I arrived at the meditation hall early so I could test-drive a few positions with the cushions. I settled on a system of two cushions the size of hub-caps under me and another one behind me so I could lean on the wall. I didn’t think I had any shot at sitting up straight for 90 minutes. One of the regulars hit the gong outside the meditation hall and other people started filing in and arranging their cushions. The woman I had mistaken for my inmate sat right next to me, chilling me. If I could have talked to her I could have seen her for herself, someone different than my inmate, but in the absence of other information she remained my inmate.
There didn’t seem to be a formal start to the proceedings. People just got comfortable and got right down to it. Six Westerners came into the hall, two Sinhala women and two Sinhala men. I took my cross-legged position, closed my eyes, and felt my breath come in through my nostrils. I felt the breath fill my chest, I felt my ribs expand. Then I felt the breath flow out of my body. I didn’t try to do anything to breath, I didn’t try to suck it in deeper, expand my ribs out to the sides to open my thoracic spine, contract my pelvic floor, or raise my soft palate. I just watched it flow in and out again. Then I started thinking about how I needed to change the date on my return ticket to the States and wondered if that was going to be a pain in the ass since I got the tickets of Cheaptickets.com. I wondered if there was an Emirates office in Colombo, or since the first flight was a code-share with Air Lanka, if I could make the change at the Air Lanka office in Kandy. “Ok, back to the breath,” I told myself. I focused my attention on the tips of nostrils and felt the air passing by at this point. I felt the air passing through my nares for a few cycles and then I started thinking about what Dan and I would do for our up-coming one year anniversary on March 14th. “Obviously we’ll go to the Galle Face Hotel, but what else?” I wondered until I brought myself back to my breath. I felt my breath at the back of my throat until I realized that my neck was getting weak and my head was dropping down.
I had no idea how long my head had dropped down and I was sort of asleep, my only clue was that my right foot no longer seemed to belong to my body it had gone numb so badly. I had to use my hands to mindfully inch it out from under my left foot in the cross-legged position. I rested on my left hip on the cushions as I brought my right foot in contact with the bench. The electric pain that burst up my leg was spectacular. I opened my eyes to look at my foot and half expected to see a sparkler burning up my flesh. The woman next to me got up and started to do a walking meditation down the meditation hall, moving exquisitely slowly and focusing on every little sensation. I still could not detect anything in her that told me that she wasn’t my former inmate.
I settled myself back on the cushions with my knees out to the side but with my right foot in front of my left foot instead of under it, and returned to my breath. I felt my breath pass in and out through my nostrils and felt very relaxed and calm. I then was aware that my head was bobbing again, down, and down, and down. I tried to reverse the direction and felt my head snap back and crack into the wall behind me, breaking the silence. I did not open my eyes. I straightened my spine without leaning on the wall and returned to my breath. I felt my breath pass in and out through my nose. My mind wandered to a high school crush, “Why was I so into him anyway?” I mused until I brought my mind back to my breath. Suddenly a singing bowl broke the silence of the room and it was over. I realized that 90 minutes goes pretty quickly when you sleep through a good chunk of it. I also realized that nobody in the room had experienced a seizure, so I figured that “Rick” had finally left Nilambe.
The meditators slowly came back to themselves and left the main hall for 4 PM tea. I eagerly poured myself a big mug of the milk tea and threw in a heaping spoonful of sugar. A far cry from my usual austerely plain green tea, but I knew that calories would be scarce tonight and I was desperate to jolt myself awake for the evening meditation. I took my mug to the outside benches and sipped it slowly. The only conversation I could hear around me was in German. The next thing on the schedule was yoga, taught in a small building above the meditation hall. After I had washed out my mug I headed up the flagstone steps to the little yoga hall, excited to get my blood moving.
