Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi — {9}
General Strike: Stillness / Cessation
Table of Contents
~ Preface
2. Indigenous Knowledge: Bhavana
3. Contact: Aim /Attack / Harass
4. Mobility: Bases / Fluidity / Agility
5. Distrust: Suspicion / Investigation
6. Medicine: Metta / Divine Abodes
7. Retreat: Encirclement / Escape
8. Diversion: Distraction / Misdirection
9. General Strike: Invisibility / Cessation
10. The Guerrilla Band: Camaraderie / Community
11. Independence: Responsibility/ Self-Retreat
12. Intelligence: Education / Reporting
13. The Revolutionary Spirit: Discipline / Determination / Faith
14. Protracted War: Land Reform / Regular Army / International Support
15. {Afterword} Mindfulness: A Balm or a Bomb for Babylon?
~ CHAPTER 9 ~
General Strike: Stillness / Cessation
Strikes… although they are of brief duration, cause severe damage to the enemy. It is enough for them to crop up at different locations and in differing sections of the same area, disrupting daily life, occurring endlessly, one after the other, in true guerrilla fashion.
~ Carlos Marighella
The stability of a State is ultimately dependent upon the productive foundation of its society — the factories and corporations that provide the financial sustenance of the social system. Disruptions to the forces of production can cripple an economy and create an existential crisis for a government. Radical passivity in the form of strikes, work-stoppages, and mass demonstrations represent powerful revolutionary tools that can challenge and, on occasion, even take-down a powerful regime. In a revolutionary context, they have a unique value of being critical strategies of a broader campaign to coordinate the actions of guerrillas, rural farmers, and urban workers. It is the heart of the word “pacifism” whereby actively doing nothing is understood to create an extreme and existential threat to a dominating oppressive force.
Similarly, in the cycles of samsāra, the Empire of Delusion survives and sustains itself through our active and passive complicity in the process of Self-production. Any threat to the smoothness of this Self-production — including strikes, slowdowns, and silent protests — is an existential threat to the stability of Mara’s regime.
There is an interesting resonance between the notions of “labor” in Marxist terms and those of “kamma” (karma) in Pali. While labor connotes the fundamental aspect of the productive forces of society, in Pali, kamma is defined by notions such as “action” but is also used to denote “vocation,” “occupation,” “work,” or even “weaving.” Thus, as the dynamics of labor are at the heart of a society’s liberated or oppressive character, our kamma is at the heart of our liberated or oppressed mind.
Volition (cetana) is action (kamma).
Thus I say, o monks;
for as soon as volition arises, one does the action,
be it by body, speech, or mind.~ Buddha, A. VI, 13
The coming together of intention and action, of kamma, creates a force of momentum in experienced reality — through volitional formations called saṅkhāras — that is traditionally understood do be of either positive, negative, or neutral result; bearing fruit immediately or ripening at some point in the future. In popular culture, kamma is often considered by its outcome. But in the Buddha’s teaching, much more emphasis is laid on the initial action by which this momentum is generated,
One becomes a thief by action.
by action one becomes a soldier.
One becomes a priest by action,
by action one becomes a king.So that is how the wise
see action as it really is —
seers of dependent origination,
skilled in action and its result
By kamma the world goes around,
by kamma the population goes around
Sentient beings are fastened by kamma,
which is like the linch pin of a moving chariot.~ The Buddha, Sutta Nipata
By even the smallest action — mental, verbal, or physical — those of us who have any lingering ignorance, craving, or aversion in our minds, propel some results into the future: beneficial, neutral, or negative. This is the force of bhava or becoming that fuels the cycle of continued existence in the traditional framework of causation called paṭiccasamuppāda (dependent origination).
This level of mind-training is far more subtle beyond the realm of gross actions of hatred or greed we tend to judge our minds by. Most of the time, the very act of doing is an act of becoming. Because it is an imposition on the future, held in expectation, it is also inherently painful. While we cannot simply decide to stop the flow of kamma, the guerrilla yogi can take forceful and dedicated time to stop — or bring to a minimum — the unrestrained flow of action and Self-production in order to be able to see and investigate the the powerful forces at play behind our volitional efforting, cetana.
