Exploring the field of mind and matter.

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." 

Vipassana: Knowledge is ego, wisdom is Being.

I arrive at Mumbai airport at dusk and to my relief, there was a pre-paid taxi counter by the terminal exit. I hand over 650 rupees to the attractive Indian lady and she hands me a taxi voucher. "Go out, turn left. Give this to the security man." she says. "Security man. Great." I respond. I walk out, turn left, and find a bunch of guys in normal wear blocking my path to what looks to me like a taxi stand. One of them aggressively walks up to me and looks in a rush. As he talks he continuously shifts his weight onto the other foot and nervously looks behind his shoulders. Directly above his acquaintances is a large sign that reads: "BEWARE OF TOUTS."

Tout: "Taxi? You want taxi? Where you going?"
Me: "I've got a prepaid taxi voucher"
Tout: "I'm taxi driver. Where you want to go?"
Me: "I'm looking for a security man"
Tout: "I'm taxi. Here taxi. Where you going my friend?"
Me: I stop walking and hold up my chit to try to read it. Really I'm trying to slow my physiology down to get present to what is really going on. "I want to go to the Pagoda. Next to Esselworld."
Tout: "It's very late my friend, where you going after? Where you staying?"
Me irrately: "I'm staying at the pagoda!"

I think by this time I've slowed our conversation down to such a slow pace that he feels very uncomfortable. He steps out of the way and ushers me with his hands toward the taxi stand I was headed to in the first place. I walk off satisfied that I had handled that with composure, but felt disgruntled at the fact that I had to stop in the first place. For the next 2 hours I find my self in a tiny four-wheeler once again being hurled through Mumbai chaos. This place is just insane! 2 hours of aggressive jostling for space on tarmac, dusty pong streaming in through the open windows, and incessant honking coming from every direction. All this for the equivalent of SGD$18??

In the darkness a golden luminous dome appears surreally over distant trees. The pagoda! Wow what a sight! I never would have had the chance to see it in all its nocturnal grandiosity.

 I sit for 5 days in silent meditation with about 120 other meditators. Me, and another lone white guy In a sea of black. The complex and the grounds, unsurprisingly, are not in impressive shape. Clean though. As directed by the teacher, I sit in Ana Panna for the first 3 and 1/2 days. Wholly focusing my attention on the touch of the breath on the small triangular area below the nostrils and the top of the lip. The smaller the area of focus with sustained attention, the more the mind becomes sharpened.  For 3 days it is a battle for my mind. Many times I find myself lost in thought, imagination, fantasy. I bring it back to the triangular area, undaunted, but still surprised by how long sometimes it takes for me to notice that my mind has wandered. "Occupy Your Mind" I posted on Facebook recently had an accompanying image of a clenched fist inside of the side-profile of a head outline ( in obvious correspondence to the ongoing Occupy Wall Street Movement), came to mind.

During the day, My practice is constantly interrupted by construction on the roof of the building. 2 guys hammering away at some floorboards and an electric saw in the distance buzzing away with absolute disregard to the meditation going on. And then on Christmas eve(and day), booming bassy techno music for a party in the adjacent pagoda infiltrated my room. There was also a noisy large black crow that never failed to perch itself closeby in the afternoons, obviously scanning the drains for whatever remnants from lunch it could find. Frustratingly, that afternoon, I gave up trying to meditate tried to get some sleep.

The mornings and the evenings were the best times. I soon found that I could go deeper, easier. On day 3, lying in bed face up, familiar sensations of heaviness and movement fill my head and my eyelids. These sensations focus my awareness on the phenomena taking place in the darkness within. At first I squint, as if it is my eyeballs that are doing the seeing. Then it becomes clear that this phenomena comes from a deeper process. A vast array of images and patterns fill my vision, reminding of the one time I had experimented with LSD. This was different, however, "cleaner", as I am completely conscious and "sober". It is very real, almost tangible. Explaining the reality of this phenomenal experience to anyone who has not him/herself would be futile. Remembering the teachers instructions, I do not get carried away with what I'm experiencing (that is, feeling no pleasure or aversion) and remain aware of the breathe and sensations. The brain is starting penetrate deeper realities.

Unfortunately this is about as far as I go. And as the other meditators get initiated into the real work of Vipassana on day 4, I am instructed to break my silence and only meditate during the 3 group seatings interspersed throughout the day. This is to prepare my mind for coming back into the " real world".

The work of vipassana is to purify the mind. Now, through the work of ana pana (concentration), the mind is sensitive enough to reach to the deeper unconscious processes of the mind. Here the real work of dislodging all the accumulated impurities the mind has gathered by bringing it to the surface. You "see" these impurities in the form of "sankaras": Gross, unpleasant sensations felt anywhere throughout the body,. Or, pleasant, subtle sensations of free flow vibrations. Either or, one is not to react, but merely watch with equanimity. By observing it, with the understanding of impermanence, it eventually dissipates. Our work is to disperse all our accumulated sankaras of anger, hate, lust, etcetera. The more we are free of this, the more we feel liberated, and the happier we will be.