There were two young British girls talking when I reached the yoga hall. Next to them was a young man with shoulder-length curly hair who added to their conversation with a German accent. I put my mat next to him. Another young Western man with close-cropped hair wearing all white put a mat next to mine and an older woman also in white, who I would later learn was his mother, placed her mat next to him. The woman who led the class arrived next, placing her mat in front of our row of mats. She was a middle-aged German woman with brown curly hair, blue eyes, and the lean build of a long-time yogini. She introduced herself as a short-term guest of Nilambe who had volunteered to teach the afternoon class. She told us she would lead us through an Ashtanga workout. Since Ashtanga was my mother school of yoga I was thrilled. I wondered what sort of instructor she would be. In my mind there were only two types of yoga instructors. The first, more common group did the poses and used their own practice as a framework for their teaching and calling the class. The second group did not use the class-time as their own practice time. They would demonstrate poses but spent most of the class walking around giving adjustments and counting breaths. This way was much more difficult because you have to keep track of everything in your head like what comes next, which side you have already told the class to do, and how long the class has been in a pose. If you practice along with them you know from your own body. The first time I taught a yoga class, I substituted in at the last minute for a teacher who was sick. During that experience I realized that I couldn’t breathe properly and speak out loud to teach, so I knew this method wasn’t ideal for the class or the teacher.
The German woman taught from her own practice. I was the only person in the class who already knew the practice, so it was good for the class to see the practice also. I felt unusually strong and was able to execute some complicated transitions in the practice more gracefully than usual. After the final resting pose the German man with the long curly hair next to me turned to me and said “you’re unbelievable!” I was stunned.
“Yes!” the British woman next to him chimed in. “Can you teach us tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure, I can teach you tomorrow,” I agreed and started to roll up my yoga mat. The German man leaned down next to me and asked “Can you levitate?” I was so shocked at his question that I replied “Yes,” with a totally straight face as if to say “of course I can levitate.” I thought he would laugh, but he nodded his head and walked away.
Walking back down the flagstone path toward the stairs leading to the ridge I tried to remember how I felt when I first saw people executing the difficult postures and transitions of the Ashtanga practice. I had been amazed and it had seemed to me at the time that the practitioners were defying gravity and a few other natural laws. Now most of it had become commonplace to me. Many of the postures I had learned to do by combing tricks with strength. The things that I could not do, I was at least used to seeing other people do. When I reached the steps up to the woods I paused before heading up. “I could just go back to my cell,” I thought. But I did not come to Nilambe to sit in a cell. I went up the steps and then started up the ridge at the edge of the pine forest. It was 5:30 and I knew the sun would set at around 6:30, so I had some time to explore. From the Nilambe side of the ridge, the mountain fell away steeply down into the valley. I kept heading up and I could see through the trees that the ridge was narrowing. I could hear a strong wind rubbing the other side of the mountain just across the ridge. It almost sounded like a huge waterfall. The ridge narrowed to the point where two or three layers of trees clung to the top of it in between sides. I scampered up the short incline until I was on top of the ridge and able to look down into the valleys on both sides. The other valley plunged straight down on the other side of the ridge. No Nilambe, no road, I could not even see the side of the mountain it fell away so sharply. Gazing out into the valley it felt like flying, like I was being picked up by the wind rushing along the side of the mountain. On the Nilambe side of the mountain I could see ridge after ridge extending into the horizon. On the other side there was only a deep valley contained by tall mountains on all other sides that I could not see beyond. Looking down into the contained valley, Sri Lanka was peaceful and beautiful to me. I realized that the meditation must have some how primed my mind to have this heightened experience.
The light was starting to fade so I crossed back to the Nilambe side of the ridge and started back toward to center. Close to the staircase I found a rock with a commanding view of the valley, the Mahaweli River, and the sun slipping down behind one of the adjacent mountain ranges. I could see the same mountain ranges that I could see from my patio at home in Kandy, but from another perspective. I watched as they started to blush pink and purple, the river between them glowed golden, and the wisps of cirrus clouds smoldered fuchsia. I felt incredibly content and satisfied looking out over the surrounding landscape and watching to first lights twinkle on the valley. The satisfaction I felt eclipsed anything I had ever experienced, even after weeks of daily intense, immersive, yoga asana practice where I tried to pound myself into submission.
