his is the most recent chapter in the ongoing series about my "silent meditation retreat" experiences -- if you're interested in first priming your mind with the previous installments, "Buddhallucinations" and "Cravings and Aversions for Breakfast," DM my rotary phone. In the meantime, befriend your blankie because this one's not winning any Teen Choice Awards for brevity.
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Well well well - here we are again, you opening this then closing it then opening it again at a later date, and me waiting sweatily for the response.
That sweat is pudding-proof of my progress, for I'll only be completely free when I'm completely response-free. As Roman homeboy Epictetus said just 2000 years ago, "Anyone who truly wants to be free won't desire something that is actually in someone else's control."
So to further scratch my itchy trigger-finger of reaction, last month I spent 9 days in silence to listen in on the quieter choirs of my mind. Though the early morning choir in my stomach has always rewarded me for overdosing it with warm water, this was the first time it had the nerve to talk back:
Me: "Talk to me, Butt."
Butt: "'Do you know what time it is?"
Every day started at the butt-crack of dawn, but I couldn't wait to start again, another chance to master the practice like a TI-83 snake game in math class - the practice being Buddha's game of "shadowing" the breath with your attention - wherever the breath goes, your attention goes.
And why troll the breath, out of all the things to troll?
Because the breath is the string to the kite of the mind - as your breath slows down, so do your thoughts....and after playing a neighborhood game of Breath Stalker for 16 hrs/day for 4 days in a row, not only does your nose file a restraining order, your.......well, just wait :)
I used to think that Buddha's "annapanna" (his breathing technique before the main event/meditative practice) was like an Indian restaurant buffet - he didn't actually care about the breathing technique, he just felt obligated to have one because every other yogi had one, while Vipassana was the chef's special.
I can tell you firsthand that his bare-bones breathing technique in and of itself can waterslide you to the other side of the moon. But it's not a straightforward path, as you can imagine with a waterslide built over moon rock. Consider this first before moving beyond:
1) The first few days in silence are for clearing the watery part of the ketchup before striking the reddish treasure chest. (there's a similar preliminary stage in my writing process where I -legally- first have to make sure that I've seen every youtube video about dinosaurs and then also check the Yahoo.com front page every five minutes. #formalities)
2) Your own experience is everything. In the time of Buddha (2500 years ago), in a world where monarchies were king, leadership legally told you what to think and believe. Then the people's champ, Buddha, rolled up in his Prius, fresh from providing his closest comrades with surreal experiences.
And because his body of work spoke for itself, people wanted to trust his word for what he was saying; that was easier than finding out for themselves. But he insisted that nobody consider his (or anybody else's) experience as their own; because it wasn't their own, they'd forget about it before it became embodied into their psyche.
So the elephant-sized mission in this Operation Dumbo Drop was to drop all thoughts, and the only instruction in the Ikea manual was to follow your unrestricted breath.
So I proceeded to breathe - and after a few days, as the hyperfast flipbook of the mind began to slow down, a few pages floated to the mind's kiddie pool surface:
1) Listening to the mind as my sole adviser is like living in a communist country and trusting everything you see on the news. The mind has its own agenda, and your best interest isn't on it.
And complaining about the bad suggestions is only going to provoke the primitive child that is your mind. If you ignore the child, eventually he'll just go the fuck to sleep.
2) Evolutionarily speaking, the mind reacts because when feels its survival is threatened. But the reality is, in 2018 in most countries, "survive" isn't on anybody's to-do list. So trusting your mind's dusty copy of an old survival software is like relying on a Google Maps edition made by Christopher Columbus, and wondering how directions to 'Home' put you in Cuba.
3) I've always associated "analysis" with "intellectual." But most analysis is overkill; remember that the mind is a prolific problem solver; the problem is that most things are not problems. So when a firehose is done putting out the cabin fire, don't waste more water by watering the surrounding lakes.
And remember that you're not allowed to complain that most news is redundant if you let the same stories in your mind cycle in a circle.
4) I also recognized that one of the background singers in my mind lobbying me to sign up for the next silent meditation retreat has on its agenda to generate material to write about. And one of its motives to write about the experience is to gain respect from my peers.
And the need to rely on peers' opinions at all increases a need to meditate.
But then my mind sprints to the Judge's Bench with a new defense; that if I'm experiencing something worth sharing, not writing about it would be as self-serving as an emo teenager skipping story-telling and going straight to his room after school.
The mind can justify anything if it's armed with motive.
*SPOILER ALERT* Please keep your hands and judgements inside the vehicle until this section comes to a full stop. And if you were raised Hindu, please wear rec specs for extra safety; you're not going to like this.
