During my recent visit to Australia I had the opportunity to go on a yatra, which is similar to a group-backpacking trip, except with periods of walking in silence, meditation, yoga, talks and small group sharing (visit the yatra web page for more information). In the East, the word “yatra” is used for a pilgrimage to a holy place. The holy place on this yatra was Mt. Gulaga, a mountain sacred to the aborigines, located 370 kilometers south of Sydney on the coast. I was only able to attend 4 days of the yatra, and so did not get to climb Mt. Gulaga, though I saw it the previous year when I taught a retreat at Namgyalgar (a Tibetan center near Tilba, at the base of the mountain).
             Victor von der Hyde, Ronnie Hickel, Jane Dwyer and her partner, Peter Byrne, organized the yatra. I have known Victor for six years—he organized a few retreats for me on my initial visits to Australia and has since assisted me in teaching a couple of retreats. He asked me to give the Dharma talks and offer some meditation instruction during my time on the yatra. What I would like to include in this blog is a talk I gave on the second evening, which was originally composed in the form of the narrative presented below.
           Here on this yatra, your life is empty of email, phone conversations, work to be done, the various activities of your home life—with that emptiness, other things arise, such as remembering your daily jobs, where you left your bowl and silver-ware, when to be silent and when you can talk again, being aware of where you step, and so on. Our lives have this quality of being empty of some things for a while, replaced by other things. So with our inner world in meditation—we may have periods of being empty of certain mundane and ordinary thoughts, but find ourselves aware of our bodily sensations, sounds, inner images, or inner quiet. Our experience in meditation has this dynamic quality of change, where we become empty of something that is then replaced by something else.
          During the day you are no doubt shifting from one mental state to another, with no one state remaining constant—fears, sadness, irritation and excitement, last for a bit of time and then you move on. Meditation can heighten this process of one thing arising and passing away, another thing arising, where it may move faster and be easier to see and navigate. This leads to a truth of the Buddha’s teaching: there is no single state of mind we live in all the time. That is, there is no stable, enduring self. Such statements as I am an anxious person, or I am a depressed person, are labels given to one part of our experience, but there is no way for us to be always anxious or depressed.
         Those of you who shared the other night that your challenge in life is your own mind speak for all of us.