I hadn’t brought my flashlight up to the ridge and when it started to get dark I knew I had to head back to the center or risk a misstep that might destroy my ankle again. Looking back at the pine forest I saw the first stars, probably planets, flickering above the black outlined treetops. I carefully headed back to the center and to my cell where I got my flashlight and my fleece for the evening group meditation. When I left my cell I found that I didn’t need my flashlight as I found my way back to the meditation hall. I waited outside in the darkness until the long-termers finished their chanting. When I arranged my pillows, I knew that I could not lean on the wall. No matter how many times I hand to change position, I knew that I had to stay off the wall or I would sleep. It was time to test the seat that asana practice had forged for me. I layered two large pillows and a smaller one on top so that I could either sit cross-legged or in a supported seiza position, a sort of kneeling with my butt back on the cushions. I figured between those two seats I could make it through the 45 minute meditation ending at 8 PM. I started off in supported seiza, closed my eyes, and felt my breath. My mind wandered back to the ridge and I brought it back. It wandered to the yoga class I would teach the next day, I brought it back, it wandered to the woman who looked like my inmate, and I brought it back. My right knee started to ache so I changed positions to the modified cross-legged with my right foot out in front of my left ankle rather than under it. I marveled that my back felt fine, and then I brought myself back to my breath. I wrestled my mind back to my breath over and over until I heard the singing bowl ring out.
The meditation room was completely dark except for a few candles at the altar featuring a Buddha statue and a photograph of the founder when I opened my eyes. Upul sat in meditation next to the shrine and the rest of us lined the two longer walls. One of the junior teachers stood up and informed the group that there would be a discussion at after the snack at 8 PM in the small hall. Then the longer-term Western residents began to get up slowly and one by one prostrate first in front of the photo of Godwin, and then in front of Upul. It struck me that these people were not bowing to robes or the Sangha, but rather to lay individuals. Neither Godwin nor Upul were monks. When a monk receives a bow he knows that the lay person is bowing to the Sangha, but for Upul, these people were bowing to him as an individual, as their meditation teacher. “Some people just like to bow,” I reasoned as I looked around the room. I noticed that the nun had not come to either meditation session. “This is probably a retirement home for her,” I decided as I exited the meditation hall and went into the kitchen for the snack.
The snack turned out to be round, rock-hard, hunks of Melba toast the size of a silver dollars. As the group sat around on the benches in the kitchen mindfully eating the toast I wanted to laugh out loud at the slow, loud, crunching sounds circulating around the room like a fugue. Every so often someone would bite into a new chunk of Melba toast and add another voice to the cacophony.
After crunching my toast I followed the herd down to the small hall past the men’s quarters. The other participants settled themselves on round cushions on the jute mat covered floor. The little room was lit only by a few candles around a garishly painted Buddha statue with bright concentric rings behind the Buddha’s head to render his halo. A German woman with chin-length wavy hair wearing all white introduced herself as one of the long-term residents and asked us to go around and introduce ourselves. The woman who looked like my inmate sitting next to me turned out to be Swedish. On my other side was the German yoga instructor woman, then Jeanne, then the German man with the long curly hair, next to him sat one of the British girls, then a quiet Canadian man, then the young German man with short hair sitting next to his mom. The older German woman leading the group informed us gently that she was going to read a transcript of an interesting explanation Upul had given her one day for “saddha,” faith in the Buddha and his teachings. She spoke slowly and kept her head angled toward the floor. I recalled seeing her in the meditation hall sitting in modified seiza on a small wooden bench meditating with her head cocked to the side and a strange blissed-out expression on her face.