Personally, I feel this has single-handedly transformed (and continues to) my life since I first discovered it 5-ish years ago. Psychology, philosophy, religious antics, scripture, and "New age" fads in my experience and understanding are all just impotent methods and by people who are lost themselves, frantically trying to find their own way out of life's misery and mysteriousness.

Try it for yourself, i'd love to know what you think.

Osho's Dynamic meditation

Our group congregated at 9am this morning for Dynamic meditation. Apparently this one was more 'powerful' relative to Kundalini a few days ago. There were Feelings of apprehension mixed with unusual confidence that I attributed to having experienced Alan's tantric meditations of yesteryear. If I could get fully present into being an out-of-control wild "animal" for 30 minutes, naked, and in a hall full of other wild, naked people, I could do ANYTHING. An experience like that would certainly evoke a unusual confidence.

Led by music, the first phase of meditation consisted of 10-15 minutes of vigorous breathing through the nostrils, emphasising the exhale. The tissues that were provided prior gave me a pretty accurate indication of exactly how vigorous. Standing eyes closed and using our entire body, we start to  use every centimetre of muscle in our arms, torso, hips, squeezing out every ounce of air from within the body. It didn't take me long to discover how quickly it took to exhaust myself and the rigorous exhales left me dry throated and gasping for air.

Phase two commenced with an abrupt 'gong' from the track and the "pffff"ing sounds from tired bodies and overworked nasal cavities progressed into screaming, yelling and wailing at the top of our lungs. I found my hands progressively flailing about me like a chained animal frantically trying to get free from its shackles, and I jump at the opportunity to "throw away" all negativity that my mind had accumulated up to that point. I discovered anger, rage, feelings of injustice done towards me, and all other kinds of ambiguous mental garbage. Instinctively scooping up it all up from my being with my arms and heaving it away as vigorously and passionately as I could, over and over and over again, yelling at the top of my lungs. The hunger of wanting to be 'free' was never as apparently as I felt in the moment. Once again my face contorted and eyes welled up as I curiously witnessed the happenings of this body. For a few seconds my body was engulfed with overwhelming emotion and my rage was replaced with loud and profuse crying - more of a cleansing, rather than a despairing kind. I also noticed myself noticing this and that I was very much curiously unattached to this spontaneous manifestation of the body.

Another gong goes off and we start jumping on the spot, with our arms straight up in the air, expounding the question "WHO?", in half-expectation that the answer would come from somewhere within us. I found this the most unbearable of all and my legs and shoulders soon started to stiffen and grow numb from the weight of my body. I persevere and wonder how on earth the less physically capable among us are managing to do this for so long.

"STOP!" followed by silence from the speakers propels the group abruptly into the next phase of the meditation: Stop whatever you are doing and freeze in place. I land with my weight distributed evenly over both feet and my arms are comfortably bent below my shoulders. Serendipitously, I had read about this Gurdjieff exercise just the night before (In Search Of The Miraculous) and recall the 'seriousness' that was originally entailed in performing it. Students under Gurdjieff who were committed to his formulations of self-study were required to freeze in whatever position they were in when they heard the command "STOP" by another member/leader of the group. A side-proponent of this exercise was also to test the mental fortitude of the student and if he could not execute this seemingly unharmful exercise in its entirety, would prove to be unworthy and incapable of attaining any serious 'results' whatsoever. I read that one student had picked up a glass of hot tea when the command was sounded and he stayed in that position for many minutes. His fingers was severely blistered afterwards for a very long time. I, on the other hand, was hardly in any sort of compromising situation, and my only anxiety was how I would look if my accumulating saliva were to ooze from the corner of my lips if I didn't do anything to stop it.., and then I gulped!

In these many moments of suspended animation, I did notice, strangely enough, how 'I' am completely ruled by this body. My "gulp" was a utter reaction, an action completely independent of what 'I' wanted to do. 'I' in all my feeble intent, did not want to swallow, but the body swallowed anyway. I also noticed what Gurdjieff had intended for us to experience: to witness the "3 centers" that make up our "selves." The Thinking center (how my mind is constantly trying to analyse), the Emotional center (when I started to tear up), the Moving center (gulping, and how the body constantly wants to move into a position that is most comfortable). Anyway, I digress. 

Finally, phase 5. In typical Osho fashion, melodious smooth music fills the room. We come out of our silent witnessing and begin to sway and dance in celebration. The 'work' is done and now it's time to come back joyfully into the world. I like how Osho thinks!

Dynamic meditation had me experience my body and its inner workings in a variety of ways: Breath, chaos, jumping, statue-like stillness and dance. Witnessing multifarious ways of movement strengthens the 'I', the 'witness', the 'observer' - What we really are.. And in that realisation of our essence lies our freedom.