On Tong Len and Toilets

Following my acceptance last year that the usual celebrations really aren’t for me, I resolved to spend the recent Christmas and new year holidays on some form of retreat, preferably one involving silence and a lot of meditation.  This was tricky, as for a while, wherever I turned, appropriately to the season, there was no room at the inn.

Eventually, Gaia House, a retreat centre for insight (Vipassana) meditation in the Buddhist tradition, agreed to take me from the 23^rd to the 27^th of December. I decided I could turn this into the longer retreat I wanted by resolving to continue on my own at home until the 2^nd of January, a prospect I found a little daunting.

By the time I arrived at Gaia House, quiet in the south Devon countryside in the late afternoon, it was dark. I was a bit perplexed as I got out the car.  This was my first visit, and the place is in permanent silence bar a few necessary and rare exceptions. The basics eluded me.  I couldn’t work out, where, on this ex-convent, was the front door. 

Eventually I found my way round to a side entrance, where a long-term retreatant came across me.  After a brief whispered exchange (I’m grateful compassion practice is a cornerstone of Buddhism), she showed me a noticeboard where a little folder with my name was pinned. In it was my room number, a map of the building with an arrow to my room, instructions on my daily hour of work and a welcome letter.  One of the coordinators then came upon me and showed me to my quarters.  Later that evening, after supper, another coordinator gave me a mini tour, and answered any sotto voce questions, showing me where to leave a note if anything came up during my stay.  By this point, I had already found the main noticeboard and scribbled down the prospective timetable on one of the donation envelopes I had found (having, in the spirit of last year’s Vipassana marathon, omitted to bring a notebook with me).  This envelope was gradually covered with little notes I wrote to myself as the days progressed.

A marker of my experience at every Buddhist centre I have visited in any part of the world (which now cover India, Cambodia and the UK) is how well organised they are to support practice and allow people to integrate in and out as smoothly as possible.  Gaia House upheld this beautifully. As someone on personal retreat, I was free to do as I pleased so long as I respected the discipline of the place, did my allotted job during the hour set aside for work and observed the usual five precepts (no killing, no stealing, no lying, no intoxicants, no sexual activity).  There were informative signs everywhere so that silence could be observed without confusion or questions: around the tea-making area near the dining room, in the dish washing area, in the library, outside the meditation hall, in the sleeping areas.  It was warm, comfortable and incredibly easy.

The place was running slightly unusually because of Christmas. Some coordinators were away, no courses were on, there were few personal retreatants and we got an extra pudding the night of Christmas eve (sweets being usually a once a week event).  On Christmas day, I noticed the Buddha in the meditation hall had a scarf of red tinsel wrapped around his neck. The rest of the time, it looped demurely at his feet.

I arrived with the tail-end of a cold and a resolve to reintegrate my yoga asana (physical) practice after the discombobulation of recent months.  I was also resolved to give myself space in the discipline and not allow super/ego to push into exhaustion and grasping.  I was surprised to find it arced quite organically if I allowed it.  I roughly observed the general timetable, taking part in four of the scheduled 45 minute sitting meditations each full day.  Other than that, I set aside two hours every morning for yoga asana, which I began gently, increasing the dynamism and physical challenge as the days continued. 

We had mostly beautiful winter days, and I walked or sat outside every lunchtime.  The library was a delight to me, and I read every day, either in one of the armchairs overlooking the garden or in my room.  There was my daily work period and the evening recorded Dharma talk in the lounge.  I went to bed and rose early and on my first afternoon allowed myself a blissful nap – which was apparently exactly the right thing to chase the cold away.  And that’s how I filled my days.

I was designated to household work for my daily hour. It turned out this meant cleaning three bathrooms.  I considered that I’ve not been on toilet duty for some time in any retreat situation so, in the scheme of things, it was surely my turn.  As the place was fairly empty and the bathrooms not much used, it was not as unpleasant a job as it might have been.  That, and following non-harming principles (to the environment this time), all cleaning products were ecologically friendly so I didn’t have to deal with any nasty chemicals, and there were helpful signs instructing which colour cloths were for loos (yellow) and which for other surfaces (blue).