She began to read the transcript slowly. The talk started in second person with an analogy that the listener is an individual ignorant of the Dharma wandering in the desert parched with thirst until he sees a man who looks clean and refreshed. The man says that he has been to the water and you can go to the water as well, that you can be like him. The refreshed man points you in the right direction. Because you see that he is clean and refreshed you trust him and go in that direction. “That’s really nice,” I thought to myself. “It expresses saddha, Buddhist faith, not as blind faith but faith based on perceptual evidence.” The talk went on to utilize a conceit of the mind as a garden and a little space must be cleared in the garden to plant the seed of the Dharma. “If the seed is envy then the harvest will be disappointment,” she read. “If the seed is hate then the harvest will be pain,” she continued. The talk then returned to the importance of the wanderer in the desert assessing the man giving him directions, the saddha. “In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna brainwashes Arjuna until when Krishna asks Arjuna what type of bird it is in the sky Arjuna answers it is such-and-such bird, but if you say it is another bird, then it is another bird to me,” the German woman read on, “and this is why a Hindu killed Gandhi,” the talk continued. The German woman serenely continued reading the next words as though she had not read anything unusual. The words “and this is why a Hindu killed Gandhi,” burned in my ears. I could not focus on anything else that she was saying.
“So,” I said to myself “because Krishna gives Arjuna this long lecture about doing your duty and it’s ok for him to go to war with his relatives because it is his duty and Arjuna goes on the win the battle, Upul is saying that a Hindu was enabled to kill Gandhi presumably thinking it was his duty?” I wanted to stop her speech and say “So, did the Dhammapada, some of the popular verses of the sacred Pali cannon, enable a Buddhist monk to kill SWRD Bandaranaike, the second Prime Minister of Sri Lanka?” I recalled that Godse shot Gandhi in protest of Gandhi’s support of the partitioning of India and creation of Pakistan while in Sri Lanka a monk, frustrated that the Prime Minister was not filling his promises to Buddhism, shot Bandaranaike for “the good of my religion, my language, and my race,” as he had explained it to the press. The rest of the words passed in a blur until I realized that the German woman was repeating the phrase “and that’s why a Hindu killed Gandhi.” I was amazed that she said it not once but twice.
“For me,” the German woman commented when she had finished reading the transcript, “It was really moving the idea of the invitation to become like the Buddha. In my Catholic upbringing, nobody ever told me that I could become like God. Such a thing would be heresy!” she exclaimed happily.
“Yes,” began the young German man with the short dark hair sitting next to his mother, “but I’ve been in Kandy for awhile before coming here. Most people here, even monks, they don’t know anything about the Sutras!” he relayed in annoyed disbelief. “How else can you learn about what is truly Buddhism?” he asked rhetorically. “I went to the University at Peradeniya,” he continued, “I talked to people there and they relate to Buddhism just like the Christians back home,” he finished angrily. I recalled my statement to Dan at the Charlottesville Target back in July that I was “looking forward to living in a Buddhist country.” Like this young man, I was hoping to find a community of like-minded people. I felt compassion for the naïveté and disappointment I shared with him.
“I haven’t read the Sutras at all,” the Swedish woman who reminded me of my inmate commented, “I have received my Buddhism through wonderful teachers, wonderful teachers that have touched my heart,” she concluded. Hearing her speak, even with her slight Swedish accent, did little to break the illusion for me that she was my inmate.
“Well, you must not have had a teacher that truly touched your heart,” the young German man shot back. The Swedish woman looked stunned. “If you had a teacher that truly touched your heart then you would be enlightened,” he reasoned. The Swedish woman was looked at him in silence. I decided that I would engage this arrogant second-generation intellectual Buddhist for her.
“When were the Sutras written?” I asked him, knowing full well that the Sutras were not written until 300 years after the Buddha’s death.
“Well, they were written 300 years after the Buddha’s death,” he admitted broodingly.
“But back then the monks had amazing powers of memory,” his mother assured me.
