Be silent and still... and it will be (sesshin).

These are the words I read as I returned to my cushion after ‘rest’ period on the fifth day of sesshin: Be silent and still. I knew what they meant immediately. I was talking, during sesshin. I wasn’t talking out loud, but I was talking. Thoughts were coming up for me during zazen, and I was being present to them, but I was also talking about them.

 I would see stuff about myself and then I would judge it:  ‘poor me’ or ‘why do you have to be like this’ or ‘it was awful that you had to experience that.’ Other times, I would explain what was coming up: ‘that’s because this happened’ or ‘that’s because they’re this way.’ As a result, I blamed others, saw myself as a victim, harbored resentment, and ultimately perceived myself as different, separate, alone.

I wasn’t being still either. I may have been sitting still, but I was grasping: trying to figure things out, holding on to the past, making things up about my future, conjecturing instead of just witnessing my existence.

As I read the words, I thought about the analogy that Fu had given (when we were at Green Gulch for the YUZ retreat) about snakes in containers. She explained that when you put a snake in a tube, they coil and writhe and fight against it. But as soon as they relax, as soon as they are still, they slide right out, and are free. I decided that the reason the Ino had written this note to me  (it was in response to a note I had written to him) was because he saw me grasping for human contact, trying to figure things out, fighting against the whole point of sesshin:  seeing yourself. So I trusted his advice and took it. I got completely still. I didn’t get silent right away, I kept talking for a long time, but I finally saw this talking for what it was: a distraction to keep me from seeing myself.

For the next 48 hours, I tried to be still and silent. I moved slowly, literally trying not to disturb even the air around me. I stayed silent, with my body at least, trying not to make any noise, any impact. I didn’t go to yoga after the note- I didn’t want to move my body intentionally, I wanted to be still. I sat and I did kinhin and things came up. When they came up, it hurt and I cried. But I stayed still. I didn’t justify what came up, I didn’t put a value on what came up, I didn’t interpret what came up, I just stayed with it. It wasn’t even acceptance, it was just existence.  

That night, I even rode my bike home in stillness. When I got home, I saw the picture of my mom that I had moved to my bedside after having dokusan with Blanche. For the first time, I saw my mom. She wasn’t a photograph anymore, she was a real person. She had lived and she had suffered. She had been a happy 38 year old and she had loved me. Then I picked up the picture of myself and my mom the year before she died. I was a happy five year old. I was next to my mom and we had been happy together. Yes, she died and I probably was confused about all that but I also kept on living. It wasn’t all suffering and sadness, we had lived too.

And then I saw my watch- it’s a women’s version of my dad’s watch – and I started crying. I cried in apology, in empathy, in compassion, in acknowledgment that my dad was there for me after my mom died. He really was there, and he was solid and stable and I was taken care of. And he experienced suffering too. We all did.

I’ve thought a lot about what happened after I read the note- whether my realizations were more intense or deeper or more real, but that’s not what it was at all. It wasn’t the realizations, it was what I did with them. I just existed with them. I was silent and still with them.

And to me, this silence, this stillness, is the essence of this practice. When you are silent to your existence, things just exist. You don’t add to them with your words or your thoughts if you are silent. And stillness, that’s just letting the world be- that’s being present to it; not grasping at it or trying to hold on to what’s already passed, you’re just being still with it, letting it exist.

And I think that’s what allowed me to finally see my mom, to exist with her. I stopped trying to decide whether she was alive or not, whether she suffered or not, who she had been, who she was now. I just saw her, without an attempt to make her anything other than the person I saw in the photograph. And I saw myself too- not as a poor five year old, or as a loss of childhood, or a broken person as a result- but as a happy five year old; because in that picture, I’m a goofy, happy, cheesy five year old, sitting next to her mom. 

And my dad, he existed too.  He was a man who was dealing with the loss of his wife and the sudden responsibility of three small children. And he did an amazing job of dealing with this. And he loved me and took care of me and still does. That’s who he is.

I’m still working on who I am. I’m working on only seeing myself, not adding to what I see with judgment or labels or desires or expectations. And I’m working on being still too- not trying so hard to figure things out or make things go one way or another; just being.. still.