Fellow YV Marathoners,
Some of you may know that I recently did a 10-day Vipassana silence course, mainly for the girls and food.
EXPOSED on both fronts -- I just assumed Vipassana was like the bhatura to Art of Living's chole, but in fact Vipassana doesn't even serve ANY food (after 1130am each day).
They did, however, serve some lessons. If you're a good boy and wait til Mommy's done explaining some background, I'll tell you all about them.
THE PART WHERE MOMMY EXPLAINS SOME BACKGROUND:
Vipassana meditation is Buddha's original meditation -- the goal is the same as AOL, but the path is quite different. To be completely honest, I didn't know I was cheating on the AOL community until Vipassana dimmed the lights and revealed her true intentions. In fact, the two styles can actually complement each other quite well. For example:
1) Vipassana, too, also believes that the mind is constantly pulled out of the present by a nonstop string orchestra starring Cravings and Aversions (and co-starring more Cravings and Aversions). I can't tell you how many times from 4am-9pm I heard Ekta's voice echoing "raagas/dweshas/raagas/dweshas." By day 6 of the diet, raagas and dweshas were turning into "ragu" and "queso" and my thumb into a butterfinger/chum chum.
2) But instead of observing the cravings/aversions at the thought level, VP's M.O. is to objectively observe the sensations on and in the body. You see, it's not the car or the woman or the money or you desire; it's the sensations (feelings) that those things create on and inside your body that the mind craves. So just like Guruji says in his bestselling "Long Kriya" to "be with the sensations," that's what we did at sensation camp, except in military doses. See, emotions are sensations before they're thoughts and emotions are generated by reacting to the sensations, so if you can observe the sensation without reacting, then the emotion (that is, craving/aversion) will never happen.
Essentially, instead of making thoughts the feature presentation, you make your bodily sensations the feature presentation. It's two paths to the same Salvation Fairydome, with both on duty as after-school programs to keep the mind out of trouble.
Here's the cool part -- each bodily sensation is also hard evidence of a tangible change in the body. And change is happening in the body and around us all the time, that is "everything is changing."
THE PART WHERE MOMMY EXPLAINS HIS LESSONS:
...1) so if everything around us is changing, including people, situations, and things, that means everything is impermanent. So trying to find happiness in ANYTHING outside of us is a flimsy model........it's like hooking your rock-climbing clip into a mudslide. Or buying your 1-yr old a lifetime membership at Kids R Us. Or relying on our kids for our smiles.
2) Writing out recurring thoughts is a cleansing experience, like pulling a hair out of your cereal.
3) Bring joy to the greater good without worrying about upsetting a few. If you upset them, have compassion for those who are controlled by their mind, but untimely compassion is only heard as ego.
4) Living in constant awareness/equanimity without reacting can conceptually be defined as the "Neutral Now." And while the Neutral Now sounds as fun as water-flavored ice cream, recognize that the taste experience comes and goes in a fraction of the time than the fireworks saga imagined by your mental craving.
**You can tell by all these food analogies what effect no dinner for 10 days had on the mind. Now please pause for a short commercial break while I eat my screen.**
(we now return to regularly scheduled programming)
5) With limited food and no noise, the body can adapt and the mind can collapse. And when there's no sparring partner for distractions and games, the infantile mind self-imposes nap time. BUT....
...6) these naps are a temporary fix like trying to hold a balloon under water. Instead, objectively observing the mind and sensations in the playpen allows the self to notice thinking patterns whose futility all of a sudden becomes laughable. This is when I've found it easiest to change the changer.
Yes, silencing the mind is a natural high, but if you kill the suspect, then you learn nothing about the motives.
I also became more aware that the main conversation in my head happens because "I" think that everything/everyone revolves around me. But life is not happening TO me, life is just happening, and I'm the witness.
As I walked into the cafeteria every day for the Daily Meal, I could hear my mind running its mouth:
"Don't sit at the first table, people are going to think you're anti-social."
BUT BITCH NOBODY'S TALKING." "So sit next to someone new, someone who's lonely and sitting by themselves."
"BUT THEY'RE NOT GOING TO UNDERSTAND WHY I'M PUTTING BUTTER IN MY TEA."
After a few days of this colorful nonsense, it became clear that, more than I've ever cared to admit, I do care what people think about me -- or rather, that they don't think what I don't want them to think about me. My decisions had been designed to portray a certain decorated self, like painting an egg........the looseness of my clothing, the pace that I ate, the intentional tardiness. And the biggest deterrent from taking chances had lied in a fear of risking cracking this imaginary painted egg of myself in other's heads. But this egg has has been created by my mind and imagined to be in others' minds, when really the shared consciousness is an eggless cake.
This email is getting long, and don't worry I'll still accept your thank-you notes for helping you kill time at work, but before you return from your bathroom break, one last thing -- I want to quickly share the transformative experience that happened every night as a group of us stood outside and stared at the stars. Each night, while staring at these balls of fire that are so far away that they may not even be there anymore, their distant existence got closer to the heart. And each night, the realizations built upon the last:
NIGHT 1 - It is incredibly random (or is it) that we are all living on this tiny planet which in comparison to the universe, is the size of a sock hole.
NIGHT 2 - So if we're sharing this small space, life must be about helping others.
NIGHT 3 - But also making enough money so I don't have to listen to others.
NIGHT 7 - I could see how these stars could've been motivation for the possible fabrication of God's existence.
NIGHT 9 - We're randomly sharing a fairly small space - if it's not God's social experiment, we're all incredibly lucky to be here, and that at the same time. So we must constantly be doing things to make each other smile.
NIGHT 10 - I may be small in this universe, but I'm still bigger than my mind.
Now please excuse me while I take my mind for a walk.
Love,
Hungry Moti