It is believed that only a fully enlightened arahant does not generate any kamma whatsoever. The arahant does not stop existing, they continue to act, but with only wisdom, kindness, and basic functionality as their motivation. Without the plaque of attachment to outcome, their actions do not lead to bhava, becoming. For as long as they live, they ride the wave of their past actions but without generating new waves that would propel the Self into the future. There is only the complete peace and kind-heartedness of the unagitated mind.
If a guerrilla yogi is serious about this attainment — and they should be — they must not ignore the enormity of the implication of this. If we are aiming for enlightenment in this lifetime we are inviting all of our past kamma to unfold before it ends. We may fantasize about our life as an enlightened being but beware: many of the arahants in the Buddha’s time suffered great hardships and died in intensely painful circumstances. We should only expect that this willingness to meet the fullness of the results of our actions — in all their joy and sorrow — with peace and love would necessitate this. There is no deal to be made with our kamma. The Dalai Lama says beautifully, ‘My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.’ The guerrilla yogi responds, with clarity, ‘Our religion is simple. Our religion is ownership of action.”
GENERAL STRIKE
…it is possible to arrive at organized mass action in the centers of work, of which the final result will be the general strike. The strike is a most important factor in civil war, but in order to reach it a series of complementary conditions are necessary which do not always exist and which very rarely come to exist spontaneously. It is necessary to create these essential conditions, basically by explaining the purposes of the revolution and by demonstrating the forces of the people and their possibilities.
~Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The mind requires profound sensitivity in order to see these very subtle aspects of reality. The guerrilla yogi benefits from restraining themselves from action and watching the flurry of Self-production impulses arise and pass over and over again in the mind. The most basic and fundamental resistance strategy in order to support these necessary conditions in the life of a guerrilla yogi, then, is one of general daily non-productivity punctuated by more robust commitments to the non-generative. Of course we all need to work and to get things done. This is life. But we should acknowledge also how our emotional and energetic investment in the outcome of productive work drains us of the energy we need to also powerfully investigate the dynamics of the mind and body. We have finite energy and we must not be bewildered about the ways in which our responsibilities in life outside of ourselves take power away from our capacity to investigate inside ourselves.
The best we can often do is simply to not invest too much into our own productivity. We are responsible for supporting ourselves and every degree beyond that we take may be beautiful and inspiring but it will also have its natural consequences which we must take responsibility for as well. The refusal to work motivated by identity craving, solidity-desire, and general neurosis is a radical act of resistance. It is the essence of renunciation (nekkhamma) which is not just restraint from the most obvious manifestation of greed, but a commitment to the the radical work-stoppage of the society of the Self. Strike is a practice and these lessons can also be integrated in degrees until the mind learns the most fundamental and powerful form of rest and relief: cessation (nirodha), the attainment of nibbana.
…all efforts must be directed to paralyze regular work, whether in government offices or in private factories, especially wherever it may affect influential figures.
~ Alberto Bayo
The strongest kind of resistance to the wheels of production is the strike, which for the guerrilla yogi is akin to going on an intensive silent retreat. There is nothing like a long period of secluded practice to give us a broader palette of training and engagement from which to deepen our skills and grow as a yogi. We recognize that the conditions of our daily lives are not conducive to the level and sensitivity of engagement with ourselves that will be required for our campaign to strengthen. We need more protection, more quiet, where our enemies are lured into a place where we have more skills, capacity, and energy to engage them fruitfully. It is a powerful stand to take: of non-violent resistance and a declaration of commitment to integrity and confidence, not unlike a strike:
If in a street fight either the police, the armed forces, or the “steel helmets” open fire against the crowd, the next day all our friends and comrades in the work must be induced not to go to work so that a protest may be transformed into a revolutionary general strike. If this end is achieved all efforts will be directed toward generalization of the strike so that business will stop and nobody will dare to work in the factories.
