Find a quiet spot, whether inside or out, and spread out your food in a mindful fashion. With the gratitude walk still fresh in your mind, seeing the food before you should stimulate those same grateful feelings. As at breakfast, say the Buddhist grace: “We venerate the three treasures and give thanks for this food, the work of many people and the contributions of every form of life,” or any mealtime grace that you are accustomed to.
Before you begin your meal, this is a good time to practice “listening” to your stomach. Are you actually hungry? You may be. Surprisingly, contemplative exercises are real work and stimulate the appetite. Try to remain conscious of the stomach’s wisdom as you eat your meal. Remember the Japanese expression “80 percent full” and the French saying “I have no more hunger.” If you are trying to eat less and have had difficulty tuning in to your stomach, you may find it easier today. A morning spent in mindful silence opens the channels of energy and receptivity throughout your body.
I have led meditation retreats for nearly thirty years, and as I think back to all those different retreats, the time just after lunch is most interesting to observe. People have typically gotten up quite early, and so by lunchtime they are tired. Having just eaten a meal makes them even more sleepy. The time after lunch is open and unscheduled, and so people scatter hither and yon to rest. If the weather is warm, you can see people lying on the grass or sitting under trees. Inside the meditation hall, people tuck the meditation cushions under their heads and try to nap. If it is a residential retreat, most people disappear to their rooms. It is all officially silent, so what I see is a grand tableau of a large group of people doing…nothing!
I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to lead a whole day retreat where from morning until night it is lunchtime break! Now that it is that time for you, I urge you to give in to being completely relaxed. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and the feeling is “betwixt and between.” But betwixt and between what? Between what has come before and what will come after, of course. But that is true of every hour, every minute, and every moment. What is special about this particular hiatus that gives us permission to let go completely?
This is, I believe, a rather deep question, but you need not ponder it now. Just rest—as completely as you can. We will take up the quality of “resting completely” in the contemplative reflection that concludes the day.
Wake yourself up at around 12:45, go back to your spot, ring your bell three times, go to your altar, and light the candle. It is time to practice vertical time.
I first described the vertical time contemplation at the conclusion of Chapter 5, so you may want to refer back to that section now. This is in part a breath meditation, so return to your spot, again ring the bell three times, and adopt a meditation posture comfortable for you.
Today’s practice of vertical time will be a little different from the method I described earlier. You have spent the past few hours in contemplative silence: looking, watching, sensing, feeling. What has that done to your sense of time? As you sit quietly in meditation posture, reflect on the feeling of the past several hours. Does it feel like several hours? Does it feel longer; is there a sense that time has expanded and stretched itself out? Does it feel shorter—does “time fly,” as the expression goes?
I have often written here that time is the essence of aging, but what does that really mean? As I originally described the practice of vertical time, I asked you to imagine the past stretching off to the left. But this morning we created another way to visualize the past: the pebbles, seeds, or candies in the large bowl, each one representing a year of life. As you sit quietly now, bring to mind the moment you counted out those markers of your years, and in your mind’s eye do it again. The first marker is year one, a year you almost certainly do not remember, but in a way is the most important, since it is the day and date you first came into this world and this body. The second and third markers are much the same. Only the faintest and fleetest memories remain of that time, but one thing you know for certain—some adult, in most cases a parent, was watching over you and taking care of you.
In your mind’s eye, let each marker of years drop from your hand into the bowl, picturing some highlight or remembrance from that year as you do. One by one let them all pass from hand to bowl until they are all there—your whole life, represented now by this body, sitting in this spot at this exact time.
This is the life you have lived; this is the age you are. There is an absoluteness and trustworthiness to this fact. Shunryu Suzuki’s affirmation bears repeating: “Which is more real, your problems or the fact that you are here right now? That you are here right now is an ultimate fact.”
Take a few breaths, each time exhaling completely into the bottom of your cushion or the bottom of the chair. It is true; that you are here right now is an ultimate fact, and each exhale confirms it. The exercise of mentally counting out each year of your life is a way of mapping the horizontal dimension of time, but all of that dissolves into the “up and down” of each exhale. With each breath the particularity of your history—“the things that happened to happen”—dissolves into the ultimate fact of your being here in this moment.
