by way of introduction
" Everyday is a journey and the journey itself is home." - Matsudo Basho
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To those of you who are joining or contemplating joining us on one of our silent retreats and wondering what to expect and what not to expect from such an experience, I thought a few words by way of introduction might be useful.
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I'd like to say a few words about myself before presenting Maitri Retreats where for a number of years now I am honored to be joined by seasoned and accomplished facilitators of integrity, and of what we offer in terms of practice here. There is a short bio of me in another section of the website that doesn't says something with substance. As the consecrated use has it, bios are usually written in the third person singular giving the reader the impression they are penned by someone else while they are not. This is supposed to be an excercise in modesty but it actually is a device that conceals more than it reveals for it gives the illusive impression of a distance between what is said and the one who says it that in does not exist.
And yet, there is this other aspect to things; even when you write about yourself in the first person and in a confessional tone, who are you really writing about? Is that, beyond our habitual way of understanding things, any clearer? How clear are we about who we are? The question about the you, the me or the self is the starting point of the journey of inner inquiry. You may well write as closely and as honestly as possible about yourself only to discover, as the great 19th c. French poet Arthur Rimbaud did one day that; " je est un autre / I is another." The self as the other, the othering and otherness we take to be a fixed identity we call the self. If it's not me then who is it? And so without taking much notice we start stepping or slipping into these bigger disquietening but potentially freeing questions.
Questions that may never be conclusivley answered as they may turn out to be just swinging doorways opening onto other questions, to other doors in other rooms. There is beauty, wonderment and generosity in questions that open us to spaces greater than ourselves. These turn out to be more open-ended, vaster in reach and are not really asking for conclusions, less even an answer. We may just ask for the comfort of reassuring answers and closures but instead are offered fathomless space that opens up vast possibilities but gives little if any certitude as a finishing line one could hope to cross.Hope is always hope about one day to come, when hope is relinquished we may be able to meet the now.
Finishing lines and the idea of passing through them also come with their own beauty; they spring from imagination. There is nothing wrong with imagining or making things up, that's what the mind does and is about. The idea is to see it for what it is and not to get too attached to what may be just an expression of our fantasy. Fantasy perhaps, but fantasies are not without their glow as they say something revealing about us humans and our deeper longings.
This is Hamid, founder and facilitator at Maitri Retreats, writing here. I'm originally from Iran where I spent the first years of life. What followed are (were?) six decades of displacement, erring and exile. Those early beginnings appear quite hazy now as I have grown old and been away from home (do we know where or what home is?) for longer than I can remember. This is one of the things age does, or rather undoes, to you; while not oblivious of the difference between remembering and forgetting, both begin to fade away in time leaving you with a dreamlike impression of life. Maybe this is what some ancient seers and bards meant when they called life a dream within a dream.
I've lived in a few places since the erring begun, ten years of them in Bali. I didn't come to here to stay for so long. Wandering from place to place no doubt, erring brought me to these shores and it seems, out of weariness perhaps, I just forgot to leave.
Deep the ocean, vast the skies. Whereto from here? I don't know.
The first silent retreat I organized here goes back to 2012. I am not quite sure how I got into this busienss of organizing silent retreats. Maybe I got the taste for silence from my teacher, Master Ryotan Tokuda, who called his sangha Maha Muni, Great Silence, and the retreats I did with him. On the occasion of the first talk I heard him give, he said silence is my religion. Those words left a deep impression on me and continue to do so till today. They simply mean, I believe, that what religion in it's truest sense is, the inseparability of all that is, is not something the mind can conceive and grasp.
Over the years, this has become one of the things I find of most value; inviting others to come to sit together in silence for a few days. There is something stirring in spending time with others in silence and stillness, most of the times with people unknown to you, but not only as some tend to come back. Over time, if we chance to meet and practice again, a sense of friendship develops between us allowing us to create, in the words of George Bataille, a community of those who do not have a community. What a paradox!
In our retreats there are no students or teachers. We don't take on these roles. Here, there is no hierarchy or if there is it is one that aspires towards flatness rather than to height. Downward and closer to earth but then also touching the sky, that is the sitting of a buddha . We gather to practice zazen; the practice of upright sitting where we redirect our attention within, to the moment to moment experience of being being here and now, encountering the formidable resistances we encounter in doing that, and letting thoughts come and go without entertaining or chasing them away. I write inward but one of the things that reveals itself as we deepen this upright sitting with open eyes and letting go of thoughts is noticing there are no hard borders between what we habitually designate as inside and outside. They are perspectives but not the only ones.
Our role during the retreats is to facilitate the space and offer a supporting presence that aims at encouraging you to have your own experience.
Understanding is important but the understanding I am speaking of here is for the essential part one to which you come to yourself. It"s an understanding that blossoms out of confusion, uncertainty and not knowing. Something may reveal itself to you during this period of practice, it is for you to discover what that could be. In the Zen tradition this is called taking the backward step and turning the light inward. It is in this darkness, not unlike the nightsky enfolding the stars, that we meet our unmistakable light.
The recommendation is to leave expectations behind and to come with an open heart, an open mind and pay attention to what unfolds. It’s this simple but we have forgotten our way to simplicity and most of our taste for it. I will not and can not say what this experience could look like for I simply don't know. Teachers are supposed to know but this goes beyond the knowing of any teacher which is what makes this path a pathless one.
The journey creates and invents itself on the go while leaving no trace behind. Feeling for the tracelessness of the journey is what intimacy with the path means.
Our gatherings help us to understand, and if understood serve as reminders, that we are all in the same boat. Each one of us may well be on their own life journey but at the end of the day it’s the same boat that ferries us along the waters, at times calm at times choppy, of the vicissitudes of human existence.
"Where is this boat going? Any ports in sight?" we ask, at times with some concern and bewilderment. Some would say out of self-concern.
"It's enough to have asked the question. Once you start sailing, there is no going back", roars back the sea. Surely not the answer we were looking for. But then, how do you argue with something so boundless?
Drifting, then at times hanging on to the splintered mast, then drifting again, at times drifting with ease.
" Having no destination, I am never lost." - Ikkyu Sojun.