I had a particularly joyful experience cleaning the toilets, showers, sinks and floors on Christmas morning.  I have a great attachment to bathrooms (and hot water) and love a clean one. Whenever I’ve been on retreat I’ve always felt especially grateful to whoever cleans the bathrooms and loos for me.  Maybe it was the silence getting to me, but I felt great delight at returning this pleasure to others.

Actually, I suspect it was the compassion meditation rather than the silence.

As I was in a Buddhist centre, it felt rude not to engage in Buddhist practices.  On my application form, when asked what I meant to do on my personal retreat, I’d written that I meant to deepen my practice of Vipassana (insight) meditation – which always feels a bit like taking my medicine, bringing my bouncing and rebellious mind more - or usually less - successfully to heel. 

Libraries are a great favourite of mine and despite the tempting range of reading materials from various traditions, what I ended up polishing off during those days was Alan Wallace’s The Attention Revolution.  It’s a fairly readable book about the Buddhist practice of shamatha, calm abiding.  The practice develops stability of mind, so that we can cultivate minds that are neither too dozy nor too excitable to perceive the ultimate nature of reality.

Shamatha practice yields amazing results (so says the book) but struck me as a pretty dry enterprise, from the time I first encountered it with the lovely Tibetan Buddhists in 2009 on the course at Tushita in Dharamsala.  Essentially, it’s about focussing the mind, usually starting with the breath.

So far, so standard. 

But in order to achieve shamatha, you’re supposed to hold your attention unwaveringly on an object for four hours minimum and should count on meditating between 12 and 14 hours a day for several months or years to achieve this.  Only when you can easily do this is your mind fit for insight (Vipassana) meditation.  If you’re only meditating an hour or two a day, says Alan Wallace, well you’re just a dabbler.  Don’t expect much.

It’s not an encouraging or very realistic prospect.

I reckon I’ve got to maybe stage 2 of the 10, perhaps 3, but for a much shorter period of time than what’s stipulated.  I suspect I won’t be getting much further.

However, in respect of my hosts, I did do lots of mindfulness meditation on my breath.  Compared to my last retreat a year ago, I noticed a few things.  I was mostly able to stay with my breath more consistently. When I did wander off, I was less caught up in the stories of grief, anger, lust… or just list-making.  They were all there but they had less hold on me.  Mostly, I was able to return to the breath more rapidly and smoothly.

Hurrah for progress.

As I went through Alan Wallace’s book over the days, I was reminded of some of the compassion meditations I had been taught at Tushita.  One is called Tong Len, which was explained to me as “equalising and exchanging”.  Essentially, you focus on the light of the pure mind (this is where I veer from Buddhism and instead focus on the light of the Self or atman, as defined by the Upanishads in the Yoga tradition.  In the spirit of advaita, non-duality, I reckon this is ok).  Then you visualise someone and you see their suffering as black smoke or matter inside them.  Then you breathe it all in, taking it inside yourself until there is no darkness left in the person you are visualising.  You then breathe out your light (of the pure mind or Self), essentially all your happiness and positive qualities, filling them with it.  So you take their darkness, giving them your light.  You’re supposed to start with people you love, then move on to people you’re indifferent to, finally to people you positively dislike or who have done or wish you harm.  

Hardcore compassion meditation.

I did three supremely focussed 45 minute sittings of Tong Len.  I did it for any and everybody who came to mind, those for whom I feel affection and warmth, those who have hurt and angered me most. 

It occurred to me that Tong Len is exactly like cleaning toilets.  It’s rather disgusting when you start, but it’s amazing how clean and joyful it’s possible to feel after taking on and clearing out the muck.  And of course, it’s the nature of things that it’s all just going to get mucky again.  A task worthy of Sisyphus.

In the walking meditation room a (real) skeleton sat cross-legged, donated by a medical student, alongside a sign explaining how meditation on impermanence and death is a cornerstone of the Dharma.  I only did walking meditation indoors once, on Christmas afternoon.  As I paced in direct line with the skeleton for the best part of an hour, wondering who was the passed-on possessor of those bones, it occurred to me, as most of the country watched Christmas telly drunk on its sofa, that my occasional reputation for eccentricity is possibly not without foundation.