“That’s 300 years that the Pali cannon is passed through human minds and formed by the culture around it,” I asserted. “Parts of it were developed out of the necessity for early Buddhists to define themselves as separate from the Jains and Hindus running around India at the time,” I explained.
“No,” the German man retorted, “They are the words of the Buddha. It is the only way to know the words of the Buddha,” he shot back.
“It’s the words of the Buddha huh?” I asked rhetorically, “What about the Abhidharma?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you say that the Abhidharma was created with strong culture influences to catalogue information for the purpose of the style of debate popular at the time?” I asked.
“Oh, forget the Abhidharma,” he waved his hand in dismissive frustration.
“So you have some doubts about the validity of the Sutras?” his mother asked me more calmly.
“My point is only that the Sutras are human, not divine. They are written by humans in a certain cultural context and you have to keep that in mind. They are just a tool, another form of a human teacher. The Buddha was the ultimate teacher of the Dharma; he could preach the Dharma to a demon and make her a stream-enterer. The Sutras do not contain that power,” I asserted. I told myself that I had made my point and I would let the conversation go someplace else now.
“Hmm…” the mother replied. Silence fell over the little room.
“I have to say,” Jeanne began, breaking the silence. “I don’t really like what he’s saying about the Bhagavad Gita, I think there is a lot more to the Gita for many people.” I was relieved that she brought it up, I wasn’t going to bother. The German woman leading the group looked back at the transcript on the floor in front of her with her head cocked and a slightly confused look on her face.
“But what’s wrong is wrong and you have to condemn it,” the young German man with the short hair insisted.
“The Gita is a spiritual book for many people,” Jeanne repeated. “Lots of people derive great meaning from it and make it part of their path,” she added with a nervous laugh.
“The Buddha himself told us to try other paths and see if they work,” the German woman added tentatively. Then looking at her watch she quickly added, “It looks like we are out of time.”
Walking back to the women’s quarters I felt profoundly disturbed. All of my peace, satisfaction, and gratitude seemed to have vanished. “This is why these things are supposed to be silent,” I realized. After brushing my teeth in the dark I crawled under my blanket and pulled the mosquito net down around me. Perhaps because of my nap in the first meditation session, perhaps because of the hard bed, perhaps because of the mosquitoes I could hear dive-bombing my head just outside of the net, I could not fall asleep. I kept thinking of better, pithier things I could have said to the young intellectual Buddhist man. “What guy travels to Sri Lanka with their mom when they are like 23 anyway?” I wondered. I envisioned a scene tomorrow where I told him that he needed to go to some hard-core monastery or dharma center in Burma and do a three month silent retreat and put all of the energy to work for him before it ate him up.
At 4:45 the wake-up gong was sounded. I roused easily from my fitful sleep with a sense of excitement and went to the sinks to wash of my face and brush my teeth to wake-up a bit. The sky was completely black and the stars were spilled out across the sky in incredible density. The air was very cold, but I remembered that the meditation hall had been warm, so I didn’t take my fleece blanket as I headed up the walk in my black sweatpants, black long-sleeve thermal shirt, and red fleece jacket. With everyone else wearing white it suddenly stuck me that I was wearing all-black with some red. When I reached the meditation hall I arranged my cushions in the fashion I had settled on the day before, two large round ones and one smaller round one on top. I noticed that all of the long-termers as well as the fresh fish packed the hall for the AM meditation.
When I closed my eyes to meditate, it was still dark. I started in seiza position and fought the usual deviations of the mind until my right knee started to hurt and I started to get cold. I knew that it was too early to get cold, so I sat with my knees huddled up to my chest for warmth. I debated whether or not to go back to my cell to get my blanket, but I brought my mind back to my breath. I debated again whether to get my blanket and I decided no, all thoughts of blanket were just distractions, all feelings of cold were distractions. Minute by minute I ground through it, bringing myself back to my breath again and again until I heard the singing bowl ring out. When I opened my eyes it was light outside.
