Vipassana

The 2011 travel season begins! The journey began with my alarm clock sounding at around 5:30 on the morning of April 12th. On the road by a little after 6:00, I made way for Elbert, Colorado, between Denver and Colorado Springs. I spent the night in the town of Elizabeth, about half-an-hour North of Elbert. On the morning of the 13th, I finished the drive and arrived at the Rocky Mountain Vipassana Association's meditation center. I took exactly one photo of the center before the course began. As a student at the course, one agrees to neither use, nor keep any cameras, mp3 players, books, reading/writing materials, instruments, religious trinkets, or any other thing that might distract the mind. For 10 days I woke up at 4:20 am for early morning meditation. Then had breakfast and rested from 6:30-8:00 am. The meditation schedule continued along these lines: 8:00-11:00 am, 1:00-5:00 pm, and 6:00-7:00 pm. The evening would conclude with evening discourse, or "dhamma talk" with S.N. Goenka video recordings, and a brief end-of-the-night meditation.

The organization claims to be a non-sectarian meditation center, and can make reasonable argument to that effect, as no they do not push any ideas of supernatural or divine guidance, powers, dieties, or miracles. I will attempt to sum up in just a few sentences a very long-winded, complicated, philosophy/way-of-life that has been painstakingly studied and elaborated on for thousands of years since the Buddha. The idea is that there are two causes of human suffering -- craving and aversion. For countless generations before the Gautama and after, all the sages and saints had preached that one must do away with craving and aversion, but the Buddha taught that while one might cut off the branches of craving and aversion, suppressing or denying ones urges or negativities, the roots remain, and will inevitably sprout again, even if only at the moment of death. To eradicate suffering at its root, the Buddha taught awareness of sensation -- to become acutely aware of every atom of ones entire body -- to observe each sensation without judgement or reaction. By passing over each part of the body, making note of each sensation, without lingering on pleasant ones or avoiding painful ones, one trains the mind to remain equanimous, observing each sensation objectively. After several hours of sitting without fidgeting, one might feel and itchy spot here or there. One might feel back muscles pinches and/or tightening. The pressure on ones tail-bone may seem to overwhelm the senses. The "old habit-pattern of the mind" is to wiggle, scratch, fidget, etc. in an effort to quickly do away with whatever sensation we find ourselves averse to. Instead, the meditator is to observe the sensation without reacting. At a certain point, after experiencing difficulties in observing the subtle sensations that always encompass the entire body, inside and out, the meditator may even crave these strong "painful" sensations, but to crave is to fall back into the old habit-pattern. Likewise, one may find themselves unable to detect subtle sensations on certain portions of the body and as the mind shifts its focus here, the meditator begins to crave sensation. The more one craves sensation, the duller the mind becomes, until it is almost impossible to detect. Thus, one develops a sort of patience mixed with detachment. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, and so on for the rest of a persons life, through meditation, they nurture this quality of detachment and equanimity, dissolving the ego and making space for true love and compassion, free from self-centered thinking.

The course was an incredible roller coaster ride of ups and downs. Part of the purpose of this sort of mediation is to not only "know" the law of Anicca (impermanence), but to experience it. Impermanence is experienced as one observes each itch, each pain, each tingling chill and wave of warmth as it arises and passes away, but also one experiences the arising and passing away of emotional states, feeling incapable, incompetent, insensitive, and unfocused at one point during the day, only to feel elated a short time later at ones incredible breakthroughs, progress, sensitivity to sensation, and equanimity with those sensations.