Why are you here?

Ken: Now to the retreat. We called this retreat Finding The Way. One of my business clients said, “What are you going to teach?” And I emailed her back, “My objective is to teach this retreat without teaching anything.” She emailed back, “That sounds very Zen.”

Our intention in this retreat is this: to create a space in which you can learn how to find your own way. This immediately raises the question of, what is a way? All of you came here for a certain reason. It may be curiosity. It may be because you want to deepen practice. It may be because you want to learn something about practice. It’s probably fair to say that everybody is here for a different reason.

One of the things I’d like you to do right now is to take a moment and write down your reason for coming to this retreat. You can borrow pen and paper from somebody around you, but I’d like you to write that down so you have it to refer to. Just take a few moments to reflect on it. Why am I here? Because this business of a way can be quite mysterious.

Those of you who are familiar with Lewis Carroll may recall Alice coming across the Cheshire Cat at a certain point. And approaching the Cheshire Cat saying, “Please, sir, which way should I go?”

And the Cheshire Cat says, “Well, that all depends on where you want to go.”

To which Alice replies, “Well, it doesn’t really matter.”

And the Cheshire Cat interrupts and says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, does it?”

Alice says, “As long as I get somewhere.”

And the Cheshire Cat says, “Well, if you go far enough along your way, you’ll get somewhere.”

So you can approach it like Alice if you wish.

Our intention is twofold, and these are things you are going to do. Learn how to find your questions, the questions that motivate your practice, which is basically, “why am I here?” And then learn how to find answers to those questions.

The retreat is inspired by a paragraph from one of Stephen Batchelor’s books. I have a great respect for Stephen. This one paragraph has always resonated with me very deeply. I’m not quoting it exactly, but the gist of it is. “Buddhism in its institutional forms provides very powerful answers to questions of the spirit. But sometimes the power of those answers overwhelms the stammering voice, which is asking the questions.”

In my own experience in teaching, I have found consistently that when people take as their motivation the very powerful answers, powerful reasons that Buddhism provides, their practice usually runs out of energy at a certain point. It varies from person to person, but usually within a year to three years, it runs out of energy. The reason is that they’ve adopted somebody else’s agenda. I know some people who practice for long periods of time, but something is often missing. And for this reason, I started paying close attention to the question, “what is the person’s own reason for practicing?” In the beginning, it’s often not the Buddhist reason.

We have to start from where we are, and there isn’t a right or a wrong here. The first thing is to learn how to listen to yourself so that you know why you came here, why you sit every day, what you want from your practice. Some of you may know it right now. Some of you may think you know it. And our intention is to help you either confirm or become clear about it. Then the second thing is that in traditional Buddhism, a teacher plays a very important role. But the fact is, the teacher isn’t always around. It seems like possibly a good idea if you yourself have an idea how to find answers to the questions that naturally come up for all of us.

Not infrequently I’m out of town or teaching a retreat, I’ll come back and there’ll be a message from one student or another saying, “I really wanted to talk with you, but since you weren’t around, I figured it out for myself.” I always feel good when that happens. I’ve always felt my job is not so much to provide all the answers, but as Thich Nhat Hanh says, to plant the teacher in the student, so the teacher’s always available to the student. And that’s our second intention—to help you find that.

I’ve known Gail for many years and she’s a very capable teacher in her own area. Do you want to say a word or two about that? Well, please do.

Introduction from the movement teacher

Gail: My own area?

Ken: Yeah, they should know something about you. Maybe not.

Gail: I come from a movement background. I started dancing when I was very young, around 16. I was fortunate enough at that age to run into a teacher named Hanya Holm, who was one of the founders of modern dance in this country. Her unusual way of teaching is, how to move, by basically not teaching you anything.

That was the beginning of this path for me, finding teachers who would not teach me anything, which is a little harder than it sounds. This led me to something called Laban Movement Analysis, which is really a way of observing movement wherever it occurs. It’s like a doctorate of movement study you could say. The purpose being that the more we know about ourselves—how we move, how we go about things, and how we react to things—the more we’re able to understand others. So that’s a bit about my background.