~ Alberto Bayo
Sometimes yogis are criticized for going on retreat. Friends and family may believe that going on retreat is escapism — that we are not dealing with reality and hiding from our problems. But anyone who has been on an intensive vipassana retreat knows we are merely evening the odds. In the everyday world of society, we are inundated with the same stream of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations. But in our lives we have mountains of responsibilities, distractions, temptations that weaken our ability to attend to this inundation skillfully. People in some traditions may insist that we can be enlightened in an everyday kind of way — that we shouldn’t need special conditions. This is wishful thinking. This is a big part of why we sit in the first place: to create the conditions that give us a chance at keeping up with the unfolding avalanche of experience in a healthy way. Retreat is simply a way of deepening those conditions to turn the tables more forcefully in our favor in our battle against Mara.
We should be forewarned: going on retreat is also an invitation to more intense engagement. We are provoking the armies of Mara. A strike is an escalation — a peaceful confrontation — with the forces of production on which Mara is dependent. But it should be done without any naiveté about the battles that we are engaging, of the ruthlessness that can be unleashed in the resistance to our freedom. The State of Self will do all it can to undermine, destroy, disempower, and diffuse the basis of support for such an action,
The strike is a model of action employed by the urban guerrilla in work centers and schools to damage the enemy by stopping work and study activities. Because it is one of the weapons most feared by the exploiters and oppressors, the enemy uses tremendous firepower and incredible violence against it. The strikers are taken to prison, suffer beatings, and many of them wind up killed.
~Carlos Marighella
One of the greatest miscalculations in the Algerian guerrillas was the decision in 1957 to call for an 8-day general strike of Arabs throughout the country. While the impact of success would have been monumental, the rebels overestimated the strength of their organization in urban areas. The conditions of the movement on the ground were not supportive of such a long-duration commitment, and the French found it easy to break the strike in a matter of hours. This humiliating defeat set the revolutionary cause back significantly and it took several months to recover its momentum.
Taking such powerful and committed actions against the enemy has great potential if successful but are also dangerous if the conditions of the rebellion are not ready to withstand the pressure that will certainly rain down upon them. It is better not to be reckless. A general strike of a single day may have been more possible — and still quite potent — attuned to the reality of the conditions of the movement.
I have met a number of yogis so enthusiastic to practice that they sell all their things, leave their jobs and apartments to go be monastics in Asia, only to find that degree of engagement far too disorienting. After months of aimless or over-exerted effort they find themselves without the stability in life that would otherwise support their continued fruitful engagement with the practice. Groundless and humiliated, they have to start their lives back at square one. When you give up everything, you have nothing to go back to. The guerrilla yogi ought always ensure some escape route back to a modicum of security in the case that the challenges they encounter are overwhelming.
THE SLOWDOWN
Another radical industrial action, less dramatic than a strike, is called a “slowdown” in which workers still perform their basic duties but dramatically reduce efficiency or productivity. The first time I visited Thich Nhat Hanh’s old monastery near Woodstock Vermont, I was flabbergasted that the monks insisted on washing just one plate at a time, drying one plate at a time, and putting away plates one at a time. It seemed incredibly inefficient — as washing, drying, and putting away stacks of plates would have taken far less time. But through my surrender to their beautiful form, my view was dramatically altered. Even as someone who has always hated doing the dishes, I found myself calmed and uplifted by the lack of agitation in the process. It might have taken a little longer but was much more relaxing, and strengthening, for the mind.
The contemporary idea of “efficiency” has true contempt for considerations of the process and the negative byproducts of rapidity, making the modern production neither truly efficient nor truly effective. In the cult of becoming we are seduced by the notion of “killing many birds with one stone,” but the guerrilla yogi learns to value the basic truth of mindfulness: that each bird deserves being killed with its own special stone.
Whether you are walking, crouching, crawling or “snaking,” your movements should be deliberate and slow. Never move jerkily. The world of nature is usually in continuous motion, even on the calmest day, and particularly in this country where breezes hardly ever fail. Slow, flowing movements on your parts will harmonize with the movements of the growth around or behind you. If you are lying down or crawling on all-fours, keep your feet on the ground and do not stick your behind up in the air.
