One of the side benefits of being the VZC Registrar is that when sending out announcements of upcoming courses I get to reflect on my own experiences in those courses and appreciate what they opened up for me in practice.
With a new Intensive Preparation course starting on Feb 19 & 26th I am reminded of experiences with the one-day and five-day intensives offered by the Victoria Zen Centre, as the intensive prep course is a prerequisite for this type of intensive practice.
Mostly when I've talked with other people about intensive practice I've talked about the difficulties. Sitting for long periods of time is physically demanding and the form of practice also removes the distractions that mask unpleasant memories and feelings that come up from time to time. Having to experience all that stuff is tough.
A pointed comment by Ven. Eshu about this reminded me that it is in some ways easier to talk about the difficulties of intensive practice because it is tangible and concrete. Most people, even those who haven't done intensive Zen practice, can relate to "my legs hurt" or "it was hard to relive memories of crappy stuff that happened when I was a kid".
But there is so much going on in intensive practice that is really amazing too, I've just found it hard to put words to that. In the one-days there is the beauty of watching the sun come up and go down together, of eating together and experiencing the Sooke zendo really fully and deeply. In the five-day practice (sesshin) there is the residential component, 13 people living together in close quarters for 5 1/2 days with little sleep, all breathing together for 18 hours a day and working so hard in various ways (cooking, teaching, cleaning, serving tea, correcting form, leading chants, supervising zendo officers) to create the sesshin for each other. The depth of relationships with other people in the sangha who have shared intensive practice is a very special thing, unlike any other community I've ever experienced. And there are the hilarious things that happen in residential practice (who knew that dropping a bell could make it ring?).
There are also the things that happen before and after intensive practice from the powerfully transformative nature of intensive practice -- little and big shifts in everyday life. Those are much harder to express, but I was reminded at the Dana meeting last week how significantly different my life is now compared to pre-intensive practice. I'm actually here to enjoy my life instead of being completely entangled in thinking about the past and worrying about the future, which is a gift not to be taken lightly. And even though things aren't always easy there is so much more resilience, humour, and determination than was there before to get back up after falling down.
Although I'm not planning to re-engage with intensive practice in the immediate future, it is a very special component of what the VZC offers and I hope anyone thinking about it will go for it, to experience it for yourself and see what it is like!
