Vipassana, my experience

The purpose of this entry is to describe to you in a reasonable but hopefully not excessive detail what my experience with my first meditation retreat was like.
If you don't want to read the intro what's it all about scroll down to where I've put SKIP TO HERE

First some general information, through an essay like this that my sister shared with me, that a friend of hers wrote, I learned about the ten day meditation retreats that occur at different centers located worldwide where the technique of vipassana is taught. What that means I will shortly explain. Going into it, all I really retained was that for ten day's I'd not be to communicate with anyone around me and learn how to meditate.

Once I arrived at the Dhamma Siri meditation retreat center in Kaufmann Tx (outlying southeast of Dallas) on March 11th, I began to learn. Some mundane details may interest you, the facility is nice and doesn't seem all too foreign especially from the entrance. There is a pagoda building on the property but even it isn't extravagant in appearance. The dorms are single occupant rooms with a bed and a hanging rack and shelves for laundry and a twin bed with small bedside table and alarm clock. There is a quarter mile or so walking path through the woods and there is a large building that is the meditation hall, where the work takes place. Men and women are segregated throughout the retreat and while you are living in close quarters with a lot of other people, you accept to work in Noble Silence, not making communication with your peers even in eye contact, thinking of yourself as completely alone in your work. If you have pressing needs there is management staff that can help you, and as you need help in developing your work there is an Assistant Teacher to answer questions at appointed times. So it's not like your larynx is going to seize up.

The silence though really, isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of what one goes through in the ten days.

Now, I'll give you some groundwork into the principles of the practice, but to make it all more robust in your understanding you can check out dhamma.org which can really fill you in and help you find a center that you could work at if you were so interested.

Dhamma, or in my interpretation of what that work might mean, The Natural Law, is a living force, you could thing of it as a spinning wheel begin spun by our effort and by the vibrational power underlying all things.

The dhamma is come to by a path that has eight principles, but they are divided into three groups, essentially; morality, concentration, and wisdom.

There are five precepts that establish morality during the practice, not to kill, steal, lie, no sexual misconduct, and no intoxication.

The no lying is the most likely issue since genders are segregated, the food is provided and if you're silent you can't tell a lie.

Concentration is developed during the first three days using anapana, essentially keeping your eyes closed, sitting erect, focusing on your breath and the feelings of your breath in your nose.

Wisdom is developed on days four through ten by the practice of vipassana, essentially moving your concentrated awareness along the surface of your body and feeling the physical sensations that connect your mind and body.

That's the groundwork, now for my experience.

SKIP TO HERE

On day 0 I talked with some of the people there who were coming into the retreat, the silence doesn't fall until the first meditation session at 8pm, so while talking to a few people that were returning students, they told me that the first time they did this it was one of the most challenging experiences in their life. What, exactly am I getting myself into? I won't know until I know.

That night through lessons provided by recordings made of a man S N Goenka you learn to begin by focusing on the breath. You can adjust your posture as need be and you aren't overwhelmed with details, given just enough to work with and to begin to learn what this is all about. Each following evening there is an hour or so long discourse video during which Goenkaji explains more and more and answers the questions you've been silently dwelling upon each day.

You go to bed and lights out are at 10.

4am wake-up, from 4:30 to 6:30, meditate in my room or in the hall.
6:30, breakfast then rest until
8:00, group meditation for and hour
9:00 meditate in your room or in the hall until
11:00 lunch
12:00 you can ask the assistant teacher questions if you like or rest or walk (i napped hardcore almost every day)
1:00 meditate in the hall or in your room,
2:30 group sit meditation in the wall
3:30 meditate in the hall or in your room until
5:00 very light dinner
6:00 group meditation in the hall
7:00 listen to discourse
then from 8:15ish to 9:00 you meditate in the hall, then go to bed.

Now that's the basic schedule from all 10 days, only day 4 is a little different. and day 10, but if I can do basic math (if) that's like 11 and a half hours of meditation each days if you really put all the effort you can into it!

This is a lot of time to mentally watch air passing through your nostrils.