The silence was like a blanket over me and I was reluctant to leave.  There were no electronics during my stay at Gaia House but I discovered that I’m perfectly capable of using my phone on airplane mode for its meditation timer or clock without getting distracted.  This proved very useful for the home part of my retreat.

So on the 27^th, in bright winter sunshine, I left Gaia House having gingerly switched my phone back on for the SatNav app to take me back to Swansea.  No distracting messages came through and I completed the 6 hour journey - 2 hours longer than it should have been due to post-Christmas traffic - in silence.  The crowds at the packed service station where I stopped for coffee and lunch were pretty intense, but I managed to keep my calm and quiet.  This continued on my stop at Sainsbury’s to pick up fresh groceries to last the rest of my home retreat.  There I bumped into a friend who has moved to Spain and I hadn’t seen for the best part of a year. This was one of a number of new year’s synchronicities.  She had come to mind at Gaia House, and seeing her again, all shining and glowing, felt auspicious and loving somehow.

I wasn’t able to maintain quite as deep a state of quiet mindfulness once at home, but the five days that followed my day of transition feel slightly enchanted now I look back on them from the pulls of life out in the world.

Trying to ride the line between discipline and listening, I managed to maintain my proposed schedule fairly successfully, with allowances for the morning I was pole-axed by my period and a genuine lack of berating guilt on my part at my lapse.  I’d constructed a provisional timetable before leaving for Devon but on reflection, given how much of the life I would be returning to happens in the evening, I decided that 5:00 risings were not particularly useful and so shifted them half an hour, still half an hour earlier than I had observed at Gaia House.  I changed the order of activities occasionally and towards the end of the 5 days stuck less rigidly to times, though still fitted everything in.  I was extremely disciplined with my cooking, eating far more varied food than I usually manage.

All senses were more vivid by now, a familiar response to silence and greater presence.  Consequently, the crutches I usually rely on were not necessary and slipped away without intention or effort.  I had stocked up on supplies of Emergency Dark Chocolate but in fact only got through a bar over the week (those who know me will know how impossible this would normally be).  In December, a friend had presented me with a Christmas pudding he had made.  I had saved it for my retreat tea, and I can’t describe the joy and gratitude with which I cooked and ate it every afternoon, enjoying a short walk to the sea while it reheated in the oven. 

Mostly, the beautiful winter weather continued.  There’s something about this kind of practice, a retuning to source perhaps, that elicits immense and totally spontaneous gratitude for absolutely everything, which makes me think that really this must be my natural state when all the rubbish is cleared away for a bit.  I spent an hour outside every morning, overwhelmingly grateful for the chance that takes me from the beauty of the Devon countryside to the beauty of the sea at Mumbles, for the people walking along the front, for friends who remember me in their Christmas pudding making, for warm clothes and comfort, for silence and solitude, for pain that pushes me to transcend, for everything.

Of course, difficult things arose too, but mostly I was grateful for the space to practise, and a little reluctant to return to the world as I usually know it.

My meditation focus moved to the Tantra of Kashmir Shaivism, more comfortable ground for me.  During my evening sittings I would listen to a portion of Sally Kempton’s teachings on the Vijnana Bhairava and practise them during the three daytime sittings of the morrow.  As my asana practice grew more dynamic, I re-found the joyful power and cleansing strong practice gives me.  I made time to make things I’d been intending for months: the jewellery I play with, the lip balms and facial oils that give me such nurturing pleasure.  My study time every day was devoted to re-familiarising myself with the Devanagari script.  Everything was more vivid, painted in clearer light, and so was the deep delight and calm these mysterious letters give me.

On the 2^nd of January, I followed my timetable until 10:00 and then got in my car and drove to visit my friend of the Christmas pudding, on his land in the countryside of west Wales. I ended as I began, bemused in my car, temporarily lost.  But the day was beautiful and I found my way and had a perfect re-introduction to the world in the company of  kind, gentle people, walks in woodland, planting a Yew tree, eating good food, body work and yoga adjustments and massage practice coming to remind me of what I do, and Kashima (a sword practice) in the winter sun coming to remind me of what I love.  I felt open and raw and totally filled with overflowing love that day. 

I reach to touch the memory of that when life separates me from it.

A couple of days after the end of my retreat, one of the friends from my west Wales re-emergence was staying with me.

