Experiencing Dhamma Thali Vipassana

Violent inner rage

Infiltrates and shakes

Peacock tail displays

Acid laced three-sixty ways

Seen by rarely opened eyes

Silently charged with new perception

Aversions dispelled, Cravings quelled

Nightly dhamma doses

And happlily ever afters

The Realization of Vipassana

(Note: this post may make more sense if you’ve read the two January Vipassana posts)

Anicca, Anicca, Anicca …the law of impermanence …everything is constantly changing.  Even this trip which slowly became my refuge and which has felt so solid and permanent is now just dissolving away like the pain in my knees and hips did during all those hours of meticulous meditation.

Following the most profound experience of my life to date, I am absolutely clear now that one creates one’s own happiness simply by not creating one’s own misery.  One has the choice to react, or not to react.  One can use the mind to observe the physical sensations manifested by a strong craving or aversion (emotion), or let the emotion take over the mind …the theory is that simple.  The practise of remaining equanamous is the tough bit.  I don’t know this because someone told me to believe it; I know this because I have experienced it first hand at the level of sensation within the body.  I observed the pain in my hips, I watched it for the rising and falling collection of sensations that it really was.  Labelling it pain and reacting to it by changing position is what I have trained my mind to do throughout life but I have taught it a new skill now …to observe those sensations …and ultimately I watched them dissolve.

The objective of these courses is to teach Dhamma¹ through the same experiential technique that the Buddha himself taught 2500 years ago.  Goenka teaches this technique to “purify the mind” in an environment where you can put it to the test sufficiently to be able to take it away and use it in your daily life.  “Purification” of the mind is about uprooting cravings and aversions that have deeply planted themselves within your mind².  On-going practise is about continuing that work and most importantly about remaining equanamous and therefore not generating more cravings and aversions going forward.

The technique itself is very stark and very simple.  It does not use any chanting or staring at and imagining objects, it just teaches you to silently observe your own breath, not to control it but to observe it, from the breath you eventually move to being able to observe sensation all over the body and from there to observing individual sensations at the cellular and molecular level.  It is a scientific and universal path towards real happiness that involves no religious blind faith, rite or ritual.

Clearly there is a bunch of accompanying theory which Mr Goenka delivers in his gentle, learnedly entertaining way through the evening DVD discourses.  I have sat through these discourses before and I have a book summarising them which I have read and delved into several times since my course in Chennai and yet when you take on that information in the midst of personally experiencing what he is talking about you can take so much more away from his stories, analogies and explanations.  For this reason alone my second experience was far deeper and more impactful than my first but I also gave it everything for the sake of my future and all of the interactions I will have in life from now on.

¹ (The Buddha’s Noble 8 Fold Path)

² Since my last course I have been able to eat almost everything that I thought I didn’t like previously …like nuts as a sweet rather than a savoury food and big sloppy raw tomatoes.  I’m still to conquer melon and papaya though!

Hopefully Speaking

Over the last couple of weeks, Blogspot has been publishing almost a poem a day whilst I was away on another Vipassana meditation intensive.  I found early May in India just too hot to sight see so I stopped feeling bad about not doing it and sat under various fans and even by a pool, thoroughly enjoying writing my final splurge of Thinking Space poetry, which I hope you've enjoyed.

If I have survived Vipassana, then today (24th May) I will be in possession of a fully cleansed mind and engaged in noble chatting.  I will leave the Dhamma Thali centre tomorrow, Udaipur bound from where I hope to be back in touch to completely wrap up this Thinking Space.

Metta

The Pleasures of Vipassana (days 6-11)

The Dhamma Setu Pagoda

Day 6

The Vipassana technique was taking shape, we were using our newly focused minds to observe sensation at the atomic level all over our bodies. We had become acutely (and painfully!) aware of sensation within our bodies to a point where we had begun to feel the vibrations of the very atoms of which we are made as they constantly shift and change. It was at times blissful and I will be bold enough to admit that, yes, it was especially pleasant on certain parts of the body! I even laughed my head off and cried with joy when eventually the laxatives kicked in!! Mr Goenka, however, was ensuring that we were at all times equanamous and that no craving or aversion should arise for any type of sensation because all sensations be they painful or pleasant have "the same characteristics of arising and then falling away" ..."nothing is permanent" ..."this is the simple law of nature ...Anicca ...Anicca ...Anicca (Pali). I found myself treating my butterflies to renditions in my head of the gentle morning chants between sittings. Occasionally though, vivid, obscure and often forgotten scenes representing things like me being unforgiving, my letting myself down, my being unwilling, my doing less than I could and me being angry were projected onto the wings of resting butterflies. My life's miseries. MY misery, MY VERY OWN SELF MADE MISERY. Mr Goenka was right!


