Quite a lot of tiredness and dark nighting since the last post, things that require heavier thinking have felt a bit difficult to get done. In the meantime, I attended a non-residential Open Heart city retreat, a first for me. In addition to the usual tantric techniques and atiyoga, we practised rushen, a more "dzogchen" version of metta, dzogchen dance and shamatha. 

The first night the atmosphere felt really electric and intense, somehow, felt a bit like someone sucker punched me. That evened out during the next day. We began with rushen practice in the morning, it was interesting to witness how the body movements started to become less coarse and chaotic. A powerful, grounding practice that I was unable to appreciate the first time I tried it. 

Metta practice didn't involve any visualizing, smiling, trying to be particularly warm or anything - we just sat facing each other. First time I tried this, it was probably my favorite of all the practices we did. Warmth and presence certainly came up, but there was also a heightened sense of clarity without so much of an overwhelming desire to love everyone, which I've had more when practicing metta with visualisations. My eyes kept going out of focus during the entire retreat, though, I had some trouble keeping my the eyes locked with my partner. 

OH practitioners have had some trouble with dark nights, so Kim gave shamatha a bit more emphasis. We practised a technique where one tries to feel the breath in a fist-sized area between the belly and the back (a location in the body that does not get karmically stained, or something like that). I keep having trouble feeling the insides of my body properly, and had a bit of trouble locating that spot, but once my attention hit it I got a small glimpse of the natural state almost instantly. Kim on traditional shamatha: "-- a fucking pain the ass". I concur. 

Kim also did a verbal teaching or two per day. Based on audio recordings I've heard previously, the emphasis seems to have moved a bit more towards dzogchen, like that view is a "wrapper" around everything else we do. He explained some of the tantric techniques and deities from a dzogchen point of view - that the deities are not external beings and that we are not taken over by any spirits or such during rushen, but that these are expressions of things inside ourselves. These talks really clarified some confusion I had had.

Kim was also very present and attentive throughout all practices, he didn't just passively recite the instructions, zone out or anything. On several occasions, he correctly identified the problem or mental state I was having from my body language, and gave corrective feedback. I found this very impressive and useful. 

All in all, a very nice experience. One aspect I find missing from OH is "living the view" - its like this very sophisticated, directed collection of techniques and understanding about the bodymind and the bhumi system within it, but so far I've not seen so much emphasis on how to apply that as in the traditions whose events I've attended. That said, practitioners are free to attend other teachings as they wish. I've been very inspired by Ngakpa Chögyam in this regard. I wish traditional Vajrayana teachings were more to a Westerner than they are now.