Escape

After crying myself to sleep in my little bed, my sleep raged with nightmares. In the main nightmare I belonged to a loving family but then I made a film about the former Austrian president and WWII war crimes suspect Kurt Waldheim. I came home to find that I had been kicked out of my own house and called a Nazi. There was a note in my room telling me to be out by 1 PM the next day. When I woke up at the 4 AM bell for Day Six I recalled the dream and was awe-struck by the randomness of the Kurt Waldheim element as I headed to the sinks to wash my face. As the cold water hit my face I told myself I would try to do the AM meditation.

When I sat down on cushion number six and closed my eyes, all I could feel was my mind simply howling without coherent thought. The only thing I could make myself think about was escape, of running away and getting myself back together with the practices that I knew worked for me and were helpful to me. “The main thing is getting my passport back from the safe,” I reckoned. I didn’t know how early the office staff would arrive and if only the director had the combination to the safe. Wild-eyed, my eyes darted around in the dark meditation hall; everyone else seemed serene, or possibly asleep. “I don’t know how all these people can handle it,” I wondered in shame. I wondered why when I went on a hike with my dad in the White Mountains before moving to Sri Lanka, I was the girl who fell down the mountain, slicing open my shin and twisting my ankle. When I fell I cried, not out of pain, but out of shame and humiliation. I’d had seven more miles to go after that. With the aid of a friendly hiker’s trekking poles, and my father taking my pack, I’d made it. Set off balance by carrying two packs, my dad had fallen headfirst into a tree on the side of the trail about halfway to the hut. When he sat up from his fall blood from a puncture wound in his scalp was running down his face.

Our destination hut, Zealand Falls, was frequented by one-night out and back hikers. We came into the hut area from the remote hut in the woods crusted in dried blood and with the whole lateral side of my left foot purple. I washed the blood off my leg as my dad washed the blood out of his thick hair in the icy stream next to day-hikers sunbathing on the warm rocks with wine coolers trying not to stare at us in horror. When I came out of the hut in my barefeet heading for the stream an older through-hiker woman looked at my foot, then looked at me and said “You’re a hero.”

“No I’m not,” I replied. “I’m just clumsy.

I was lost in my memory of the White Mountains when the tape of Goenka’s chant started to roll and the bell for breakfast rang out. On the way to breakfast I checked the office, locked. After breakfast the office was still locked. I then returned to D-Block and packed my bedding into its duffle bag and crossed the campus again to check the office. With relief I could see the director standing next to the older teacher. “I need my passport back, I’m leaving” I told him with my voice cracking. He immediately backed into the office and allowed the older woman to take control of the situation. “Here, come in here,” she gestured to the small meditation hall. She sat on the small teacher’s pedestal and I sat on a cushion in front of her and started to cry. “This is tearing me apart,” I said simply,

“It’s normal to feel this way, all churned up,” she replied compassionately. “It’s part of the process. This is very good, it means that it is working for you, your samskaras are coming up and you are working them out,” she continued.

“It’s too much for me,” I replied.

“What’s too much for you?” she gently enquired.

“The pain,” I stated simply, “My whole body hurts and my whole mind hurts all at once, I can’t take it anymore. I need to go home and get myself together,” I asserted, tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Except for the Group Sitting,” she replied “You can go and sit at the back. I will see to it that the Dharma Helpers put a chair for you at the back so you can feel more supported. What else?” she asked.

“I don’t have faith in the practice,” I admitted.

“That is sad,” she replied with a touch of disdain. “You expected meditation to make you feel a certain way and it hasn’t. Now you are upset. But you will feel better, when you get Metta, it will feel so good,” she told me, smiling benevolently.

“I see that this practice can tear me down,” I reiterated, “But I don’t see how it can help me. This isn’t why I came to Buddhism, all this talk about death and liberation. I came to Buddhism to learn how to be a better person in this life,” I explained.

“But it can do that, you just need to give it time,” she explained. “I can see that you are a very emotional person,” she continued, “This practice is learning to be less reactive. See, feel your tears, on your face, feel them with equanimity,” she instructed. I did as I was told and we were both quiet for awhile as I was able to stop crying. “You are lucky to respond this way, the Sinhala have these things come up too, but it affects them in all sorts of crazy ways,” she furthered, patting herself on the head with her right hand and the gesturing up to the sky as though the psychological issues of the Sinhala spewed forth directly from their skulls. I wanted to ask what sorts of crazy ways, but didn’t. “What else?” she asked.