In a few moments you will shift your attention to the second bowl on your altar—your imagined future. But before you do, let your recollection of the past continue to settle. Ordinarily we carry the past and its memories like a sack full of stones. Our tendency is to drag that sack with us through the doorway of each new day. Right now, breath by breath, is a chance to let all of that go. (You don’t always have to carry that sack of stones, by the way; in each moment it is your choice.)
When you are ready, turn your attention to the second bowl and the feelings you had when you counted the year markers into it. Go back and in your mind’s eye do it again. The first marker is next year. What thoughts come to mind as that one goes in? The next marker is the year after next. What does that bring to mind? Does the whole exercise make you uneasy? Is it possible that you feel a little resentment at being asked to do it at all?
How many markers did you put in at the beginning of the day? Now that several hours have passed, do you still agree with yourself, or would you like to change the count? Would you put in fewer markers now, or more?
Let these reflections pass through you as you count out your future years, one by one, into the second bowl. This is a way of mapping horizontal time in the future.
When you are done, let all these thoughts dissolve, and exhale into the bottom of your cushion or bottom of your chair. Whatever the number of markers you have put in, the future is unknown. Your anticipated future years will be marked with joys and sorrows. As Suzuki urges us, remember the ultimate reality of yourself right now.
Spend twenty to thirty minutes alternating between past time, future time, and present breath. With all the popular literature on the power of now and staying in the present moment, it is tempting to make a value judgment: “horizontal time bad, present moment good.” Actually this is not so. There is no good or bad in our experiences of past, present, and future time. It is all your life, it is all your aging, and it is all true. Do not dwell in the past or worry about the future. The skill and the wisdom of this contemplative exercise is to develop the flexibility to move freely from one to the other without getting stuck.
When you have concluded your meditation, ring your bell three times and slowly get up. How do you feel? Do you feel any different: older, younger, or about the same? How do the number of markers in the second bowl, representing the years of your imagined future life, look to you now?
It’s about 1:30 in the afternoon. Blow out the candle. Time for a walk.
Shunryu Suzuki liked to say, “Don’t be so serious!”
What he meant was, life is serious enough; no need to add to it. Turning the attention inward requires a lot of energy. The secret of any successful meditation retreat—whether for a day, a week, or a month—is the alternation of intensity and release. Vertical time is an intense practice. So to release it, take yourself for a walk.
This is not a gratitude walk or a “doing nothing” walk. It is just a walk. The point of it is to move and to let go of any tension or intensity. It also contains a teaching that everywhere you go, mindful awareness goes with you. Even though you are not trying to concentrate, your day of meditative activity and reflection has left you in a concentrated state. Walking, as long as it is in silence, will not dissipate that concentration, but disperse it throughout your body and your senses.
So notice if your senses seem sharper now, if colors seem a bit more intense, if sounds seem more potent, if your movements feel more fluid. Experienced meditators often do sitting meditation for days, or even weeks, without moving around much. In the Zen tradition, we alternate periods of sitting with periods of walking—and sometimes that walking is fast and energetic. We also sometimes do movement meditation, such as Tai Chi. If you are schooled in any of the many meditative movement traditions, you can do that during this time in place of or in addition to walking.
Meditation is not just a respite from the commonplace; it is part and parcel of the commonplace. An ordinary walk in the park is not just ordinary. In one of the most famous Zen teaching stories, Joshu asked his teacher Nansen, “What is the path to awakening?” Nansen answered, “Ordinary activity is the path to awakening.”
As with many Zen stories, this dialogue is so plain that it is hard to see the lesson in it. Joshu thinks that the path to awakening is something special or secret, a matter apart from the ordinary. Nansen reminds us that the path to awakening is whatever path we are on right now. As you take your walk, you walk the path of enlightenment. And actually, there is never any other path.
On your return, visit your altar. Examine the flowers and the two bowls. Light the candle. Sit in a relaxed position at your spot and take out your journal. Read over all that you have written so far: your gratitude walk observations and any other notes you have taken during the day.
