All About Me

In June 2012, I was 5 months into learning the basics of a Hatha yoga practice. I was new to therapeutic movement, and its focus on moving and breathing left me wanting more. It occurred to me one night, “if I loved breathing and moving… what if I just focused on breathing?” As soon as the thought occurred, I sat down to sit and breathe like I did in a yoga class. Or more accurately, I tried to sit and breathe, but all that occurred was a barrage of thoughts! Through this thicket of verbal thoughts emerged a moment of clarity: just as I went to a yoga teacher to learn yoga, it would be wise to find a meditation teacher to learn this sitting and breathing. So, A few google searches later, I had booked a beginner’s meditation course in my home town. I remember going to the group’s hall, being impressed by the teacher’s explanations, and interested in the instructions. The teacher said to try the practice of “Body Scanning” every day for a week, then come back. My first meditation at home the next day was exciting and revealing, at the end of the 10 minute timer I felt more ‘in’ my body than ever before. “This works” I said to myself, a grin on my face. I was ready for tomorrow’s discoveries in my meditation. Fast-forward eight weeks later, and I was body scanning, breath counting, and even doing some simple visualisations. I had instructions, a routine, but most importantly I had an experience of seeing space in between my thoughts, something I had never experienced before practising meditation. It was relatable, repeatable, and so taming my mind was more than just possible, it was occurring in each moment. It was on the last session of this beginner’s course that a volunteer suggested I go on a retreat to really cement my understanding. They were organising a 10-day retreat in a couple of weeks… and so I called my work to ask for some time off! Even if they said no I would have gone, but fortunately they said yes. It is an understatement to say those 10 days changed my life. The intensity of the schedule combined with a supportive group environment unearthed a level of calm and awareness in me that is beyond words. It was also the first time I was exposed to buddhist teachings. The meditations were the same that we had learned in the beginner’s course, but in between those meditation sessions were teachings on buddhist philosophy. I began the listening of these teachings somewhat sceptically, but not cynically. But I left those teachings with a shaved head and new buddhist name: I had taken refuge at the final session that morning. Turns out Buddhist teachings scratched an itch for me, and meditation was just one part of a rich intellectual tradition called ‘Buddhism’. Thus began my life of learning about Buddha’s teachings. I came home and attended classes with different buddhist groups, read books on traditional buddhist teachings, attended day-long workshops and more retreats, I was even lucky enough to see the Dalai Lama in his 2013 Australian tour. One year after my first retreat, the buddhist teachings were vibrating through me so much that I was questioning the practicality of my almost completed university degree. Financial security, job status, intellectualising, all seemed to be more than distractions, they may be impediments to a fulfilling life. Some more learning and another 10 day retreat later, and I had decided upon a compromise between the two extremes of career life and renunciation… I organised to take a year off my university studies and volunteer full-time at a retreat centre in the Victorian Mountains. My year there was a complex one: I learned less buddhist philosophy and a lot more buddhist community practice. I was attending resident meetings, learning to sit amongst conflict, manage my own zeal for work so as not to burn out, and temper my expectations of ‘what a buddhist should do’ or ‘ how a buddhist should behave’. I thought I’d be going deep into my own meditation practice, but I found myself deep in my own habits clashing with other people’s habits. This was where I learned that meditation wasn’t the goal, meditation was the method to treat people with more kindness and respect. How I behaved was the goal, and it would be a lifelong process. After my year of volunteering for the upkeep of the centre and running retreats for various teachers, I had to return to finish my university degree. I approached this final year with much more composure. Late nights alternating studying and partying had no interest for me anymore. This wasn’t in a pious way, I had just outgrown this more traditional university life. I finished my honours degree with a view to do one thing: work hard enough to fund a long term retreat. 18 months of work later, and the centre that I had volunteered at called me one Saturday. They were looking for new permanent residents to learn to run retreats. Of course, this meant another period focused not on my own silent practice, but the lived practice of living in a buddhist community. I thought that if I said no, I would have learned nothing about selflessness. So I gave notice at my work, and by the end of the year my car was packed and destined for the hills of Victoria again. Returning to this role of community member as an open-ended prospect had elements of excitement and heightened frustrations. There was nowhere to run to now, when things were difficult I had to face them (and my own sense of self-righteousness and aggressive communication style alongside it). I thought my initial year of living in this way would have made my future path smoother, but there I was, faced with my own strengths, weaknesses, joys and frustrations, for all to see. I was fortunate enough to have the time and resources to complete a 6 week solitary meditation retreat that year. For those that know, it was a beginner's vajrayana retreat with some concentration practices included too. I had a cabin, a shrine, some ritual implements and a fireplace. Food was brought to me, as the schedule of four meditation sessions each day left little time for much else. I will prepare another post that gives this experience the attention that it deserves. But in brief, I experienced an extinguishing of the notion that life was a question that needed