“Why do you do it?” she asked.  I can’t remember what I replied at the time, but it didn’t feel satisfactory.

On reflection, I realised it boils down to what I wrote after my first Vipassana retreat in Cambodia in 2010.

The first noble truth of Buddhism is the reality of suffering.  Compare that to the foundation of Vedanta, which is that everything is Brahman and that the nature of Brahman is saccidananda (pure being, pure consciousness, pure bliss).  By nature, if only we can uncover it, we and everything in this universe are pure bliss.  That is our essence and our nature.

All the contemplative traditions teach us that bliss is not dependent on external circumstance but is an internal state.  When I engage in more extended meditation and contemplative practices, I’m able to connect to that aspect of my nature, if only fleetingly.  And carry some of that deep joy into the realities of daily life, which at times feels anything but blissful.

So on we go for another year.

Wishing you, as always, oceans of bliss,

from Lucy, with love x

On Arising and Passing Away - and a lot of (attempted) meditation

Not so long before I started writing this blog, I was coming to the end of my two-year yoga teacher training. We were studying the Shiva Sutras, one of the core texts of Kashmir Shaivism, and had learnt a meditation called Kaalaagni Rudra.  

Essentially, this is a practice (as I understand it) of dissolving.  You sit and dissolve your body in a (cool) fire you envision consuming it. Then whatever else may arise - thoughts, emotions, desires, aversions - also go into the fire. What's left at the end of all this dissolving is your enlightened Self. 

Of course there are no guarantees you'll be getting there any time soon. Kaalaa means both time and death. Rudra is one of the names of Shiva, the transcendental god of yoga and dissolution who carries the trident for which this blog is named. He sat meditating on his mountain for millennia to master the secrets of the universe, so I've a lot of catching up to do.

Within ten days of daily practice of the Kaalaagni Rudra meditation, my partner of six years announced he wanted to be single. That was rather more dissolving than I had bargained for, but I accepted it with (I think) good grace. If I have anything close to religious belief, it's that people shouldn't stay with one another out of habit or gratitude or guilt or fear of change when the core essentials of spirit and connection are gone from a relationship. Part of that deal is that I have to accept it both ways.

This particular version of life's kickings pales into insignificance however in the face of the one that came my way last summer. They say the gift of pain is that it pushes us to transcend it. This requires some serious work. I sometimes fear the universe has decided that the only way to propel me effectively on my spiritual path is by regular dose of agony.

(Please universe, if I promise not to slack off, might you consider a different tack?)  

I have been hanging on to my meditation practice like the lifeline it is since last June, doing my poor best to deepen and strengthen it. In my current state, there is something essentially comforting in reaching for the very distant reality that this "I" that feels so much - most of it deeply unpleasant - in essence does not exist.

A few months ago, a friend and yoga student mentioned her desire to visit Skanda Vale, which calls itself "the community of the many names of God" but essentially runs like a network of Hindu temples deep in Carmarthenshire woodland (albeit also paying homage to other religious paths and whose patron is the Christian saint, Francis of Assisi). I'd been wanting to visit for some years and decided Navaratri, the Hindu festival of the nine nights of the Goddess, would be a good time to go, in memory of the kalari puja last year. So off we both went, sleeping bags at the ready, last October.

You may have heard of Skanda Vale, as a few years ago it made the national (UK) news with the attempts by the monks and nuns there to save Shambo, the temple's bull. Shambo was suspected of carrying bovine TB. The fact that he was never to enter the food chain was deemed immaterial (Skanda Vale is strictly vegetarian; no one may enter the indoor temples unless s/he has been vegetarian for the preceding three days) and after a long legal battle, poor Shambo was eventually put down.

There's an elephant there too, but I've yet to meet her. It's amazing what goes on in West Wales.

If you stay the night, as we did, you're expected to attend both the 5:00am and 9:00pm pujas, and with another three in between, we were kept very busy. 24 hours of it was plenty, but for those 24 hours, I loved it all.

