Opening Talk for Work Retreat - Working and Awakening

Opening talk for a retreat that looks at how we may create artificial divisions between what seems 'sacred' and what seems 'worldly'; between 'retreat life' and 'everyday life', 'meditation' and work' and so seek transformation through only a small part of our lives. In opening to a profound wisdom that sees beyond such dualities, we can come to know an authentic freedom that is truly boundless.

Okay. Well, I'm not actually sure if everyone's here, but we'll go ahead anyway. A very warm welcome to everyone. Welcome to Gaia House and welcome to this work retreat. I didn't get a chance to look at the forms yet, but my guess is some of you will be quite new to retreat, and this might be your first retreat, and others of you will be old hands at this, and everything in between. It's worth, I think, beginning any retreat just taking a little time to reflect on, what is a retreat? What's it about? What are we doing here? Reflect just in terms of history, mankind's, humankind's history, that the form, so to speak, of a retreat has been with us from before recorded history. It's such an ancient form, the movement of human beings, the wish of human beings to make some gesture, a small gesture or a large gesture, to take time out, put time aside, put space aside so that they can inquire into life. That current of wanting to do that and doing it has been going since before history was recorded.

Human beings, and we today, can sense a possibility that perhaps life can be lived with more freedom. Perhaps we can live life with more understanding, with a deeper understanding: what's this all about? Perhaps life can be lived with an openness of heart, with more of an openness of heart. And even if we don't articulate that movement, those wishes that way, or we can't quite put our finger on what we're looking for, that yearning somehow is there, I think, at the root of a human heart. And wanting to move towards those possibilities for ourselves in this life in a very real way -- so not as an abstract ideal, not as a "wouldn't it be nice if," but in a very real way in my life to move towards that: freedom, peace, openness, understanding.

More normally, in the way retreats are set up, actually at Gaia House but throughout history, one devotes a period of time, short or long, exclusively to meditation and silence and simplicity. So this retreat, a work retreat, in a way is -- within that context and within the context of Gaia House -- actually quite a unique experience. It's a unique form. The idea right from the beginning of a work retreat is, what would it be to balance working, activity, so-called 'everyday life' activity, with meditation, and look at the whole thing as an arena for this journey? So in that respect, there are two aspects that make a work retreat different than a typical retreat at Gaia House. One is -- as I just alluded to -- there's less time on a retreat like this for formal meditation. So if this is your first work retreat, it will feel quite different. It will feel quite different. On the other hand, if it's your first ever retreat of any kind, you might feel, "Wow, we're really doing a lot of formal meditation," by which I mean sitting in the hall here together, walking meditation.

The idea with that is that there can be just as much awareness and investigation during the work; that the whole day, working and not working, whether we're in here or we're outside working in the garden or around the house or whatever it is, the whole of it is an arena for discovery. They're viewed completely equally, completely equally. There's equal emphasis of importance given to each. We may want to just check in with ourselves, where do we usually lean with this? People are different in terms of their personalities, where we tend to gravitate towards exploring more or regarding ourselves as discovering more spiritually -- in the work, or in the formal practice. Can they be equal?

Typically, or often, a duality can be set up between formal meditation and sort of everyday life. Now, this is interesting. I really believe that meditation is a skill, it's an art in fact, and we can deepen at that. We can really learn that and deepen in it and develop it over the course of our lifetime. That is available to us. And a meditator should feel that as they're meditating more, they have this sense of the meditation unfolding, deepening, discovering more in the formal meditation. Then that sense of depth, of discovery, of unfoldment in the formal meditation, should spill over into our life, and affect the way we live, and affect our choices, and affect how we are with ourselves and with each other and with life. It should be doing that.

But equally, the exploration, the spiritual exploration we do in life, the care we bring to how we live, how we are with each other, how we are with ourselves, how we are in a moment of activity, moving in the world, that forms the basis for our meditation practice. The Buddha said this over and over and over. It forms the basis for our meditation practice. Otherwise, to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan, it's like a mattress balancing on a bottle of wine. If you get that. It's not ... you know. [laughter] We really need to take care of how we are in our life because it serves as the basis of our meditation, it nourishes our meditation.