“I’m not getting enough to eat at night,” I told her, “I think that I feel so much worse because I’m hungry.”

“Yes,” she replied nodding, “You are young and you are burning everything up in your meditation,” she said thoughtfully. “How about we give you some toast and margarine with tea?”

“Ok,” I replied. “That will help in the evenings,” I admitted. I knew that I felt worse emotionally when my sugar was low, even if I didn’t feel hungry per se.

“Alright, how do you feel now?” she asked.

“I feel better,” I replied. “Can I stay here for the rest of the morning sitting and then re-join the group after lunch?” I asked.

“Yes, this is the small meditation hall,” she replied, “I think that’s good,” she finished, standing up. “I’m going to leave on the eighth, but the other assistant teacher is very conversant in English as well,” she re-assured me on the way out. I stood up as well and moved a cushion over against the wall. I sat down on the cushion and let myself cry without trying to stop myself. I tried to just observe. “She did have a point about expectations,” I mused, reflecting on bitter experiences where I expected things to be nurturing and they weren’t. I could see how much of my suffering in those situations were a result of expecting the peoples and places in involved to make me feel happy and feeling angry when they let me down. Eventually I was able to focus on the breath and even do a few Vipassana scans. I felt the sensations over my entire back as it was supported by the wall. When the teacher returned to check on me I was feeling much better.

I allowed myself to nap at lunch after unpacking and re-making my bed. In the afternoon sitting I took advantage of my freedom to shift around until the 2:30 to 3:30 sitting. In the determined sitting I was able to focus easily and sweep through large parts of my body at once. I felt like I was connecting the dots, unifying the whole equation, taking the integral of the formula Goenka had given me. When the 3:30 sitting ended I felt exhausted. When I sat back down first my hips hurt, but I knew I could handle it and kept focusing on my breath and trying to sweep my body. Then my shoulders hurt and I gave up on Vipassana and just focused on my breath. When the middle of my back started to hurt I knew I was close to cracking, so I got up and went to the little white chair at the back of the room. I closed my eyes and my mind started to howl again. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, but I did not open my eyes. I simply felt my tears. I focused on my breath and realized that I was howling for comfort. I realized that I envied the spiritual comfort most of the people in front of me derived from religious ritual and the religious context of this course. Suddenly a thought flashed through my mind “This is all bullshit,” I realized with sudden clarity. “Happiness is my true state. Anything that takes that away is just bullshit,” I suddenly felt. I stopped crying, opened my eyes and dried my tears. I remained at the back of the room in the little white chair observing my respiration with equanimity.

At five-o-clock tea I felt a little sheepish about my extra food, but I knew that my youth and my added muscle-mass from running and yoga made my metabolism run much faster than most of the other participants. “Three slices of wonderbread and a lump of margarine is hardly a decedent feast,” I reminded myself. I knew that the fat in the margarine would slow down the absorption of the simple sugars and help me through the evening. After tea I wrote about my experiences in my journal and took my quick shower before the next determined sitting at 6 PM.

In the evening sitting I became aware of tingling sensations all over my face and it seemed like I was a unified whole. I was able to sweep my body en mass as instructed, and then go over it part by part again. I started at my head and went to my feet and went from my feet to my head. Even the evening DVD was interesting as Goenka espoused the theory that we are addicted to craving. “When someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol it is really their craving they are addicted to,” he explained. I thought this was an interesting idea that it was our compulsions themselves that we are addicted to, not the object of our compulsions. Goenka also told some common stories of the life of the Buddha that I already knew. One of the stories was the story of Angulimala, the man who had taken an oath to kill 1000 people and wore a chain of his victim’s fingers around his neck. When he encountered the Buddha he needed only one more victim. Goenka told the story to illustrate the power of the Dharma to convert a killer into an arahat, an enlightened being. He also used the story to illustrate equanimity by telling the audience how after Angulimala became a monk he was sometimes tortured by the families of his victims when they recognized him on his alms rounds. “He bore their beatings with a smile, in perfect equanimity and understanding of Anicca” Goenka relayed happily. As he started to chant in Pali I reflected that Goenka left out the part of the story where Angulimala becomes a killer because of a vow to a teacher. “That story also shows the potentially power destructive power of a teacher,” I thought to myself.