~ Bert “Yank “Levy
This is part of the value of slowing down and coming into stillness and why as yogis we are encouraged to move very slowly. Mahasi Sayadaw encouraged yogis to move as if they were very old or very sick. This was not to be morose, but to encourage a profound carefulness and patience. It is not trying to control the speed of life. But by inclining toward stillness we are able to see the incredible speed at which life is happening, at which Self is being produced.
Learn to move with the wind, stopping when there is a lull and continuing when it blows again. When possible, have the wind blowing from the enemy towards you, for wind carries sounds, also the scent of cooking, of petrol, and so on.
~ Bert “Yank” Levy
If we move slowly enough we can experience a tingling intimacy with the environment, like when playing hide-and-seek. Walking meditation can feel like we are sneaking up on ourselves: and in a way we are stalking the Self: learning to read the signs, impressions, and path of this unfolding process of being.
An intense sensitivity can develop where the line between the observer and the observed is heightened, blurred, or erased. When we are observing ourselves in stillness or in motion, sometimes the body or mind can feel extraordinarily alien: its animalness or its impersonal nature are brought into extreme, sometimes disturbing, intensity. Other times, a kind of settled and easeful embodiment can arise, where a powerful coherence between knower and known becomes predominant, or vanishes altogether. This kind of sense of disappearance or of non-separation can be extremely pleasant. As Li Po writes in Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.~ Li Po
This kind of vanishing is an important experience in the life of a meditator because if gives confidence in the Buddha’s teaching on anattā, non-self, and gives a sense of versatility and capacity of mind that is confidence building. It is a degree of non-doing that provides complete invisibility, in the insubstantiality of the sense of Self.
Invisibility is the guerrilla’s fortress. The only one he can hope for. Steel and concrete can be shattered by high explosives, but how can you blast invisibility? Of what use heavy artillery or dive-bombers against ghosts or will-o’-the-wisps?
~ Bert “Yank” Levy
It is very hard to do nothing. To simply sit on your steps and receive the life of the street, on a park bench and be a part of and apart from all that is happening, or a kitchen chair and stare out the window and just observe the movements within the frame, requires a profound faith in the merit of not being caught in the merciless current of busyness and occupation that tend to overwhelm our lives.
Doing nothing is hard, in part, because the powerful mental impulses of volition (cetana) constantly at play in our minds and hearts are so subtle. When we commit to slowdown and stillness we are confronted with the otherwise invisible force of cetana which is so very important to see. The source of our restlessness, our dis-ease, our discontent is brought into focus when we just try to sit and do nothing. We see the impulse to control, to judge, to make more of, rather than let reality play itself out, without our constant intervention.
I learned the most about how to truly relax and settle my system not in intensive meditation retreats, but rather by sitting on my stoop. Anywhere I have lived as an adult, I have spent time on the steps outside and just watched people, cars, birds, winds, clouds, sounds and smells go by. It taught me a lot about vipassana long before I ever heard the word or sat down on a cushion to meditate. Through it I came to trust the value of doing nothing. I learned how to push myself and hold myself through the initial discomfort of restlessness and just settle back and observe by appreciating the peace of mind it brought me — relaxation from the simple concentration — but also the deeper perspective of life moving by.
You may not have a stoop to sit on but perhaps you can find a park bench to commit to and watch the world move by: Watch families and couples, individuals at rest, at play, exercising, reading, smoking, arguing, sleeping, dreaming. The homeless people, the rich people, the young and old, the happy, the sad, the lonely, the busy. The animals, the elements, the plant beings, the feeling in the air, the sense experiences we are immersed in. This practice can be a powerful doorway into the brahma vihara practices of lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. If we can learn to watch the outer world around us without an agenda — and take refuge in that process — we can transform our relationship to our internal practice as well. We let go our need to try to perfect everything we see and settle into the appreciation of what is, of actuality — not because we approve of everything we witness but because it is real. If we can meet reality with genuine interest and care, and see the ways that it connects us to the greater humanity, to the greater beingness of the world around us, it bears profound fruit: loosening the grip of perceptions (sañña) on our mind. Of course when we see our agenda, our preference, our reactions, it is not problem. In fact it is just another element of what we observe and learn to integrate into our knowing.