The retreat process

Ken: Thank you. So when Gail and I started talking about what we were going to do, I asked, “What do you usually do?” And she described her process. So we’ve broken down Gail’s process into three steps here. Is that fair?

Gail: That’s fair enough.

Ken: Day one is interviewing the tribe. The metaphor we’re using, you’ve heard that there’s a treasure in some island or somewhere. You’ve landed, and now you’re interviewing the tribe to get some information. If you are going to try to find your spiritual questions, you got to get to know yourself, just the way that Gail was describing.

Day two: Based on your interview, you start hunting for treasure, which in terms of our metaphor are your questions. We’re going to be very optimistic and presume that you actually find one or two. There usually aren’t more than that.

Day three: What do you do with it? In my own experience, this is not a linear process, but we have to talk about it in some way. That’s why we’re doing it. The teaching sessions themselves are probably going to be more like open conversations with a view to eliciting ideas and possibilities that you already know but may not be aware that you know. As I said, our intention is not to teach you anything but help you discover what you already know.

Do you want to say a word or two about observation and assessment?

Gail: I’d be delighted.

Ken: Thank you.

Gail: This process of observation means, make note of what you see, or feel, or experience, but don’t try to put it in a box. “This experience means that” or “What I see must mean that”—those are assessments, and we’re trying to steer you away from assessing or judging towards just observing whatever it is that you see or experience. It’s very easy: we’re very well-versed in assessing, jumping the step of observation, knowing really what you saw. So we’re going to hit that home probably a few times.

Ken: I’m going to strike the first nail, the first blow right now. Some of you’ve done this exercise before, but one exercise we sometimes do is we pair everybody up and they just look at each other for a few minutes. We then ask people, what do they see?

People usually say, “I saw a sad person” or “a happy person” or “a gentle person.” All of those are assessments. What do you see when you look at somebody right in the face? What do you see? What you see are: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a forehead, maybe some hair, and so forth. That’s what you see. Everything else is assessment. You get the gist.

So when we say observe, what do you actually experience? Time and time again I ask people, “What are you experiencing?” And they start telling me a story. I usually have to back them up and say, “What are you experiencing in your body?” Nine times out of ten times, they look at me completely blank as if saying, “My what?” Most of the time we are assessing our experience. We’re not in touch with what it actually is. So this point about observation and assessment is, what am I actually experiencing?

Body is a very good place to start. Gail’s expertise, as she described, is through the body. She’s got an awful lot of expertise in other areas. She’s worked with me for many years, so I know she knows a little bit more than just the body. And the body, in one way, is the source of wisdom.

We are also going to work through awareness, which is wisdom. As for emotions, we’re just going to abandon you there, that’s not our problem. You’ll just have to work that out yourself. We’re going to give you just a very little taste of how we see this going. No doubt it will change completely.

Ibn Al-Dinawari wrote books on medicine, religion, astronomy, mathematics, and the qualities of plants. His detractors claimed that he wrote on far too many things to have profound knowledge. They added that even if he did know all these subjects, he should teach only one of them in order to be effective. People become respected and authoritative, they said, by specializing and becoming known for one thing.

A visitor queried Ibn Al-Dinawari about this. Ibn Al-Dinawari said, “Even the bee is known for at least two things—honey and the sting. But here is an illustration. Take this peach. If you want one thing from it, you may choose: taste, color, texture, coolness. But if you’re seeking one thing in that way, you do not want a peach. Only a fool would approach a peach and say, ‘It has far too many things for me. Why do peaches not have flavor alone?'”


An exercise in awareness

Gail: That’s good. Okay, everyone stand up. How many of you are aware of what you did to stand up? What were you aware of?

Ken: She dances.

Gail: Were you aware of your body, the space around your body, where you placed your weight? Okay, sit back down again. How did you go about sitting down? Was it a direct reversal of the way you stood up? Which side did you lean to? Did you use your hands? Let’s try it again. Stand up. Try to be aware of your whole body. Maybe you could start with your feet. You can try sitting and standing as often as you want. Or not at all. [Laughs]

Are you aware of your feet? What do your knees do? Which leg do you bear the most weight? Where does your pelvis go in space as you stand up? What happens in your sternum and your rib cage? What do you do in your neck? Do you hold your tongue tightly to your mouth? Or do you release your tongue? What do your eyes do to stand and to sit? Do you hold them in one place? Do they move from side to side? Is there a temperature change in your face? Are your hands cold or hot? How much space do you take up when you’re going down? And is it the same space when you go up?