Even my evening sitting went well, I was able to remain on my cushion paying attention to my breath or doing occasional Vipassana sweeps. When my mind wandered I thought of other stories of the Buddha and stories of the past lives of the Buddha like the conversion of the child-eating demoness Kali that Dan and I had talked about in the past. I also thought about the idea of being addicted to craving and/or aversion and why that would be attractive to the mind.

I slept well and woke up on Day Seven feeling rested. I never imagined that I would feel rested at 4 AM. The morning sitting went well with only one episode of sleepiness I easily overcame by breathing harder. When my mind drifted, I thought about giving people presents. I thought about the presents I had already bought for people and how much they would like them as well as presents I planned to get for other people. At breakfast, two young male monkeys attacked the slops bucket where we scrapped our plates. The beautiful, ethereal, older teacher was walking into the chow hall as the monkeys hit the bucket. She scowled at them and one hissed back at her. She then stooped to pick up a few rocks and started throwing them at the monkeys, driving them away. “Obviously the monkeys don’t get Metta here,” I thought to myself with satisfaction, “A monkey is still a monkey even at Dhamma Kuta.” I was glad that my teacher had reacted realistically to the presence of the monkeys at the chow hall, showing that being a meditation teacher doesn’t mean you have no spine.

In the concentrated group sitting after breakfast I took seiza position with my pads supporting me and held it till the end. I felt tired, but I had confidence that I could make it. I alternated sweeping my body mentally with going over it part by part. After the concentrated sitting I felt miserable and couldn’t hold any position. When the pain shifted into the middle of my back I knew I had to go to the back of the room. I reflected with relief that I had no intention of making this practice into a home practice. I knew that Goenka recommended one hour in the morning and one hour at night to keep receiving the benefits of practice, “But since I perceive no benefits,” I reasoned, “I’m just going to make it through this and then that’s it. I’ll go back to yoga and running.” I tried to focus on my breath but my mind kept drifting to how I could apply to practice of all-over scanning to yoga and running. “I bet all-over scanning might really bring something to my yoga practice,” I theorized. “It would probably be good to cultivate that in difficult balance poses, and of course increased understanding of Anicca will help me hold demanding poses longer,” I thought until one of the Dharma helpers indicated that the teacher wanted to meet with me at the front.

I went up to the front and sat in front of the older teacher. “How are you doing today?” she asked.

“I feel much better, thank you,” I answered sincerely. “I feel ok in the group sittings, and I use the wall when I need it other times,” I explained my strategy.

“And the bread and margarine?” she asked,

“Yes, that’s helping, I even felt better in the morning meditation,” I replied. She requested that I meditate in front of her. After my little meditation she told me that my vibrations felt very strong. “Good,” she told me, smiling.

After lunch we had the general sitting from 1 to 2:30 where I remained on the floor but indulged in my freedom to change position. Then from 2:30 I started in seiza but had to change to cross-legged because of my knees after 45 minutes. The meditation didn’t go as well, I focused on my breath and did the occasional Vipassana sweep, often losing focus in the middle of the sweep. My mind drifted to the idea that if some Mormons stormed the hall to offer me another paradigm I would probably jump up and take it just to get off of this mountain. I realized that I still wanted to quit, but I felt like I didn’t have the strength to break away, “like an abusive relationship,” I thought. “I don’t have the strength to argue my way out of it, so I’ve made this fantasy of the Mormons to come and get me, then I can be passive,” I realized. In the instructional sitting I fidgeted on the floor relentlessly. I noticed Delia get up and go out to the balcony to stretch her legs. I didn’t trust myself to do this; I figured that I would stretch my legs all the way back to D-Block. I didn’t attempt Vipassana, trying only to focus on my breath. When my mind drifted, I thought about how when I was home I was going to use my money to get more massages for my physical wellbeing for my back rather than buy collect more material wealth in the form of shirts from Banana Republic.

After meditation I felt terrible as I dragged myself down the hill to afternoon tea. My whole body hurt as one big solidified gross sensation moving toward the chow hall for my white-bread and margarine feast. “It’s like a laboratory of hell,” I realized. “You create the worst possible conditions outside of a terminal illness and you learn to deal with them with equanimity and understanding that things will change, Anicca. Then you go back to your life and you can deal with things better,” I decided. “I hope it works,” I thought as I savored my milk-tea.