So that's the first aspect that makes a work retreat different. It's this striving towards a total equality and inclusiveness between the formal meditation and the work. As such, it really is a precious opportunity. What we learn here in the silence can hopefully translate into our lives in terms of balancing that. Second aspect that makes a work retreat different is the aspect of service. That's quite an interesting one. I am sure you are aware, but if you're not, basically you're here offering five hours work a day of service to Gaia House. It's really an offering on your part, for which I say right now thank you very much. It's really, really appreciated. It's work that the house needs doing, and it's really helpful. But oftentimes, especially in Buddhist teaching, it hasn't really been brought out yet much throughout history, the potential of the path of service. A lot of talk about meditation, probably unparalleled in spiritual traditions, the amount of subtlety and complexity that meditation is talked about. The path about service has not really been brought out in the Buddhist tradition. But service can be a path in itself that leads to freedom, leads to the heart opening in love.

[9:13] So through your service, through the work that you're doing on this retreat, that you will do on this retreat, you're actually supporting others on the path in a very tangible way, a very tangible way. Others will come here and genuinely be supported in their efforts on the path because of the work you do in the next five days.

Last week, I think it was, last weekend, I was invited to a sitting group in Exeter, a meditation group in Exeter. They invited me to lead a discussion, and the theme they wanted to discuss was: what does a spiritual life consist of? What does the spiritual life consist of? So that was quite interesting. It was also very interesting for me just to be in the middle of that discussion, thirteen people and myself, and how many views and sort of counter-views and opinions. Quite interesting to see the range of what people thought about that. But there were probably some elements that could be drawn out for sure, and one of them was mindfulness, awareness, presence. We're going to be talking a lot about that on this retreat.

So a cultivating of awareness or mindfulness as the real heart of this practice, really central in this practice. The aspiration to live with awareness. Partly it's through awareness that understanding comes. It can't come through any other way except awareness. And partly it's this movement to want to touch life almost nakedly, directly, want to actually meet life and open to it and be touched by it. That is at the heart of the agenda of mindfulness. It's one of the things at the heart of the agenda of mindfulness. So often, we don't meet life directly. There's a lot of talk on this retreat about awareness, and the practice is to foster awareness, to nourish awareness, that sensitive awareness, and everything that is beautiful that goes with that and comes out of that.

So awareness, certainly, of course. That's probably, in these kind of circles, a thing that most people gravitate towards as being central to the spiritual life. But I think there are two others that are really, really important. Sometimes they're hard to clarify for ourselves. One of them is intentionality. And the other is view. So intentionality and view. The Buddha talked a lot about both of these. They're really, in a way, at the beginning of his path, the beginning of the eightfold path, in fact. So intentionality and view.

Intentionality. A retreat format, a retreat form, a retreat environment, is actually -- theoretically, at least -- a very simple environment. There's not a lot going on here particularly. Sometimes it feels like a lot going on in my head, but in terms of actual activity, there's not a lot going on. That simplicity, the spaciousness of that simplicity, allows something. It allows a human being to focus on their deeper and deepest intentions. What do I want? What do I want from this life? The very simplicity allows that to be dwelt on. What are my deepest intentions? Sometimes we come to a retreat with very specific intentions about a situation in our life or relationship or whatever it is. But more generally, what might they be? Sometimes we're not aware, and we need to let the simplicity, allow the simplicity to enable that to become clear for us.

So intentions, the Buddha placed at the core of the path, really at the core. The thing about intentions, or one of the things about intentions, is that they're impermanent. So we can come tonight -- maybe not tonight, but tomorrow morning -- full of energy and brightness and very clear intention/aspiration about what we want to move towards, what we want to open up in this retreat. The thing about them is that they shift. They slip, really, is more accurate. They're impermanent. It's so interesting to see what happens to our intentions in life. It's not just on retreat. The blessing of retreat is that you see this process more clearly.