How much room is between your two legs in standing if you were to measure it? How much room is underneath your armpits as you’re going down to sitting if you were to measure it? What is your emotional state now that you’ve tried it a few times? How does that affect your body and the space around you? Can you directly reverse coming up and sitting down without spending too much time thinking about it? Do you choose it for fun, efficiency, delight, heaviness? Are you exhausted?

Ken: And you thought this was going to be an easy ritual.

Gail: So, every time you get up, you could be aware of any number of things. Those were just a few. And if you want to be present in your life, can you be aware while you get up and sit down? And would that be useful?

Observation not assessment

Ken: Okay, thank you. Now you notice in Gail’s questions, all of them were about observation. There was no assessment in any of them. What’s happening there? What’s happening there? What’s happening there? Very simple. We do simple things like stand up and sit down. And we are largely unaware of the multiple facets that Gail was just reaming off. I get the impression she’s done this before.

All of that, and much more, is going to be very useful information for you in terms of finding your way. We’ve already started the first day. This was a little bit about interviewing the tribe. Tomorrow morning we’ll be meditating. We’ll do two sessions of meditation punctuated by Qigong.

George will be leading the Qigong in the meditation hall, and he positions himself in the center of the meditation hall so pretty well everybody can see him. Just follow him in the movements. Those of you who are not familiar, he’ll be going over that this evening.

Meditation instruction

Ken: Then we’ll all be sitting together. There aren’t any interviews in the first meditation period. Then we come down for breakfast. During that first meditation period just let your mind rest, resting with the breath or resting in open awareness, whatever you’re used to in your practice. And if you want, you can begin exploring—what am I experiencing?

What I don’t want you to do is to get into a talk with yourself, like: “I’m experiencing this,” then, “I’m experiencing this,” then, “I’m experiencing this,” then, “I’m experiencing that.” When you’re actually in the experience, you’ll find the more aspects of your experience you’re in touch with, the quieter your mind actually grows. Would you agree with that?

If you’re talking with yourself, you’re probably missing a lot. As you are sitting, you may notice tension in your shoulders. Resting with the breath, just experience the tension, and continue resting with the breath. You may notice sometime later that your jaw is clenched. You may choose to relax the jaw at that point. Continue resting with the breath. And you may find yourself experiencing something, and moving away from the experience. Well, that’s interesting. Approach your practice in a spirit of curiosity. Here I am, resting with the breath. What’s actually going on here?

It’ll be simpler and probably more fruitful if you start that process with the body. If you start it with the mind, you end up in some weird form of self-psychoanalysis. And we found that it doesn’t really work. You just spin in a lot of stories. So just start with the body.

A silent retreat: why?

Ken: It’s a pretty experienced group here. So I think we’ll do silence. You don’t have to be silent when you’re doing meditation interviews. You can also ask questions during teaching periods. If you need to speak with Molly about anything, that’s fine too.

The purpose of silence is that it really helps you become aware of what’s going on in you. When we interact with others, it’s astonishing how much we project onto others and think it’s out there. But when we’re in silence, we find ourselves going through the same trips. But now we can’t blame it on anybody else. It’s very annoying. So it really helps us become much more aware of what’s going on, and to hear, and feel, and know everything that we’re doing, which we ordinarily are distracted from, because we’re thinking.

The other thing about silence is that in being silent, we don’t dissipate energy in conversation. You may find internal ways to dissipate it, but we’ll try to help you with those. But one tends to dissipate a lot of energy in conversation with other people. If we observe silence, then that energy begins to accumulate and becomes available to us for attention and for the quality of our practice. So these are the two principle reasons.

Those of you who are in double rooms and things like that, you may think, “Oh, I can talk.” We have a few married couples here. I’m going to strongly suggest that you observe silence as completely as possible. That may seem strange for you to do so, may seem a little unnatural or a little awkward. But for the purposes of the retreat, it’s very, very helpful. So I encourage you to do that.