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!
