Frosty - The Snowman and The 5 Hindrances Attack

I have just come back from a very inspiring and insightful 5-day silent meditation retreat taught by Bob Stahl, a senior teacher at the Center For Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the world-famous Spirit Rock Meditation Center near-by San Francisco. Bob also lived in a Buddhist Monastery in Burma for over eight years.

Retreats are great to deepen our practice of meditation and mindfulness and allow some very profound work within ourselves. As all external factors get eliminated through silence, minimal eye contact, no Internet, telephone or TV, and a remote setting, we are pretty much confronted with ourselves. What we would think to be a relaxing and peaceful retreat turns out to be (quoting Bob) a "shit accelerator". The setting seems so beautiful and calm but inside ourselves it's just the opposite. All that stuff that we successfully ignore in our busy lives is suddenly flying high. Our likes, our dislikes, our pain, our restlessness, our fears and our doubts, they are all there, all at ones! And on top of that we are realising how tired we actually are. So try to deal with that!! :)

Bob put on his big smile and looked like a sassy little boy when he started talking about "shit is flying high" and explaining that this is the best stuff to work with. The shit-accelerator gets us away from our daily routine, our rat race, our auto pilote. It shows us where we have work to do.

Bob's easy-goingness and humour made us laugh and so we started our "work" at the retreat: meditating and being mindful of what is coming up. Just sitting and observing.

Bob calls this the "Frosty - the Snowman" approach: When the snow globe is shaken and the snow churns up, no matter how bad the snow storm gets, Frosty sits. So referring to us, whatever churns up within or around us, we stay grounded.

I love this sweet metaphor because it really describes what meditation is about and adds a sense of humour. Often we take our likes and dislikes and our fears and doubts so serious that we find it difficult to get over them. When we understand that "shit is happening" but it is impermanent, and that as we remain seated we can literally see it coming and going, we have developed a powerful tool to regain control over our mind and can start using it properly.

There is more to come on this retreat.