On Doing A Retreat At Home

A time-tested way to deepen one's meditation, mindfulness, or yoga practice is to do a retreat. Retreat is actually a bad word for what we mean because we aren't escaping from anything, in fact, we are being with ourselves intimately. Being with ourselves with intimate awareness is healing and freeing. Insights have a larger window to arise when we spend a dedicated amount of time doing our practices. In this talk, I discuss how to understand, set up, and undertake a meaningful retreat at home.

Transcript

Hello.

Good evening.

It is good to be with you tonight.

Tonight I'm going to talk about home retreats.

And even if you think that was something you might never do,

It still could be valuable to hear some of these things.

So there will be Dharma in there as well as more like practical suggestions.

I thought to offer this because I did a one day retreat myself on I believe Sunday.

And I found that really valuable and I believe we underestimate our own ability to do retreat at home.

And disclaimer,

Is that the right word?

Disclaimer,

I don't have any children.

I just have a girlfriend and she happened to be out of town.

So for those who have kids,

I know it's more complex.

For those who have roommates,

I know it's more complex.

But where there's a will,

There's a way.

So I did basically a full day of practice.

I think even a half day is worth it.

And why?

What does retreat do?

One way to appreciate what retreat is,

Is it's familiarization.

It's spending more time in a space of mindfulness,

Spending more time in a condition of non grasping,

Spending more time with the nature of awareness.

And there's a paradox because the Dharma and realizations are not about time,

About something that's created as a product of effort over time.

And yet the more time we do spend in these conditions,

The more we know them and the more access we have to them.

So after a certain amount of years at doing retreat,

I learned I could just still my mind anytime I wanted to.

I just learned I could do that because I had familiarized myself with that space.

So one thing with retreat is it's familiarizing yourself with the things that you taste a little bit when you do a daily sitting.

Another important element is it takes a steady practice to see into habit patterns deeply.

Because habit patterns do arise over time.

That's the thing.

If you really live in presence,

There are no habit patterns because you're free of karma.

But we don't live there.

So we're subject to habit patterns.

And you can't really witness habit patterns without taking enough time in mindfulness to be mindful of them.

They have to unfold.

In a way that's like saying the thing about meditation is you want to see how deluded you are.

You want to see how crazy the mind is.

You want to see how emotional reactivity happens.

And that takes steady practice.

Can that happen in your day to day life?

Yes.

Does it happen deeper in a retreat space?

I think so.

In fact,

Insights into emptiness and of the absolute nature of things are not super common.

But insights into karmic patterns for people,

Almost everybody who does retreat,

I get that reflection that they see into the weavings of the self.

And that's beneficial.

In retreat,

You also have a chance to bathe in silence.

Think about the opposite.

Think about somebody who grows up in a very noisy urban environment and what that does to the nervous system.

People adjust and acclimate,

But it does something to somebody's body and energy.

If you never have been to a city like New York and you go to New York and you feel the tempo of people,

It's quite different.

So whether you're in New York or you're in LA or Boston,

Massachusetts,

Bathing in silence will recondition your nervous system.

It will do something to your being.

It really,

We can soak in it.

And even a little bit helps.

Practice is not about the absence of noise.

It's not about the absence of noise.

And it's not about the absence of thought.

And yet when noise is cleared out of the mind and when the environment is quiet,

It's almost as if that invites a deeper aspect of reality.

It's like they're shy.

The dimensions of spirituality,

There's a certain shyness to them.

They like the quiet.

We can't always have external quiet,

But internal,

We can cultivate that to some degree.

Another thing that retreat does is we learn about aloneness.

We learn about aloneness.

A lot of times we're by ourselves,

But we're still in reference to our social networks.

We're still thinking about other people a lot.

We might be on our phone.

We're by ourselves,

But we're still kind of hooked into our relational network.

And in retreat,

You disconnect from that.

It's just you.

It's just you and the universe.

And eventually that division itself goes away.

You touch the place where there is no other.