I hurried back to my cell to get my blanket and then hurried back up to the kitchen for tea. I tried to hurry mindfully. “I am hurrying,” I told myself while walking down the path. I poured tea into the biggest mug I could find and took it out onto the terrace to sip with my blanket wrapped around me. I marveled that despite all of the other physical discomfort of the morning practice, I did not feel hungry. The young German man came and sat at an adjacent bench, but didn’t make eye contact.
After cleaning out my mug I headed up to the yoga hall. The Swedish woman led a basic series of stretching postures for an hour for me and the two British girls and then it was time for breakfast. I hungrily filled my bowl with the reddish-brown kurakkan porridge, other wise known as Finger Millet porridge, sweet dates, and sliced a tiny sour banana over the top before heading back outside to a seat on the terrace. I tried to eat slowly and mindfully, occasionally putting down my spoon as I had read to do in the magazine Cosmopolitan years ago. “You never know when Cosmo advice is going to come into play,” I thought to myself as I looked out into the valley. After washing my bowl and spoon I knew it was time for karma yoga from 8 till 9:15.
In Sri Lanka something always needed to be raked and swept, so I grabbed the broom resting in the corner of the housing block made from long, stiff, bambusa fibers. I had seen Daya, the downstairs servant, raking the yard with a similar broom. I slowly raked the leaves out of the path in the garden and off the paths around the women’s quarters. Sometimes I would rake the leaves under large bushes and sometimes I would rake them into larger piles, push them up on the broom, and carry them to the edge of the property. The other residents carried rocks from one pile to another, burned trash, and cleaned the bathrooms. I figured that I would have to be on a higher level of meditation practice and karma yoga before I was going to clean someone else’s squat toilet. While I was raking in the sun I felt tired and fatigued.
After an hour I put the broom away and retreated into my cell to get ready for the 9:30 meditation. As I was arranging my pillows I noticed that the crowd was thinner at the late-morning meditation. The only participants seem to be the new people and no long-termers. I climbed onto my pillows, closed my eyes, and started the now familiar battle. I mind repeatedly drifted to the yoga class I was going to teach that afternoon like a bad dog that loved to run into the neighbor’s backyard and terrorize their cats. I had to shift positions more often and seemed more easily irritated my small aches and pains. I stubbornly kept my eyes closed and dragged my mind back to my breath again and again. I began to hear the sounds of pots banging in the kitchen, anticipating lunch, and I brought my mind back to my breath until I heard the singing bowl cry out at 11 AM.
After the meditation I immediately headed back up the steps, past the thick pine forest to the narrow ridge. I crossed the ridge and headed a few more steps down toward the valley on the other side. My exploration was rewarded by a huge rock that jutted out of the side of the mountain into open space. Sitting on the rock looking out into the bright valley I felt happy, relaxed, and satisfied. Time seemed to move deliciously slowly, the only thought cutting through my pure enjoyment was the nagging idea of when I could return to Nilambe. Sitting on the rock I realized that on one hand I could never really return. Even if I physically came back, it would not be the same, but I realized that this was not important. My enjoyment of meditation was the important thing, the one thing that I could take back down the mountain with me. I knew that my grasping wish to return to Nilambe would fuel other retreats and meditation groups when I returned to the States.
After another delicious vegetarian lunch I knew that I had to finally face the reality of a cold shower. I had waited until the heat of the day to undertake this operation. All of the women at Nilambe were bald, had boy-cut, or chin-length hairstyles. I knew from experience that a cold shower was not too bad until I had to address my hair that reached down between my shoulder blades, creating a thick river of ice running down my shivering spine. The water in the shower felt as though it was drawn straight up from the chilly bowels of the inner-most reaches of Hell. I carefully exposed one body part at a time until it was time for the hair at the end. I tried to back-bend while rinsing my hair so that the water would not run straight down my back, but it was still a bracing experience. “Now I know why all of these women living the Dharma have such short hair,” I thought ruefully as I toweled myself off.