In an earlier chapter, I described the thanksgiving prayer, in which you said “thank you” to yourself and then watched to see what thought or image came to mind. Now we are going to do the thanksgiving prayer in reverse. Next to or after every gratitude note in your journal, write the words “thank you.” Go down your list until every note has the words “thank you” next to it.
Now read it over to yourself and notice the way in which the addition of those two words makes what you have written a kind of incantation or prayer.
Once you have finished, from your envelope take out the paper on which you wrote the Metta prayer, and read in silence or in a low voice the third version of the prayer:
As all beings grow older, may they be kind to themselves;
As all beings grow older, may they accept joy and sorrow:
As all beings grow older, may they be happy and at peace.
Do this for about ten minutes, rest in silence for a few moments, and put the paper back in its envelope.
Take up your journal and open to the place of your last written reflection. What comes to mind now? How does it feel to take the Metta prayer that you began by directing toward yourself, and “pay it forward” to everyone else?
You may have some further reflections to note in your journal. As you do, remember to add the words “thank you” at the end of each.
When you are finished, close everything up, ring your bell three times, blow out the candle. It should be about three o’clock: tea time.
Prepare your beverage of choice as you did in the morning, and drink it quietly, concentrating on the taste. Remember the story of De Shan, the Diamond Sutra expert, and the tea lady. The tea lady had said to him, “Past mind, present mind, future mind are all in motion. With which mind will you drink this cup of tea?”
Your practice of vertical time earlier in the afternoon should help you do better than De Shan, and simply drink your tea with confidence and pleasure. The point is to not think about anything in particular and just drink your tea the same way you breathe—one sip at a time.
From one point of view, during the time it takes for you to finish your cup of tea or coffee, you’ve aged fifteen minutes—precious time that will never return! From another point of view, you have just enjoyed your tea in the continuing present, Blake’s “eternity in an hour.” In that sense, you haven’t aged at all; you are just here.
For the next hour, we will practice the most fundamental meditation of all—Resting in Awareness, as described in Chapter 10. It is a practice of utter relaxation and acceptance, which is why it is both the simplest and most profound of all meditations. You will accomplish the practice in three stages: concentration, spaciousness, and surrender. Each stage is fifteen minutes long, and punctuated by a short break. You may want to use a timer to help you know when each fifteen-minute period is up, or try to sense the passage of time inwardly.
As always, light the candle, ring your bell three times, and sit at your spot in a comfortable meditation posture with half-open eyes. As you now know, most meditation has two aspects: focus and insight. Resting in Awareness includes both aspects. The first stage of the practice will emphasize focus. Traditionally we concentrate on the breath as our preparation for Resting in Awareness.
As we have done with many of the contemplative reflections, begin by tuning in to the breath as though to a radio station. The breath consists of inhaling, exhaling, and a pause or resting space before the next inhalation comes. Spend some time focusing your attention on this threefold rhythm: inhale, exhale, pause; inhale, exhale, pause.
The three stages of breath need not be equal in time. When you are at rest, it is common for inhaling to be rather quick, exhaling to be more prolonged, and the pause after exhaling to also be quick or short. For the purpose of this contemplation, the pause following exhaling is the most important. That pause is a kind of expanse or open space, like a field or a meadow. Be sure that as you focus on the feeling of it, you do not elongate it or force it to wait. That would introduce tension into what should be a calming and relaxing process.
It may be helpful to think of the post-exhalation pause as a kind of melting or “spreading” of the breath out beyond your body and into the space of the room or area where you are sitting. With each breath, relax into exhaling and the pause that follows with a sense of melting or surrender. As Lama Surya Das likes to say, “Let go and let be.” Let go of each breath as it leaves you, let the space that follows be just as it is, and let each inhale come back just when it wants to.
If you find yourself becoming distracted, imagine those distractions dissolving into the open space that follows each exhale. Let them go and let them be.
When the timer rings, slowly open your eyes fully, take a couple of deep breaths, and slowly begin to move and stretch. When you feel ready, slowly stand up, remaining in your spot. Let the concentrated feeling of your breath continue to flow through your body as you stand. To stand quietly in this way is itself an act of meditation. Many traditions of meditative movement, such as Tai Chi, include the practice of standing in calmness like this.