I was especially drawn to the early evening Mahakali puja, honouring the awesome (in the true, rather than surfer, sense of the word: for the first time I felt both the promise of overwhelming terror and engulfing love as I sat there, mouthing the chants I knew, listening to those I didn't) black goddess with her blood-soaked tongue, the Sanskrit recitations and chanting, the climb up the hill through the woods to get to her… Most of the people attending were Indian, Nepali or British Hindus who had travelled from all over the country, and in between we were offered proper Indian ashram meals, perfectly warming for a Welsh autumn. It assuaged a little my India homesickness.

Unlike the Indian visitors, predictably and endearingly taking pictures at every given opportunity, I stuck to the "no photography, no electronics" rule and so have no pictures to share. But here is an image of Skanda Vale's Kali I found on the web:

A few weeks later, I returned with another yogi friend, a mere daytrip this time, to repeat my prayer to the dark mother. "Please remove this darkness in me. Please transmute this darkness in me into light."

That, after all, is Kali's power and gift: transcendence and love and light through seemingly black horror.

I think she took me seriously. A few days after my second visit, I was meditating in my room, the little card with her image I had bought at the Skanda Vale shop by a burning candle. My meditation over, I left the candle burning in its glass holder and turned my back to start some work at my desk. A few minutes later, there was a loud crack: the candle holder had spontaneously shattered, scattering glass everywhere.

Lesson for Lucy: don't turn your back on Kali.

Last November, I finally got to the Mandala Yoga Ashram, another place I have been wanting to visit for a while. It too is nestled in Carmarthenshire woodland. It is in the lineage of the Bihar School of Yoga, with which I have unfinished business.

The Bihar School of Yoga (which publishes loads of very useful books most yoga students own at least one of) is in Bihar in north India and teaches Tantra and Vedanta, which I was particularly interested in studying when I embarked on my travels in 2009. Unfortunately, the ashram (then, at least) only accepted correspondence by post, and by the time my letter asking to stay and communication of their reply accepting me had reached me, we were well into 2010 and I had almost finished my time in India.

In retrospect, I think this was exactly the right thing, as I had other Indian discoveries to make on that particular journey. But I did feel that something was moving into its right place as I approached the Mandala Yoga Ashram for my meditation course on a dark night last November, half my exhaust hanging off my car.

"Oh, it's starting," I'd thought, as I heard the ominous clunk and inspected the broken machinery by fading torchlight on a damp unknown roadside. And so it continued, with the early onset of my ever-dramatic menses and the hacking of a chest infection. But I felt deeply right at that place, preparing potatoes for lunch or sorting them into sacks (my karma yoga jobs), the early morning sitting, followed by chanting and then asana, my total delight when one of the swamis photocopied the Devanagari (Sanskrit) of the morning chants so I could practise my reading as we chanted, the varied structure of the day, the periods of silence, the periods of shared work, some deeply inspired guidings of our meditation practice.

I came away feeling I had found my joy again and perhaps for the first time fully realised the teaching that our state is dependent only on ourselves and has nothing to do with what is outside of us. The externals remained pretty daunting (I unexpectedly moved house again later that week - something I had not anticipated when I arrived at the ashram - for the second time in as many months). I am not evolved enough for the joy to have stayed long, but the fact that it came at all indicated a significant shift, I felt.

In all the churning of that time, my walking boots were taken off the ashram shoe rack, complete with my custom made insoles. Those boots (and insoles), which have been round the world, have taken me once up the Andes and twice up the Himalayas, had their own adventure to Essex and back, this time without me.

A few days before Christmas, I made a winter solstice journey to the ashram, to which my errant boots had been returned. I meditated in the sadhana hall, walked, talked to those who live there, collected my boots and was fed a very nice lunch. Here is a picture in the nearby woods from my walk:

After meditating a bit more, I headed on to Skanda Vale. I had decided a winter solstice pilgrimage was in order, so I went from yoga ashram to Kali puja, driving through extremely Kali-esque weather (high winds, rain, thunder and lightning) to get there. I was rewarded with a special extended puja (where they wash the goddess in a variety of potions) and humbly made my prayers before her drawn sword for the coming year.

In keeping with my resolve to give up on celebrations, I was off on retreat for new year. I consented to Christmas out of duty but straight afterwards, I was to cut myself off for the best part of two weeks on my second Vipassana meditation course, as taught by Goenka.