I struggle during the 6 to 7 determined sitting. I had to change position three times. I tried to hold each position as a mini-determined sitting and tried to motivate myself to grind through as many Vipassana scans as possible. When my mind drifted, I thought about the terminology of destruction and misery. “But there is creation also,” I reasoned. I realized that when I got back home I wanted to make beaded flowers again. I realized that I missed putting the pretty beads on the gold wire and making the petals, then the stamens and pistils. I missed making something pretty. I decided that I would make some flowers for our friends who were getting married in September, “Maybe Jesse can put them in her bouquet or something,” I thought in between observing my breath. During the Dharma Discourse DVD Goenka told some more pleasant stories relating to practice and his experiences with his teacher in Burma. He told the story of a Western metallurgist coming to Burma and experiencing the Dharma as a ring of pure metal can draw impurity out of another metal. He also told a funny story about how his teacher had to yell at a lazy student once. In the 8 to 9 sitting I felt generally like shit, but I sat on my cushion and knew it would pass.

I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep on my bed and woke up ready for Day Eight. I felt quite excited about Day Eight because I never thought I would get there. I knew that Day Nine was the last day of serious work and Day Ten we would get Metta, “whatever that is,” I thought as I walked quickly and lightly to the meditation hall. In the parking lot the center’s van was running and I noticed my teacher inside. I recalled that she said she was going to be leaving on the eighth day. I approached the open door of the van, “I just wanted to thank you,” I told her. She was gazing at out of the opposite window and turned to me surprised for a moment. “You’re feeling better then?” she asked. I nodded my head “yes.” “Good” she replied, turning her head back to the window as I continued on up the hill.

Once I entered the hall I realized that my joints were hurting even before I sat down. I thrashed from one position to the other, determined to stay on the floor until one of the Dharma Helpers called me to the other assistant teacher “don’t torture yourself,” she instructed me gently, smiling, “why don’t you go sit in the chair.” I nodded my head in agreement and walked to the back of the room. My back felt great against the back of the little chair and I was suddenly able to snap my mind into focus and do Vipassana scans till breakfast, even through the half-hour of chanting. I felt that I could flow my attention through my legs much more clearly when they weren’t all bound up on the floor.

After breakfast I was glad that I had saved my back for the determined sitting. With the energy of breakfast in me I was able to hold my seiza position for the duration of the sitting. I was able to sweep through the sensations in my body like pouring a bucket of water over my head. I was increasingly able to feel sensations inside my body also, as thought the inner and the outer weren’t that clearly defined. After the bell rang for break I stood out on the balcony of the meditation hall and looked at the valley, I had a nagging feeling that I’d experienced a meditation breakthrough, but I sort of knew what came next now.

Sitting on the floor for the 9:30 till 11:00 sitting was nearly impossible, I felt sick to my stomach and my back gave out almost as soon as Goenka was done saying “Start again, start again,” on the tape. It felt like I was at a point in a demanding yoga practice where I was crawling on the floor from posture to posture. I recovered the earlier revelation that happiness was my natural state, “but it sure is buried now,” I thought to myself as I walked to the back of the room. Even the little wooden chair was not enough support I quickly realized. I had to move to the floor and use the entire wall to support my back and my nauseated stomach in front of it. When I focused on the breath I realized that my agony was a lack on confidence. I didn’t think I had what it took to complete this practice, have a relationship, and even just live my life. I focused on my breath and tried to simply observe these desperate feelings until I heard the bell for lunch.

I could feel that the crocodile had me in the start of another death roll underwater, so after lunch I showered, cleaned up around D-Block, and walked around. I didn’t want to lie awake at night. When I sat down for the afternoon practice I noticed that Delia was not on her cushion. As I fluctuated between the concentrated sitting and resting my back on the wall during the instructional sitting I noticed that she did not return and the plump assistant teacher was missing also. I wondered if she was in the small hall crying as I had been. My practice in the afternoon was unremarkable and uninspired slog through the day. I felt sick to my stomach for most of the afternoon. When my mind drifted all I could think about was how sick of the practice I felt. By the end I could only keep my eyes closed for a few minutes at a time. When the bell rang for tea I could barely face my bread and margarine, but I made myself eat a few slices. One of the older Dharma Helpers looked at my half-eaten bread with concern as I threw it away.

