Too Rich. Too Rich…
On my way home from the California Vipassana Center where I spent the past 11 days meditating, I was trying to think of clever headlines for this email. So many ways:
1.) How To Drive A Gemini Crazy? Vipassana.
2.) Get To Know Your Nozetrilzzzzz.*(See asterisk below)
3.) The Truth Lies Right Under Your Nose.
4.) How To Spend 110 Hours on a 22" x 22" cushion.
5.) Just Don't Do Something, Sit There.
* Goenka fans are laughing and poking themselves in the ribs saying, "It's funny because it's true. It's funny AND true."
Anyway. after completing the course, I have to say that it was probably the most profound experience of my life. And remember this, that's including Kathy Lee Gifford's Today Show performance. Wow.
Each day began at 4:00 AM. At 4:30, we sat for two hours. From 6:30 til 8:00, we had breakfast and small break for bathing, nap, etc. From 8 til 9 AM, group sitting/lesson, from 11 AM til 1 PM dinner(yes, dinner) and question answer period session with teacher. From 1 until 2:30, meditation, from 2:30 til 3:30 group sitting/meditation; from 3:30 til 5 PM, meditation. From 5 to 6, tea break, from 6 til 7, group sitting and lesson; 7 til 8:15, dhamma (universal law) talks, and from 8:15 til 9 PM, meditation. And they tricked me! I had to be vegan, AND silent! And dinner at 11 AM? "Here's your sesame seed and a thimble of water. See you tomorrow!!" I couldn't even complain about it. Imagine my agony. Oh, you also couldn't make eye contact with any of the over 100 participants.
Imagine the agony of sitting in one spot and NOT MOVING positions for 11 hours a day. The first day, all 11 hours, was spent feeling your breath coming in and out of your nostrils. Sounds easy. Your mind will NOT let you. It's amazing how many commercials, crappy songs you don't even like, inane memories, profound ideas occur constantly. Like about ten per second. It's really hard to listen to the constant chatter of one's mind. It really proves the point that we have lost the ability to feel sensations in our body. Through busyness, worry, memory, speculation, analgesics, alcohol, and drugs, we've numbed ourselves. To start having to listen to what your minds goes through constantly, it's pretty agonizing. To try and control it, even harder.
The week pretty much progressed like that, as people got deeper and deeper into their heads and bodies. People would burst out crying, remember abuses that were repressed, people that they had wronged, begin to understand their behavior patterns.
The thing that was so cool about it is that it is no mumbo-jumbo, it's just pure science. It's not dogmatic or sectarian. It's merely how the Buddha came to understand how the mind and universe functions. And he must have been on to something, as he was describing sub-atomic particles arising and falling 2,500 years before the electron microscope.
By day six, I was starting to have semi-transcendental experiences-weird colors, patterns, sounds. Had to learn to shut them off too. (To think of all the money one could have saved on acid, ecstasy and mushrooms...)
By day seven, I was feeling sensations all over my body. Internally. Externally. Vibrational. I could actually taste electricity moving over my tongue. Like when you're a kid and you touch your tongue to a six volt battery to see if it still has juice? Or when you're older and touch your right eyeball & left nipple to your car battery to see if it does? Okay, maybe I was the only one to ever do that.
And why do they ask you to do this? To show you that nothing is permanent. Nothing pleasant or unpleasant. If one starts just observing sensations on the body and not reacting to them, they will learn to train their minds to react like this in life.
So Buddha was no god, just a very early Stephen Hawkings or Einstein. I think that so many enlightened people have come out of the east because they have understood how the function of mind and matter and the function of natural law and the universe are in conjunction. When travelling in India, I learned that it was common knowledge or belief that Jesus spent nearly 15 years in Kashmir and India & Persia studying Buddhist philosophy. And it shows in His teachings.
What did I learn from the course? That I am responsible for my own misery and conversely, happiness. And I also know for a fact that my unhappiness was caused by turning down or actually turning off my feelings when my parents got sick. If I had allowed myself to feel the depths of my hurt, I thought I would have gone crazy. I never lost compassion for others, I just lost the ability to feel for myself.
I experienced real peace for the first time in my whole life. And I felt like the Grinch at the end of the course whose "heart had grown three sizes too big that day."
So, really, really profound.
I know this is a little deep, but a couple of people got the impression that my Christmas email was sorta a downer. No no no! I am so glad for my self discovery, at the risk of friends, family, strangers thinking I'm nuts. And I heard from about twelve people that I'd traveled with saying that they too had had significant depression readjusting to western society. So much of what we value is bunk. And you learn this in the East. It was and is vital. Career never was. Just a means to pay rent, as I would never define myself by my work.
So fret not, I am happy, energized, at peace and so grateful that I was able to do the course that has deeply changed my life. I especially thank David my pal for taking care of my very high maintenance pooch yet once again, so that I might be able to realize what I have longed to know for so long. And in turn, given me a longer fuller life. I don't say this lightly. Thank you.
So have a great holiday season. May the next year be one of peace and harmony for you.
Smooch.
Craig
Check out www.dhamma.org if you want to see where I went. I highly recommend this difficult, agonizing and fantastical experience. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, - anybody at all can benefit. It's free and it's in a city near you...
~originally written january 2001
