During a 10-day silent meditation retreat I attended at the beginning of this month at Wat Suan Mokkh in Thailand, I had the opportunity to explore the idea of attachment.  Without yet knowing the topics of the Dhamma talks we would receive, I went to the retreat with the specific intention of getting to the bottom of an attachment that I’ve been struggling with for a couple of years now.  I figured ten days of silence would allow me the space to quiet my mind enough to hear the truth of my heart.

The first few days were simply about the discomfort of adjusting to an entirely new environment and an entirely new experience.  What struck me the hardest initially was the extreme solitude.  Although one may experience loneliness from time to time, you can always pick-up the phone and call someone, write an email, or get lost in the vortex of facebook; but here I was surrounded by about 100 other strangers, and whatever I was experiencing I had to deal with entirely on my own.  I couldn’t connect with anyone around me, I couldn’t skype my Mom for the comfort of her voice, I couldn’t update my status on facebook for some cyber support.  I couldn’t even write in my journal or get lost in the pages of a book.  Whatever was coming up, I had to contend with on my own, and just deal.

What did come up was an onslaught of intense anxiety.  I wasn’t sleeping well because my body had to adjust to sleeping on a concrete platform, I wasn’t eating well because the food was upsetting my stomach, and the hours upon hours of sitting were sending my thoughts into the depths of negativity.  My faith rested on the fact that all of this was temporary, and that I simply had to get through it and all would be well.

In the midst of the initial suffering, that feeling of attachment only increased, rather than dissipated.  By the end of the third day, I was sitting in our evening meditation hugging my legs to my chest, my forehead pressing against my knees, eyes tightly closed, silently chanting my own mantra: (inhale) “let,” (exhale) “go,” (inhale) “let,” (exhale) “go.”  Those words seemed to do the trick, and I was able to sleep that night with a renewed sense of peace, and the understanding that I could make my way through my own mental drama and come out on the other side.

Everyday throughout the retreat (except the 9th day which was entirely silent), we listened to Dhamma talks, during which the monks talked about Anapanasati (a meditation technique that uses the breath as the central point of focus), as well as Buddhism, the nature of existence, and the human condition.  Seeing that we were all in silence, our only choice was to receive this information and process it on our own, using it as we saw fit throughout the day.  Though the concepts were simple, the ideas were dense and at times, illusion shattering; a lot to take in and work through.

The instruction on breath was very helpful and allowed me to dive into my meditation practice in a way I hadn’t been able to in a long while.  But at times, my mind would become fixated on an idea and wouldn’t let go, and as hard as I might try to force it, refused to focus on the breath!  I would then get frustrated, feeling as though I’d wasted an hour when I may have been just steps away from enlightenment!

Then came the talk that changed the trajectory of everything.  (There was so much build-up to it, and the talk itself was so dense, that it will be difficult to gloss over, but I’ll do my best.)  It was a talk that focused primarily on craving; how in truth, a great deal of existence is about satisfying a craving.  This isn’t just chocolate ice cream kind of cravings (though that’s certainly part of it), but cravings ranging from checking email, to watching TV, to buying expensive clothes, to calling that person we know is bad for us.  It’s all connected and so often serves only to distract us from more important activities or even our higher purpose.  Once we have this craving, we become attached to the idea of satisfying it, and once it is satisfied, we then quickly replace it with another craving because it is the mind’s nature to be distracted, fickle, and often lead us astray.

After this talk, I got up for my hour of walking meditation feeling as though God had blown into my ear and cleared the fog from my inner eye.  I could see with clarity how that precise attachment I was clinging to had everything to do with craving, and everything to do with attaching to the idea of satisfying that craving.  My pesky mind had taken hold and almost completely silenced the voice of my heart. 

With that realization came another important discovery.  If I was stuck on a craving, attached to an idea, or experiencing an emotion that was not allowing me to begin my breath-focused meditation, trying to force the breath to happen was not a method that worked for me.  Instead, the best thing to do was recognize the impermanence of that state and simply allow myself to experience it for a moment.  I would close my eyes and allow my inner awareness to explore the physical sensations that the thought or emotion was eliciting.  As touched upon in my previous post, it felt as though the sensations would rise up through my body, feel intense for a moment, then simply evaporate, because ultimately I was not giving them any power, not adding any fuel to the fire by reacting, blocking, or lashing out. I could suddenly see just how small those attachments were, and that it is our mind that feeds those attachments, gives them life, and makes them overwhelming.  Rather than obsessing over how to stop the feeling or stop the thought, I simply surrendered and let it happen, and in no time, it would vanish.  From that point, I would experience a calm that allowed my mind to shift gears onto the breath and dive deeper into the meditative process, allowing my heart room to expand instead.  Then sometimes, in those moments of silence and stillness, the gift of clarity would come again, and I could hear my heart speaking to me, loud and clear.  Truth.  Freedom.  Love.

Epilogue

After I finished writing this article, I went for a run to clear my head so I could come back and read it over with fresh eyes.  What occurred to me while doing my finishing stretches is that what happened to me during my meditation is a mirror of what happens to me in my life at large.  Being a bit of a perfectionist, I tend to force things, rather than surrender and allow them to happen naturally.  That often causes a temporary denial of my intuition, until I smarten up and accept the truth of the matter.  Ultimately, all we can really do is put forth our best effort, direct our energy to what matters most in our lives, and listen closely to the sound of our hearts rather than the distractions of our minds.

Photo Credit: Trent Amour