Day 7

Draw a line in water and it disappears immediately. Draw a line in sand and it disappears some time later. Draw a line in rock and it takes much much longer to disappear. As is the way with the things that scar our subconscious which I had begun to witness in the visions. It was these mental scars of varying depth ("Sankaras" in Pali) which the technique had begun to free from where they had been subconsciously residing in our bodies. Sometimes Sankaras manifest as significant pain (ie as psychosomatic illnesses), sometimes as the little niggles that we all have but which don't really effect us, sometimes as something in between. Most of the time, even when we understand their existence, we don't even know that they're there apart from the odd weird dream where they might surface briefly. We were working towards freeing ourselves of these deep rooted scars and I was entirely bought in to the teaching by now. And why not? After all I had seen so many of my own deeply personal Sankaras being shaken out of position and had become quite miraculously pain free. In every session I worked "diligently" as Mr Goenka asked us to with textbook "equanimity" sat like a statue without even using the back of the chair. By the evening sitting I tried my first free flow ...oh yeah baby that tested my equanimity!


Day 8

The Female Cell Block

From the moments where I was unable to be 100% equanimous I can safely report that free flow Vipassana meditation, is exquisitely beautiful at a sensual level but I must be clear I don't mean that in a sexual sense despite there being some orgasmic comparisons to be made! In every sitting I was preparing for and carrying out about 6-8 free flows lasting 2-4 minutes each. In essence I had gained such control over my mind that once I had observed (but I like to think of it as awoken) all of the sensations that bind me together, I could push my awareness as a field of energy through my entire body in any direction with the energy basically surfing the atomic vibrations as it went. A sign went up allocating us "new students" to a cell in the pagoda. We were treated to two sittings in the pagoda, where I resumed my practise on the floor. The pagoda is beautiful and full of individual chambers which allow meditators to access the "Tibetan monk in a cave" principle the isolation ...the free flows were intense in there to the point of being exhausting.

Day 9

Back in the meditation hall, free flows were set off in new planes, left to right, front to back it was like being your very own MRI scanner. If there was a blind area or any arising pain (Sankaras were really being riddled out by now) which blocked the flow, then I just had to focus on that spot for a while after the flow and mentally massage them out ...they didn't just scuttle off, I am still working on some now, but they get looser and looser and eventually disappear with a cleansing free flow. I worked hard to remain in a meditative state between sittings, walking with one foot in the sun, one in the shade feeling the hot and the cool, remaining equanimous to all sensations I was observing as they arose and drifted away. And so the day passed, in sublime, deep and focused meditation. I equanimously accepted that we did not get to go back in the pagoda (...or maybe I was a little bit gutted). When I eventually crawled under my mosquito net, my body was an iron statue on a magnet bed and I needed ten minutes to muster the strength to get off and under my sheet.

"Noble Chatting"

Day 10

I was showered by 4.20am and in the hall early, eager to maximise my practise whilst still in Silence. At 10am the silence was lifted and a day of what the lovely and wonderful Mr Goenkaji termed "noble chatting" ensued. We still had group sittings though including a great session of loving kindness meditation to share our new found peace, love and compassion with the living world. We watched a film showing the other gorgeous centres Mr Goenka has established for meditation study and practise around the world before watching his formal address at a UN Spiritual Leaders convention on why it is was more important to help everyone in the world to be happy than to convert them to sectarian religion - it was very well received by the leaders of those religions and all of us as we blissfully relaxed our spines and smiled at those with whom we had shared our journeys and who were fast becoming new found friends. The old Tamil ladies and I held hands and smiled so deeply that it brought tears to our eyes, we knew we still couldn't speak to each other but we had shared so much. The Indians and westerners just let rip on the conversation front, there was so much laughter and a good few fondly sarcastic comments about chanting, working "diligently" and Anicca ...Anicca ..Aniccaaaaaaaaa"

Day 11

Having stayed up talking far too late 4am should have been a tough start but it wasn't and we all made the hall on time for our last couple of hours of Vipassana and loving Kindness practise. After breakfast everyone began to pack and head off in different directions a few of us to Pondicherry...

Postscript

I am sat by the sea now on a balcony in Pondy and I have been practising with Linda from Sweden, a fellow vipassana "inmate" for at least 2 hours a day for the 3 days since we finished. I feel exactly like a freshly laundered me. I have not changed, gone mad or become half-dove. I do not feel the need to sprinkle petals or give offerings to statues but I have been moved spiritually and cleansed but only by nature and its very very good. It seems a grave understatement to say that a weight has been lifted because I couldn't have told anyone exactly what that weight was before this or have known what many presumed forgotten parts that weight consisted of. The technique is shatteringly scientific and needs no form of blind faith or doctrine so the only thing you can actually rebel against is yourself and that is well explained throughout the course even though it was incredibly hard to take their word for that until you realised it ...for yourself.

I can safely say that despite days 1-5, the worst thing about the whole experience was actually just the mosquitoes which revelled in the whole lack of killing that pervades the meditation centre!

...and the butterflies? ...Equanimity set those free days ago.

Me and some of my Dhamma Setu "Fellow Inmates"

The Pain of Vipassana (Days 1-5)

"Well Well Well"" in all senses of the phrase!