Anyone who follows this blog may remember that I did my first (and till then only) Vipassana course in Cambodia in May 2010. After that, I had no desire to repeat the experience. Quite apart from the physical difficulties of it, it's not a meditation style I had particularly warmed to.

Here's what I wrote about it back then, for anyone who would like reminding:
Uncomfortable Bedfellows (or Frogs, Scorpions, Vipassana)

This time, I was off to Dhamma Dipa in Herefordshire. Once again, as I settled into my room, I had the rare sense of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. This is perhaps surprising, as I had decidedly mixed views on Vipassana, and whilst I felt compellingly drawn to the ten days of total silence and long, intensive sitting, I can't say I was looking forward to it.

I have decided that the major difference between my ashram experiences this year in the UK and my Asian ashram experiences boils down to the comfort of the beds. I don't think I need do more than show you my Vipassana accommodation in Herefordshire verses my Vipassana accommodation in Battambong:

Vipassana Herefordshire

Vipassana Battambong

The first thing that became clear to me was how much my first Vipassana experience had been defined by the harshness of the physical conditions. In retrospect, it really gave me an insight into what it must have felt like in some of those Southeast Asian Japanese prison camps in World War II. Not that I was in any way ill treated or wanted for food or hygiene, but the grimness of doing something hard in that kind of unrelenting wet heat marked me. When people ask me what the experience did for me, I can only ever answer that it shifted my relationship to discomfort. Or perhaps that was the year of travelling. When I look back on those ten days outside Battambong, what I most recall is the still-vivid sense of dissolving in grease and sweat.

Looking back on it now, I think it laid the foundations for this, most recent course.

There are twelve timetabled hours a day of sitting, between 4:30 in the morning and 9:00 at night. About an hour and a half of this is watching Goenka give his nightly discourse (very engagingly, it must be said) on a large projection in the dhamma hall, but the rest is sitting meditation. This varies in location between the hall and your own room (most of us shared one in Herefordshire). I was also allocated one of the meditation cells to make use of for days 8 and 9. Men and women are segregated and we all promise to observe noble silence (which includes not communicating by gesture or eye contact, as well as by speech) and five precepts (no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual activity, no intoxicants) for the duration of the course.

Day 0, December 27th, I arrived, was allocated my room, settled in and ate supper. After supper there was an orientation speech, during which, on several occasions, we were asked if we were prepared to observe the discipline and see out the full ten days. Anyone who felt they couldn't was asked to talk to management (and presumably sent home). After that, noble silence began, we were allocated our spots in the hall (oldest students at the front; I was bang in the middle this time, so no chance of sneaking off to a quiet bit of wall when my back had had enough), and given our first instructions to practise, ready for the morning sit of the next day, day 1. Silence continued until the late morning of day 10. The course actually finished the morning of day 11. Payment is by voluntary donation, which is only accepted from people who have completed a full ten day course. If you leave early, they won't accept a donation from you.

Another big difference in Herefordshire was how much I enjoyed the food. There was plenty of it too and I was intrigued to see how my appetite fluctuated over the ten days. Normally, there is no evening meal on Vipassana courses, though first-time students get a bit of fruit and are allowed milk in their tea. In Cambodia, we had full evening meals, and I wondered at the time whether the country's recent history of genocide, much of it by starvation, made Cambodian organisers hesitate to deprive their meditators of a meal. There was no such hesitation in Herefordshire. Between my lunch (which ended at 11:30) and next morning's breakfast (at 6:30) there was a 19 hour fast, with only my permitted lemon water or herb tea (no milk) at 5:00pm. How difficult I found that varied, I think according to my cycle.

Days 1 and 2, I was catatonic. I seriously began to question whether there is any difference between meditation and semi-sleep. I put that down to the effects of the last year, but I'm not sure.

The meditation itself, to occupy all those hours, is very simple. According to the tradition, it's the technique taught by the Buddha himself.

We spent the first three and a half days on Anapana meditation, essentially breath awareness, focussing on a decreasingly small area. I believe this is to develop focus of the mind. Bar a little Metta Bhavana (sharing the merits / compassion mediation) on the last day, the rest of the course was spent on Vipassana, which essentially is a way of scanning the body for sensation, as taught by Goenka.