And so the moment becomes a fullness,

Becomes something where there is no separation,

No outside.

So learning about aloneness also means that there's a certain self-sufficiency,

Not the kind of egoic self-sufficiency like,

I got it all together.

I don't need anybody.

Not that,

But the fullness of one's own being.

When all you're really doing is sitting and eating,

You win that back.

You know for yourself the fullness of being because you have sat in just the nakedness of existence and felt that fullness.

Often we go through a whole life and never have that experience.

Even when we're camping,

We get busy.

So the fullness of one's own existence.

So when we do retreat,

And often one of the obstacles to doing it is people feel like they don't have discipline.

And right there that kind of means that you feel like it's imposing something on you.

Or retreat is like putting some kind of walls around you.

You don't have to relate to it like that.

Even if that doesn't get triggered in when you are sitting,

The rebellious aspects of us tend to get sparked.

Or they often get sparked.

And first thing I want to say is that if you push too hard,

You trigger rebellion.

Too much discipline,

That in you which doesn't like to be disciplined starts kicking and screaming.

And you can hold still with that and let that just move through as restlessness.

But you can also not instigate that in the first place by having a soft approach.

So if there's not enough discipline,

Then there isn't a vessel to hold the energy and the awareness that's generated.

So what I mean by that is if you do a retreat and you just kind of anytime your knee itches,

You get up and eat an ice cream sandwich,

It's nothing's going to happen.

It's not going to start cooking.

You've got to have some boundaries.

But if you do too much of that,

It will actually be counterproductive.

I remember one of my earlier private retreats where I bought this.

They were a really good flavor of Hello Kitty Pop Tarts.

And every day after my midday sitting,

I got to eat a Hello Kitty Pop Tart.

They were really delicious.

I didn't even need a toaster.

So there's some way in which you work with the part in you that really doesn't like,

Oh,

I don't want to have to just do this.

It's usually kind of a young part of us.

Try to work with this skillfully.

Try to anticipate that arising and think of some way in which you can appease that rather than just stuff it down like a lid on a pot.

I often suggest to people that they make a bare bone schedule that they can keep.

So what's the minimum that you can commit to?

Let's say you do set aside from 9 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock at night.

Can you commit to four hours of practice?

At least that.

And then you commit to that and you really hold yourself to that.

Maybe you get four long sticks of incense and you have them on an altar.

That's how they used to keep time.

Actually in the Rinzai Monastery,

I was at the timekeeper sat next to an incense burner.

They didn't use a clock.

So you have your bare bones schedule and then if you feel moved to just practice beyond that,

You do it.

You have the spirit of practice through the whole day but you only make the bare bones schedule.

So you're not pushing too hard on the discipline side of things.

It's really good to have a method that you're committing to.

Method that you're committing to.

In some traditions the retreats themselves are themed on the method.

So you have a shikantaza retreat or open awareness retreat or a concentration retreat or a metta retreat,

So forth.

That's really valuable because you can't know the depth of a practice without really just continually coming back to it.

The smorgasbord approach tends to feed the part of us that likes to just be distracted.

And as soon as something gets difficult we say,

I want to try something else.

So and so doesn't really know what works for me.

And then that repeats itself a half hour later.

What we did tonight is a routine because you would stick to that.

Each session you would go through those practices.

So I'm not saying you have to do just one thing but there is some commitment to a pattern.

In retreat one of the most important things we're doing is the mind is fasting.

Some people will tell you that if you fast once a week or you fast seasonally or even if you actually go from like dinner to breakfast and no snacking that you'll prolong your health significantly.

Lots of good studies that show that fasting really heals the body because so much energy is going to digestion that it doesn't go to other forms of regeneration.

I believe the same is true for the mind.

When the mind fasts it starts to heal itself and recalibrate itself.

A funny thing you can observe in a retreat center is let's say there's silence and no reading.

You'll see someone at the bulletin board like reading the like fire notice.

Or like they'll be reading the instructions for like how to flush the toilet without flooding and they'll do it over and over because there's this like lust this this strong desire for words.