What I just experienced was not a retreat as  lead you to believe, a retreat is gentle and uplifting, blissful even.  What this was, as clearly stated in its literature, an intensive course in vipassana meditation, a technique capeable of purifying the mind. The literature also talks about "surrendering" yourself to the teachings for ten days and becoming your own master thereafter. So I was forewarned ...but nothing could have forarmed me for what was to come and I am probably a bit too freshly removed to provide a truly balanced account so I will provide a factual breakdown of my various states as the course progressed

Day 0

We took five precepts which required us to chant in Pali (the ancient indian language that Buddha used) to agree to abstain from Killing, Stealing, All Sexual Activities, Telling Lies, All Intoxicants.

I realised that there were actually 12 days on this 10 day course but sat through the evening sessions changing position regularly.

Day 1

I sat and was mosquito eaten through the morning sessions which included a lot of tape-recorded pali chanting by Mr Goenka our tape-recorded teacher. I was supposed to be focussing on my breathing but my brain was a sack of restless butterflies, the chanting was a torturous durge and my back began to hurt. On some explaining about the metal reinforcements throughout my lower back, I was granted permission by the teacher to use a low platform with a backrest where you put your big flat sitting cushion and keep your position in the meditation hall. I felt shamed for caving in so soon and it didn't help anyway because the pain escalated. By the Discourse (a DVD of Mr Goenka comforting us on what he knew had been a tough day, giving us helpful tips and actually being very lovely) I was writhing in back-tension agony, wondering if I was supposed to be feeling serene or even just OK. Sleep came upon me like a ton of bricks.

Day 2

Was quite simply day one with the added misery of knowing what to expect, the Discourse opened with Mr Goenka saying that at least it was not as bad as Day 1! I shook my head, then hung it in shame as that was communication and I was not supposed to be communicating and my misery escalated a fraction more. I wished I had not given the management all of my valuables and agreed to stay for ten days. I thought a lot about prison, being a prisoner and what concentration camps must have felt like as I walked up and down on the Ladies Walking path which was lined with the beautiful gardens of the meditation centre. It didn't make sense, the place looked so serene when our 35 ladies and 50 gents (firmly segragated) had arrived.  Conspiring paranoid brain butterflies fluttered wings tatooed with lines like "in Thailand even the devil smiles", "Jekyll and Hyde", "luminous snakes are poisonous". I wondered if Hell might have made a better stop on my trip and I ditched my bra, convinced it was trying to restrict my breath and stab my spine.

Day 3

I had spent so long witnessing my breathing it had become second nature despite the pain. The teaching had moved on to spending ten hours a day focussing the mind on a limited area of the body. This was the area from above the upper lip to the nostrils both inside and out. Instructions were played in Hindi, then English then Tamil. Tamil was my playful diversion, I noticed that its Spanuguese-Indian sounds took 1.5 times the amount of time that English took to explain anything whilst Hindi took only slightly longer than English to expalin anything in. I wished the Hindi took longer, it sounded lovely in Mr Goenka's soothing tones, I escaped from the burning heart of Mordor when these Elvish tones blessed my ears. The concious relevance of the English language brought me sharply into the room and the soothingly delivered instructions were light relief. The odd subversive tattooed butterfly fluttered its wings when I warmed to Mr Goenka. During the evening group sitting (we were not allowed to step outside and walk during these 3x daily sessions from Day 0) my top lip began to sweat. I was so focussed upon it, I sensed every minute aspect of that pearl of perspiration's generation, it was a moment of personal glory. All of the butterflies were still.

Hells Bells

Day 4

Burning moth-ridden brain, incarcerated in hell. Signs went up saying that nobody was to change postion during the group sittings. My anti-dogma fuse blew as I felt a suffer-litttle-children-but-I-will-redeem-you vibe coming on, this was meant to be non-sectarian meditation not dictation. Rat moth butterflies with chronic torrets and fangs fought fiercely. One of the "phrases of the day" which were found on the notice board included the words "burn, burn". A kind note from Mr Goenka said that the idea was not to torture yourself. The teacher told me the pain would go. There was talk about purification being painful, why the hell did I seek this purification? Why the hell was I here? Those winged vampire creatures in my head forced visions of my worst moments of self and experience into my mind. I didn't want reminding, these things were random, deep, buried, moved on from, once noteworthy, irrelevant and forgotten. I was in the pit of my most depressive times with hot oil being poured onto me. I ransacked my backpack and reached out a craving hand to codiene for pain relief and and laxative for something to taste (amongst other reasons!). The codeine absolutely pasted me. Given the light, simple diet and deep mind surgery that was going on it was a truly narcotic experience...thank god I only took it during the discourse ...which was something about me creating my own misery.

Day 5

At least Day 4 was over. Having realised that taking codiene was probably against the intoxicant rules I saw the teacher who was not actually demonic and kindly talked about how a good body was just as important to the art of living as a good mind. I was moved to a simple chair and cushion at the back of the meditation hall with the old Tamil ladies. The teaching had moved from preparation to Vipassana meditation and milky white and turquoise butterflies occasionally danced from flower to flower.