The evening concentrated sitting passed in much the same fashion; my concentrated sitting was more like continual shifting in a desperate effort to remain on the floor. I tried to observe my pain with equanimity, but a diffuse cloud of panicky anxiety began to condense in my mind. All I could think about was how much I missed Dan. I missed Dan every day, it was always in the background, but during this sitting it commanded my mind. I tried to take one breath after the next like putting one foot in front of the other at the end of a long run. I ruefully realized that my body hurt as though I was training for the Olympics yet in reality I was falling out of shape. Sneaking a peek around the room I noticed that Delia had returned to her cushion and looked fairly calm, calmer than I felt. The evening Dharma DVD passed in a blur of Goenka asking the audience what is this “I,” and what is “me,” and what is “mine.” I leaned against the wall in the back in a fog composing poetry to Dan in my head. When I heard Goenka start his chanting I snapped back into focus.

I followed Delia out onto the back balcony of the meditation hall after the DVD was over and we were waiting for the Sinhala discourse to end. The other women waited on the side balcony, nearer the door. “The only part of those DVDs I like is when they pan over to his wife at the end,” she whispered, breaking the silence and we both stifled our giggles. “Yeah,” I replied. “You know that before he got all into this meditation shit he must have been one rough-ass son-of-a-bitch to live with,” I joked. “How are you doing?” I asked in a more serious tone, still looking out into the dark valley.

“Better,” she replied, nodding her head. “You?”

“I’m going to make it,” I remarked grimly as the meditation bell rang out. “Hey can you see Sri Pada from here?” I asked her, referencing her research site, the popular pilgrimage mountain said to have a Buddha footprint at the top. The area of the footprint was apparently covered by a concrete slab on which the ritual pujas were performed. Muslims believed that it was Adam’s footprint left on the mountain top on Adam’s exit from Eden into the world, thus the popular alternative name, Adam’s Peak. The Christian community attributed the mark in the rock to the footprint of St. Thomas. Not to be left out, the Hindus attributed the footprint to Shiva and venerated the site with a shrine to Shiva. Sri Pada even features in Arthur C. Clark’s science fiction novel “The Fountains of Paradise,” Clark himself having lived in Sri Lanka since 1956. Pilgrims climbed the mountain all night along an illuminated path to see the sunrise from the peak and hopefully see the mountain’s shadow on the clouds in the valley just as I had seen the shadow of Dhamma Kuta’s mountain a few mornings before.

“I pretty sure that’s it over there,” Delia replied, pointing out to the left into the darkness. As I followed her gaze I could see a blurry mountain top a few ridges away with a bluish light at the top.

“That’s got to be it,” I replied in awe, amazed I had never noticed it before.

“Have you done the climb?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “It’s one of those things that Dan has done three times and isn’t keen to do again,” I explained. “If he takes a break from translation, we just want to go to Colombo to relax,” I explained. “Plus, I never really seem to be in the mood to get up at 2 AM and slog up some mountain,” I joked. “Actually, it’s the decent that scares me more, I have a bad history with descents,” I admitted.

“Going down is rough,” she admitted as the bell rang.

After my brief exchange of words with Delia I felt giddy, energized, and almost high. “It’s probably good that we can’t talk,” I realized. “We’d probably all just sit around and bitch, and now I see how it can be distracting,” I admitted to myself as I settled down on my cushions. Sitting cross-legged with my eyes closed I tried to observe my respirations, but could not. I kept thinking about Arthur C. Clark and how weird it was that he lived in Colombo. I recalled that the final chapters of 3001 - The Final Space Odyssey at the Galle Face in 1996, even the cheapest room in the Galle Face had a writing desk. I remembered walking past the bust of Clark in the open-air lobby many times on our various trips. “Man, even the briefest contact can really set your mind in motion,” I realized. I tried again to focus on my breath but ended up debating how important it was to me to climb Sri Pada. “I don’t really feel like it, I know my footing will be off going down since I’ll be tired from being up all night, but will my Sri Lanka experience be incomplete?” I debated until finally Goenka’s deep, gravely chant rang out into the air to end the sitting.

Back in the D-block while getting ready for bed a projectile was hurled over my partition and landed on my bed. It was a packet of hot coco from Delia with a note attached, “for celebratory tea on Day Nine!” I slipped the note into my contraband journal and carefully placed the hot coco on top of my backpack before tucking my mosquito net around me and falling asleep easily.