Day 1 wasn't too big of a deal from my perspective.
Day 2 was a little bit more challenging but not terrible and you learn to focus more on the feeling of the breath on your skin
Day 3 was harder because you have to feel the sensation of the breath on your upper lip and and other sensations (what does that mean???)
Day 4 is Vispassana day; so in the afternoon you sit on your own from 1p to 2, then from 2 to 3 you have a group sit, then from 3 to 5 you learn vipassana.
this is VERY VERY PHYSICALLY DEMANDING My back hurt so bad and I was convinced afterwards that they must use experiences like this to train CIA agents how not to crack under interrogation techniques.
Day 5 was the first time I had a nonlinear unexpected experience, I felt things on my skin jumping like crazy and my awareness of this sensation all over my body was wild!

Now, it's really important to stop and say that everyone goes through their process differently, we're all unique and feel things in our own way and have our own lives to sort out. And my experiences didn't follow the linear sense of learning along with the teaching, I didn't have a controlled awareness of subtle vibrations on the surface of my body until day 9. What I had on day five was more intense and it wasn't "my" conscious awareness moving the scanning of my body at first.

Also, what does feeling tingling on your body have to do with wisdom? Well, a lot as it turns out. because practically speaking, wisdom is patience, awareness, and balance, or equanimity. And going through this process of connecting your mind and body through the concentrated awareness of physical sensations teaches you a LOT about your personal attributes of patience and emotional balance and how to learn to observe and not react to the world, and the nature of reality its self as constantly arising and passing away. Just like how movies and TVs have a frames per second, and so you are watching the ever changing flow of visual still images. Every trillionth of a second is a static moment that arises and passes away, and our sense of awareness is of a continuity. This process allows you to feel your motion in the subtle vibrations that make up everything.

Or something like that, I don't know exactly, I just started this man!

To a certain extent, I think my very personal experiences that followed in the days between 5 and 9 won't tell you too much about what you will go through, but in general it was so hard for me, because sometimes I felt a lot and a lot more often I felt nothing.  And it's really hard to find balance with that, and until you can learn to let go of your desire to have pleasant experiences, and not have unpleasant ones, you're never going to be balanced. And I was not. But I have become morseo.

Also a big part of what you are learning about is how the active role of wisdom is in not reacting. Not letting craving or aversion and your knee-jerk reaction to them run your life, instead you begin to master your self control over how you do with what you feel.

I'm going to close shortly with an analogy that I drew in a conversation I had this afternoon. Talking with a fellow mediator here on day 11, out of the retreat and post processing before I go back in. (Planning now to serve for two more ten day retreats and sit for another one. The serving is less hours of meditation and a lot of active work experience and is a meditation in motion or so I've heard.)

My analogy is this.

The way I saw a lot of things in my life is like a painting that I painted over a window. I started scratching some of the paint off in chunks and realized that there is a clear window under the painting, now I need to wipe the glass completely clean until it looks like there isn't any glass there, and then from what little I think I know I'll reach through to the world on the other side of the glass and find out if what I think I see there is what is there, and who is looking through the glass?

I don't know, it doesn't matter now, I'm just learning how to be balanced enough to wipe a window.

As for 'getting enlightened' that isn't what this is, the work for me is just learning how to see what is, as it is, but you can't cut a butterfly out of it's chrysalis, if you do the wings wont have developed properly and it will never fly. All I can hope is to see the caterpillar eat a leaf, or watch a shifting sensation on the outside of a chrysalis until something else....

In the meantime, there is plenty to do each day, just being with the fact that every trillionth of a second is arising and passing away.

And vibrationally, we are all connected in a field of love, and the more I can become in tune with the love and compassion, and not get caught up in running from hatred or fear or pain in anger by running towards sensual gratifications and get beyond the gross reality to the subtle. The more loving feelings I can feel, share, and be.

When you have an hour, you could listen to this, it encapsulates the work so well
http://heartwisdom.libsyn.com/jack-kornfields-heart-wisdom-episode-15-the-awakened-heart

Fundamentalism

I found myself thinking about fundamentalism. The challenge lies in trying to make something complex operate by a certain set of simple rules. One could never make enough rules to make everything fit or work.

in my own way, i am a fundamentalist.

love God(the divine, pick the name that makes you feel good) with all you've got.
love your neighbor (everyone) as you'd like to be treated.

'nuf said

Ignorance

Ignorance is a common and natural mental state, it is simply the act of ignoring one set of information in order to focus on some other set. Everyone does this. Many people have not had the time or the guidance or the curiosity to focus on what others may consider meaningful data sets. This does not entitle one to ridicule another, this is an opportunity for us to learn about the information that engages them, and also an opportunity for us to share new realms of knowledge with them.