Last week I attended a Zen Rohatsu retreat in Bellingham. The Rohatsu commemorates the Buddha's enlightenment, which tradition says happened at this time of year, when the Buddha took his seat beneath the bodhi tree and vowed not to move until he had gotten to the root of enlightened mind. His enlightenment moment happened at dawn after sitting all night, when he saw the morning star, and was struck by the full, wide-open insight that life, all matter, all form and experience truly is woven together at its core. All is alive. There is nothing whatsoever to fear.
Within the Zen tradition, Rohatsu is the most important retreat of the year. Often it includes at least one all-night sit, where students take upon themselves Buddha's commitment to become awakened, no matter what.
The silent Rohatsu retreat I attended lasted three days instead of the usual seven. The schedule was not so rigorous as it is in the Zen monasteries of Japan. But there were still long hours of sitting each day. As the final day of the retreat came to an end at 9:00 PM, we were invited to sit longer into the night, as the Buddha did long ago, if we felt so moved. I was tired. My knees ached. I was ready to call it a day. But when the last bell had rung, I decided to sit just a bit longer. I joined the half-dozen or so other Zen students who stayed in the meditation hall as the others quietly left for the night.
I didn't stay to prove anything. It wasn't a contest or a marathon. I just felt like it. One hour became two, then three, then four. Time melted into a vigil, held within the deep darkness of a mid-winter's night. Somewhere in the night I napped for a couple of hours on my cushion, then resumed sitting for the last two hours before dawn. I sat with all the things that feel so wrong about the world, and all the things that make no sense about my life. I sat with all the things I have yet to accomplish, and all the things I have given up trying to accomplish. I sat with a deep knowing that my time left on this earth is short, and my life - all life - is precious beyond what anyone can truly comprehend.
It felt as though my snarky contentions about right and wrong became tributaries of a much larger river. All my fears and hopes, insufficiencies and self-doubts, just kept flowing into a great river that was big enough to hold it all.
This is the raft I want to ride on. But it is arguably not as easy as it used to be. And it was never easy to begin with. So much is dying now, so much more to let go of than just my own small life. In his recent NY Times piece, Learning How To Die In the Anthropcene, Roy Scranton has written:
In the epoch of the Anthropocene, the question of individual mortality — “What does my life mean in the face of death?” — is universalized and framed in scales that boggle the imagination. What does human existence mean against 100,000 years of climate change? What does one life mean in the face of species death or the collapse of global civilization? How do we make meaningful choices in the shadow of our inevitable end?
These are questions that haunt me in the night. Where is the river that is big enough to carry life forward beyond humanity's end, beyond the end of the bio-sphere that gave birth to us? Can I drink even that down, stay in the rapids of that, without losing heart or hope?
Maybe it wasn't so different in the Buddha's time. No doubt it was this same fierce beauty and wonder at our transient passage through Time - this same drinking it all down - that shined through for the Buddha when he glimpsed the morning star all those centuries ago. It is that same fierce beauty and wonder that offers to break things open again in our own hearts - and again and again. Endlessly, forever.
Hafiz writes:
If I were in the Tavern tonight, / I would buy freely for everyone in the world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty / Of time and space cannot endure very long.
Death is a favor to us / But our minds have lost their balance.
The miraculous existence and impermanence of Form / Always makes the illuminated ones
Laugh and Sing.