If you need to bring a prop to being, that’s fine. You can carry along book, a drink, a trumpet, a deck of cards, some dominoes, or a spoon to carve — that’s OK. Just remember that it is a cover for your more serious work of just sitting there and doing nothing but watching the world and your heart’s response to it.
The form of attack of a guerrilla army is also different;
starting with surprise and fury, irresistible, it suddenly converts itself into total passivity.~ Ernesto “Che” Guevara
INVISIBILITY
Just as there is no perfect silence in the battlefields of conditioned reality, there is no perfect stillness. As we commit to longer periods of intensive retreat and silence, the sense of noise is often augmented. The bombardment of sounds can become more intense. The busyness and restlessness of the mind can be quite overwhelming. When we come to sit still it becomes clear that everything is moving, everything is changing, nothing is ever still for a moment. But it takes the orientation toward stillness to be able to notice it.
As we first come to sit we may notice that it is very hard to simply watch the breath without controlling it. Even as this becomes easier, we get to a more subtle level of investigation of the mystery of the power of volitional capacity of mind as it stimulates physical activity, or as it stimulates further mental activity. What impels the attention to move to another object? Is there an aspect of volition to even what we would otherwise consider unconscious or involuntary actions? Some lineages say even the heartbeat has subtle mental moments of volition compelling that rhythm. Do what degree can we observe the doing without doing the doing?
When we see the mind controlling the experience we don’t need to fight it. Just see it, observe it, try to get a sense of what is the emotional flavor of each impulse-moment. As the more gross motivations settle down or become more acceptable, we can see that there are ways of observing that are less and less intrusive, less and less impactful. In fact, there might be an aspect of awareness that arises effortlessly alongside the experience itself without the disturbance that comes through agitation. In the purely observed moment, mindfulness still has impact — but it is the impact of wisdom and insight rather than anxiety and control.
We should consider that we might experience mindfulness as entirely odorless, colorless, flavorless, invisible, weightless. Perhaps mindfulness has no sensory character of its own, no particular experience of its own, doesn’t add any qualities to the observed experience. If being mindful results in pleasant sensation it is because it is not grasping or rejecting what is happening — even if what is happening is grasping or rejecting — and that is an unfathomable relief. How is something so invisible so impactful? Perfect stillness resists no motion. Perfect silence resists no sound. Mindfulness resists nothing, and so is invisible, unobtrusive, takes no space, and creates no ripple.
Suppose we were… an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed. Our kingdoms lay in each man’s mind; and as we wanted nothing material to live on, so we might offer nothing material to the killing. It seemed a regular soldier might be helpless without a target…
~ T.E. Laurence
The earth feels still most of the time. It is our basic metaphor for solidity and security. “Anchor,” “grounded,” “firm,” “settled“ all have a relationship with this idea that the earth is stable and our place on it can be stabilized. But one look at the United States Geological Survey website and you come to find that the earth is entirely unstable. It is constantly shifting, trembling, shaking, cracking. If you have ever experienced an earthquake then you know this directly, and the effect can be not only devastating physically but profoundly unsettling on an emotional level as well. Mindfulness also produces earthquakes of the Self, in which we realize that our primary framework of stability is itself entirely unstable. As is often the case, it is awakening to the degree it is disturbing. The guerrilla yogi can recoil in fear or accept the challenge of the implications of the truth.
At some point in our meditation practice we learn to let go of our anchor, realizing that the mindfulness and concentration are strong and supple enough, the mind is skilled enough, that it doesn’t need to rely on a conjured sense of stability to be free. Actually the mind doesn’t need to be doing anything at all. When strong and balanced between the seven bojjhanga, mindfulness spontaneously observes whatever is arising — in the body, in the mind — without sticking and without rejecting.
This is an acute form of guerrilla vipassana — open awareness — where there is no intentional directing the attention of the mind at all. The mind shows up where it is called and passes away with that experience, arising again alongside the next moment of sensation. In this way there is no sense that the mind is being driven by unwholesome motivations — or driven at all. If it is directed, it is OK because that directivity, in the form of cetana, is seen and known and not identified with. If it is identified with, that is also known and so need not be a problem. This is effortlessness in its purest form, equanimity in its purest form, a practice worth developing and having a deepening sense of faith in. The times where this method is truly choice-less are actually quite rare but we can practice in a more general open way with a great degree of fruitful success.