The mind is hungry for knowledge.

Or they'll be reading the chant book they'll take it into their room between sittings and they'll want to read the chant book.

The mind has this hunger for knowledge and it loves to get it through language and concepts.

The irony is what it really wants is in the meditation itself it can't get it from the words but the habit is there.

So it's important to cut that off as much as possible.

So if you can practice not reading and not talking that doesn't mean that everyone else in your house has to be quiet.

No but you could say I would like to not engage in conversation it's fine what you do.

You not talking.

Me not practicing my personality through talking really serves the practice.

The practice of personality is something we rarely interrupt.

So not reading not talking.

We do want to disrupt our internal dialogue.

There's this kind of delicate thing.

The practice is not about no thought.

But within moments of no thought deeper insight is possible.

The goal is not quiet mind but quiet mind really helps deepen certain insights.

So in retreat we have this attitude of trying not to talk to ourselves so much.

As you start to do that you realize how much of the self talk is really just banal anyway.

Really is.

You've probably thought the same thing 30 times yesterday.

So the inspiration comes easy when you try to do it.

Instead of reading words instead of communicating verbally we let the Dharma communicate.

There are a lot of Zen teachings that talk about how mountains and rivers continually preach the Dharma.

Or the sound of the bird is the guru.

And this could be the sound of the laundry machine.

There is always speech the hunger for speech too has like a mystical root.

And we get it from a more profound level when we suspend the personal.

We suspend the person.

Another thing to say about the mind.

Some of you know voice dialogue is one of the practices I do.

And something I've noticed is that.

With.

Mind energy.

It excludes the heart.

Meaning that when we are in a mind mode like rational thinking mode or intellectual or kind of problem solving fix it mode.

We can't also be in the heart mode.

I think people who seem to embody both actually switch.

That's what they've cultivated.

They can engage you intellectually and then when it's time to drop that they can be in the heart.

But it's very difficult to really be in both at the same time.

So when you disconnect a bit from the mind your heart starts to open.

Your your more intuitive and heart centered faculty kind of comes out it's like it's shy.

It's shy because it's it's tender.

So connected to all this is in retreat we're doing a social fasting.

The other thing I notice is how hard this is for people to do.

I've seen thousands of people write little notes to each other in retreat.

They can't they can't give up the hey do you notice me.

And that's one of the most important things for us to fast from is the seeking of self worth through being seen by others.

On a psychological level that is a need that human beings have.

But on the path of awakening we've got to let that go so we can see what that's all about.

So you take a social fasting.

You put aside your relationships as much as you can and you see how much those relationships trigger different aspects of yourself.

So much of the grasping ego is relationally arising.

It really pops up as other people pop up whether actually in front of us or just in our minds.

The personality pops up in response.

So social fasting if you can do it is an important part of retreat.

Now I've definitely done retreats where especially as a teacher I had to interact with people.

Right I had to go in and out of silence and engagement and you can do that.

You could do a retreat where you go to work still.

You get on and you do a zoom.

It really depends on your intent but you would want to minimize it out of honoring the space that you're trying to correct.

I want to talk about time fasting.

Now this is not a strength of Japanese Zen.

Japanese Zen tends to be very regimented.

Everything is really timed you know like it's time to eat.

It's time to you know what time it is almost all the time.

There's all these bells and blocks and and so forth.

But in a home retreat.

So let me say that has its benefit.

There's a lot of wisdom to that.

There's a reason why they're still doing it that way after over a thousand years.

But at home we can practice no clocks.

No clocks.

This is a modern invention.

We kind of believe that clocks and measure time is always have people have thought but no it's not.

People have just related to the position of the sun basically.

This kind of measurement of time that we have is a is an industrial revolution imposition on us.

It came from the workforce essentially.

And so the time fast itself the heart kind of goes ah.

An interesting thing I found in my morning sitting outside of retreat my daily sitting I do I re I do three 20 minute periods of different practices usually.

