Last weekend I took part in a retreat at Rivendell in Sussex, with the FWBO. Enchanting place, lovely group of people, tough weekend.
Tough, for me, firstly because this was my first retreat not entirely in silence. Silence is difficult, of course: austere, empty, long. But I can do silence, always find it calming and nurturing. Cultivating quiet and openness, sometimes painful openness, while remaining in communication, while talking and listening between meditation sessions and discussion groups and over endless communal meals: this I knew I would find much more difficult, but potentially a positive challenge.
Tough, too, because the theme of the retreat was Dealing with Anger. Who wants to deal with that? to think about it at all? Even now, my mind slides away.
Buddhism teaches that anger is a negative, destructive emotion - something to aspire not to feel, at all, in any circumstances. There was, in our group, the usual righteous resistance to this. Aspire not to ever be angry? Not even angry about violence, cruelty, injustice and oppression? Surely that can't be right? Surely that will lead to passivity, to not trying to change the things that all kind, progressive people feel must change?
And then there's the struggle so many of us have waged to 'get in touch with our feelings'. Surely it's healthier not to harbour and repress difficult emotions, but to 'speak our truth'? Doesn't unexpressed anger become depression?
I'd already been wrestling with all this over the past few months, as my meditation practice grew more regular. If you keep sitting with yourself, everything comes up: the whole parade of how you're doing in life, the grinding round of miserable habits, all the things you un-remember and deny and hide from and spend years and years building defences against.
The most significant thing I've learned, from a teacher met recently who seems to be a good teacher for me, is the practice of watching emotions arise in the body - the first feeling of tension, disturbance, resistance, almost before you can give it the name of fear, disappointment, anger. Looking for the tiny space where it is possible to notice this. Tiny. Tiny. And the huge difference it makes to become aware, even sometimes, even fleetingly, of that space before falling headlong into emotional reaction.
These few seconds of noticing the feeling arise, examining and accepting how it is, perhaps sometimes even being able to ask, "what is this about? where is this coming from? do I want it?", are sometimes enough to start a transformation of the hot, burning spiral of energy that is anger or another destructive emotion into care for oneself and a space to make choices about the ensuing action. Just a few seconds, so hard to locate and notice. But if you can do it, the effect can be so huge. Not suppression. Not passivity. But more choice about where to direct that powerful energy.
Of course, this is not just huge, but hugely, excruciatingly painful. Who wants to take a look at how a feeling feels, where it hurts and trembles in the body, the deep vulnerability from which it may arise? Who wants to look, especially, at the personal, ingrained, habitual patterns of reaction and behaviour set off by strong emotions? At those patterns, the appalling, shaming, aargh-why-did-I-do-that-again patterns? Certainly not me. I passed a very painful weekend.
Somehow, though, I think I'll keep trying to do this. Because the amazing thing is that although it's terribly painful, it doesn't last, as anger can last. It hurts like hell and then burns out, like the open hurt of a child, leaving a space for choice, and maybe for tiny, tiny change and more effective, less destructive and self-destructive action. This stuff does work.
I find it difficult to write about this, can't but make something subtle sound simplistic and naive. One of the best things, for me, about learning Buddhist meditation practice is that it's been almost entirely experiential - not talking about it or reading about it, but doing it. Some things, though, are worth expressing. However inadequately.
