In the summer of 2016—my second year at MAPLE—Soryu did a three month retreat in the cabin. When he came back, he started teaching in a new way. He was teaching a method, which he began to call The Forall Method (now The Jade Method).
We did a weeklong retreat every month at the monastery. Several weeks into the first retreat that he taught after getting back, an idea suddenly came to me. I saw how a series of transcripts of Soryu’s talks could form the basis of an overview and introduction to his teachings. I knew precisely which talks I wanted to include, and why, and even in what order. It would be the thing I wish I’d had when I’d started training with Soryu—something that later came to be my north star and gold standard for much of my own writing—leaving the breadcrumbs I wish I’d had.
I knew I had the skills to turn the idea into a reality. I had written, edited, and self-published a book several years earlier. The only problem was that, doing so would require a fair bit of time and effort. The normal monastic schedule was too busy to allow for me to create a book. I would need time off to work on the project, and my weekly day off and occasional vacation days wouldn’t be enough. I’d need dedicated time to put towards the effort. And most importantly, I’d need Soryu’s blessing. And that meant—I would need to become eligible for a grant.
At the time, Soryu had introduced what was called the grant program. The idea was to create a tight feedback loop between Awakening—contemplative practice aimed at classical enlightenment—and Responsibility, action and service in the world for the benefit of all. If, through Ur meditation training, U made a shift in your practice and experience, one that was noticeable and significant (as judged by Soryu), then U could become eligible to apply for a grant to receive time and funding to work on a service project of ur choosing, one that would lead towards Ur vow.
I had not yet become eligible to apply to the Grant Program. But now, if I wanted to do this project, I would need to. So I threw myself into that month’s retreat.
Soryu had been telling me for months to “relax.” That was my “assignment.” There was actually a specific thing he wanted me to work on, in the same way that a university professor might give a specific assignment for their class. Relaxing was one way of describing or pointing to the thing that he wanted me to see, discover for myself.
Towards the end of the retreat, I started to notice that just before I experienced an auditory thought, I would feel a little bubbly sensation rising up my spine, neck, and jaw. It was really quite small. And noticing it didn’t necessarily seem so important at the time! But once I’d noticed it, things did seem… different. If I noticed the sensation, I’d have some choice about whether to let it become a thought or not. I’d get some spaciousness around thinking overall.
Sure enough, that insight—noticing the sensation, which opened up the possibility of relaxing or letting go of thinking—led to me becoming eligible for the grant.
relaxation in the body is the key to receiving this wisdom at any time
When I got the grant, it meant so much to me. I hadn’t believed in myself and my practice. I hadn’t believed I could make progress in my practice. I hadn’t believed I could get the grant. But I did! And that meant that I could do my project. Suddenly I felt a sense of possibility and confidence.
The project ended up being called Maple Seeds. One of the last things I worked on for Maple Seeds was an appendix on Posture. The Forall Method begins with establishing Ur posture, a process which included quite a few details that we wanted to explain with some care. A friend, Stephanie (Mikyung), had taken a number of pictures of me with poor and established posture. All that I needed to do was to write something to explain the pictures. I knew the material pretty well (admittedly more in theory than practice—my own posture, meditation or otherwise—has never been great), and more or less what I wanted to say about the topic overall. I just had to write it.
To me, this was the least exciting or fun part of the project. Posture was boring to me. Having the vision for the project, working to make it happen, compiling and editing the talks—all of that had been more rewarding for me. I was putting this off because it felt dull. But it needed to happen to finish the project.
I wrote up a draft pretty quickly. Since I already knew what I wanted to say, it more or less all came out quite smoothly as soon as I actually sat down to write. I emailed the draft to Soryu to look it over, and moved on to the next task I had to do that day.
Just a few minutes later, Soryu called me on the phone. He’d already read it, and was calling to talk to me. Was there a problem, I asked? Not at all. He sounded excited. I was confused. There wasn’t a problem, he wasn’t angry at me—he was excited? About the posture piece? Why? It was the most boring, easiest thing I’d ever written. It wasn’t like it was the Great American Novel.
Sure, what I’d written was pretty good—serviceable, I thought—but did it really merit all that excitement?
“Relaxation!” he emphasized. “Just like I’ve been telling you! You were relaxed when you wrote this, and it shows.”
Somehow, in that mysterious way he always could, he could tell just from the words I’d written that I was more relaxed when I’d written them. My state of mind was evident to him from the few paragraphs I’d sent along.
I thought the call was odd at the time, albeit not unusual for him. It just didn’t make sense to me then. It does now, though. By calling me immediately after he’d read it, as soon as possible after I’d written it, while it was still fresh in my experience, he could give my nervous system a clue. This was it! This is good! Keep doing this!
Now, years later, I always try to write when I’m relaxed. When I’m physically relaxed, emotionally at ease—it shows in my writing. I’m relaxed now writing this essay! And so much beautiful writing has flowed of me over the years: tweets and threads and essays and more books and even novels and also words in visual art that I draw! And whatever I do, I try to do in a relaxed state of mind. I see how what I create, whatever I do, how I show up in the world, is intimately connected to, inseparable from, my state of mind.
I’m so glad I did that project. I’m proud of what Forall and I made together. And I’m so grateful for what I learned through it, especially at the very end, about relaxation.
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