Several years ago, when I was just beginning to dip by big-toes into the ripple-free waterpark called Meditation, the most common response was, "is it like Mindfulness?" To which I instinctively said "no," because I didn't want the quality of my experience to feel commoditized (just like if you *discover* a new musician, then mention them to a friend and your friend already knows them, you're quick to reference the smaller fonted features of their catalogue, to protect your space on your pretend pedestal. It's the same survival wiring, to protect your newly found fertile land from invaders).
I'd always reference one of my favorite childhood shows, "Recess," where a whole episode was centered around swinging on the playground swing all the way to the other side - I'd compare mindfulness to paying attention to the swing, and my practice to swinging all the way - except that I was a virgin bragging to friends about sex.
The truth was that I'd never actually experienced that other side for myself.....until now.
Previously I'd been taught to not believe everything I think; when that didn't stick, the ante was raised to "no thought is worth believing." But all the while, the soul was supposed to remain my bass line, the only barcode/unique identifier of my personal existence.
Then imagine, after having not talked, or read....or texted..........or listened.....or caffeinated, or made eye-contact, for a week, and then fully succeeding in draining the mind of all uninvited play-dates. What's left is a silence that only you and the Sahara have experienced.
And you're in this Silence...and you're not even sure if you're still breathing, but you stride forth without it because even breathing feels like a nuisance...........................you keep digging deeper into the desert sand, trying to see how deep you can go....until..............................................................
.............................................................................................you strike the stillest water you've never seen...............................................................................................................you think,
this has to be the soul.
And you sit there, not planting flags or celebrating, but in a Western standoff, both parties waiting for the other to flinch..............waiting..................................waiting...............................................................................................waiting.................................................................................................................WAITING...................................and then.....
.
.
.
.
..
...
BOTH flinch. *
There it was, personal proof that even the soul was wearing a fake mustache this whole time, an imposter trying to not get caught as the Just Another Thought that it was.
Through my religious upbringing, my mind had been trained to trust the soul as the deep-sea camouflage that made me me, only to go deep-sea diving and discover that that corral-colored clam was a scam.
My immediate feeling, rather than betrayal, was freedom, like Genie at the end of Aladdin.
If the one thing I regarded as "truth" was Just Another Thought, and I just saw that bitch waver, the idea that "no thought was worth believing" was no longer an idea - it was my own experience. Suddenly, like after watching a horror movie where you sprint up the basement stairs for safety's sake, then the next morning's sun shines light on every monster's hiding spot..... knowing that even the "soul" was a slick sales job by the greasy mind, caused thoughts to voluntarily submit themselves for sentencing; the gig was over. And it made the Art of Non-reaction easier to not react to. This whole time I'd been eating an apple and avoiding the core, then accidentally bit the core, and discovered there was no core.
I was reminded of a conversation I'd had during a heated exchange on a hookah rooftop in Uzbekistan, with an American traveler named Wilson. Wilson asked me, "If your parents didn't raise you Hindu, would you still choose to be Hindu today?"
I adamantly said yes, Wilson called bullshit, and it made my blood boil. Motherfucker the Hindus got it right.
Wilson, if you're listening**, you were right.
It's easy to confuse what you believe with what you've been told to believe, especially when others' continuous influence on your mind starts to look like your own handwriting. And the concept of a soul has always provided the safety of a pool noodle; even if you didn't agree with anything else, believing in the "soul" made me feel and look good, a combination every product on the planet envies.
WRAP IT UP, MOHIT
I've long known that I can trick people into thinking my understanding of the world is at a high level, by assigning digestible language to shapeless concepts. But it's all a farce until it's actually been applied; even reading this may create a high, and that too, will fade.
One can visit a 3rd-world country, be briefly moved by piteous poverty, return to become momentarily more patient with traffic and toothpaste shortages, until soon returning to Self 1.0.
The mind can't just be fed words and re-wire itself; it has to be exercised to be changed (through a medium like meditation), just like the body has to be exercised. You can't read "Stallone's Abs, A Memoir written by Stallone's Abs" and wake up with Stallone's Abs. You can't watch ten 10 Ted Talks and wake up with Stallone's Abs.
You see, the more we learn about ourselves, the more parts of the lottery ticket get scratched off - we get encouraged and think that once we fully know ourselves and our full code, then we'll be free.
But be impatient with freedom; be free now. Because there is no code.
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*Keep in mind that this was my personal experience -- though many in the room experienced something similar, don't believe my experience, only believe yours.
**Wilson passed away earlier this year, but his legend lives on.