Vippassana, 10 days of Quiet

I just finished a 10-day meditation retreat in Jesup, Georgia, in total silence; no talking with, or looking at, anyone else except the teacher and "the management."  Two meals a day, at 6:30am and 11am with fruit and tea at 5. Dorm-room residence on a woodsy piece of land with walking trails. All was separated for men and women, each having their own dining, sleeping, walking areas, and the meditation hall was divided down the middle with men and women on each side with separate entrances and separate management staff to talk to if any need arose. It was beautifully managed for our comfort and concentration on what we were there to do.

And what was that? We were there to look at our minds. Sort of.

We had evening lectures by S.N. Goenka (video recordings from a course he taught in 1991 since he left his body in 2013) a teacher of this style of Vipassana from Burma, which he says is the unpolluted original form of the teaching of mind-purification that Siddhartha Gautama Buddha taught. After 500 years in India, he said, it became mixed with other rituals, and changed, so wasn't effective and was thus abandoned there. In Burma it was preserved by a line of teachers, and it moved to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and other eastern countries.

The first three days of the retreat we focused on our breath to enhance the ability of the mind to detect subtleties of breath sensations in our nose, on the edges of the nostrils and on the upper lip. This he called Anapana meditation.

We took 5 precepts on the 1st evening, observing "Sila" - abstaining from killing, lying, stealing, sex and intoxicants. Was black tea or coffee an intoxicant? I guess not since they stocked it in the dining area. Cool. And sexual fantasizing couldn't be either, since, I figured, most people here would have some sexual thoughts coming up, right? It was easy not to lie, since we were speaking only to the assistant teacher and lady manager.

I was getting terribly bored by day 3, still meditating on our nostrils and upper lip, wondering why I had to keep doing this same thing for 3 days, and I wasn't detecting much additional sensation. Maybe because I was so distracted by my thoughts of sex! I was fantasizing of a beautiful unavailable man that I had liked, and how we would meet, and what we would do. Many ideas were formulated, I felt very creative.

I also formulated the most amazingly worded monologues I would tell to this man I had liked but was never able to say just how I felt about myself or about him. So perfectly worded and slowly stated, and I felt that my truth was finally coming to the surface. All the confusion of feelings I had before blocked my access to my boundaries, my true desires, and what was right for me and for him. The confusion seemed to fall away, and my stillness of mind allowed me to get to the intellect and clarity to interpret my feelings and what I wanted to create with this person which went on changing over the days I was there, until I stopped thinking about it, or putting much importance on it.

I also generated wonderful ideas for writings, and activities back in Gainesville, and I kept thinking of many witty Facebook posts.

Day 4 we learned the art of Vipassana meditation, scanning the body for sensations such as the touch of fabric or air, tingling, numbness, pain, heaviness, lightness, vibration, tightness... You scan down from head to toe, then back up from toe to head... later he told us to sweep 'en masse', sweep 'en masse' which was very confusing coming from an older guy with an indian accent so I had no clue he was saying the french term until I asked the assistant teacher a few days later.  There were no subtitles on these videos of him that we watched every night.

I scanned myself. I felt fleece jacket on neck; pants on waist; pants on legs; pressure on feet; moisture on hands; after 30 minutes, there was tingling, some numbness coming up. Some coolness in some areas from the air. Many areas were 'blind,' with not much sensation, especially forearms, lower back and cheeks.

Day 5 I was getting a little calmer, and scanning over and over... but Day 6 I was irritated at this teacher. He kept saying these are not "useless rites or rituals." He criticized other religions for the devotional practices, and the empty activities by people who were still angry, fearful, and egotistical, not having any control of their own minds, and doing things for show, or our of fear, or because it was tradition... which, yes some of that could be true, but his attitude seemed to be making fun of other people, and I didn't think that was they style of a very enlightened egoless person. Not that he claimed to be...

On Day 6 I wanted to go home, and leave the lectures of this old Indian guy, talking stories about anger and greed on the most gross rudimentary levels with examples of slapping a secretary in anger, or kicking a man on the street out of disgust, or taking a brother's inheritance of land. When was he going to talk to us about all the emotions I was feeling in my heart and my stomach? He did not talk about emotions coming up in meditation. He seemed to have zero emotional intelligence and I was not getting the link between the feeling of fleece on my neck and my attachments and aversions to so many things in life. Hello? He was speaking a lot of theoretical things, and how we would get rid of all our aversions, attachments and miseries by observing all sensations of the body.