Where do they slip to? I have an intention for, if I'm really gung-ho, for complete unexcelled liberation. Where does it slip to, come the first afternoon, tomorrow around four o'clock? [laughter] Check in. Where has it gone? "I just want that cup of tea." It's gone somewhere so seemingly insignificant: "I just want to be a bit comfortable. Just want things to be a bit convenient. I just want a little bit of sense pleasure. I just want to make sure I'm in my little cocoon of security." This is all very human. Not to judge it. It's very human. How often in our life do our intentions slip that way? How often in a day do they slip that way? They slip that way thousands of times each day, thousands of times. This is where the practice is. And actually, to just begin to be aware of this process is part of the practice. Huge awareness, huge blessing in our life just to begin to see how our intentions slip. It's not often the case that they slip in a very dramatic way.

Sometimes our intentions, we're moving about our life or in the work here or elsewhere, and where do the intentions go? We just are concerned with not looking bad in what we're doing. We don't want someone to think bad of us. How normal is this for our life? How normal is it for that to become the intention in what we're doing? Or I want to look good, or I just want to get the work done. You will see this here. You will see this. And again, one of the blessings of a work retreat is that what we see in our patternings of work here on this retreat, same deal, same patterns that are operating for ourselves on the outside. We will see that slip. And again, not to judge this. You will see it. A huge part of the practice is actually seeing it, seeing it and being aware.

And we keep renewing the intentionality. We keep renewing the intention. The Buddha has this word viriya. It's one of the factors of enlightenment, viriya, the factors of awakening. One of its translations means 'persistence.' We just keep resetting the intention. You keep realigning it. It's not that dramatic. It doesn't sound that sexy. It's at the heart of the path.

So one of the ways of doing this -- and you might carry this as a sort of living question in this retreat, and I would encourage that -- is to ask yourself at any time you remember, just remember to ask yourself, "What am I putting first right now?" What am I putting first? What's my priority? Right now, in this moment, what's my priority? In any moment, in a meditation or at lunch -- that's an interesting one, what's my priority at lunchtime? [laughs] During the work. What am I putting first in this moment? We can keep that as a question that's really alive, and just keep popping it in. What might we discover?

[18:36] You might have discovered you showed up for the retreat and you had an idea -- and this tends to happen every year; I'm not sure if it happened this year -- and for some reason everyone wants to work in the garden, or almost everyone wants to work in the garden. And it's basically first come, first served. So some people arrive and they've missed the gardening slots. What am I putting first in any moment? Does it need to be how I want it to be, what gives me pleasure? Or am I, for instance, in this case with the gardening or whatever, can I put service first? What am I putting first? What's my priority? On a meditation retreat, we are quite naturally preoccupied with the question, "How is my mind right now? How is my mind? What's going on with my mind? What's my mind state?" And actually that should be part of meditation, that we keep an awareness of the mind state, of the state of the heart. But again, given this question that I'm asking, one can put too much preoccupation on that, too much.

So yes, we want calm. Of course we want calm. Pretty much everyone that sits down to meditate is after calmness. It's important and we need to know how to get it. But whether it's the meditation or the work, can we inquire into, is it possible to be free in relationship to what's going on? This is where that second aspect comes in, view. Right View. The Buddha put this right at the start of the eightfold path. It means that when something is not going how I want it to go, when something is not going according to plan, how am I viewing that? How am I viewing it? It's absolutely key. Again, these don't sound like very big shifts or big questions or dramatic or sexy, etc.; massive, massive in their implications.

So am I inquiring into things with a desire to understand in a way that makes me feel free in relation to what's going on? Am I inquiring? How am I viewing? At lunch or -- here, there's wonderful food, if you've not been to Gaia House before. You probably just had tea, and you see the soup and how lovely it is. The managers and the cooks put so much love and care into the quality of the food. But in a way, you know, our intentions can slip into this kind of -- well, like I said, just seeking out sense pleasure. It doesn't matter how the food tastes, really.

