Nirvana Is To The Rear, On Your Left

The meditation room is different from anything we had ever seen before. Very beautifully designed, it sports a garden of vines draping down its sides. It’s the second floor of the Multi-faith Center at U of T.  Had there not been a theater production of the Fringe Festival taking place in the Quiet Room, I would never have chanced to stumble upon it.

When I peer into the room, I feel surprised that I had never explored its dimensions before. Could it be that it is tucked away behind a room marked ‘men’s ablutions’? And could this be potentially daunting to someone who is unfamiliar with the terms and the rituals? I put aside this question as I haul the cushions and mats down to the second floor.

A young man in his late twenties approaches me as I enter the space and start to unpack the cushions onto the wooden floors. His face questions mine.

“Do you know where the Nirvana Group is?” he asks. He clutches a piece of lined paper in his right hand with numerous directions scrolled on it, alongside a set of phone numbers.

I shake my head and try to jog my memory. “Not that I am aware. Are you sure you have the correct date and time? Do you know what floor it might be on?”

“I don’t know,” he says, scratching his long red beard. “I just know that they practice Qi Gong and some meditation.”

“We do something similar to that,” I said. “But we are called the Chan Meditation Group. You are more than welcome to meditate with us.”

The man hesitates for a moment and then agrees, but on the condition that he can also bring a friend.

We start to truck the remaining cushions and mats downstairs. I learn that he is not a student but he has a lot of experience in retreats, such as Vipassana and traditional Hindu meditations. He asks me what tradition I practice, and I mention a little bit about Chan as a Chinese school of Buddhism and meditation. He listens with a kind of soft curiosity.

Soon the young man into the room after his friend arrives. The friend is also a meditation practitioner. His face and voice carry a soft but powerful pointedness to them. I imagine his friend to be a great politician or a leader of some kind. There is a quiet intensity in his stare. I feel as though his friend has an unflagging attention to the cutting edge of this moment.

The teacher and I do our usual guided exercise and meditation. I mention the process of letting things be with the body and not forcing the breath to happen. Even as I start to close my eyes, I listen to my own words, and my mind is an open space. The sound of running water from the wall of plants starts to soothe me. I can visualize myself in a sea of green, almost a kind of marshy swamp. And the whole room opens up to me. Even my pain opens up to me and shares its secret with me. And even the burden of existence becomes something wonderful and meaningful, because it is no longer a felt burden.

Later, as we do the walking meditation, I raise my palm to feel my face. It feels completely new and alien to me, as though another person’s hand were feeling the contours of another person’s face. I know it is happening, but I am just not responding to it as ‘familiar I’ touching ‘familiar me’. It is all the same, touching and being touched, hand and face.

And during the group sharing, we talk about what methods of practice we use. The young man with the beard mentions a practice called self-inquiry, where the participant probes deeply into who she or he is. And our teacher asks him that pointed (and sometimes dreaded question): have you figured it out yet?

A pause.

Figured out what?

Have you figured  out who you are?

The young man laughs, slightly embarrassed.

Um…

He looks downward, as though peering closely into his heart.

I don’t know. I am the current moment, what is happening now.

The young man’s friend jokes, “I keep telling him who he is! He should know by now!”

But  the teacher is persistent.

Who are we?

And we go around and find out what everyone thinks

I don’t know.

I am what is happening right now..

I don’t know…

A bird fluttering in the grey wind…

Who said that?

Who is asking?

Embarrassed (or relieved) silence. And the chance to not have to say the answer is so precious. It is a relief to know that one never really has to say who one is when one is who one is. The words will always elude that quality of just being that enfolds over time, or over no time at all.

Where does the mind move? Does it need to move at all? Today, tomorrow, and forever, I will play the game on the roller coaster and I will have ups and downs.  I can’t find nirvana. Do I need to find it? Is it not already in the laughter, in the agitation, in the roller coaster? Is it not in the loneliness? There is the need to find relaxation and calm, but even that is a desire. Why not simply accept the roller coaster, without needing to find a way to get off it?

Why?

We were never on it in the first place. Mind is mind, regardless of what state of mind we entertain. That phenomena arises and settles and there is an illusion of movement. But still, nothing moves mind. Mind pervades all the phenomena. How can it move between one and another when it pervades all?

What about habits? I wonder

Do I need to move my habits. They are just traps. But who is getting trapped?

Later on we leave together after the meditation. And I hope to be able to see the young man again. He seems so present and peaceful. I get his email so that he can be on the email list and join the upcoming Chan workshop. 

And as he walks away with his friend, I wonder: does he need to look for Nirvana again?