But during this retreat I just said no I'm just going to sit when I feel like it and stop when I feel like it.

And I always sat just as long or if not more than I would if I had the timer.

But I didn't have that.

When is this over kind of thing that like straining against the time.

Because the bell ringing is our placeholder for the future and we can be in relationship to that future and we want to drop that future.

Even when you're doing these things on Wednesday night you want to drop that relationship to the bell.

That's how you let go of time on a deeper level.

So no clocks.

Consider sitting without a timer even if you just had an incense stick that would be better than a clock.

There's some measurement of duration past but it's a lot different than than measured time.

The next thing I want to mention applies to inside retreats and outside of retreat and that is a sitting space creation.

Creating a sitting space manifest what you value.

I'm assuming you value it almost all of you I've seen many many times in this space.

If you value it manifest that make it physical create a corner of your room that holds those energies for yourself.

So you create an altar that has some positive energy with objects and images that that symbolize what qualities you value.

What qualities the practice brings out that you value.

And I encourage you Tibetan style to face that altar.

I found it very helpful in some long solo retreats I had pictures of teachers I printed them out that I respected and I had like a deity image and I had offerings and I would sit facing the altar because it's kind of like I would start you know thinking about whatever unrelated thing and then I would see these images kind of looking at me and then I would go oh thank you yep not supposed to be thinking about that right now.

So you you actually can draw on the strength of the lineage by creating an altar like that and and facing it.

Invest in some really good incense it's worth it if you've never smelled some of the high quality Japanese incense it's not that much a stick maybe 50 cents a stick for the really high quality stuff it's exquisite.

It's exquisite.

In the sitting space that you create try to remove all words.

Try to remove all text as much as possible.

When I have it a space of no concept.

Airflow in a retreat in your daily setting sitting is really important too.

It'd be better to be a little cold and have a window open have airflow than have it be stuffy because airflow is related to the flow of chi and when when there's no airflow then that affects the energy that's available for the practice.

So working creatively with airflow natural light if possible.

This could be something that you assemble and then you take down.

Maybe you can't take over a part of the house but maybe you could you know with an easel or a stool create something that you bring out and put away.

The mind has so many excuses for why we can't do things but often we could think creatively about them.

Especially with retreats this next thing I recommend but you could definitely do this with your daily practice I often do and that's to work with ritual of intention.

So especially if you're going to create a retreat you want to set like.

An entry point and an exit point.

Some means of vocalizing your intent say it out loud don't assume that you're the only being in this space.

In some traditions outside of your retreat space you make offerings to the elemental guardians to malevolent spirits to animals so that you ask their permission so that you won't be as disturbed.

So you you relate to the living energies of the place you practice because they will affect it.

The energies affect the practice so in relating to them even asking them for permission for certain practices that are intense you're you're usually taught to ask for permission and listen for a response.

So vocalize your intent make some kind of offerings relate to the guardians.

If you have a kind of prayer or text that you can recite even daily that can be a really inspiring thing.

I know I kind of contradict myself there about the text but maybe one thing that you chant and then you put it away.

You might want to smudge your space even if you're not going to retreat do some kind of energy clearing ritual.

You can do that through bells through tuning forks through toning and you can do that through some of the really.

Ancient and time tested shamanic means smudging with sage or whatever it is I like Paulo Santo to me that's crisp.

I'm kind of new agey so I bring crystals in often I'll even sit with them don't tell anybody.

So take really respect the space as a mate with you in this an ally with you in your practice it will affect your meditation especially if you're a beginner it will affect your meditation if the area is sloppy.

That's why the Japanese Zendos are so uptight about cleanliness.

They've recognized that OK yeah it's uptight but it really helps.

It's very clean and the environment in the mind aren't separate.

So a clean environment helps the mind feel clean.

And just a few more things I found some specific practices for retreat that especially if you're practicing a good amount of hours can be really supportive.