There were 2 assistant teachers sitting on daises, and they were not ever speaking except to tell us when the breaks were. Why weren't they using their intelligence to bridge the gap between these general gross emotions examples Goenka was speaking of and the subtle emotion challenges that a modern western person might be more likely to be dealing with? Or why weren't they answering any questions to the whole audience?

I went to the female teacher 5 times to ask the questions. It helped a lot. It was beyond what Goenka was saying. Hm, confusing.

Okay, Day 7 I was finally having a quiet mind and trusting that some good things were happening for me. I felt it, as my attachment to that attractive man seemed to be reducing, and my internal dialogues with him were changing to less attachment and more compassion.

Day 8 it finally clicked! As I create equanimity with pain in my body, I can create a habit of the mind that has equanimity with things that happen in my life. Oh, ok! So if a mosquito bites me in meditation, I can practice on that training ground to be equanimous with the sting and the itch that is there... so when someone says something quite rude to me in future, I will have a mind trained to not react, but to consider and process and think before responding.

I was feeling more sensations, and by now had experienced a few surprising things.

After a few days of Vipassana I realized I was sensing my left side as blue, darker, like in the shadow, and the right side as orangey active yellow. Then I realized that these correspond to my yin side (dark, night, passivity, moon) and my yang side (daytime, active, sun). Wow, so I had firsthand experience at the feng shui idea of yin and yang qualities - I actually experienced those qualities and colors on my left and right sides! During one sit, I experienced my right side as tingly and vibrating in it's totality, while my left side remained largely un-sensing. Wow, the right felt alive, and the left felt half-asleep. The right is the masculine side, the left the feminine side... For years I have noticed more injuries to my left side than to my right and wondered about it.

It was revealed to us during one of the later lectures that we will end up getting a sensation of vibration and tingling throughout the body at some point, and it will very feel pleasant... but we should not get attached to this, just as we should be equanimous with pain we might feel, and this sensation is a good training ground to create equanimity with this nice sensations.

So the idea is: that our cravings relate to a negative body sensation that happens, and we want to react to alleviate it. As we practice not reacting to body sensations in meditation, our mind gets calmer about wanting satisfaction of craving, or to get away from things we have aversion to... and those cravings and aversions calm and balance out over time... then, we stop being reactive in situations and with people. We begin to get more accpeting of what is.

I can say that I had some amazing internal experiences (a few mentioned here), and am grateful for the seachange in my attachment that I had coming in to this retreat that has now been minimized to something very small.

There is more to the story of Vipassana that I did not discuss here (accumulating merit, karma, sankaras, etc) and that I have not learned about yet... but I think this has a great potential to help me with anxiety and worry that I have and for connecting me to what is true for me at a deeper level that I miss as I tend to keep myself pretty busy in action - that active yang side!

Wage Slave Society

"Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life energy." - Nikola Tesla, quoted in Waking up: Freeing Ourselves from Work, a book by Pamela Satterwhite.

I have noticed the robotic routines people engage in during the week, with weekdays consisting of rushed morning getting selves and kids ready for work and school at crazy early times... coming home or doing afternoon activities designed by others to "improve the self," grabbing mail and newspapers, changing, cooking, eating, watching some tv, or reading a novel or checking out some social networking... and going to bed, and repeating the next day. The weekends are full of home improvement, car maintenance, yard work, going to games, cleaning the big house with all it's stuff that needs to be cleaned... 

Someone told us that we need big homes with big yards, and big cars to take ourselves to long-working hours in jobs where others tell us when to work, and allow a few weeks a year which we use for a "getaway" vacation... giving us benefits that pay for exorbitantly unaffordable insurance.

This is the situation for the masses of people who are workers in large companies, and these companies are getting bigger, so that workers are farther and farther from those making decisions and they can't see effects decisions have on people, just how decisions affect numbers.

Capitalist society is structured such that most people are either unemployed or "wage slaves." This leaves little time for creativity, spiritual practice, organizing new groups to change politics/economics or being with oneself.

What is this doing to our self-esteem as a society of humans? How unconscious are we going to go, such that we don't notice that we are not having control of our own lives? How many of us just feel lucky enough that someone would allow us to work in their holy company and are willing to put up with being tired and overwhelmed by all we have to do each day?

Do we realize that the system is designed to wear us down, make us tired, make us busy? Even the fun that is offered is designed to keep us busy... don't think, don't organize, don't meditate, don't sit quietly with kids and have long conversations with them about what is on their mind.

