That Time I Sobbed My Way Through a Himalayan Meditation Retreat

Fear, sadness, grief, jealousy, and anger are like quicksand: resisting them in a sudden, knee-jerk way can make them much more troublesome. But investigating them patiently – embracing them, even — can undo their effects. Pema Chödrön, an American nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, tells a story about Milarepa, a Tibetan sage who lived…

Jaimal Yogis
5 July 2017
Rainbows in the valley below Kanglung, Trashigang Dzongkhag, Bhutan. Photo by Kartografia.

Fear, sadness, grief, jealousy, and anger are like quicksand: resisting them in a sudden, knee-jerk way can make them much more troublesome. But investigating them patiently – embracing them, even — can undo their effects.

Pema Chödrön, an American nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, tells a story about Milarepa, a Tibetan sage who lived during the twelfth century. One night, Milarepa came back to his meditation cave and found a horde of demons. “He had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind,” Chödrön writes, “all the unwanted parts of himself.” But he still didn’t know how to get rid of them.

Milarepa had been at this spiritual practice stuff for a while, and had developed a few tools, which he tried out on the demons.

He tried lecturing the demons on Buddhist teachings. No luck.

Even though we may understand the benefit of embracing our obstacles, actually doing the embracing is another thing entirely. We are expert negativity dodgers.

He raged at them. They laughed.

Finally, he gave up and said, well, “looks like you’re not going anywhere and I’m not either, so let’s just live here together.”

Then, as if Milarepa had spoiled the demons’ fun, all of them left — all but one really nasty one with horrible fangs. And “we all know that one,” Chödrön writes. “Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.”

With this demon, Milarepa knew he’d have to be smart. So he walked up and stood face-to-face with it, feeling its hot breath. Then he promptly stuck his head into the demon’s mouth. That demon then left, too.

When I lived at a Ch’an (Chinese Zen) Buddhist monastery just after high school, I occasionally practiced with a group of monks in the Thai Forest tradition as well. Some of these monks were British, and though monks don’t traditionally eat after noon, these British guys had not surprisingly found a loophole for afternoon tea.

One afternoon over chocolate and Earl Grey, they told a story about a pilgrimage they’d been on through India together. While heading to Delhi, bandits had hijacked the bus and began stealing the passenger’s wallets at knifepoint. Now, Thai Forest monks never touch money; they receive all their food from supporters. When the bandits got to these orange-robed bald men, some of the novice monks were afraid. But one of the elder monks walked directly up to a robber, pointed at the knife, and then, like it was a scene from of Game of Thrones, he bore his neck, daring the man to slice.

The robbers fled.

Stories like these illustrate the almost magic power of embracing and facing obstacles – be they emotional or physical. But even though we may understand the benefit, actually doing the embracing is another thing entirely. We are expert negativity dodgers.

I learned this when I went on my first ten-day Vipassana retreat in India, and ended up sobbing through most of it.

When I was a college senior, my Indian American girlfriend of a couple years, Sati, and I painstakingly planned a yearlong trip to India. But weeks before the trip, Sati left me for someone else — an older man who seemed to be really good at everything I was insecure about.

Devastated but determined, I went on the trip solo — and after months wandering the subcontinent heartbroken, looking to distract myself with work and tourism, I wound up in a small Himalayan town.

Devastated but determined not to wilt, I went on the trip solo — and after months wandering the subcontinent heartbroken, looking to distract myself with work and tourism, I wound up in a small Himalayan town, McLeod Ganj, hoping more meditation could help me heal. As I’ve written about here before, I befriended a monk in McLeod, Sonam, who also happened to be devastated and heartbroken.

Sonam had lost track of his family in the Chinese occupation tumult. But heartbroken as he was, he was at the same time the happiest person I had ever met. Sonam simply exuded joy — while also grieving. Once, while crying about his family, I even put my arm around his shoulder and he laughed, saying, “Ja-ma, you funny, dis bery sad, no problem.” That little saying, “bery sad, no problem,” became a mantra for me during my six months in the Himalayas. But I didn’t truly get the depth of Sonam’s wisdom until I forced myself into a more expansive silence than was found in my short daily practices.

The Vipassana meditation center I went to was run out of a yurt in Bagsunath, a smaller town above McLeod. It was as basic as it gets: dirt floors, a single image of the Buddha on a wooden table, old military-style canvas tents with cots to sleep on.

Adhering to the Buddhist idea of dana (giving), the retreat center didn’t charge a dime for food or lodging, which helped me breath easier the minute I walked in. Given my student loans, even the one-dollar per-night rent at a local family’s house was starting to make a dent.

Vipassana — which means insight in Pali — is a system of meditation built on the Buddha’s first teachings in the Satipattana [Mindfulness of Breathing] Sutta. You’ll get a sense of that sutta from its initial lines:

A monk, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree or to an empty place, sits down with his legs crossed, keeps his body erect and his mindfulness alert. Ever mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows, “I am breathing in a long breath”; breathing out a long breath, he knows, “I am breathing out a long breath”; breathing in a short breath, he knows, “I am breathing in a short breath”; breathing out a short breath, he knows, “I am breathing out a short breath.”

In other words, in Vipassana meditation, you witness what’s happening — without trying to change it. (Hence “Mindfulness of Breathing.”) It sounds almost ridiculously easy, so easy it would be pointless to mention. But scientists now know doing this simple act everyday has an incredible number of great side-effects: it can increase immune function, decrease pain and inflammation, increase positive emotion, decrease depression, and on and on. Doctors are now prescribing mindfulness for everything from back pain to postpartum depression.

