Audio: Richard Witteman 2004
The following talks by Richard Witteman are available on both CD and audio tape.
October 2004 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- What a long journey to relax and let life live itself.
- Just listening: it's not a matter of weeding out impurities.
- Such trying takes attention away from the broad, open inclusiveness of what's here.
- Awareness is an amazing word - the liveliness, the presence that's just naturally here
- And yet the truth of this presence is so far beyond these words.
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| Day 2 |
- Stories so well told, in the magic theatre of the mind, that we live them.
- Thought is so powerful that it's unwise to be naive, afraid, or judgmental about it.
- In simple honesty even the most complex and rooted stories reveal themselves.
- We're petri dishes - a thought spore lands, grows, and a whole world is created.
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| Day 3 |
- To be unconfused by "you are not your body" teachings.
- To acknowledge and allow the intensity, intimacy, of bodily experience.
- On top of body-identification, we have ideas of what we are, what the world is.
- A feeling, which doesn't survive scrutiny, that ego is whole and continuous.
- If we wonder about the whole thing, here as it is, not seeking to fix, tenderness rises.
- Not even love toward, it's just there. What was impossible before has changed.
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| Day 5 |
- Charlie Brown: "You know, I feel guilty about everything I do."
- The authoritarian, judgmental voice in the head, so absolutely calm and righteous.
- "Superego" is apt - godlike. We take the part of the little ego who's screwing up.
- Then we judge others in turn, to assuage the pain of being its victim ourselves.
- The atmosphere of kindness that naturally comes with presence.
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| Day 6 |
- In not-knowing beliefs lose importance, they're not as interesting as what's here.
- Though helpful at times, mechanical practices blunt freshness, distance us.
- Moray eels, garish faces to human eyes - a girl asked, "Daddy! What are they for?"
- One could ask that about us, but truly I've no idea.
- Yet here we are, in the middle of this astonishing movement of life.
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| Day 7 |
- Finding elements of retreat in daily life, though talk and thought are more sustained.
- A moment's pause can break the spell, reveal the mind's magic theatre as just that.
- Wonder and not-knowing amidst the most familiar things.
- Spaciousness, like the sounds of nature, so we don't contract and forget what's here.
- Meditative work is faithfulness to something precious.
- Small acts of kindness and presence have an effect beyond what we can imagine.
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