I woke up to the bell for Day Nine and lay in my bed in the darkness for a few minutes, listening to the residents of D-block slowly shuffle to life before heading for the sinks myself armed with my toothbrush. The finish line seemed so close, but so far away as I walked to the meditation hall in the dark. Before entering the hall I walked out onto the back balcony of the meditation hall and saw Sri Pada again in the distance. In the clear morning air I could easily see the illuminated path of the pilgrims up the side and the light at the top. I imagined hundreds of pilgrims toiling up the delicate path of lights, working their way through the dark to see the sunrise at the top.

When I entered the hall I surprised myself by being able to sit on the floor for the entire two hour meditation and focus on my breath and complete some good, thorough, Vipassana sweeps. After breakfast I climbed back up to the stupa at the top of the little Dhamma Kuta campus hill on the side of the larger mountain. The valley was filled with clouds again, but the sun wasn’t bright. The grey, diffuse, light made the distant mountain ranges look as though they were covered in snow. The sight of the mountains appearing to be covered in snow sent of bolt of pain into my heart and for a moment I felt cold to the bone as though I had been outside in winter for an afternoon. The distant, cloudy mountains reminded me of the mountains across Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont where my father lived while I was growing up with my mother in Richmond, Virginia. I would leave the grey, muddy, Virginia winter to visit him in a sparkling winter wonderland. I remembered another trick of the clouds I had seen in Burlington walking with my father back to his apartment one night from the pedestrian mall area in the winter. I was very cold and I was trying to hurry along until I saw what I thought was lightning in the sky, only it didn’t vanish. My father and I both stopped on the icy sidewalk, and it took a few minutes for our minds to dissect the phenomena. I thought at first it might be a tiny Aurora Borealis, but then I realized it clouds had blocked the face of the full moon in such a way that a vivid sliver of moon was visible against the otherwise blotted-out sky. I spent the entire break before the 8 AM concentrated staring at the “snowy” mountains remembering Vermont, learning to ice-skate, and our trips to Montreal.

When I entered the hall for the determined sitting I reminded myself that this was my last AM determined sitting. “One more time,” I cheered myself on. I settled by self in seiza, closed my eyes, and quickly felt my whole face relax and drop into focus on my breath. When I felt my awareness of my tiny little breath expand first out to the side and then all around and I was able to rest in this expanded awareness for a few minutes. Reluctantly I turned my attention from this sensation to performing Vipassana sweeps. When my mind drifted I thought about the mountains that looked as though they were covered in snow and felt the stab of homesickness again, but I was quickly able too bring myself back to the sensations in my own body.

After the determined sitting came they played a tape of Goenka’s instructions. Usually he just told us to “Start again, Start again, start with the top of the head, the top of the head,” and so on, but this morning he led us through a more involved guided visualization of not only feeling the free-flow of sensations on the skin, but also through the body, forward and back as well as up and down. “Use your awareness to pierce the body,” he instructed us. I found the idea of piercing my body a bit disturbing, but I was able to relax my abdominal muscles and connect my perception of sensation from front to back. I worked steadily on developing this technique until the bell rang for lunch at 11 AM. While working on the new Vipassana technique I had felt hungry, but when faced with more dhal and curries I lost my appetite. I felt like after the intense meditation my body was shutting down. I pushed my curries around on my metal plate with my little metal spoon and finally dumped most of it in the trash and headed by to D-Block for a nap. As I slowly walked across the campus I felt dizzy and wobbly, I knew that no matter what happened that night, I needed the nap now.

The last thing I remembered was sitting down on my bed and then lay down on my side, bringing my feet up behind me, and pulling my knees into my chest. The next thing I knew the Japanese woman’s alarm was going off and I found myself in exactly the same position one hour later. I slipped my packet of hot coco into my pocket before walking slowly to the meditation hall I wondered what sort of shape I was going to be in when I returned from this course. “Dan’s probably worried that I am going to come back as some sort of flaky meditator trying to free herself from attachments, or that I am going to shave my head and ordain after this,” I mused. I knew he would be relieved that I wasn’t returning home obsessed with this practice.

