Vipassana Meditation Retreat-- Jenny

"Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion." - Dalai Lama

The rule book said “No talking or body language, no reading, no writing, no music, no cameras, no yoga, only two meals a day, up at 4 am, and ten hours a day of sitting meditation”. And there we were, on day “0”, handing over all of our valuables and mobile entertainment, not to be seen again for ten days. We had read the Buddhism primer. We had experienced some Hindu yoga. But we really wanted to dig in deep. We were to be in separate camps, Brett in the men's and me in the women's. But there would be group meditations. We agreed that we would not even so much as make eye contact with each other, if we were to give this a fair chance. Vipassana is a meditation technique discovered by Buddha, but accessible to anyone of any religion. It is universal. Buddha taught that craving and aversion were the causes of human suffering. The aging S.N. Goenka from Myanmar has revived the technique in it's purest form and has written a book to to coincide with his oral teachings called “The Art of Living”. For a short description see www.dhamma.org/en/art.shtmj .

Day one.
I am not sure if the monkeys in my head or the real monkeys living along side us at the camp were terrorizing me more. Day one we focused on our breath. And watched as our thoughts strayed. And we focused again on our breath. And our thoughts strayed. It starts getting a bit rediculous, and you have to laugh at yourself. I told stories to myself of a gunman coming into the meditation hall, and me jumping up to save everyone. I had thoughts of creating a You Tube video of a master meditator being challenged to see how long he could sit without being distracted by feathers tickling his nose, by jokes, by noise and music. I had thoughts of the monkeys outside biting me, going to the hospital, and going into anaphylactic shock from the rabies shot. Insane! This is what they tell us. Our minds are insane. And we must not let our minds control us. I wholeheartedly agree.

Day three.
I am really sick of focusing on my upper lip. Can we do something else? I sit and watch the monkeys at lunch today. Two of them are picking fleas off each other quietly and lovingly. An alpha male is pacing back and forth, breathing fast, ready to attack something. The babies are climbing a tree, swinging, and flying arms stretched outward, landing with a bang on the steel rooftop of my dorm, then sliding down uncontrollably to the gutter, back to the tree and repeat. This flurry of activity perfectly parallels my thought pattern. I find it so striking that my eyes well up and I chuckle to myself, grinning from ear to ear uncontrollably.

Day six. “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” -Khalil Gibran
I feel something changing. I am starting to understand how this technique works. But it is difficult. The body starts hurting when you sit in one place for one to two hours without moving. The mind gets agitated and bored, you get sleepy, all tricks of your mind to keep you from meditating. I notice that Brett has resigned himself to a chair, later to find out his old MCL injury was flaring up again. He was getting bored, he was freezing, he was in pain, and wasn't sure if he wanted to continue. He started doing more meditation in his room, and then sneaking and reading his Gandhi book. But he stayed. My day six was horrible. I was also restless, I was getting upset with myself that I couldn't sit still. I was aching as well. But we were both gaining insights into ourselves.



Day seven. “Being is the stillness beneath the mental noise”.-Eckart Tolle
I had a breakthrough. I was able to experience unpleasant feelings and sensations in my body and remain “equanimous”. I didn't react to them. I was able to just observe. This is the technique of Vipassana. It is to sever the connection between the mind and the body, so that the mind and its insanity (or past conditioning) can no longer control your reactions, which manifest as greed, passion, anger, fear, jealousy, etc. It seems so simple. Remain aware, remain equanimous. No aversions, no cravings. Don't react. Everything is impermanent. My senses are so raw and acute today, that I notice minutia all around me. I watch the sunset as I have every evening. This evening I notice at first that the air is filled with a stillness. But as I examine the plants at my feet, they are ever-so-slightly rocking back and forth. They are growing too, even more slowly. They, like us, are growing and decaying. There is a constant energy flowing through everything. Nothing is as it seems.

Day ten. “Calm is his mind, calm is his speech, calm is his action, who, rightly knowing, is wholly freed, perfectly peaceful, and equipoised.” - Buddha
The noble silence we had kept for nine days is broken. Strangely, Brett and I both reported feeling very close and loving towards the people we spent 10 days with, despite the fact that we had hardly seen their faces or spoken a word. We found each other at the “common area”, and couldn't stop chatting about our experiences. We had 36 hours of plane rides ahead of us to talk, and we were looking forward to it. We still had one more lecture and a few more sittings before we were finished. The last morning we all pitched in to clean the Dhamma Hall, our rooms, the kitchen and the bathrooms. The retreat center runs on donations only, and relies on the students to help out. I sat out in the woods on the women's walking trail for the last time, watching a few of the baby monkeys in the distance. Suddenly, the big male monkey spotted me, ran up the tree above me, and started swaying back and forth on the branch, threatening me. I took the hint and slowly down-turned my eyes, creeping away. But I laughed to myself thinking that, after spending 10 days with them, I now understand the monkeys and their behavior much better, and they scare me a lot less. The same goes for my monkey mind.

In the words of S.N. Goenka: “May all beings be happy. May they enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness.”