After a few minutes, sit down again in meditation posture. You are ready to move on to the next stage of the practice, which is “spaciousness.”
As we discussed in Chapter 10, conscious awareness resembles space, in that it has no specific shape or boundary. It doesn’t have any content of its own, either. Rather, it contains and accepts whatever content comes into it, whether a thought, a feeling, or an emotion. Conscious awareness differs from physical space, however, in that it is awake and alive: It is conscious.
The breath can be experienced as a kind of moving space. The breath, like space and like awareness, has no form or shape either, but you can feel it flow in and out, and after exhaling it dissipates into the wider space all around you.
So now, as you resume your meditation, notice the assumption behind the breath that you are the one breathing, and turn it on its head, saying to yourself instead, “This breath is breathing me.” Picture the space around you as expanding and contracting you the way an accordion player expands and contracts the accordion’s bellows. Imagine yourself as the passive recipient, from the wider world all around you, of this wonderful thing called breath.
As you develop this image and adjust to it, let your awareness shift to be less on the movement of breath in and out, and more on the space in which breath moves. See how large and expansive you can allow this space to be.
The space is breathing me. For the rest of this fifteen minute period, let this be your contemplative focus. Relax into the space that is breathing you, and as you let the space do its work, surrender to its efficiency and power. There is nothing you need to do. Space itself is doing the work of expanding awareness beyond the envelope of the physical body.
As the fifteen minutes ends, once again open your eyes fully, slowly stretch, come to standing, and stand quietly for another five minutes.
The third stage of this meditation is Resting in Awareness. As you sit down and resume your meditation posture, let all thoughts of breath and all images of space disappear, and just rest in the state of being that you have become. Let everything go. Don’t try to meditate; don’t try to focus. Don’t try to do anything. At this moment, there is nothing to do, nothing to accomplish, nothing to achieve. You are complete just as you are. If thoughts come, they too are complete just as they are. If feelings of impatience or distraction come, let them come. They too are complete.
This is complete surrender. You might ask, surrender to what? We could say, surrender to a higher or deeper power, but that idea isn’t necessary. Whatever is higher or deeper is already complete within you. You are it and it is you. Relax, trust, and have faith that the power of this deepest of relaxation is always with you, can always be called upon, and, if summoned, will always answer your call.
This is your highest self, but it is also your most ordinary self.
When your fifteen minutes are up, open your eyes wide and gently come back into movement and then to standing.
You are complete, and the hour is concluded.
You may be familiar with the elaborate sand paintings Tibetan Buddhist monks do as part of their religious ritual. The Navajo and other Native Americans have this practice too. They spend hours or days carefully constructing an elaborate image from colored sand. But once their ritual is complete, they destroy the image, collect all the sand into a heap, and ceremonially disperse it.
In that same spirit, as your day away comes to a close, you will appreciate one last time what you have made and done, and then disperse it into the place from whence it came.
Open your envelope and take out your aspiration for the day, the one that went:
When I return from my day away I will be___________________________________and I will do the following:___________________________________.
How did you do? Was your hope for the day fulfilled? If not, or if there is more you feel needs to be done, that then becomes the day’s lesson and new aspiration. As for your promise for the future, is that a promise you can keep?
Reflect on your state of mind when you wrote it and your state of mind now. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, but plans have a way of working out nonetheless.
Now examine the piece of paper on which you wrote:
My biggest problem is___________________________________
My greatest joy is___________________________________
Are these statements still true? Has anything changed? Sometimes a seemingly intractable problem grows more workable after a day of quiet reflection. And the inventory of familiar pleasures can grow or change in the time and space of a day away. See what is true for you now, especially around the shape and dimension of your aging.
Your envelope with its aspirations and intentions is the sand painting of your day away. The time has come to dissolve it. If you have the wherewithal to burn it, do that, letting it disappear into flame and smoke. If you would like to tear your writings into little pieces, that is another way to make them vanish. However you physically dispense with the memorabilia of your day, allow your mind to also let them go. They have served their purpose, and that purpose is now done.
At your altar, pour the pebbles from the smaller bowl into the larger one. Your past, present, and future life are again one. Blow out the candle; ring your bell three times.
Your day away is complete.