Vipassana

In the afternoon session on Day Four we were told it was time to learn Vipassana. Instead of receiving our instructions by audio tape in the main hall, the English speakers went to the small hall to watch a special afternoon DVD. The third assistant teacher had arrived; a plump and jolly older Sinhala woman and she accompanied us down to the small hall to press “play” on the DVD player. Goenka explained that we are learning to feel the vibrational nature of our bodies, pulling on quantum theory to support his point. “The Western scientists have only now realized what the Buddha learned in the laboratory of his own body, that reality is constantly arising and falling” he explained happily. I wasn’t entirely sure if the Buddha really preached the vibrational nature of reality, just the rising and falling. “I’m not sure that’s the same thing,” I pondered. “The Buddha has given us the framework of the body to study,” Goenka continued. “Just as with AC current the lights flicker on and off faster than we can see them, we must learn to perceive this reality in our own bodies.” I felt as though Goenka was giving us the equation and asking us to learn how to take the integral, to figure the area under the curve as it related to our own bodies. “So we must first learn to feel sensation on subtler and subtler levels,” he continued. “We will start with the top of the head. The top of the head,” he began a slow, guided scan of the whole body. I was amazed that I could not feel anything on the top of my head. I knew that the top of my head must be there, but I couldn’t feel anything above my eyebrows. “If you cannot feel an area,” he explained, “Then this is a blind area. If you feel very strong sensation such as pain, then this is an area of solidified, gross sensation,” he furthered. “Just observe with equanimity,” he warned. “Do not react with aversion to the gross solidified sensations and do not react with craving to the free-flowing subtle sensations. They are all Annica, Annica.”

Back in the main hall I attempted a few scans of my body am was amazed that I was able to feel subtle sensation on some parts, and when I got to an area such as my legs, everything got all confused, especially if I was sitting cross-legged. The blind areas drove me crazy, I knew my ears were there, but unless there was a breeze across the hall, I couldn’t feel them unless I wiggled them. I called on my knowledge of anatomy to help organize my scans, following the sternocleidomastoid muscles down from behind my ears to my collarbone to my Pectoralis muscles, I mentally followed the Trapezius down the back of my neck over to my shoulders and then down my back. A single scan would mentally exhaust me and I would have to return to the ease of my breath for awhile before doing another round. My body began to hurt all over. I felt as though I could not remain in one position for more than ten minutes. When my mind drifted my emotional self hurt all over. I thought about the death of my father-in-law. I thought about seeing him in his casket and touching his solid, embalmed arm through his suit coat and feeling like I was being torn in half. I thought about how I would never see my former mother-in-law and sister-in-law again, they had been some of my closest friends and they were lost to me in the dissolution of my marriage. I was the one who left, who gave up, and that was enough for them.

While taking a break outside the hall, a mosquito landed on my arm. As it started to draw blood, I deftly killed it with the other women watching. “So much for ‘no killing,’” I thought ruefully as we filed back into the hall to hear Goenka say “Start again, start again.” I did a few rounds of Vipassana and then fell back to observing the breath. After tea and crackers I didn’t even try to do Vipassana. I just focused on my breath right away to calm myself.

In the evening DVD Goenka gave practical information about Vipassana, telling us that we could do the scan in any order so long as we didn’t leave anything out. He recommended that we spend about ten minutes on blind areas, but no more, and he recommended that we move as quickly as possible through areas of solidified sensations so as not to get stuck in them. “No Vipassana meditator has ever died unconscious or screaming,” Goenka told us. “They all feel death coming, they feel the dissolving and they welcome it. That is what we are learning to do. This is the art of living, the art of dying,” he told us. The concept of the “art of dying” reminded me of Dan and my conversation about my cancer inmate and the horrible, protracted manner of her death that bewildered everyone involved, including the inmate herself. “We all have habits and patterns, samskaras, inherited through previous lives,” he continued. “Through this practice we will bring them to the surface and eliminate them. That is the path to liberation,” he paused. “When we die, a big, powerful samskara arises and determines the next life. That is why we are learning to live and to die with equanimity. We are performing a surgical operation to get down to the root, to dig it out,” he asserted. As he started to chant I felt a chill, “Some things’re better left buried,” I thought. I wasn’t sure if I accepted his view that by bringing things to the surface they could be conquered and I knew the idea of working through samskaras through practice certainly wasn’t Buddhist. “That sounds like tapas, like purification through heat in yoga,” I thought in confusion as I walked back to the main hall for the night meditation.