After my shower I rested in my cell reading Godwin’s collection of talks in Hong Kong until the 2:30 group meditation. Walking back to the main meditation hall I reflected that this meditation had been my first group meditation in years the day before. Now I felt like a veteran. I stacked my pillows and took my seiza-style seat with confidence. I knew that my knees and ankles would get tired faster than my back, and it was easy to alternate with my knees and ankles. I plunged into the meditation, whenever I found my mind planning my yoga class or thinking about my new favorite rock, I brought it back to the air moving at the tip of my nostrils. I changed position when I needed to and before I knew it I heard the singing bowl and it was time for 4 PM tea. Drinking my tea on the terrace I realized that I had just survived my last 90 minute meditation. I had only the evening 45 minute meditation and the early morning hour meditation before Manju came to fetch me the next day. I saw the bald German woman again and thanked her for the packet. “You find it helpful?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “It’s very everyday, just right for me.”
“It is very practical,” she confirmed, nodding her head.
“I am really enjoying it here,” I commented, “but I have to leave tomorrow. I was just thinking about how I am sorry to have to go.”
“Why do you have to go?” she asked in a blunt tone intended to jar me into re-evaluation.
“I have a household to run,” I replied, shrugging. “But this place is very special to me,” I continued. “I want to return, but even if I never do I will seek this sort of experience again and that’s the important thing. I am grateful to the people who live here full-time to keep it up and running for people like me to spend a few days and discover something about themselves,” I finished with a slight nod of my head. The bald German woman nodded in return, smiled, and headed down the path to the women’s quarters.
I headed up to the yoga hall to arrange myself and get the room ready for my afternoon class. I picked out one of the center’s mats, opened the windows, and reviewed my intention for the practice in my mind. “I’ll take them through the standing series, then one or two postures on the ground, a few finishing poses and then finally resting pose,” I told myself as the two British girls, a Sinhala woman, and the Swedish woman unrolled their mats to face me. I did the first sun salutation with them to demonstrate as I narrated. After the first sun salutation sequence of poses I continued to call the poses, count the breaths, and remind the class of their gaze points, but for the reminder of the warm-up I circulated around the room giving adjustments and suggestions. As we progressed through the standing series I would stop wherever I was in the room and demonstrate a pose or modification as I thought was necessary, but I spent very little time on my mat. Sometimes I would go down the line and give the same adjustment to everyone and sometimes I would work with one person on one pose. My primary fear was holding them in poses too long, especially since none of them were familiar with the Ashtanga style of practice. I felt sympathy for the class and sometimes like I was punishing the class because I was not practicing along with them.
At the end of the class I introduced handstands against the wall. The Sinhala woman and one of the British women had never done handstands, so I showed them how to face away from the wall and back up the wall to start building the arm-strength and the confidence. When I felt that it was time to move on I re-gained control of the class and brought them back to their mats for a few gentle finishing poses. While the class took final resting pose I went to each student and took their head in my hands, encouraging them to relax and extend their necks before placing their heads back down on the mats. While they soaked up the practice in final resting pose I watched over them sitting in lotus at the front of the room wishing them each a good stay at Nilambe.
