Time to dust off the mighty written word, or typed word, as it is, and tell you about my post holiday Vipassana meditation course. After Christmas, I took refuge with about 60 other people in an old (as in no heat and bad plumbing) Catholic summer camp to learn the teaching of Gotama the Buddha. It's a technique dating back around 2500 years and it is still being taught all over the world as a remedy for all ills.

From the website: www.dhamma.org

Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation. It was rediscovered by Gotama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for universal ills, i.e., an Art Of Living.

This non-sectarian technique aims for the total eradication of mental impurities and the resultant highest happiness of full liberation. Healing, not merely the curing of diseases, but the essential healing of human suffering, is its purpose.

If you read nothing more about my experience there, know this-- it was the most transformative experience of my life! Coming from someone who makes it his business to experience and teach transformation, I do not say those words lightly. I've been through many yoga trainings, even taught them, but nothing has allowed me to go so deep into my own being as the 10 day vipassana course.

The Experience

Just signing up for the program is a test of mental preparedness. After deciding that I wanted to do this for ten days, I had to fill out a questionnaire the plumbed the histories of my mental health and family life. Each step of the way is met with the recurring question Do you really want to meditate for 10 days? and Can you stay the entire length of the program?

The first night there, I took the vows of a monk, which are not really all that hard, especially the big ones like I will not kill anyone or anything or  I will not steal. It is slightly more difficult to take the vow of noble silence. For the duration of the course, I was to cultivate the sense that I was working alone, meditating in seclusion. Not talking to anyone was easy, but the vow extends to all forms of communication, including eye contact. I also adopted the schedule of a monk, which involves waking at 4am and meditating for 1-2 hour blocks until 9pm. Each day was about 11 hours total sitting in meditation.

Aren't there alligators in Florida?

The predominant thought for the first three days was Dear God, Please let a rabid alligator bite my leg so I can go home! I formulated plan after plan for escape the first few days. Every time I sat to meditate, either alone or with the group, I felt the urgent need to be doing something somewhere else. Or I would gain some amazing insight on some project I was working on back home and want to act on it. Since writing and reading materials were contraband, my only option was to continue meditating and hope that the thoughts would subside (and maybe that I would remember the good ideas in the New Year).

It got easier as the days went by. They blended together into a sludgy blur, as if time decided it really didn't have anywhere to be and could just take a little rest before getting on. My body was wracked with the most physical sensation I have ever experienced, even at the Baron bootcamps. After day three though, it just stopped. I could sit without pain for one or two hours. Around day six, I stopped worrying that zombie reindeer would ambush the camp and I realized that when I sit still, the mind keeps churning up thoughts and I usually miss out on the benefits of being silent.

There is no spoon.

The best stuff doesn't really show up until day eight or so, and I know now why they ask you to commit to the whole course. It takes nothing less that a total commitment to the process to reap the benefits or vipassana. The technique is simple, but not always easy. To sit and be still, on the inside as well as the outside takes a strong determination. The reward for such actions is clarity. I'm not talking about the clarity that comes with a good nights sleep or a cup of coffee, I mean the "this is the matrix and no, there really isn't a spoon" types clarity. Every bad sensation that arises, every negative (or positive) emotion that comes up and into the awareness has a cause--and I could see it. It was like having a magic xray machine into my own being. Thoughts would happen and I would see how they actually changed my body, either by pulling some muscles tighter here, say across the chest, or by releasing some new hormone into my bloodstream making me feel giddy and light.

Each emotional event disintegrated into all of its constituent parts. There was cause, action, reaction, new event, new cause, new reaction. Like the sense of time that slowed, each biological process revealed itself to me like stop-motion movie of how my mind was working. Even more exciting was that there were no blind spots. Everything I looked at came apart and revealed its history to me. It was easy to see the truth that we create the reality we see. What's hard is keeping  that awareness open and flowing while moving through life and making a living. Coming from 11 hours of meditation a day to maybe 1/2 an hour to an hour means that a lot more thoughts are churning throughout the day, clouding up that pristine sight that made everything so simple and clear.

The memory of all of that clarity is preserved, however, and it serves as a reminder that seeing things clearly is possible and more and more possible every time I sit and be still. 

Check out the not-so-silent ride home!