Has it really been a month that I've been at a meditation retreat?
Silly question. Yes, I've been at the North Fork Mahavana Vipassana Center for the last month, first to sit (for over one hundred hours, according to our rigorous meditation schedule) and then to serve a ten-day course.
Why am I giving away my labor, you ask?
I asked myself the same question the day I signed on to be a server (the last day of my sit) and again in the middle of my service when I was going through something that made me extremely anti-meditation.
But first things first.
The sit was amazing. Amazingly hard. And painful. Physically painful. I would wake up in the morning with shoulder and back pain, and by the end of the ten days I had constant back pain. What does this have to do with meditation? Well, it seems that my issues, my sankaras as Goenka would call them, manifest as burning, unrelenting pain that starts in my back, along my spine, spreads to my right shoulder blade, my right leg, my right shoulder and after that I had to move and start over.
Ugh.
I realized some things, especially after I started talking on the last day. I tend to exaggerate to try to impress people. I allow the moods of other to influence me, as well as what I perceive to be what they want. For example, I offered a ride to a lady heading to Yosemite, and made sure to tell her that I was being picked up, I didn't know when, but I gave her a time estimate. When my ride didn't show up within that time, I became agitated and annoyed and passed that on to my ride when she did show up.
Ugh.
My group talked a lot about how Goenka annoyed them, how they went through so much emotional stuff. I didn't feel that way, I felt like I was in a lot of pain, and when I allowed myself to really focus on the pain, to get into it, experience it, then memories came up, things I've been holding onto, and I observed myself getting really annoyed
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2 comments:
That sounds pretty grueling.
As a meditation instructor, I’m always looking for words that are useful. You know, methods that might convey an important concept, or perhaps give helpful inspiration. One word that Goenka uses that I’ve only recently come to like is “defilement.” (C’mon, say it out loud. Roll it around in your mouth & flick it off your tongue.) He uses the word to describe lots of things, from sensations in the body, to negative thoughts in the mind.
Defined as “To debase the pureness or excellence of; corrupt”
It relates the idea of something naturally pristine & wonderful, but willfully desecrated or befouled. This really fits with my view of our natural tendencies. That to return to this state of naturalness is to regain a circumstance of fabulous wonder. (Very Daoist, right?) I like that when we experience defilement in our minds, we also experience it in our body. (A Daoist would say that it goes both ways.) Therefore, by observing our body, we are observing our mind. By cultivating our mind, we are cultivating our body. Returning “US” (that is, both: “BodyMind”) to a state of purity.
Pretty freakin’ cool, actually.
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If your meditation
Is truly high and deep,
Then you are bound to have
A silent dialogue with peace.
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