Escaping Vipassana

Vipassana meditation was the cloest thing to prison that I ever hope to experience. The idea is that you go to this little meditation center in the countryside with about sixty others, (half male, half female but the sexes never mix) who you will make absolutely no contact with for ten days but you will spend ten hours or more each day sitting several feet away from each other. At the start, you sign your life away saying that you will promise to stay for the duration of the course and follow it's rules. No sex, intoxicants, killing, lying, media entertainment, communication with the outside world and no communication at all except to the staff and teacher. The whole deal sounded rather crazy to me when I first heard about it but I was told that while it was very challending it would also be very rewarding. Attracted mostly by the craziness of it, I signed up.

The practice itself is in the footsteps of what the Buddah did to become Buddha all those centuries ago. It has been passed down in an unbroken line of teachers ever since. For awhile it was lost to India but kept alive in a neighboring country until a guy brought it over to India during the middle of the last century and it has garnered a solid following. The basis of it is this meditation technique in which you focus all of your intention on the flow of respiration through your nostrails. Not trying to control it, simply keeping your attenion focus solely on that and drawing your mind back whenever it wanders. If that sounds cool to you try it. It's hard for a few hours but after a day or it gets fairly easy. My own mind wanders a lot but as long as you stay focused its easy to pull it back and hold it for longer and longer and longer. And longer. And longer still, until the novelty has worn off and the boredom sets in.

The boredom was too much for me to take. Try to imagine not thinking for an entire day, not having one single completed thought for hours at a time. You probably can't. It's maddening and I couldn't stand it. The idea is that by learning to focus your mind so completely and finely you can later probe deep into your own being. I'm sure it works, and the whole 'probing of your true self' does have some attraction but to me, spending whole days forcing my mind not to think just to expereince the universal truth that the entire cosmos and everything in it is interconnected and made up of gazzilions of particles that jump in and out of existence in an instant, just like our own lives - ehh, not my cup of tea.

Apart from the boredom there was also the environment in which it took place. The grounds were very beautiful, but also very small and with only one 'walking path' that was about one hundred yards long and ten wide. There was no where else to go to stretch ones legs apart from up and down that long dirt strip overhung with trees. And you really needed a place to stretch your legs. For hours upon hours, starting at 4:30am until 9:30pm you are expected to sit cross legged on the floor in very serious concentration. There are breaks evenly spaced out and meals, a meager vegetarian affair but otherwise you sit on a pillow in total silence in a stuffy hall and meditate. The directions for the meditation come from a voice on a CD, because appearently the only person in the world qualified to teach this technique is the guy who brought it back to India. There are perfectly qualified teachers present who can answer any questions you might have, but only one man is capable of telling you to, "Focus on the area the edge and inside your nostrails. Follow the respiration in and out, in and out. Notice how sometimes it comes in the left nostrail... sometimes the right... sometimes both nostrials...." He says this several times at the start of each session and in three languages Tamil, Hindi and English (the whole course, except for the breif chanting to begin and end each session is in three languages).

Over all, it was very impersonal and on second thought, prison probably would be better - atleast you can enteract with your fellow inmates. After about 48 hours there I decided that I'd had enough of Visspannu and of Buddhism overall, but that's a seperate issue, and so I decided to get out. First, I had to plant the seeds the night before I wanted to go. I did this by saying how I was very bored and didn't really believe in or like the technique and then asked a few very pointed questions about Buddhism in general. This led to a very lengthy disscusion on the subject, which only furthered my belife that I want absolutely nothing to do with it ever again. That however, is a whole other topic. Then I informed him as soon as I could the next day that I wanted to leave. This was very tricky since you're only supposed to talk to him during certain times and so I wasn't able to tell him until noon. Another lengthy talk followed on the subject of why I should stay and how it was perfectly normal to absolutlely hate the technique before you had mastered it. I told him that I had no doubt that he was right, but all the same my mind was made up and I leaving. " Thats ok", he said, just try it until after the afternoon session at five and then give me your final answer and you can go.

I was content at that point. Freedom was within reach and I'd be back to civilization by night fall. Then the rain started. It was torrential, thunderous and flooded grounds of the center, which stood up a slight hill from the main road. It began at 1:30 and by 2:30 I knew that no car would be able to make it to the center. By 3:00, walking the half kilometer down a country road comprised of mud, cow shit was starting to look in doubt. Half an hour later, I informed the teacher that I was leaving, he implored me to stay another night and leave in the morning due to the rain. I however, was already fantasizing about Tandoori chicken, a beer and a good movie. So, I told him not to worry - where I was born it rains all the time and a little water wasn't gonna stop me. Quickly I set off on the road, bags in hand, pants rolled up to my knees, coat tied around my neck then thrown over my backpack and mosoon in full force.

However, during the final meditation session, while the rain was making the possibilty of leaving less and less likely, I did have one really cool exerience wth the meditation. The irnoy is that you aren't suppose to have experiences like this and if you do you're suppose to snap out of it and drag your mind back to, "...sometimes it comes in the left nostrail... sometimes the right... sometimes both nostrials...." About half an hour into the session I saw in my mind a wavy, fuzzy, somewhat spikey shape, which upon relfection looks something like a roll of film. Still following the breathing technique, I found myself focused upon it and then in a sense I was drawn in. All of a sudden I was completely immeresed in memories from my grade school days. Hundreds of them, one after the other and all quite random events that I had not thought of in many years. In each memory it was like I was there, reliving it in prefect detail. All the sights, sounds, smells, feelings (both physical and emotional) were incredibly vivid and spanned my entire grade school experience in Seattle. After what seemed a long time I became aware that I was barely breathing at all and my hands, which were clasped in front of me, fingers interlocking felt as if they were holding something that was slightly squeezable. I was able to go back into the memories and stayed there for what I thought was a very long time. When I opened my eyes, the whole thing could not have lasted for more than ten minuets.

Anyways, that didn't stop me from leaving...

Shortly after departing, I made it to the nearest 'hotel', which in these parts means a restaurant with a conveience store and tea stand out front, not the kind with rooms. I'd written down a few names of cab companies and after unsucessfully trying the pay phone about a dozen times and each time getting the, "The user you are trying to reach is unavailable," I was handed a cell phone by the lady at the store, got a hold of a taxi only to discover that she didn't speak any English. The guy at the store came over and I handed him the phone. I have no idea what they talked about for the next 15 minuets, my guess is that he spoke Tamil and she Hindi but either way, things looked in doubt until a construction crew showed up. There was a young engineer with them named Sandeep who spoke good English and was able to tell the guy with the phone what I was saying, who was then able to tell the dispatcher and an hour after I arrived, I had a ride set for later that evening. Sandeep bought me a cup of tea, so full of sugar and milk that one could mistake it for cheap hot chocolate and I set my dung/mud caked flip-flops a few yards away, sat down and watched a cloud of flies numbering in the hundreds swarm about them while I waited for the taxi.