As he explains it, everything we experience is experienced by the body as sensation. Our so-called unconscious mind is constantly responding to these sensations with either craving or aversion, which in Buddhist thinking is the root of all misery. By focusing on sensation and scanning the body meticulously for all varieties of it, we bring the conscious mind inline with the unconscious mind. We learn and physically experience that all sensation is transitory, that all pleasure and pain is transitory. With this lived experience of arising and passing away, the mind releases its grip on our cravings and aversions, and the impurities of the mind can rise to the surface to be cleared away. In the long term, this leads to full liberation (enlightenment). In the short term, this should make you deal a bit better with the stresses of life and generally be a more pleasant sort of person to be around.

Goenka is clear that the point of Vipassana is not to quieten the mind. Vipassana is designed to bring up all the muck. The point of it is to retain our equanimity (essentially the quality of experiencing without clinging or aversion) in the face of both muck and bliss.

And that is really, really, really hard.

By day 3, I was violating my promise not to engage in ritual or prayer. I'm pretty sure Kali came with me on that retreat, and by then I was screaming (silently) to any god or goddess kind enough to listen to deliver me from the hell of grief and fury boiling inside me.

Physically this course was a lot easier than my Cambodian experience. It didn't require the same grim determination just to stick it out. Emotionally, it was much, much harder, as though I had to acquire the physical endurance the last one demanded of me in order to face this one's emotional ravaging.

The intensity of it fluctuated but much of it was frankly horrendous. Yes, the muck was rising.

Towards the end of the course, returning women students were called up in groups by the woman assistant teacher, where she checked whether we were mostly working "part by part or with the flow." I wasn't sure if I'd broken my vow and told a lie when she asked "and is your equanimity getting stronger?" and I nodded and whispered "I think so."

Despite my weary attempts to be a sincere Vipassana meditator, at least for the time being, Tantra arose spontaneously for me on more than one occasion, though not in any orthodox form (which, come to think of it, is a characteristic of Tantra). On day 8 or 9 (I know because I was sitting in my cell), the rage with its attendant pain was having its merry way with me and I was totally incapable of focussing my mind on anything else, or retaining any semblance of equanimity. In the same exhaustion and despair that wrenched a prayer from me to be delivered from my discomfort in Cambodia (a prayer that was very entertainingly answered), came a spontaneous pleading upsurge, this time with clear words attached: "Mother, this [rage] is Shakti too. Show me how to use it to heal."

Immediately, it dissolved. Call it grace or call it luck, but I was deeply thankful for the respite. I still have little idea how to use it for healing, but the respite was enough, whether due to an external Kali or just the Kali of my mind (and are they not the same?).

Just to clarify for those who wonder what this has to do with Tantra, there is a text called the Spanda Karika which teaches that all consciousness and matter is the vibration, pulsation, modern physics says makes up the world. The teaching is that all of this vibration is Shakti (the creative power of divine consciousness, which just happens to be feminine and a name of the Goddess). If we relate to anything at all with a proper understanding of its nature as Shakti, it can become a vehicle to enlightenment. This includes how we relate to emotion. This is definitely NOT Vipassana.

Not all the emotion was painful. For the first time in that situation, I spent two solid hours totally consumed by lust. I know how long because each of those hours was an adhittana sitting (sitting of strong determination: you're not supposed to move - at all). The first one was all the more impressive as it was my ninth hour meditating of the day. I checked (because I have no discipline and I am curious) the time when my mind first momentarily loosened its grip on the heat of the fantasy it was pelting along. 48 minutes had gone by without me so much as twitching. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by the degree of surrender and freedom my mind was enjoying. When silence was lifted, I compared notes with a fellow meditator who also reported some very lustful periods. She said that when it had all passed, she felt like she'd swallowed bleach. I'm happy to report I felt no such thing. My experience of it was intense as all the rage and grief, but blessedly pleasant.

Aaah, the workings of the mind.

But in that much time attempting to meditate, I spent a lot of it wondering whether I was actually doing anything other than sitting there with my eyes closed, my mind off on so many trips, frequently bored rigid with the task at hand. I comforted myself with the thought that even just sitting in silence with my eyes closed for ten days must do some good.

It did.

