Sat, 05 Aug 2006
After Amitabha
My meditation retreat is over. The focus of the retreat was on accumulating one hundred thousand repetitions of Amitabha's mantra, as this is the prerequisite for the phowa retreat. I actually got one hundred fifty thousand repetitions done. The format of the practice is simple: you visualize yourself as Avalokiteshvara and visualize Amitabha in front of you, flanked by Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani. Any you repeat the mantra while trying to maintain the visualization. At the end of the practice you dissolve the visualization. it's just the basic garden variety sadhana. Here's the schedule I more or less kept to for six days.
- 4:00 to 6:00 Early morning session
- 6:00 to 7:00 Breakfast break
- 7:00 to 9:30 First morning session
- 9:30 to 10:00 Morning break
- 10:00 to 12:00 Second morning session
- 12:00 to 1:00 Lunch break
- 1:00 to 3:00 First afternoon session
- 3:00 to 3:30 Afternoon break
- 3:30 to 5:00 Second afternoon session
- 5:00 to 6:30 Dinner break
- 6:30 to 8:30 Evening session
So it was a six session meditation retreat. Khenpo Tsultrim advised a four session schedule, but I found that I wasn't able to maintain my concentration during a longer session. As it was, my mind skittered about like a bead of mercury. It only really settled down on the last two days. My visualization also got better, though it never was really good. I'm too verbal/left-brained to visualize well. I didn't have a tremendous amount of free time, but when I did, I drank Diet Pepsi and reread Michele Martin's book on the Karmapa, Music in the Sky. I ran into the usual problems during retreat: sore legs, wandering mind, and so on. Anyone who's done retreat knows the deal. The retreat was more than a formality, I think my meditation is better overall as a result of doing it. But the proof of that will come in the following weeks. The most important thing I read during the week was in my notes from one of Lamchen Gyalpo's talk:
Some assert that they have understood the nature of mind, but haven't freed themselves from ego clinging. You should be nauseated by ego clinging conduct.
Reading this was like getting slapped in the face, especially since I was still sulking about taking down my notes from the VKL site. Enough of the up close and personal. Here's an amusing article on how Chinese Buddhist monasteries are going high tech.
The internet is also important for Mr Hui at Jade Buddha Temple. "The first thing in my daily work is to open the laptop to check e-mails and surf the internet," he said. "Everything in the temple is now processed online. No paperwork. Those who failed to pass the computer test were laid off and reassigned to non-office jobs."