Having said all that, we need to kind of respect where we are with this. So a certain amount of comfort and convenience, obviously, is necessary. And for most people a certain amount of sense pleasure is necessary. That's fine. We need to respect that. But gradually, I think, part of the path is that we find comfort, ease, within. And then we're looking less for it outside. Part of the function of mindfulness is that it gives a comfortable sort of vantage point on life. We're in the seat of mindfulness, in the place of knowing. We're taking this seat of awareness, and from that place, we are aware of our life, and there's comfort in the knowing, in taking the seat of the knowing. There's also a certain amount of comfort in the non-complication of retreat. It's almost like resting in that.

So there will be, during the course of any human day, and you can guarantee it's going to happen on this retreat every day, quite a few times a day, something unwanted inside or outside (so-called). Something unwanted. And then, how are we viewing that? This is key. How are we viewing that? It's so easy to view it as an inconvenience, and a hassle, and something to be got rid of, and "this shouldn't be here," and something that just brings us down. How am I viewing it? Can I view it as an opportunity? That's the shift that puts us on the path. When we don't view difficulties as opportunities, we're actually, in that moment, not on the path. We're not on the path. It's an opportunity for inquiry, for discovering freedom in that moment.

One way of kind of summing up the path, the whole path, would be taking care of the heart, taking care of the heart in the best possible way. That's what the path of practice really is. What's the best possible way I can care for this human heart in this life? And that taking care of the heart forms both the basis of our path but also the substance of the path. It's really what we're doing at a very deep level. It might sound odd; I don't know how that sounds right now. But that's actually one way of looking at what the path really is. It really forms the basis, and the basis of our practice. It can form the basis of our retreat. So how do we take care of the heart? How can you take care of the heart for the days that you're here? Physical needs are taken care of -- food, shelter, etc., very lovely house, lovely environment, lovely managers looking after us, lovely food, etc., nourishing. How can we take care of the heart? How can we just put that foundation in place?

One of the ways -- and again, this is a suggestion that you might want to take as a current to run with through the retreat -- is just, as much as you can, when you can, when you remember, inclining the mind, inclining the heart, towards appreciation and gratitude. So easy for us to live our lives moved away from that. What would it be just to reflect on, for instance, the managers, the staff? I know this retreat takes an enormous amount of work. We capped the numbers at twenty partly because of the amount of work it takes for this particular retreat, to set it up and to keep it going. So behind the scenes is an enormous amount of work going on with the managers, the staff, meetings, planning, and this and that. All for the sake of supporting us in our practice, supporting us in our movement towards freedom and opening the heart. Can we incline the mind towards that? Appreciation of nature, gratitude that a place like this exists, gratitude for the teachings, gratitude for whoever in your life made it possible for you to be here in whatever way -- someone staying somewhere, looking after something or whatever it is while you're here. Inclining the mind in these small ways makes such a difference to our life, such a difference. So taking care of the heart.

[27:23] With all of that, and with the view and the intentionality that I talked about, and the awareness, and the taking care of the heart, there are three kind of practical factors that I want to talk about that also very much form the basis and the ongoing fabric of our time together. We're a small number of people living together for a few days and exploring together. One of the things that supports us in doing that is the silence. On any retreat, I believe that the silence is a really significant aspect, very deeply significant aspect of the retreat. It's something that we can very easily dismiss and not see as that important, but actually it's something quite powerful in its possibility. But particularly maybe on this retreat when, again, relatively speaking, there's less formal time for meditation, there's something about the silence, something about the silence. It's there. Sometimes people just sense it when they walk in the front door. Something about it can have its effect on the being.

The silence is interesting. It actually doesn't take much silence -- sometimes just a little bit, a few minutes or a few hours -- for that to begin to wash through the being, for it to begin to remind us of what we most deeply want in this life, where we most deeply want to be going. It's immensely powerful. It reminds us of our intentions, allows a clarifying to come into the intentions. All the kind of bric-a-brac and flotsam and jetsam of the mind that we get so preoccupied with in our daily life, one of the functions of silence is that it can just settle, just sink to the bottom, and what's deeper, what's more important, can begin to rise and begin to become clear. Incredible gift of the silence. So please, please, please, to give yourselves to the silence and respect the silence.

