Solitary Retreat (2of2) — The Transformation of Body and Mind
After returning from Tibet, the physiological transformation in my body became more intense. The most painful was the opening and transformation of the energy channel in the throat. I was confined to bed, my whole body devoid of strength. I could not speak, could not eat. Even drinking water felt like a steel blade cutting through my throat and esophagus. I communicated through gestures and writing, telling my family not to worry. At midnight every night, the energy channels in both my lung lobes would suddenly expand — as if a pump had abruptly inflated the lungs. At those moments I had to immediately squat or kneel upright on the bed. The suffering was beyond words. If not for the Master’s constant encouragement by my side, I felt I might collapse entirely. This continued for half a month until, one night, all the symptoms vanished at once. My energy was full, my whole body light. When one morning I sat once again on the cushion in the living room, tears of gratitude streamed down my face — I could sit again. The building where I lived was next to a power plant that began emitting exhaust from a large chimney every morning at three o’clock, so the air in my home was particularly poor in the early hours. But that morning in my sitting, when the acrid smell entered my nostrils, I suddenly found the odor had transformed. In my throat it became cool and sweet, as though I were breathing pure oxygen. My lungs seemed to have become a purifier. I excitedly reported this to the Master, who was unmoved and said: “Don’t be happy yet. The energy channels in your throat are not yet fully transformed — the chakra there has only opened by a third. Some of the channels will close up again. We’ll see about the rest later.”
The transformation of the ear’s energy channels was less painful. First there was numbness and a feeling of pressure at the back of the skull at the jade pillow point; during sitting, explosive sounds arose in the ears along with chirping bird sounds; hearing in both ears dulled and became delayed. Sometimes in sitting, cone-shaped light emitted from the ears, along with inverted images of various kinds. Once in samadhi I saw Manjushri Bodhisattva arrive with a small attendant, saying he had come to cleanse my ear roots. The attendant held a bowl of water while Manjushri transformed into an elderly monk, inserting some instrument into my ears to wash them. I watched as thick, dark, filthy matter flowed intermittently from my ears. The water Manjushri used had just been drawn from the Eight-Merit-Virtue Water of the Western Pure Land. At that moment two elderly figures passing nearby stopped short, covering their noses. “How can it smell this bad!” they exclaimed with expressions of disgust. The little attendant said: “Mind your manners.” The two said nothing more but stood quietly watching. I felt Manjushri spent about half an hour before departing. Coming out of samadhi I felt immediately clear and refreshed, though my ears ached a little. A few days later I was standing at a roadside waiting for a taxi. Suddenly all the noise and clamor of the street transformed into the sound of ocean waves — the sound I love. The stream of vehicles and people before me, the buildings — all became like a mirage. Myself included, everything became a painting. I stood quietly, body and mind dissolving into the sound of the sea, all sense of time lost, all concept of space transcended.
In samadhi I could complete various methods of practice relatively quickly, but the physiological transformation of my energy channels proceeded step by step, very gradually. Let me describe briefly the pattern of this transformation. At the very beginning of sitting, I was only learning and playing amid various meditative experiences — I believe this was simply my previous karmic connections combined with the Masters’ assistance. After completing all that the Masters had transmitted, my experience of sitting became no different from that of an ordinary practitioner, except that I immediately entered into the level of light, with meditative experiences and wandering thoughts growing ever fewer. Most of the time I dwelt in a state of still, undisturbed white light. Sometimes I felt dissolved into light, unable to see any energy channels described in the texts. Yet at other times I could clearly see my own cushion in meditation. This continued for over a year before I faintly began to see the outlines of my central channel, left channel, and right channel. I saw my organs, my limbs, all the subsidiary channels; I heard my heartbeat like thunder; the sound of blood flowing like a cheerful stream; the sound of the Earth’s rotation; the vast resonance of the cosmos; my own breath; and I even smelled the odor emanating from my own skin pores — the human body is truly coarse and unrefined. During this period I felt a strong aversion to worldly existence and a powerful urge toward liberation. As my samadhi deepened, my mind became ever more focused and ceased to be disturbed by the above, though thoughts still arose. Then one day I found my lung-breathing had stopped. My crown chakra and lower abdomen were alternating between tortoise breathing and embryonic breathing. After some time, the crown became steadily cool — about every few minutes. Going deeper, the embryonic breathing dissolved. It seemed as if a point of energy settled in the thoracic vertebrae — not in the central channel but in the spinal column. This faint concentration of energy was still and motionless, and could allow one to sit without eating, drinking, or breathing for as long as one wished. From the moment the breathing stopped, wandering thoughts could no longer arise. After embryonic breathing had been present for some time, the inner fire began to ignite. The lower abdomen grew warm. When the practice of mindful awareness in daily life — the governing of arising thoughts and intentions — was well aligned with the samadhi practice, the warmth would gradually expand, and as the warmth-sign appeared, the true breath would stir. The entire body of energy channels would fill with a gentle, swirling primordial energy. The entire body — warm, soft, supremely at ease — and the heart would brim with boundless joy. This is just a small portion of the physiological changes I experienced in cultivation. I believe these are changes every practitioner will encounter. The physiological transformation catalyzes a corresponding psychological transformation, progressively purifying habitual tendencies and opening wisdom.
