A Journey to Panna: My Second Vipassana Retreat…Part 2
The last time I wrote, I attested to the awesome power of Vipassana meditation, and my second 10-day retreat there earlier this year. Thinking back to that wonderful week and a half I find myself feeling so blessed beyond measure…wow.
We left off on Day 6. On day 7, I didn’t go to meditate in my assigned cell at the pagoda. Instead, from 4:30-6:30 a.m., I sat in the meditation hall. My body was aching, and I kept resisting the urge to move. I was playing tough, in that I didn’t want to change my position and I was suffering, and that suffering was massive.
What had gone wrong? The day before I had attained my much anticipated, much hoped-for “A-ha” moment, and now I was miserable. Somehow, I needed to figure out a way to apply Goenkaji’s teachings. I started hearing Goenkaji’s voice in my head. The suffering was still there, but his voice instilled an attitude of gratitude. I was grateful for this opportunity, I was grateful for who I am, and everything in my life. As they say: No regrets.
So by sitting there, and observing the unpleasant sensation throughout my body from head to toe and examining how it felt, I decided that from then on my body would be still. My mind is going to be quiet, calm, alert, equanimous, and whatever situation I find myself in it, too, shall pass.
Every time I wanted to scratch an itch, or whatever the case might have been, I knew that, too, would pass. I cannot talk about other people’s sensations, but I know for sure I experienced the sensation of coming and going away from my own body. One minute I was in Cameroon, aged 5, then aged 7, then 15, and the next minute I was in France, aged 20, then one city or another, then before you know it I found my old self in school in New York and then I was back at Dhamma Dara, in my self-imposed prison.
Then another A-ha moment: I do not have to be my thoughts, I can simply be the observer of my thoughts.
Observing our thoughts instead of being them relieves some of our suffering! Whining and complaining about not having enough money will not put money in your pocket. It just creates deeper and deeper sankara, or misery, that robs us of our clarity of mind. And the joke is that when you really let go, it all comes to you. I have witnessed that firsthand.
What you resist persists…It is our resistance that creates suffering.
– Buddha
And the resistance creates more and more resistance.
The rest of my time at the retreat was spent living in the moment, and I began to aspire to doing dishes and cleaning the toilets in the center. That is what older students like me graduate to; being of service to newer students.
I would like to make a small disclaimer to anyone considering a retreat at Dhamma Dara: The Vipassana technique does not work if it is diluted, blended or turned into a frappé. The meditation hall can be like a torture chamber, but it’s a free torture chamber; donations are only accepted after you have tried the course. I always used to hide behind donating money, but there, service is always more meaningful than money. I have to go and donate my most valuable asset – my time – and serve in any capacity I’m assigned to serve, including doing the dishes, wiping and cleaning toilets. That is my next move, and I’ve already signed up to do that this fall.
A Journey to Panna: My Second Vipassana Retreat
Recently I attended my second 10-day retreat and vow of Noble Silence at the Dhamma Dhara Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. When I arrived at the center I was greeted with a flood of memories from my first retreat last year and the incredible spiritual journey I experienced with karmic guru SN Goenka (Goenka-ji).
This year was different because Goenka-ji had given up his body not long after my first Vipassana experience last year. Hearing his booming chant, this year, knowing that he was in another dimension, was priceless. He was very much alive and fully present.
From 4 am to 4:30 am, your alarm clock is a gong banged by volunteers who serve. The meditation starts at 4:30 am–we meet in the meditation hall. The day ends at 9:30 p.m. Lights are out at 10 p.m. There are approximately 10 or 11 hours of sitting meditation in complete silence sandwiched in between. At times we heard chanting, but were forbidden from chanting ourselves.
Each day the true treat was the evening discourses delivered by Goenka-ji.
Before the retreat even starts, you have to adopt a certain code of conduct which included 5 strong precepts of the Vipassana technique:
- The rejection of killing – especially in what we eat
- No lying
- No stealing
- No sex
- No intoxicants.
In other words, the senses are not to be indulged at all. For the first 3 days of the retreat, we practiced anapana meditation. The purpose is to tranquilize the mind before embarking on the Vipassana technique on day 4.
- On Day 4, I meditated alone in a cell within a pagoda — a self-imposed jail. I did not have the big insight that I was hoping for, and yet, that was okay.
- Day 5 was fabulous and my ego, which was dormant, knocked on the door. It wanted to go home, because I thought I had achieved mastery of the technique.
- That big ‘A-ha’ moment arrived during the afternoon of day 6 after mud wrestling with my ego. The concept of non-duality is one that I have known for over a decade, and though I understood it intellectually, it was only on day 6 that I experienced it at the cellular level.
Let me tell you what I mean. For example:
If you can watch sensations come and go, with equanimity (think of a mosquito bite and your urge to scratch it sooo badly), but you know that it will only make it itch more — so you just observe the sensations and don’t scratch it. Because that itch, too, shall pass.
Similarly with your agitating (or itchy) thoughts, you can watch them come and go, without indulging them and being reactive or explosive. You can simply observe them, without attachment or aversion. They will, like clouds, disappear – sometimes those might be storm clouds!
Sitting in the pagoda then, I realized that nothing, and no one, could ever bother me.
As I continued, the connection between mind and body became more apparent. Buddha said, after years of living close to starvation as an ascetic, that one should take care of one’s body. I began to sense the quantum interaction between my mind and the sensations I was feeling in my physical form. My body may have ached from sitting in meditation for hours at a time, but I was determined to keep going, even as I suffered more and more.
Join me next time to discover what happened after day 6!