And the first one is to do bowing practice and bowing practice can help move the energy in your body not only does it cultivate humility and is a practice in itself but it moves energy in the body some kind of physical activity that's not too rigorous.

I think if you go for it like if you jog or do something too rigorous you actually stir up energy and it's not helpful in retreat but a walk gentle movement bowing can be a good thing.

We've got to get the juices flowing toning or chanting can be really helpful in moving energy.

Of course breath and voice and chi are related.

So you move that through and especially if you hit a real stale emotional place in your meditation that can really help cycle it through lying down meditation when your body is tired.

Maybe you take some sessions where you just do supine.

There's no detriment to that if you can stay awake.

And last but not least I recommend power naps.

Not necessarily the power nap where you I thought a power nap was just a short nap that you snapped out of but someone taught me like no a power nap is when you drink coffee and then you go to sleep before it kicks in.

And so what happens is you get your 20 minute nap and when you wake up that's when the caffeine kicks in because there's a delay.

So it's like you don't have any grogginess.

Maybe you try that I don't know but what I mean by it is short naps and retreat even a 20 minute nap even maybe a couple 15 or 20 minute naps between sessions can really rejuvenate the body and you might find that you drop into some deeper states.

So you don't want to get too much machismo about doing retreat.

A lot of the old archetypes and texts have this kind of I think overly masculine we're going to conquer all the demons and get blisters on our butt and like you know smash through the rock we're sitting on kind of feel but I don't think that's necessary.

I think we can have a kindness and bring a motherly energy into our retreat practice at two.

It may even be more sustainable that way.

So for those of you who consider this like this is my path.

I really want to go deep into Dharma.

I really want to open up this meditation.

I really have some intuition that what people talk about is possible for me.

Do retreat.

Find an afternoon where you can set aside four hours.

Find a day.

Find a week.

If you can find three years that would be amazing.

This this practice is transformative but we have to actualize it through through doing it.

It's actualized through the doing.

And if you can't do retreat then you just practice with the situation you have.

Life gives us plenty of fodder.

And yet there's there's retreat.

Half hour on the dot.

Okay.

Any reflections or arguments about retreat complaints.

Okay.

Thanks for listening.

I did.

Yeah.

I don't make that decision but I can.

I'll take your suggestion and maybe it will be helpful for other people.

That's right.

Yeah.

I still think it's worth doing.

Yeah.

And I wonder what what can be brought into the way we approach the work.

Or maybe we can arrange particular kinds of work.

For example maybe meetings don't have to take place during that day but other kinds of work gets done.

Thinking creatively about how to bring the most practice in that's possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah I think so.

Yeah.

It's kind of what a day at the monastery is like it's book ended.

Secure you book end the day with practice and then in between you do your best to maintain it.

Okay.

One thing I didn't say is if you can go to an inspiring natural place that's fantastic.

Yeah we don't all have that that ability or that opportunity but if you can that can really help.

Like I want to meditate where car is meditating that looks amazing.

It was.

Okay well let's do the four Bodhisattva vows.

Oh does anybody not know them.

I don't have them ready to go in the chat so you could just follow along if you don't know them by heart.

For great Bodhisattva vows.

Beings are numberless.

I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible.

I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless.

I vow to enter them.

The dua way is unsurpassable.

I vow to embody it.

Beings are numberless.

I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible.

I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless.

I vow to enter them.

The dua way is unsurpassable.

I vow to embody it.

Beings are numberless.

I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible.

I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless.

I vow to enter them.

The dua way is unsurpassable.

I vow to embody it.

Okay thank you everybody.

As you know upcoming events are listed on zendust.

Org.

I'll be doing an inner critic retreat.

A one day retreat on Saturday the 28th I believe it is.

The number one obstacle to your meditation.

The inner critic.

I want to help you see what it is.

Get some space.

So I invite you to that.

It's online.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alright.

Stay cool as a cucumber.

Hope to see you next time.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Thank you

This was so wonderful. Many suggestions included.
I will listen again and experience a half day retreat at home. Sounds delicious.