But for Buddhists the side-effects are not the point. The point is to actually end suffering — like, for good. Thoughts create our reality, goes the thinking, and suffering is an experience in the mind. Master your thoughts — or simply let them be without constant reactions and identification — and you master reality. You master being.

I liked Vipassana, which is the foundation of all Buddhist meditation. But Vipassana schools, I found, tended to be slightly more relaxed than the hardcore Chinese approach I’d been trained in. I’d had a wee chip on my shoulder as I strolled into this mountain yurt in Bagsunath. The schedule called for eight hours of meditation per day and sitting practice finished at 9 PM. That’s a lot. But compared to our old Ch’an schedule, it was like running a half marathon instead of a full 26.2.

The moment the retreat bell dinged, my mind came up with infinite excuses about why I should be anywhere but alone with it in a yurt at 8000 feet in India.

I’d forgotten, however, that when you’ve been running around in the bustle of everyday life — movies, emails, friends, family, music for distractions — stopping those distractions cold turkey can be shocking. Suddenly, you’re alone in a strange place: your mind. And you’re alone there for what seems like way, way too long.

The moment the retreat bell dinged, my mind came up with infinite excuses about why I should be anywhere but alone with it in a yurt at 8000 feet in India.

“I should be writing!” I told myself on day one. “I’ll never get into grad school now! Sati will have been right to leave me. I’m a failure.”

On day two, my Ch’an ego re-took the wheel: “These teachers are weak. I should be in China, not India.”

On day three, I developed a crush on a UN worker who was volunteering at a nearby refugee camp and spent the entire day fantasizing about how I might approach her when we were allowed to talk again. Soon I’d even played out a passionate romance and happy life together. We’d have two children, live in a cottage in Bali, and end world hunger.

On day four, I abandoned that fantasy and began stewing about the teacher, an elderly Indian man, for telling me not to do yoga during the retreat.

“Simply do the meditation,” he said. “The practice is all you need.” I smiled, but was thinking, “and all you need to do is remember we’re in the middle of the fucking Himalayas! I think a little yoga is okay.” (I was carrying around a lot of anger.)

By day five, I began to settle into the practice, and felt just on the cusp of some good old-fashioned retreat peace. But when the pitch and chop of the mind begin to settle, when you sink into the still depths, you occasionally find the tentacled creatures that live down there.

That happened on day six. I got hit with a memory of Sati and me in Hawaii. It was a simple image: just us with our feet in a tide pool near Hilo, giggling and about to go for a snorkel. She was wearing a gold one-piece bathing suit and was joking about jellyfish and how locals had told her to pee on herself if one stung her.

It wasn’t much. But for whatever reason, surrounded by a thick crowd of mindful breathers, each sorting through their infinite psychological knots, I began to convulse and sob.

I restrained myself enough not to sob for the rest of the hour — wasn’t I supposed to be some kind of Zen warrior here? But when the bell rang, I ran out to my tent, plunged my head in my pillow, and bawled like I had never bawled before. I cried for an hour straight, a sort of wheezing tantrum.

At the end, I felt better and assumed that would be it.

“Minor technical difficulty,” I tried to say to my neighbors, especially the UN woman, with subtle glances.

But during the next sit, it happened again.

Then again.

Then again.

I’d never cried about any of this before.

Meditate. Cry. Meditate. Scream and punch pillow. Meditate. Weep until donkey grunts and hiccups set in. Silent retreat had become weeping retreat.

In those early C’han retreats, I’d had this vague notion that meditation was all about cutting off emotion with razor-sharp focus, about getting tough on pain, which was ultimately a mental illusion. And, before meeting Sonam, I would have forced myself to stop crying. I would have sucked it up and soldiered on. But in the midst of my sobbing, hokey as it may sound, I felt like Sonam was coaching me from the sidelines: “Ja-ma, look! Dis bery sad noooo problem. Big sad berrrry ok!” So I tried to follow my coach and just let the sadness be.

It was interesting: once I stopped being angry at myself for not being enlightened, for being a normal human with normal feelings, the crying and sobbing and pounding ceased to be so bad. Of course, I wouldn’t have minded if they left and never came back, but still, when I surrendered in the midst of the bleating and the hiccuping, the wave of emotion became a surge — more akin to unrestrained laughter than it was to depression. It was actually strangely pleasant.

And the more the tears were allowed to flow, the more the sobbing shifted away from Sati. There I’d be, head in pillow, but I was also eleven, watching Mom collapse by the sink as Pa said he was leaving the marriage. I was also six at a new kindergarten, terrified to speak to the other kids, who looked so easy and carefree. I was also fifteen, getting high and caught in another stupid lie that was hurting someone I loved.

I’d never cried about any of this before. I’d taken up the way of our military family and spent my whole life soldiering through grief, flipping the bird at sadness as if it was weakness. But Sonam had revealed a truth so obvious it was the easiest to miss: you couldn’t run away from sadness any more than a river can run up a hill.

Life was sad. Really sad. There was no way around it. But sadness, when it was allowed to be itself, was strangely not sad. Sadness was just sadness. Tears just saltwater.

 

This essay has been adapted from Jaimal’s memoir, All Our Waves Are Water: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment and the Perfect Ride.

Jaimal Yogis

Jaimal Yogis is author of Saltwater Buddha, The Fear Project, and the forthcoming memoir, All Our Waves Are Water, and the picture book Mop Rides the Waves of Life. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their three sons.