The first night
As I arrived at the bus stop, I wondered whether it was possible to identify a meditator by certain characteristics - do they sit more still or fidget less? Do they wear traditional multicolored harem pants? To my surprise they looked like normal people…
Day 1
So I am sitting in one of our first meditation sessions, starting to get into ‘the zone’, and then I am assaulted by some croaky and out of tune chanting. And I can’t help but think to myself, “well this is distracting…” It turns out that there is to be chanting during the majority of our meditation sessions. I still don’t understand the utility of the chanting, supposedly the chants, which were in Hindi. They were to create a sense of loving and happiness. So yea…
This was the first time I had a proper look at the timetable. Ten hours and forty five minutes of meditating a day, hmm I wasn’t quite prepared for that. Neither was I prepared for not having dinner. I got to dinner time on the first night without realizing and then, disaster. I remember think to myself, “WHAT!!! But I have been hungry for the last 2 hours!”
Day 2
So now everyone has begun their meditation practice and the noble silence required (no interaction with others, no eye contact, no speaking, no gestures). The noble silence is having some funny effects. Everyone looks like spaced out zombies; you sit down at breakfast next to someone and they just continue staring blankly out the window. In the end this creates a feeling of total isolation.
Ok, something that’s really grinding my gears is how this is supposedly not a blind faith and that Vipassana is not sectarian (we have 1 hour sessions every night where S.N. Goenka would lecture us on Vipassana). According to S.N. Goenka, Christianity, and Hindu and other religions … are blind faiths because they do not allow people to question the beliefs. Um, we are not allowed to talk!!?!? (You were allowed to ask the teacher questions, but any questions relating to the philosophy of Vispassana - not the practice - were ignored and answered with the cryptic “you must understand it through experience, that is why we meditate”)
Day 3
So far my meditation practice had been going well. However, a thought crossed my mind. “Don’t think about your mouth.” I have had issues while meditating before - paying too much attention to my mouth and having to swallow consistently. So now I am thinking about not swallowing, which - it turns out, is the best way to make yourself want to swallow… (go ahead and try it). This went on for a good 2-3 days. My swallowing was just audible, and as I swallowed this made others think of their mouths, so they swallowed, and then this set me off again… Before I knew it there was 4-6 of us stuck in this horrible cycle of swallowing. It really was horrible.
Day 4
If “stupidity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results” then patience is doing the same thing many more times and expecting different results?
Today we started Vipassana. Vipassana is a load of crap. Through paying “closer and closer”, “deeper and deeper” attention to your senses you can experientially understand the “law of nature”, impermanence. Why can’t I just read about it in a book? I am pretty sure I understood impermanence when I was like 3 - when mum or dad leave a lolly within reach, and then suddenly it is gone (also, just a note that these “laws of nature”, of which there are a few, are sounding awfully religious)
Day 5
Part of the moral conduct, the sila, was the rule that during the course you must, “abstain from killing any living creature”. This rule uses the wrong words, it should be ‘cease’ in stead of ‘abstain’. As abstain implies that we already do it, which is generally true, and we can keep doing it after… But I digress. What defines as a living creature and who gets to decide, are you not allowed to use soap as it kills bacteria, what about your immune system? What about walking, you are bound to stand on some unlucky insects…
Day 6
I think I understand the reason this and other similar things are so popular? The problems is the vagueness of the content and how it is interpreted. Since the content is vague you can interpret it in a few different ways. So if someone at one of these retreats wants to agree with the teachings, they will convince themselves they are doing the meditation correctly. And if they can’t convince themselves then they teacher simply tells them they are doing it wrong. (but maybe there could be some sort of placebo effect if you think you are doing it right?)
While I was brushing my teeth, I avoided staring at myself in the mirror, I didn’t want the guy next to me to think that I was vain, because I am not. But I realised that the very act was vain in itself. Vanity at the vanity…
Today meditations of ‘strong discipline’ were started. During these we were not supposed to move our body position, other than to improve your posture. The idea behind this was to learn to become equonimus (neither craving or being adverse to something) with the pain. I moved alot… After failing miserably during the day, shifting my position every ten minutes or so, I decided that I was going to make more of an effort during our final session, I wasn’t going to change position. I changed position only once, and considering the discomfort I went through I was reasonably happy with my efforts. (Win) I congratulated myself on my success, as I limped away…
Day 7
Injured… I could barely sit cross legged after my impressive show of discipline. (Fail) Not being able to sit in a position for more than a few minutes, unsurprisingly, ruined my meditation practice. Some of the students had back rests and I thought that one of them would solve my problem, so I approached the teacher and asked for one, he told me “to be more equonimus” … I was not happy. And this further ruined my practice, as I was too busy stormily thinking about how the teacher was an idiot and a prick…
I overheard another female student asking for help, she had some serious lower back pains and the reply from her teacher was “there will be more discomfort”… After thinking about it I realised that our teachers thought they were being compassionate. I saw it as our teachers not caring about our pain and injury, where as they saw it as helping us to become enlightened.
So instead of meditating I focused my thoughts on other things. Among other things, I spent time going through some of my old mnemonics and creating new ones; I tried, and failed, to play a game of chess against myself; I figured out a bunch of prime numbers up to 109; and I started to write a short sci-fi story… Very little meditation occurred in the last three days.
Day 8
Some thing I still question is the ability to be truly objective. Can a human be truly objective? And what would the point be? The mediation required objective observation. But I still struggle with this, maybe it is my own faults.
Another part of the moral conduct, the sila__, was the rule that during the course you must, “abstain from all sexual activity”. So it is safe to say that by this stage I was horny! However, what I found interesting was the alarming frequency that my thoughts were drawn towards girls. These thoughts were not necessarily sexual, it could have been a conversation, a look, etc… or sex.
Day 9
Another thing that really grinds my gears is that these people think that they are solving global issues and are accordingly good people. “If everyone in the world stopped suffering the world would be a happy place, free from misery. Mediation is the tool for this and thus why we teach it.” So what you are saying is that - if I sit on my butt all day I am making the world a better place? What about the people that are starving, or dying of diseases, or are killed by crazy people or … are you going to tell them to be more equonimous?
Day 10
An interesting thing about getting to interact for the first time with people you have seen for 10 days is that you feel like you know them. You have inferred a lot about their personality through subtle movements, their walking style, their posture…
The people of meditation. Interestingly the majority of people (that I talked to, young males - not a very representative sample) at the retreat were in low skill jobs (Harvey Norman, Noel Leaming and the Warehouse salesmen …) and talked a lot about banging girls and doing drugs. At one point I was stuck in a 1:30hr conversation about Cactus (I thought it was the name of a brand, not actual Cactus) and how good it was - for the first time in a while I found myself in the position of not having anything, what-so-ever, to add to the conversation. And funnily enough, I also didn’t have anything to add to the next conversation. Which was along the line, “so this one time, I had this chick bent over …”
The last morning
Everyone is really happy. I don’t know if this is because meditation truly makes you happier and we were being coming skilled practitioners, or we couldn’t wait to get out of there.
So now we are off to change our lives, we have motivation, either because we believe in the teaching or because we just wasted 10 days sitting on our butts.
(Although the featured image for this posts shows a gradual diminishing of the inner fire, I think I experienced the opposite)
Thanks and goodbye
Note: As critical as I was, I did notice some benefits after completing the retreat. Notably, that I was calmer, found it easier to filter out everyday life, and more focused on what I wanted out of life.