an answer. Eventually, the inadequacy of continually posing questions as a method to arrive at “life” seemed so apparent. I had been walking around with a “question=answer” dichotomy as the very basis for my mental experience every moment; and during my retreat that wore itself out. The resulting open space has remained with me, in varying degrees, right up to typing this sentence. After my solitary retreat, I was ready to interact with people again, that is for sure. I continued to help the centre in various ways, eventually teaching meditation at the centre and nearby towns. I was slowly becoming part of the wider community, finding a home, finding comfort, building a nest. Three years went by at the centre. It was in the warm embrace of this comfort that led me to become complacent, hostile to change. The arrival of new residents at the centre who had their own strong opinions made me feel challenged, frustrated and disheartened. Had I learned nothing from my retreat? How could people treat me this way? It revealed itself that, over the last 4 years, I was trying to wall off a comfortable little pad for myself, but the only result would be having to continually defend it. That, and having completed every retreat at the centre multiple times, I decided it was time for me to learn something new. One upside of the new residents visiting the centre was meeting a woman my age who was intelligent, insightful, caring and fun. After 9 months of living together, we consciously invited a physical sharing with each other. We are still together today. It took 3 months for us to get a visa to India as students enrolled in language and Buddhist studies in Dharamsala. This is where the Dalai Lama resides, alongside the Tibetan government in exile. Here I was exposed to a very simple, raw style of living, creature comforts were now found in power that was on and clean vegetables. For all the confronting smells, sounds and hygiene practices, there was a vibrant community of westerners looking to deepen their connection to Buddhist practices, especially by learning languages that were not their mother tongue. I have to admit, language learning did not come naturally to me, nor with great joy. I was not homesick per-se, but I was appreciating the idea of clean water and observable road safety rules. I would have been lost without the kindness of other people during my time in India, as I was very vulnerable. That was a great takeaway from my time there: we rely on kindness like plants to sun. I remember the sun shining though the window of our rental room as I received a call from the centre I had spent 5 years living in. It was the co-ordinatior; he was leaving, and asked me if I would consider running the meditation centre. Of course, this meant leaving India, packing in the all immersive-language learning, but being an integral part of helping Buddhism flourish in Australia. That December, when class broke, we returned to Australia and met with centre owners, committee members and the head teacher. One sticking point was clear: we were unable to do the role unless we were paid. This was the first time anyone in the organisation had made that request: every single person in the organisation was a volunteer (including the outgoing coordinator, a self funded retiree of sorts). It was not easy, or pretty, but the allowance was made. And for a third time that decade, I filled my car and off I went to live at the centre. The first thing on the event calendar was the biggest thing the community had ever attempted: a 100 person, seven day meditation retreat with a visiting teacher of international renown. It took everything I had, and everything a lot of other people had too, to pull this off. We were overburdened, sleep deprived, and disillusioned. Although we had help from all over, it was a wake up call in “biting off more than I can chew”. We spent the next week tired, confused, and not doing anything particularly ‘Buddhist’. My experience with conducting this over-the-top retreat was a watershed one. I had been expected to work myself to exhaustion so that an international teacher could undertake various cultural rituals, with all the english-speaking guests spending hours and hours listening to chanting they didn’t understand for the ‘blessings’ and ‘merit’. The guests were so inspired they got to be there, the travelling teacher, assistant monks, and spiritual director so sure of the usefulness of the retreat, but I was clearly on the outside: I experienced only thankless effort for a cultural jamboree. I spend the next 10 months wrestling with my own questions about the cultural blindness this community was living in, having to manage the expectations of the centre owners, and leaving some small drop of energy to maintain my own practice and study. When we suggested ways the centre could change to allow us to balance work, our own retreat schedule and time away from the centre, the owners labelled us greedy and insensitive. I loved Buddhism, but I had outgrown the cultural wrappings it came in. We handed in our notice, and moved to an urban city by the end of that year. My first meditation session with a new group, unbound by the expectation of running the space, was like taking off a heavy backpack. My shoulders were light, my breathing was easy. The people were nice, and it was easy to see their niceness. I stayed with them, and tried other groups, until the pandemic moved practice to online spaces. Given this time away from the cultural fanfare of the Buddhists that raised me and I trusted, my understanding of Buddhism either had to adapt to the changing nature of my experiences or perish in obscurity. It had done so much for me: gave me a sense of purpose, a way of understanding the world, and a guide to behave in a way that was helpful and constructive, rather than selfish and destructive. So, over the three years after the pandemic elapsed, I have worked on a number of different methods to be involved in Buddhist thinking in a way that is commensurate with the culture I live in. After at least 10 attempts at various projects, I have arrived at something as simple as it is daunting: I am publishing under my own name: hence, Joseph M. Frawley is born.​ Let's see how it shakes out.