It is quite a weird -- if you're new to it, you may love it at first; for other people it's quite a weird environment to walk into. And socially, you have to admit it's quite strange: here's twenty of us, in the whole house we're probably fifty people, living quite close together and not talking to each other. That's a little odd. But as we deepen in the silence, our sensitivity opens up and we can begin to feel a connection in and through that silence. We may not be talking to each other, but we're aware of each other. We know who's here. We're looking. We feel that connection, and supporting each other in the silence. Something very, very beautiful about that, that sometimes words and talking and non-silence can actually obscure. So please, to give yourself to the silence, and just see it as supporting your own practice and supporting each other in practice.

Just practically, some of you may be sharing rooms. You may be here with a friend. So just make an agreement not to talk for the duration of the retreat. There will be time at the end to meet and talk together. There will be time. Or if you haven't met your roommate yet, say hello tonight. Say hello, figure out if you want to sleep with the window open or closed or this or that, and then just agree to be silent. And please, please, please, please, mobile phones -- just ignore them. Just ignore them. I mean, they're great, but it's such a kind of blight in a way when we want to be silent. Sometimes texting, you think, "Well, it doesn't make any noise. It's still silent," but it's the spirit of silence and the power of that spirit of silence that we're interested in. So please just maybe turn it off and put it at the bottom of the bag.

So there's the silence. Second practical thing is the kind of simplicity. I touched on this earlier. Some of you may be arriving and have odds and ends or pieces of business or something you need to finish up. Please go ahead and feel free to finish that tonight, to just take care of whatever you need to take care of, make a phone call. If you don't have your mobile with you, there's a pay phone. The managers will tell you where the pay phone is. If you've done that or when you've done that, take a little time tonight to really arrive, to really arrive here. It is a different environment. Take a little time -- and it's very quiet here -- just to walk around inside or even outside. Beautiful night. And just feel yourself here, feel yourself in the grounds, feel yourself here, land in the body, in yourself here.

And the retreat starts, and we'll be putting the schedule up, and just to surrender to a kind of simplicity in the retreat. There's simplicity around the schedule -- it says "sitting at this time," it says "work at this time," it says "Dharma talk at this time." And one just -- just surrender to it. It's simple. Instead of choosing, "Mm, what should I do? It's four o'clock," just to surrender. Again, something about that simplicity, it kind of clears away what might be in the way so that we can see more easily and see more deeply easily. And it can allow something. It allows something to come up that we might need to see -- maybe something beautiful. It allows that to emerge.

Silence, simplicity. The third thing is the ethical guidelines. Did the managers talk about ...? The managers went over that. I'll just very briefly mention them again. The five precepts. Like the silence, and in a way like the simplicity, we are giving these to ourselves and to each other. It's something we agree on together as a way of supporting ourselves and our practice, and supporting each other, and supporting the whole environment and the time here. So commitment to not harming; not taking what is not given; in the context of this retreat, abstaining from intentional sexual activity; in daily life, not speaking lies, not speaking what's harsh, not speaking gossip, not speaking what divides people, not speaking idle chatter -- a very difficult one, this whole area of speech, made a lot simpler on this retreat by the fact that we're going to keep silent for the most part, apart from questions and answers, and me talking quite a lot. And the fifth one: abstaining from drugs and alcohol. So this retreat is a completely drug and alcohol-free environment, and for the purpose of awareness, for the purpose of clarity, for the purpose of deepening our sensitivity in life. We need, if we are to tread this path, if we are to live a life that's beautiful, that's growing towards beauty and freedom, we need every ounce of our sensitivity, every ounce of our clarity and our awareness. Anything that obscures that, that clouds that, that dulls that, it's just shooting ourselves in the foot right from the bat.

So these five precepts, we make a collective agreement together. They're a gesture of love to each other, of care. I care what I'm putting out. I care that what I do affects those around me and myself. A gesture of respect for each other so that there can be trust here, so that we don't have to watch our backs. When there's trust, the heart can let down its guard, and something can open. It depends on that trust being there, which depends on the precepts. So the heart opening, if that's what we're interested in, depends on our keeping the precepts, our commitment to living with care, caring how what we do affects each other.