When I called them out of final resting pose at 5:30, they all thanked me for the class before we dispersed for our sunset activities. I had brought my fleece and my flashlight up to the sunset stop on the Nilambe side of the mountain. Walking up the stone steps to the pine forest I still felt giddy from the adrenaline of teaching the class. I remembered how the student’s shoulders had softened and opened in response to my adjustments for them in forward-fold. I reflected that I had never done a teacher training. I had started teaching yoga to my family and friends almost as soon as I had started yoga myself. I simply replicated the adjustments I experienced at the studio. Before I had come to Sri Lanka, I had substituted for a few sick teachers at my home studio, but I didn’t have a regular teaching gig. If I wanted to get serious about teaching I probably should do some sort of certification when I got back to the States, I reasoned. When I sat down on the rock on the Nilambe side of the ridge my mind was racing about possible teacher training schedules. I weighed the pros and cons of gradual training programs versus immersions until I realized that I was not seeing the sunset. The sunset was not as vibrant as the previous evening, a more subtle wash of lavender on the mountains, pink across the sky, and a slight straw-colored glow to the river. When I focused on the changing landscape I suddenly felt grateful that I took the chance and came to Nilambe. I knew that back in the States I would have never gone on a two-day two-night retreat. Only the limited social options and threat of extreme boredom secondary to being left in the house for three days alone was enough to surmount my fear of meditation. “In the States, there would have always been something seemingly better to do,” I thought to myself. I watched as the sky faded to black, and the stars spilled out from behind the pine forest, and the lights in the valley winked on one by one. “If Sri Lanka has given me nothing else,” I acknowledged to myself, “It has given me this. It has given me the knowledge that I can create this sense of serenity in myself.”
When it was dark I turned on my flashlight and found my way back to the main meditation hall. The evening meditation was already in full swing as I arranged my pillows, took my seat, and focused on my breath. Upul sat in meditation next to the candlelit Buddha shrine at the front of the room. The candles next to the Buddha provided the only light for the room. Upul sat with an unwavering smile on his face formed by pulling back the back corners of his lips. When my mind wandered to whether or not I should undertake a 10-day retreat at a Vipassana meditation center outside of Kandy I brought my mind back to my breath. When I wondered what sorts of retreats they offered at Yogaville in central Virginia I brought my mind back to my breath. When I thought about yoga teacher trainings I brought my mind back to my breath until I heard the singing bowl gently rub to life. One of the junior meditation teachers announced that there would be no discussion tonight. I watched as the long-termers took turns prostrating before the photo of Godwin and before Upul before I headed to the kitchen.
The evening snack turned out to be much tastier and quieter ginger cookies. I nibbled my cookies mindfully under the stars before returning to the women’s quarters. I brushed my teeth and washed my face in the dark before tucking myself into my mosquito net and blankets. I fell into a deep, dreamless, sleep as soon as I settled into the straw mattress.
I immediately woke to the sound of the wooden gong, brushing my teeth and washing my face again in the dark before pulling the fleece blanket off my bed and wrapping it around me before heading to the meditation hall for my final meditation. After I stacked my pillows and took my seat, I swaddled myself in the blanket so that only my head emerged from the top of the wrapped fabric before closing my eyes to meditate in the utter darkness. I fought the battle of mental re-direction for an hour, opening my eyes to the sound of the singing bowl and the delicate light of the dawn.
After a quick mug of tea, I headed up the stone steps to the pine forest, fleece blanket and all. For my last morning I decided to forgo yoga for dawn on the opposite ridge. I reached my favorite rock on the side of the ridge opposite Nilambe just as the sun was cresting up over the ridge across the deep valley. I wrapped the blanket around me on the cold rock and watched as the light spilled down through the fog and eucalyptus plantation on the opposite mountainside. The breeze was light and I could smell fragrant wild lemongrass somewhere near the rock. I could hear monks chanting at a monastery in the valley as I savored the sunrise. The time moved slowly as I refused to allow myself to think about returning to Nilambe or anything relating to the past or the future for an hour on the rock. After an hour I knew that I had to leave to wash out my sheets and hang them up on the line, sweep out my room, and return my keys and the packet to the office per Nilambe protocol all before Manju came to get me at 8 AM.
In the office Jeanne asked me how I had liked Nilambe.
“It’s wonderful here,” I replied sincerely. “This place is really special, thank you for keeping it going after Godwin’s death,” I finished. Jeanne nodded her head approvingly as she wrote out my receipt, 800 rupees, about eight dollars for two nights. I was finished eating and ready to go when Manju pulled the three-wheeler to the top of the hill. Without saying goodbye to anyone I hopped in the back of the three-wheeler and we headed back down the mountain.
