With eyes closed, two vegetarian meals a day, with a vow of silence and morality, I undertake another 10 days of solitary self-observation under the guidance of S.N Goenka. Prior to the course, I had posted a video of him on Facebook where he was interviewed in Dhamma Giri, Mumbai, where I had taken my last course in 2011. Watch it here: Goenka on Vipassana
The first 3 days is spent developing the awareness of our breath, as in naturally flows in, as it naturally flows out - the bridge that will take my awareness farther into the depth of my mind. Like our 5 sense for physical awareness (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), the mind has an awareness of its own. As observation since birth has always primarily been of the outside, this faculty of inner awareness is so easily overlooked and therefore under-developed in the vast majority of people. The practice for these 3 days is to observe respiration. We are learning to sense more subtle sensations that are always present within our body, but are never aware of. We are also practicing to keep our attention continuously on our breath. Along with learning to be aware of deeper sensations, we are practicing sustained attention.
As usual, thoughts relentlessly enter my mind despite my intention to be fully in the present moment. One that particularly catches my attention is when I foolishly tried to describe my previous experiences deep meditation to M. I said "..the visions I see seem more real to me than what i experience in the outside world." In that moment, I saw that I was unconsciously seeking for the pleasurable sensations I've had in the past. Intellectually, I knew that I was not to seek pleasurable sensations. Unconsciously, I was desiring it.
What also was astonishing to me was what I picked up during the daily discourses. Having completed 4-5 previous courses, I thought I'd find the discourse repetitive. Perception has a way of picking out information relevant to the current level of consciousness(?). I sunk into despair upon realizing that coming back to these 10 day retreats once a year is useless if not practiced on a daily basis. Being in a course enables one to enter the depths of the mind to purify it by being equanimous to both aversive and pleasurable sensations. Awareness of sensations with equanimity - so we go home that much lighter, and happier - an actual sensation that is felt in the here and now. But if in daily life we revert to our habitual patterns of sinful (misguided) behavior, we re-accumulate the impurities (greed, lust, anger) that we work so hard to eradicate.
On the 10th day 'noble silence' is broken and all the meditators socialize to 'prepare going back into the world.' I love meeting the different kinds of people. Lots of travelers from so many different paths and perspectives allows me to reflect on what I do, and why I do it. What I notice most this time round that the meditation does for me is that the practice of equanimity helps in my interactions with people. My conditioned habit pattern is to operate from a state of self-consciousness, which makes me not want to be around people: social anxiety and chronic grumpiness. Actually, the chronic grumpiness is a product of the negative feelings of social inadequacy. But now I was operating from a base of equanimity, not self-consciousness. So I was liberated from my anxiety, and free to explore other people. I was also imbued with a sense of love and compassion - Godly qualities that I've come to realize that is inherent within myself (the human being), once our idiosyncratic impurities are removed.
My habitual and negative state of mind will revert to its habitual and negative state if I don't continue practice. So begins my year of living equanimously, to change the natural habit pattern of my mind.
"Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change."
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