We have been convinced in our society we must be always doing something. We must be productive. We must be active, or something is wrong. If someone asks another to a social event and the other declines, you might hear: "Why, what do you have to do?" It is often assumed that there has to be something that you have to do in order to justify that you won't accept an invitation. Or people ask, "Are you busy Saturday night?" So funny, actually!! The wording we have created around activity and invitations! Again it says, if you aren't busy, then you'd be going to the thing I am going to tell you about!

The news announcers list the great successes of the economy as more full time jobs are provided! People NEED to work 40 hours a week to survive!! This has been our creation. What an arbitrary numbver! Eight hours a day. "As long as you get your eight hours in!" is a mantra for many bosses... I have known many people who kill time at the end of the day, and stay at their desk until the clock strikes 5 o'clock. I have done this many many times at my last job! The boss was watching to see if she was getting her money's worth from me based on how many hours I was at my computer. It felt so degrading. Many jobs are designated as 40 hours... but some of those jobs require 30 hours to do the work, and some require 48 hours a week to do the work. The latter group has workders that don't take any breaks all day long, in order to get it all done; my sister is one of them. But she 'loves' her job! She leaves at 7am each morning, drives, and isn't back til 6pm each evening. This is 11 hours a day. What? How does this make a balanced life? And she takes no breaks at work. What? How is this acceptable, legal, and ok?

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/meal.htm

I was in the workplace, in cubicles in offices in companies, with offices and CEOs etc. For a time, I worked as an information technology project manager that worked on developing a new payroll/human resource system and I learned about labor laws that were developed for factory workers who needed to sit down and take breaks for their own safety. The law said you should get a 1/2 hour if you work at least 6 hours. Every state is different. Most require 1/2 hour if working 6 or more consecutive hours. Puerto Rico reflects their own culture that values sleep and family, requiring an hour (in Latin America, people would typically go home for the home cooked meal if possible).

Wow, 1/2 an hour break! Doesn't it seems a bit degrading when we are giving our life energy to the job? Then again, the culture of places I have worked is to not take breaks. Eat lunch at your desk and keep working through the breaks because we are busy and have a lot to do. Now if we are passionate our job and it is a sort that doesn't really feel like work because we are stimulated and excited and happy doing it, who needs breaks?

Well that is where I will be. In a role in which I give my life energy to something that is my spiritual calling.

I am happy that more people in my life are creating work schedules that match their energies where they have a lot of say and control over their work... and many of my friends are becoming more aware of the importance of alone time. I love when people do this for themselves, and I am becoming an expert!

I quit working a year ago. I am grateful for the great benefits I had in the mid to late 90s that allowed for great retirement savings and matching program at my company (14% match!). This allows me to ponder, sit, reflect, pray and be. For now. I will be in action again soon, but I do want to SAY NO to the 40 hour work week at someone else's office forever.

If I was in charge of a company that had workers, I would create a culture of taking breaks, and encourage people to stop and gather, and relax and visit and take care of themselves with some movement, yoga, or walks outside on the nice grounds with trees, bushes and birdbaths. There would be some games and... well that gets into a whole other discussion about all the perks that some companies are providing people with at work so they love being there! (Google, e.g.) I would want to hire a lot of part-timers so that people have an option to stay home with kids, or have 2 golf games a week, or do more spiritual practice or work on their guitar skills or read or just sit. We would measure work based on results somehow... not x number of hours, if possible.

I think 4 hours a day is a perfect amount of time to do good productive work... and not all at once.

And I would love our society to have the expectation and structure that every individual would take a year off of work every 7 to 10 years. Do the things we always wanted to do.

Eckhart Tolle was so depressed from working so hard on his PhD, and when he reflected on the I that was so tired, and exhausted, and suicidal, he had a deep inner awakening that there is no "I" but that is illusion. He quit is PhD, walked around London for weeks, sitting on park benches and observing the amazing beauty of everything around him, even the traffic.

These kinds of people are threats to a controlled society, by the way... it is not predictable or controllable, and the authorities have to be in control, they must provide us jobs, and affordable housing and entertainment, and really fancy, smooth black roads.

What if we could live more simply, work less, and just be still part of each day? Is it too painful? Are we too ancy and conditioned? I am getting ancy if I am out too much now. I will find the balance soon enough.

#wageslavesociety #overworked #makingaliving #tesla #workplace #howtolive