Inspired after my first jhana learning experience to explore states that require deeper concentration, I attended a retreat with a teacher in Pa-Auk Sayadaw’s lineage earlier this year. The instructions were simple: keep awareness on one point of the breath (slightly outside the nostrils), balance effort and ease, and the jhanas will arise when conditions are right. In this lineage, absorption is so strong such that, even from the first jhana, one will not feel the physical body.
Well, it was a difficult retreat. What I wanted was to bathe in the bliss of deeper access concentration, and perhaps jhana; what I got was a glaring spotlight on my patterns of aversion and resistance. After some distance, I could eventually concede that, yes, this retreat was what I needed, as uncomfortable and humbling as it had felt. It gave me a chance to do the difficult but unavoidable work of facing deeply buried restlessness, fear, and distrust, and to become more aware of current impediments on my path of letting go.
Restlessness was the biggest hindrance at this retreat. Some causes of restlessness were unavoidable: I had some stressful discussions with my partner before, and had plans for a vacation with family afterwards. Because I had to negotiate with my boss to take an unpaid leave for this time away, there was some self-inflicted pressure to have a “good” retreat and make the time off “worthwhile”. Of course, it did not work out that way: the more I felt like I was not making progress, the more stressed I became 🙂 I also had trouble adjusting for the first few days. This retreat was new in many ways for me: it was a few days longer than the 10-day silent retreats I had attended up until then (I didn’t think this would make a big difference, but soon found out that a few extra days can feel like an eternity when your mind is plagued by restlessness), in a house with a small group of retreatants (which was cozy, but at times I missed bigger retreat environments where I could disappear and feel “anonymous” when I wanted), with different types of food than I was used to. As a result, I often found myself wanting to be anywhere but here – counting the days until the end of the retreat, fantasizing about getting on the flight home, or planning what to pack for the beach 🙂 None of these difficulties were insurmountable: if I attend a retreat in this style again, I suspect I will adjust more quickly, having learned what to expect. I will also try not to plan any exciting vacations right after a retreat next time 🙂
Another cause of restlessness, one that would need more patience and practice to transform, was the perpetual “meditation coach” voice: “How still is my mind? Are there still any hindrances? Let’s try relaxing my effort here… oh no, let’s bring the energy up to get more clarity on the breath”, and on and on. When I brought this up in our private interview, my teacher asked, “Is this voice actually helpful?” Of course, I knew the answer. As my meditation deepened, this inability to settle down masquerading as helpfulness made it hard to experience the moment as it was. Looking deeper, I could see fear beneath the restlessness. We were, after all, practicing to achieve states of consciousness beyond our “normal” day-to-day experiences – with it came fear of the unfamiliar, and more importantly, fear of losing the self. My mind was desperate for safety and control, and it did so by maintaining fragments of identity, whether as a helpful meditation coach or a stubborn meditator who wanted to escape from the retreat.
Our teacher acknowledged these fears and gave us ways to work with them. He encouraged us to give our minds space to integrate new experiences by getting enough sleep and spending time in nature. He advised us to notice and reassure ourselves that nothing bad had happened each time we reached a deeper point in meditation. We also meditated on love and forgiveness everyday to create a container of safety and support. Those were my favorite practices from the retreat – it was reassuring and healing to let myself be permeated by lovingkindness within and all around. At one point, these practices, combined with an investigation of trust (“How much do I trust this practice? The teacher? Myself?”), brought to the surface a painful childhood experience of betrayal. Unbeknownst to me until then, this childhood trauma had colored my worldview such that I had doubted this path would bear fruit for me. I spent the next few hours letting the feelings move through my body and dissipate. It was a powerful experience, and an inspiration for me to explore lovingkindness practices as a jhana entry point in the future.
Another remedy to fear came on the last day of the retreat, completely off the cushion. Our small group of retreatants, with hearts tender and open after two weeks of living and meditating together, broke silence at lunch and continued talking until almost midnight. Some shared their own experiences of entering these deep jhanas for the first time during the retreat – especially how they overcame the challenges in getting there and how they felt afterwards. It was invaluable for me to listen and take in the fact that these practitioners came back from their deep concentration experiences… normal 🙂 None of them went crazy or died or imploded 🙂 It was one thing to study with a teacher who has attained these states, but seeing my fellow practitioners’ successes made the feat seem less scary and more of a possibility for me. I also noted the positive qualities in these new Dharma friends that I admired and wanted to develop in myself: their sincerity in approaching the practice, openness to identity-altering experiences, and deep commitment to making formal practice part of their daily life.
Was it disappointing not getting what I wanted? Absolutely – I had a good cry about it close to the end of the retreat, when I had hit a wall and felt that jhana likely would not arise. But the retreat had its own fruits, quieter ones, that would have gone unnoticed had I clung to my story of how things should have gone. Even with all the struggle, there were moments when my mind felt safe enough to relinquish more and go deeper into stillness. During the vacation afterwards, I found myself, without trying, more aware of the preciousness of time with family and more willing to be present with them. I was clearing a path through the thick forest of my hindrances and complexes and getting closer to the other side, even if I have not made it out yet!