Once in the hall I tried to meditate and felt that Vipassana was out of the question. My whole body hurt and I felt restless, like I want to jump up and run screaming from the room. I decided that as a minimum, for the rest of the meditation, I had to sit there with my eyes closed and at least try to focus on my breath until Goenka’s raspy chant broke the silence. I could only get through a few breath cycles before my mind would drift to something disturbing and I would drag it back again. I allowed myself to sit with my knees up to my chest and my arms wrapped around my knees for support and comfort. I allowed myself to rock slightly with my breath and then I realized that I was literally rocking in the fetal position on the floor.

Having skipped my nap, I fell asleep quickly, slept soundly, and roused easily for Day Five. Once I settled myself in seiza position on my cushions I started to focus on my breath, then I started a Vipassana sweep. When I got to my right leg I realized that I was sleepy. “Breathe harder,” I told myself. I was surprised that this was the first morning I had fought sleepiness. Rather than fight anxiety, terror, and restlessness this morning, I fought sleepiness, taking rounds of hard breaths to wake myself up. Once they started the Goenka tape of his half-hour chant I knew I was on the home stretch. I tried to observe the annoying chanting with equanimity as I felt breakfast drawing near.

After breakfast I climbed up to the stupa and looked out over the cloud-filled valley. Other mountain peaks pushed up through the clouds and into the clear morning air. The sun was rising behind my mountain and the shadow of the mountain was cast onto the clouds in the valley, forming an eerie, dark floating triangle on the canvas clouds. I sat for an hour, watching the triangle move and the mist start to burn away, revealing the vibrant green valley. I felt amazed that ordinary people could come up onto this mountain and do this practice, this intense meditation. Then I reminded myself “right now I’m ok, I’m not panicking, I’m not restless, my hips don’t hurt, and I’m not sleepy. I don’t know what the rest of the day will bring, but right now I’m doing alright,” I repeated these words to myself over and over until it was time for the next sitting.

The late morning sitting went well. I was able to feel more sensations over more of my body. I did not allow myself to nap after lunch, instead walking around the campus, doing some laundry, and taking a longer shower and washing my hair. On the previous days I had quickly jumped into the cold water at the 5-6 PM break and washed only the vital areas. I took advantage of the heat of the day to help me do a more thorough cleansing in the icy water. At the 2:30 to 3:30 sitting they introduced the idea of the concentrated sitting. “The Group Sittings, from 8 to 9, from 2:30 till 3:30 and from 6 to 7, these sittings you will not move,” the primary teacher told us with a scowl across her broad face and pucker of her lips. “The other sittings you are free to change position as you like,” she re-assured us before repeating the instructions in expressionless Sinhala. I took a deep breath and arranged myself in my best cross-legged position.

The concentrated sitting itself went well. My strong determination to not move translated into a more focused mental state and I was able to sweep my body efficiently. In the following 3:30 to 5:00 sitting, however, I felt broken. By the time Goenka was done telling us to “Start again, start again,” I could not focus my mind on Vipassana, on the breath, on anything. Everything hurt all over. When my mind drifted it didn’t go to specific memories but to feelings, the feeling of anger directed against me, the feeling of that same cruel anger I saw in myself. The feeling was horrible and amorphous, I couldn’t grab it and see it clearly. The teachers had not called me to the front to check on me since day three. As I twisted my body one way and the other on the floor, almost writhing, I wondered what I would say if they did call me today. Would I tell them that I felt like I was going insane? That I feel like this is too much to bear? They called several of the other meditators, but not me. I began to feel like a failure. I felt that I could not withstand this practice. Finally, I allowed myself to start singing show tunes in my head. I started with the “My Favorite Things” from the “Sound of Music,” and then worked my way through the entire “Sound of Music” soundtrack before the bell rang for tea.

