzen cited the three dimensions of mindful awareness - concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity - and instructed us to apply them accordingly, focusing on the presence or absence of Don't Know, detecting any and all subtle changes be it visual or somatic, and cooling out with a level-headedness around whatever arose. We stretched up and settled in, monitoring spontaneous levels of Don't Know Mind for almost two hours, with Shinzen offering sporadic but encouraging guidance. "Stay with that. The longer we work, the deeper we train,"

Don't Know Mind is the source of Zen Koans, riddles in the form of a paradoxical questions like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", inner inquiries used to gain intuitive knowledge. Having equanimity with muddle or confusion is the basis of an extraordinary new kind of knowing, discovered independently in three different cultures. The Tang dynasty of China's Don't Know Mind was also the ancient Greek's skepticos "epoche" as well as  the Christian monks' and nuns' "Docta ignorantia" of the middles ages. Shinzen pointed out that in general, the more we learn the more questions we have, thus Don't Know is always bigger than Do Know.  Matters turn over and over in our minds, as we at best ponder and at worst obsess over the things we care about. Cultivating an awareness of the prevalence of Don't Know then allowed for  experiencing a sense of freedom or tranquility in its absence, the working through of mental drivenness also nurturing one's natural wisdom function. Enjoying the energetic bump as I scribbled points for this piece in a notebook by candlelight, I thought, 'This is exactly what I should be doing with my Friday night.'

If you're interested in checking out The Home Practice Program, go here to learn more and join in on the next virtual gathering, usually the second weekend of the month, scheduled for August 10th-12th. 

Harry Dean Stanton Steps Into The Light

Are you a fan of Harry Dean Stanton? Old and new devotees alike should know the Actor, Icon, Musician, Repo Man, and Seeker left for the world of the Spirit on September 15th, 2017. Prior to his passing, however, Harry Dean made some great movies, his final on-screen role as Lucky released last year, the opening scene pictured above. Lucky, according to the film's write-up, tells the story of a “90-year-old atheist and his struggle against encroaching old age. The film depicts his coming to terms with his own mortality, as he searches for enlightenment."

I fortuitously caught Lucky in Holland this winter at the Knickerbocker Theater, a cool little western Michigan community cultural center. I’d had a thing for Harry Dean as some people do, especially after reading an article upon his death focused on his life as a seeker. “Enlightenment is the only thing that matters” was his quote, pictured sitting on a zafu meditation cushion, kneeling on a zabuton, smoking a cigarette with a long, dangling ash. When Harry Dean Stanton as Lucky appeared up on the Knickerbocker’s old-school marquee, I was IN. I don't quite get the film's aforementioned descriptor, as I can’t recall much that'd have me labeling Lucky an atheist, although he clearly wasn’t a religious man, What I did note to be a spirituality-focused exchange occurred between Lucky and the fellow war veteran Fred, played by Tom Skerritt, their interesting but muddy dialogue over apple pie slices in a scene in a small town Texas diner being the inspiration for this article.

Connecting over shared, horrific combat experiences, Lucky listens intently to Fred, Stanton's focus fueled by a real-life WWII stint at Okinawa. “I still think about those people on the islands hiding in caves afraid of us, the Japs telling them we there to rape and kill them all," croaks Fred. "I remember this little girl. She couldn’t have been more than seven, in rags. She saw us comin’ I guess, outta no where, outta the hole, and.. she had this beautiful… smile on her face. It wasn’t a façade, it was coming from somewhere inside of her… from the center of herself." Fred continues: “Good Lord. In that shit hoie. It stopped us in our tracks. Here we were, covered with shit, with pieces of people, I swear I couldn’t see one tree left standing, and she’s grinning from ear to ear. So I said to my Corporal, I said “Look here, we have someone who’s happy to see us.” And his response was: 'She’s not happy to see us. She’s a Buddhist and she thinks she’s going to be killed. And she’s smiling at her fate.' When I think about that little girls face and that beautiful smile, in the midst of all that horror and how she summoned the joy. They don’t make any kind of medal for that kind of bravery.”

I don’t think this exchange made some profound, original spiritual truth. In fact, I found it a bit muddled, maybe in a similar way to this post about my love for Harry Dean Stanton. My point was to clarify the (somewhat) discussed notion here that one of the goals of spiritual practice like Buddhist meditation is to develop such a dynamic inner connection that eventually the most horrific external events – warfare, loss, the death of others as well as ourselves – effect us less and less. As I'm fond of reminding people - if purification practice can strengthen us in the face of the real biggies -  like our shared destiny to one day not even exist - imagine how it might assist us in the struggles of daily life. My teacher John Ashbrook says it this way: “When you’re at peace within, you’re at peace without.” And on that note, RIP HDS. 

Rock Around The Clock

We celebrated our first proverbial pajama party at The Higher Haven this weekend.  Footies aside,  this was our initial shot at a Real Overnight Retreat utilizing the 19th century Farmhouse on the property, a key aspect to the vision of this place from the start. The equation to make all this work required three elements – 1. a place to live + 2. a place to teach + 3. a place for practitioners to rest and rejuvenate. While my house proved solid from day one on the land and the studio has been in place for almost two years, the third structure required an awful lot of TLC coupled with many a sledgehammer swing. Without the house, I liken trying to prop this rickety circus up the last few summers to establishing a two-legged tripod, which left me similarly feeling like one of those collapsing push button toys, God's thumb pressing me from one contorted shape into another.

All that changed on Saturday's sunny morning. The dark, thundering little cloud above my head that sputtered bolts of lightning every time I even gave thought to the Farmhouse dissipated upon the blessed arrival of The Higher Haven's first overnight campers. Lead by Bridget Erin Sheahan of Brighton Yoga Center, Alix, Allison, Brenna, Ryan and Guy all seemed to find the property - and importantly the second house- enchanting. The fact that the weather was impeccable didn't hurt after a brutally cold Spring, as it slowly warmed into the best day of the year. But it's Bridget's sunny, beaming face that's now lodged in my mind's eye, as she looked around and happily gushed statements like, "I think we just found a new retreat center," and , "you're going to do very, very well here."  

Having people here for a short extended stay already feels immensely more relaxing then those back-breaking One Days.  Saturday flowed like The Black River, the notion that simply being in this area and close to some of Lake Michigan's most pristine shoreline would be a healer for people proving true. I could go on and on but can sum up a long, boring drama-filled story by saying that the first guy to believe in this place (me) was also going to be the last guy to believe in this place (my shadowy self doubt). And now that the mind's constant questioning has been quieted with a few satisfying answers, we, (meaning me I guess) can finally move on - from resistance,from laziness, from victimhood, from regrets of the past, from fears of the future, what have you - from all the shit that's held me down. And in unleashing my Shine, I'm feeling an amped up ability to assist others to do the same.    

Brighton Yoga Center's web site cites the quote from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, "Practice for a long time with devotion and enthusiasm." And that we did. Bridget's student Allison lead her first class, a significant accomplishment. And Bridget lead a great and what I personally felt was a very challenging Ashtanga class Sunday morning. Her and her companion Guy also literally camped back in the woods, another nice first. We took part  in Ceremony, we asked for healing, we celebrated life and we nourished ourselves with grinds orchestrated by the Oven mittens of one of The Southwest Mitten's brightest culinary lights, our friend Chris Ferris. After breakfast every one headed out, with talk of an August return. If you're thinking of taking part in an overnight retreat, perhaps you could join us then. Or jump in with another group the weekend of June 23rd-24th. Right now, on the subject of overnights, I need to happily get some sleep, as I look forward to communicating with you further and seeing you soon.