Retreat (2009)

Friday afternoon
we arrive, meet
our fellow meditators,
talk for hours
about the prospect
of not talking
for the next ten days

*

every morning
the gong waking us
into 4:30am darkness

*

for the first three days
we watch the breath

*

feel the breath entering
& leaving the nostrils,
channels of breath
gently brushing
the upper lip

*

stripped of speech
& gesture
how we still keep
a polite distance,
how I am careful
not to slurp at my tea
in the dining hall

*

writing is not allowed;
‘there is no need
to take notes’

*

no reading either
except signs & notices;
a makeshift sign
on the border of the property reads
‘do not go beyond this point’

*

every day after breakfast
taking a walk around the field;
around its perimeter
the long grass has been trampled
into a narrow path;
my toes,
exposed through sandals,
sprayed with dew;
grasshoppers leaping
away from each step

*

perhaps a sleepmurmur
is all that has exited
my mouth for days –
other than a cough
or froth of toothpaste

*

three times a day
a ‘sitting of determination’:
to stay still
for an hour,
observing the pain
in my shoulders and back
as it arises

*

towards the end
of each arduous hour
the coughing starts up
amongst the men
meditating around me
(this being their subtle way
of expressing discomfort)

*

remembered songs drop by,
wash uninvited through
the meditating mind

*

what is that sound?
two percussive blocks
knocked together
or a restless frog
in the dawn?

*

4:30am
New Year’s Day:
close to forty degrees;
moths, mosquitoes & others
drunken in the heat
party around the nightlight
outside our dorm,
& the thought arrives:
any other year,
I’d be joining them

*

some afternoons
it must be 45 degrees
in the meditation hall;
I leave a pool of sweat
on the mat

*

I break my vow of silence
to inform the ‘male manager’
that the first toilet on the left
has a blockage

*

men & women are segregated,
have separate facilities,
though we all meditate
in the same hall –
men on the left,
women on the right

*

everyone is asked to dress ‘modestly’
to minimise distractions

*

meditating in the hall
at dusk,
intermittent mooing
of a distant cow

*

a spider on the door
of our dorm room...
is it? – yes, it is
on the inside of the glass

*

without communication
it's difficult
to come to an agreement
about whether the dorm door
should be open or closed
during sleeping hours

*

on white porcelain sinks
in the male washroom,
mosquitoes & beetles:
a growing collection of corpses

*

anicca:
everything arises,
passes away


Note: This poem is based on my experiences during a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat in December/January 2007-08.

rain (2008)

1.
no one takes his leaflets –
why? because it’s raining?

2.
this weather
is a lot of information

3.
tense as glass this morning
as he sits to meditate

4.
subtle sensations of vipassana:
isolated showers

5.
his hand will not destroy
even the smallest creatures

6.
someone jokes
that his hand lacks teeth

7.
his apartment
becomes moths

8.
this rain
is unintentional

9.
naked he stands,
a book in each hand

10.
smiling, shaping to accept
he enters the rain

Seven Concentrations (2008)

1. Entrance

This should be easy to enter, like a building. Not that all buildings are easy to enter, but the idea that they could (or should?) be. "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding." Ha.


2. Retreat

Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking, not unlike a holiday which doesn’t include a single digital component. Our thinking became less mushy once we exited the city. For a moment our bodies felt lighter than notions. A tingling of safety. But ads gave chase, behaving as do subatomic particles, which the physicist can only know by inference. They surfaced even in the most private of spaces: the pimples of the tongue, the shield of the retina. There was no longer a question of where – therefore escape had no meaning. There were arguments already and we needed other channels of conversation to erupt.


3. Reading

No amount of reading will ever be ‘enough’. This does not require a diagram.


4. Coding

It wasn’t the effect I wanted; this made me especially happy. Inelegant code. Widely-circulated propaganda: shots of webs supposedly threaded by spiders in various states of intoxication. Two flat whites. Dark promise of an uncharted mineshaft. Or open-source; an open-cut mine.


5. Mythology
Overheard: "... your money where your myth is." The study of contemporary mythology. Where science ends, where we begin... to feel... unspoken? We can only hope.


6. Art

Too many artists (moths) at this 'soirée'. Their code is elegant. Pretty in black, sloganesque. To be one of them, one of theirs. Shaping to be unexpectable.