When we start to feel that every assertion of the mind is an assertion of Self — a form of control, an enforcement on reality, a renewal of existence — the guerrilla yogi must learn to let go of all method, sit back and allow reality to take its own shape at its own pace. Letting go of method entirely, allowing for wandering thoughts, for craving and aversion, for sleepiness or wanting — the Self becomes truly invisible.
Capt. Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Col. Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Capt. Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.~ Apocalypse Now
Because the experience of open awareness can be so wild, it can feel less contained and concentrated because it is alive and moving with life as it is. It may not fulfill the same need for immediate feedback in regards to concentration or the suppression of defilements. But the more we let go and allow ourselves to explore practice in this way, the more we will benefit from the natural equanimity and calm that arises alongside it. It is this equanimity that is of such fundamental value because we come to the inescapable truth: it doesn’t matter at all what is happening.
We can see in this development that our path is really one of the purification of motivation. So the guerrilla yogi seeks to undermine this by settling back and unhooking from the wanting that is motivating our mental actions. We might notice that we have more energy but we almost don’t recognize it as energy because we only know what energy feels like as a constrictive force, a pushing, a tension. What is viriya that does not burn itself up? What kind of viriya generates more of itself rather than depleting itself? Mostly beings use their minds like propellers, getting them to where they want to go, asserting themselves onto the world. In vipassana we use the mind as a windmill, receiving experience. But through that passive connection moment by moment we are generating energy, generating force of mind — through restful and relaxed. This kind of viriya is a form of renewable energy.
If you are always practicing at 100%, much more often than not it means that your motivation is skewed. When we are applying that much effort, most of the time we are pushing, striving, controlling, grasping, forcing, wanting. Because the energy is so firm, we tend to fixate on the object we are trying to observe and are unable to see the mind that is doing the observing, and the underlying motivation. We are so invested in getting concentrated that we aren’t interested in the object itself. It is the place where trying is actually avoiding.
You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.
~ Pablo Picasso
As a general baseline, the guerrilla yogi should aim for using only 70–80% of our energy. Usually, being able to observe the object and the mind requires some slack in the attention. The sun is so bright it obscures the heavens. The intensity of the mind can actually shroud reality. We exhaust ourselves because the mind can only push so hard for so long. If we pace our energy for the long haul, when challenging experiences come up we feel naturally able to call upon the reserve energy that we have because we haven’t spent it, we haven’t depleted ourselves.
Of course there are times when full energy is necessary and appropriate. Sometimes the situation calls for it, sometimes it simply arises on its own. There are times, important and powerful times, when the mind can be entirely balanced and purely motivated at 100%. There would never be any reason to stop or hinder this. But the guerrilla yogi should be willing to see the reality of what is motivating the mind, and what impact it is having, what it is keeping in the shadows, and make adjustments as appropriate. There may also be times when almost no effort is needed, when even the slightest impulse toward or away from one object or another is experienced as a distasteful manipulation, unnecessary and unfruitful. These are important as well.
Walking meditation is a good place to practice our range of effort and the spectrum of intensity we are applying to the practice with what motivation. Walking at different speeds can help give us a sense of what speed can engage the concentration most effectively at what scope, given the current conditions. That is to say, if we narrow the field of attention to a small area (bottoms of our feet), medium area (the whole body moving), or wide-open (to all the senses), is it more effective to walk at a super-slow, medium-slow, or a regular walking pace? Seeing how quickly we can get into an unconsidered rhythm of walking is helpful to keep the energy of the walking practice balanced and renewed. Take the time to ask yourself, how quickly can I move and honestly say that I am observing sensations? Most of the time we will find ourselves humbled and walking more slowly.