We weren't given much overt guidance on working with emotion, but I have been trying to keep observing it as arising and passing sensation in the body. When I tune into it as sensation, it passes very quickly, and yes, I am more equanimous, my perspective is better balanced. I don't know how long this will last, but I am hoping to hang on to at least some of it.

Since my return to the world last Tuesday, I have been pining for the silence and the sitting. Considering how painful much of it was, this surprises me. I have a much clearer sense that the technique of Vipassana has benefitted me in a deeper way than simply honing my discipline and endurance. I suspect I will go back for more sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, back in the world, the multiple strands of my life's work and study aligned in 2013 in a way they had not before. My passions for dance and yoga and martial arts and philosophy and meditation are twining together in a way that feels whole and complete and deep with integrity. I don't earn much, but everything I do at present aligns with my values and aspirations. It may have taken the best part of two decades to get there, but it feels well worth the journey.

So now my task is to nurture that seed, that it may continue to grow.

In the early days of this blog, I joked I should get "svatantrya," meaning self-dependent, free, autonomous - a quality of Shiva and of Consciousness - tattooed onto me. At the Mandala Yoga Ashram, one of my fellow meditators and dishwashers turned out to be a tattoo artist from Cardiff. If this last year showed me anything, it was that it was high time this was etched into me. So here is his handiwork:

So I step into 2014 forged in fires, tempered and tattooed.

The solo I made earlier this year feels very much part of that: ritual, martial art, prayer, surrender. Here's an image from a performance last October:

So here's to more evenness through another year of arising and passing away.

From Lucy, with love x

HOPE LOVE FLOW PASSION SOFTNESS SEA KINDNESS EARTH GRATITUDE

These are the words that form my new solo, Rituals of Faith and Imagination.

Here’s the trailer to it:

For those interested in such things, we are in the festival of Navaratri, the nine nights of the Goddess. Tonight is the last of the three to Durga, warrior goddess and presiding deity of kalari (and all martial arts). Tomorrow begin the three to Lakshmi, she of splendour, sweetness and abundance. The final three are dedicated to Saraswati, she of wisdom, learning, the arts, subtle knowledge, she who gave us vac, speech, words.

Here I was last Navaratri, helping clean the kalari in preparation for the annual kalari puja that falls on the final three days of the festival.

With my move from Kerala back to the West, this Navaratri is a much less communal affair, a solitary, internal practice.

I was thinking of Saraswati’s vac in rehearsal this morning.  Since my return from India at the beginning of the year, I have been developing a solo, drawing on my time at the kalari.  In between and part of the elements of ritual are nine words, from two inspirations.  It was only after they’d been chosen it occurred to me that the number nine is considered auspicious.

HOPE LOVE FLOW PASSION SOFTNESS SEA KINDNESS EARTH GRATITUDE

These nine words and fifty two letters have become a major part of my life since last spring.

An imaginary grid holds the letters in space and the game of the solo is to spell the words, tracing them exactly, in their various predetermined weavings.

The words may not be Sanskrit but they have weight.  I remember Carlos, my yoga philosophy teacher, talking of Saraswati’s gift of vac, the weight and power of words.  The resonance of these nine has shifted and deepened over the months I have been dancing them. I don’t understand quite what they mean.  I just know that each time I dance them, I come out feeling different: cleaner, stronger, purified somehow.

When I went to India for my first long adventure in 2009, a lot of people expressed surprise that I, supposedly a yogini, wasn’t going to study asana (postures).  I went to study philosophy and meditation, to make dance and learn kalari.  For me, there has never been a real differential in these practices. Practice is practice, be it my yoga on my mat, aikido in Swansea, kalari in Kerala, sitting meditation or dancing what comes out of all of it.

Practice is practice.

This solo has been perhaps the deepest practice of them all.  There’s a simplicity and purity in turning up, regularly and alone, to dance it, whether my body is aching or energised, whether I’m feeling optimistic or broken hearted, whether I’m lethargic or enthusiastic.

The next two performances are at Y FfwrnesTheatre in Llanelli, the theatre that adopted me on my return from Kerala.  It’s at 18:00 on October 18^th and 19^th.  It’s free.  If you can’t be with me in body, be with me in spirit.

The words are hidden in the solo, known only to me.  But I wonder what moves the watchers.

From Lucy, with love.