What leads the energy to gather and bring about physical transformation — beyond the depth of samadhi practice — is, more importantly, the breadth of one’s capacity for compassion. I once read in a Buddhist text that inside a single pore there exists an entire world. I couldn’t understand that level of realization. But when I suddenly and directly verified that state in a samadhi session, I felt myself become a great round mirror. I could see clearly a vajra-being seated or standing in every pore of my physical body, the expression and gestures of each one perfectly distinct. To see the three-thousand-great-thousand-fold world was like looking at a fruit in the palm of one’s hand, entirely clear and unobstructed. What mattered was this: in that moment I truly understood that the physical body is a false self — a name and form. Recognizing the true self, the original face, I understood in an instant the Chan koans — and burst out laughing. Coming out of samadhi, I wept in gratitude to the gracious Masters and to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
A friend said to me: in these years of practice, you have given far too little to your family. And now you want to go to Guangdong, thousands of kilometers away — letting your parents worry and pine for you. The old saying is: “While your parents are living, do not travel far.” Isn’t what you’re doing rather selfish? I told him: there are many ways to repay a debt of gratitude. I have lived with my parents for over twenty years. My parents don’t stop having worries and suffering and physical pain just because I’m beside them. I have watched countless times as my parents struggle in the whirlpool of afflictions, powerless to help. They are both past sixty; life has its natural limit. I don’t know whether they will be able to be born into the Pure Land they hope for when the time comes. I have deep faith in cause and effect. My way of repaying my parents is to free them from lifetime after lifetime of rebirth, so that they will not suffer in affliction again, in any life.
That is what I told him. But when the moment of departure came, looking at my aging parents and my young child, I struggled silently. All I could do was dedicate all the merit of my practice to them — to them and to all those who had shown me help and love.
In Guangzhou I was met with the breadth and openness of a great city, and I began to love it.
In Guangzhou I used the practice of medicine to form connections with people. After half a year I resolved to help build a dharma center at a monastery in Guangdong. But for various reasons it didn’t come together as I had hoped. I reflected: my resolve was good — why were the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas not blessing this, but letting adverse conditions ripen instead? Examining my own motivations carefully, I found I was attached to “conditions” — feeling a particular connection with certain Masters, a fondness for that kind of monastery. The moment attachment arises, the mind has already deviated from the Way. Of course adverse conditions would ripen. I had previously thought that “places of the Way” were only where there was the Way — but that itself was an attachment to conditions, to purity and solemnity, to a visible and formal kind of practice, to conditioned phenomena. When I walked out of that monastery and in an instant woke up: the three-thousand-great-thousand-fold world — where is there not a dharma center? Where is the Way not manifesting? “In a single flower there is a world; in a single leaf there is a Tathagata.” I had recited that before, but never experienced it as deeply as in that moment. Walking back into the teeming, bustling city, I felt like a fish returned to water. The worldly realm is the greatest and most complete of all dharma centers. Just as it is in the mud that the sacred lotus grows, a truly complete person need only give rise to a single thought, and it influences all three realms. The dharma center is in that person’s every act of body, speech, and mind. Whether speaking face to face with one person or before tens of thousands makes no difference. When you yourself become the embodiment of the Way, your every arising thought is already teaching — when you speak it, it resounds like a lion’s roar. What is there to call “propagating the Dharma”?
I now have many friends in Guangzhou, and almost all of them ask the same question: why did you come to Guangzhou? Sometimes I deflect with a few excuses — but what I want to say here is this: if you have understood for even one moment what equality, boundless love, and compassion truly mean, then all of your actions become without reason. You will no longer ask your Master: why? Throughout the entire course of practice we can set down family, career, friends, fame, and gain — all external things. But at the very end we find the one thing we cannot set down is the self. The process of breaking through ego-clinging is like watching yourself die with open eyes, and then being born again. This is what it truly means to arrive at the complete fruit of Buddhahood. To reach this state, you must enter into the realm of boundless love and great compassion — otherwise you will never be complete. In that quality of selflessness, all actions are simply the response to conditions.