I walked slowly to tea. I had a strong feeling the practice was wrong for me. “It’s taking me apart alright,” I acknowledged to myself, “but can it put me back together again?” I remembered Goenka’s analogy of surgery. “I think I’ve hit an artery,” I thought and I sipped my milk tea and ate my three water crackers and a banana. I remembered that when I came to Dhamma Kuta I was thinking happy thoughts, “What the hell happened to that?” I wondered.

At six we had another determined sitting. I made it through with two position changes and a few good rounds of Vipassana scanning. I could hear the wind starting to pick up outside and the air felt suddenly cooler. I walked down the steps to the small hall for the discourse DVD with a sense of sinking dread. I dragged one of the blue cushions out of its row and placed it against the wall so I could lean on the wall while I watched. On the DVD Goenka again began to discuss the journey of suffering from birth to death. He told a few stories to illustrate attachment such as an old woman from the village who attended one of his courses in India. One day she was crying as though a snake had bit her. It turned out that a little purple pouch that she kept the 50 Rupees that was her life savings, a silver trinket from her dowery, and a sweetmeat given to her by a friend when she left for the course, was missing. “She was inconsolable at the loss of these little things,” he laughed. Finally another participant saw a monkey in a tree with the pouch and the silver trinket was recovered and the course participants chipped in to replace her money. Then he told a story about a monk who attended the course. He came to Goenka and said “oh, in the city there is your monastery and at your monastery there is your elephant.” Goenka had thought to himself “what, my monastery? But then I realized that the monk would not say ‘my’ in reference to himself because that would admit attachment” It turned out that the monk had built the monastery without the proper permits and the elephant was not allowed inside the city limits. The monk knew that Goenka had worked with the mayor of the city at the Vipassana center in Burma. “One word from you could save your monastery and your elephant,” the monk had pleaded. “Such attachment from a renouncer,” Goenka laughed. He didn’t say if he intervened to save the monastery.

“So what is the solution?” Goenka asked rhetorically. “What is this ‘I’ that craves so much? How do we get rid of it? Do we commit suicide?” he asked rhetorically again. He then went onto explain that the mindset of one who commits suicide is very negative and a powerful samskara arrises leading to a terrible rebirth. “What is this I have stumbled into? Jonestown?” I asked myself in terror as the wind started to howl outside. Goenka assured us that through the practice, the establishment of equanimity, and the understanding of Anicca, we were “Bound to be successful.” His raspy syllables reminded me that I heard no other voice but Goenka and I heard him day and night. It felt dangerous to me. “This really takes a lot of trust,” I reflected, and doubted it was trust that I possessed.

We left the small meditation hall after the DVD had ended and went back up to the main hall. For some reason the Sinhala version of the sermon was running longer and we had to wait outside in the wind and the dark. I sat crumpled up on a step leaning against the side of the building thinking about Goenka talking about suicide with a smile on his face. I felt so cut off from everything I could use to sooth myself and I began to cry. I thought of Saint John of the Cross’s term “Dark Night of the Soul” describing a painful period of spiritual transition. “I thought people only experienced the dark night after they had achieved something,” I thought bitterly, “I feel like all I have is the dark night.” When the bell rung for meditation I wiped my tears and stood up. One of the older women who walked with an obvious limp and meditated in a chair was having difficulty getting up from another one of the steps. The other people just walked on past her, filing into the hall. I took her right hand in my right hand and put my left hand around her back to steady her and easily raised her up off the step. Then we both continued on into the hall.

When I sat on the floor I could not even close my eyes. I sat with my knees up to my chest, rocking slightly. Helping the woman off the step was my one glimmer of human contact and it made me miss my job as a nurse. I thought about the suicide attempts I had seen at the prison and the inmates I had picked up out of their own blood, cleaned up, and sent to the hospital. I remembered the ones that tried to hang themselves, security had cut them down by the time I got there and if they were conscious, so there wasn’t too much for me to do. Thinking over the suicide attempts I had worked, I realized then that I had to leave Dhamma Kuta, I felt like the place was destroying me.