If you are starting a longer period of intensive retreat, be very careful to pace yourself as you begin. Try to have your immersion be as gentle as possible. When we appreciate how rare retreat time is, sometimes we can overdo it with gusto and enthusiasm and so trip ourselves up early on. If you are serious about your retreat, take your time. Start in first gear. We cannot bring the same attitude and approach that we have in our daily lives onto retreat. Out there we need to push and achieve. In retreat, we need to be stealthy, careful. We are in a war zone, respect the intensity of what you are up against. Respect the sanctity of the subtly conscious, of the workings of the heart and mind — and don’t just try to bust down the door, jam on the gas, come in with guns blazing. You will get blazed back, slammed down, busted up. You begin a retreat with very little resource — and you don’t even know it. Give yourself time and space to take stock, inventory of inner resources, and begin to apply them with care and tactical sensitivity.
As the days go by, you may decide that it would be appropriate to build your momentum, apply a bit more intensity: aligning more with the formal schedule, for example, or even sitting for longer periods once in a while. On the other hand, you may notice that the intensity builds at the right pace right at the level of energy you are applying. This is more often the case than not. The heart only opens when it is relaxed. and we can begin to see how restless even a little bit more application of energy can make us. Be willing to be surprised by how deep you can get by being easeful.
One important way that we can train the mind in this kind of limber agility is by practicing in the lying posture. When we lie down it is very difficult for the mind to strive, to push, to conjure unhealthy ambition. Our mindfulness is often less precise, more fluid: “more like a water-color than an oil painting” my teacher would say. Again, at first it can be hard to trust this. We become accustomed to believing that “good practice” is sharp and concrete and clear. But over time we can see that other qualities are raised as we lie down: non-resistance, equanimity, calm — and these are fundamentally important to the guerrilla yogi. Of course there is much more of a threat of falling asleep, but we simply recognize this as the cost of the training and exploration. Until our energy becomes balanced and the mind stops assuming that lying down means sleeping, we run the risk of dozing off. But is this so terrible? Perhaps we need a nap.
NIBBANA / CESSATION.
The most profound experience of non-doing is in the realization of nibbana. When perfect conditions align in the mind and the progressive stages of insight are fully explored and digested, the mind has the capacity to take the unconditioned, nibbana, as its target. In Spanish, the word used for strike is “paro” or “stoppage.” Nibbana is the most pure, most successful kind of strike: the deepest peace, true freedom. Whereas all other experiences of reality are “conditioned” in that they are subject to change, arise and pass based on conditions, nibbana is called “the unconditioned.” It is an aspect of reality in which there is no coming or going, no arising or passing, no production or consumption, no birth or death of any phenomena. It is perfect stillness where even consciousness does not arise. It is considered the most profound rest and relief.
Where water, earth, fire, & air have no footing
the stars don’t shine and the sun sheds no light.
There the moon does not appear, yet darkness is not found.
And when a sage — a brahman through sagacity — has realized this for themselves,
from form & formless, from bliss & pain, they are freed.~Buddha, Bahiya Sutta
The Buddha commonly referred to beings as “stuck on taking up” and encouraged students into the process of “seclusion, dispassion, cessation, maturing in release.” This release is the strongest and most natural refusal to “take up” anything as me or mine, to bear any ill-will, or to covet anything. Nibbana represents the fruition of this release which, in our tradition, is recognized to occur in 4 progressive stages: Stream-enterer (sotāpanna), once-returner (sakadāgāmi), non-returner (anāgāmī), and arahant (arahant). The stream-enterer has their first experience of nibbana, usually no more than a blip, but it is powerful enough to uproot all doubt in the path and profoundly clarify the nature of the path for that yogi. Each stage beyond that represents a deepening process of uprooting of defilements until upon final liberation in arahantship there is no more greed, hatred, or delusion at all.
As a person develops along this path they are able to abide in nibbana with greater and greater facility and for more extended periods of time. The arahant has total control over this ability and upon the breaking apart of the body, the mind, with nibbana as its home, does not come back into any state of being. Without the momentum created from wanting, everything comes to rest. No more death, no more birth: It is the end of the war.
Click here for Chapter 10 (The Guerrilla Unit: Comrades / Community)
Click here for Chapter 8 (Diversion: Distraction / Misdirection)