7. Meditation

We take smoke-roads out of town, until we rise from morning meditation. A doubt: were we meditating this time, or waiting? To think is to stray. Slipped and cut. The mind is overcharged, wades in all the gone and unwritten. But to return to the point… return after return is the practice. Returning to the one point is the practice.


Notes:  "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding" and "Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking": Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, Allen Lane, 1973.

An earlier version of this piece was published in otoliths 12.

For Edwin (2008)

"If we continue in our mindful observation there will no longer be a duality between observer and observed."
- Thich Nhat Hanh


We have always been as weightless as this.

Our modest collection of questions.

Holes full of nets; nets full of holes.

No waiting: all things are present.

Eye observes itself.


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

stem (2007)

a watched rain never falls. alone in our many rooms craving left-aloneness.

*

stem overgrown with thought. seated in lotus position.

*

we map disappearances. small birds wrapped daily. cannot drink the river.

*

rowing three hours each way between us. to arrive at degrees of fidelity. granting the eye permission to lick.

*

think we’re coping better with crop failures. though there are times we want to murder the fruit. unpeel what is peeled. how we never know how to hold what's dying.

*

in spite of our ghosts, go scuttling in party shoes. go scuttling, eyes wrapped in sheets. ditching dharma, ditching precepts.

*

our housedust. a lint magnet. stem the breath with fluff. dustmites fed on skinflakes.

*

if the rain would pile upon itself. if the harvest. bring breath to what is said.

*

lotus position. the spine a stem.

*

to err. still planting the heart. craving left-aloneness. listening for dry echo.

*

i say tremble then. break with the room. strew dust. be spilt.

*

you say stay faithful. wear blue on blue days.

Mid-city meditation (2007)

I take off my shoes
so the grass can imprint
abstract designs on my ankles

can't see any other meditators
in Alexandra Gardens

a precious day

sun gushing,
pooling on gemgrass;
river metallic

cars on City Rd
sounding like the ocean
(peaceful cars)

I slow
& stop thinking
for some seconds

then I remember
to take off my sunglasses

& it becomes a lot brighter
behind closed eyes

I notice this,
then revisit the breath

an easy breeze
stroking my face

I revisit the breath,
revisit the breath

until half an hour later
I hatch
from my trance-shell,

look over at my shadow,
my head made of grass

*

8pm that night
I meet Monica on the bridge

we gaze through the sci-fi city,
make new pledges,
smile out...

a 4x4 crushing
a skater's stray deck
jolts us back to the wheel


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

Vipassanā (2007)

Meditation
shouldn't be misunderstood
as another search for an exit

It is a way back
to where you are

First letting the eyes stop,
calming the antennae

Then all punctuation dropped,
an unhurried torch
shone throughout the body

The mind does not need to shop

Silent as smoke
except for the radio
from the apartment below,
bleeps counting in the newshour;
swooshes of traffic, birdsong solos,
hum of the nearby city

Of course the body hands out flyers
for a protest march
and sometimes a slow bee visits,
buzzing at every itch,
every knot of fear,
every burn of venom in the blood

The ongoing task of sitting
may be learning such restlessness
by heart
(the heart has many commas)
while mind writes smaller and smaller

Though my first teacher taught
that mind and heart are the same bell,
fused in a single word:
chitta



Note: The literal translation of vipassanā (Pali) is ‘insight’. The word is used to refer to ‘insight meditation’, and a specific form of Buddhist meditation practice which is taught in various strands of modern Theravada Buddhism. See the Wikipedia entry on vipassanā for more information. I practice vipassanā meditation each morning, following the method taught by S. N. Goenka.

Below: An image from Ansuman Biswas' project Self/Portrait (sourced from thelab.org)

Opening Meditation (2002)

Flow,
pour yourself into
the flow

and then
rest
with the flow.

Through
your room
windows

you
are seeking
those who awaken

in the future,
silent roads
from the past,

the deafness
of lovers,
the rain.

One fallen piece
of water
a mirror

balances
these pulsing colours
of life.

You do
not see
the shattered

flowers,
nor the exits,
those who left.

Your eyes
follow
the flame

inside
and outside
of sight.

You grasp
a cold key
and

with it
unlock the game
of change:

to flow,
pour yourself into
the flow

then
rest
with the flow.