I felt restless in the general sitting before the determined sitting. At the break before the determined sitting I power-walked back down to D-Block to go to the bathroom and try to burn off some energy. When I sat down in seiza in the determined sitting my head started to throb, the pain reverberating through my skull. “I can sure as hell feel the top of my head now,” I anguished. I was amazed that I could feel so horrible in a completely new way. The headache was not like my occasional sinus headaches, it was like my whole head was going up in flames. I tried to detach from the pain, I tried to go into awareness of the breath, but I could only succeed for a second or two. I remembered Goenka’s voice from one of the DVDs telling me to “come out of your misery,” and marveled that I had never felt so many different kinds of misery in such a short, condensed period of time. “It’s like a misery dessert sampler,” I thought as I forced myself to remain on the floor for appearances only and not change position distractingly often until the bell rang.

I wandered out to the balcony and looked out over the valley in a daze. All of the clouds had burned away and the sun blazed down on the sweeping green valley. I could see part of the Mahaweli River snaking it’s way in between the mountains. The warm concrete of the balcony relaxed the soles of my feet. “Why didn’t I bring Tylenol up here?” I mourned. When I returned to the hall I went straight to the back wall and sat down with my knees to my chest and my entire back supported by the wall. My head hurt and my mind howled, but I just let myself storm. I no longer expected to feel good and figured it was ok to feel terrible for a little while. “It’s funny,” I thought, “When I’ve been depressed, guilt over feeling depressed has always just added insult to injury, for now, I’ll just try and accept that I feel bad and not get all worked up over it,” I told myself as I tried to relax into the wall. When the bell rang I took my packet of hot coco out of my pocket and walked quickly down to the chow hall.

I reached the line for food first and the Dharma Helpers happily handed me my little metal plate of toast and margarine. The older Dharma Helper who had seen me throw my lunch away looked particularly relieved. I grabbed an empty cup, emptied in the whole packet of hot coco, and poured myself some hot water from the big communal tea kettle. Taking a seat in the front, I slowly stirred the hot coco until the mixture was completely dissolved. Delia arrived in the chow hall toward the end of the throng. When I saw her enter I quickly raised up my mug and flashed her a smile before taking my first sip. My headache seemed to melt away with the taste of the hot chocolate brew. I slowly sipped the elixir and savored my bread and margarine. After I finished I remained at the table for a few minutes feeling nourished and satisfied by my meal.

After bread and hot coco I returned to D-Block to wash-up and get ready for the evening program. “Just one more determined sitting,” I told myself. “You can do it,” I cheered internally, “Leave it all out in the meditation hall, just eat up the practice,” I prepped myself as I walked back to the main hall. I was not sure which demon would greet me when I arrived on meditation cushion number six, “Sleepiness? Restlessness? Internal Howling? Physical Pain? Or would it be something new entirely?” I pondered. When I settled myself in seiza I could tell immediately that restlessness would be the problem this time. I wanted to rocket out of my seat and start running, jumping, and climbing up the rest of the mountain. It took all of my mental energy just to keep myself on the floor from six till seven. I was able to focus on my breath in spurts and perform the occasional inside-and-out Vipassana scan. When my mind wandered I wondered what we would do tomorrow, “What is Metta anyway?” I wondered. I thought it was strange that I had not yet heard Goenka use the word even once.

The sitting was ended by a Goenka chant starting with the word “Anicca.” When the chant was over I shot up off my cushion and started walking to D-Block to get my fleece, but really just to walk, just to move. I walked quickly down the driveway, to D-Block, and then back to the small hall for the discourse. As Goenka talked about the role of Vipassana meditators in society and the responsibilities of Vipassana mediators in society I sat against the way, my leg nervously shaking. I couldn’t stop myself from looking around the room, at the other meditators, out the window, and into the wide, expressionless face of the primary course teacher. When Goenka began to talk about behavior modification I briefly tuned back into the DVD. “If when you got mad at a situation, you used to get mad for 8 hours, now hopefully you will only get mad for 6,” he explained from the TV screen. “If you keep practicing then it will be 4, then 2, then one hour, then a half and hour,” he continued, raising his jowls into a smile. This was the message I wanted to hear all along, but now I felt like I couldn’t hear it.

When the DVD was over I shot out of the small hall and up to the main hall. The Sinhala discourse was still in full swing while I paced like a caged animal along the women’s side of the balcony, up and back, up and back, while everyone else sat crumpled on steps. Walking didn’t help me feel better. I didn’t feel like I was burning anything off. I felt like I was burning up inside, like I was one step away from taking off my clothes, running naked through the woods, and falling asleep in a tree. I knew that meditation was out of the question, I knew that I could not sit on the floor. I felt scarred. The older teacher had assured me that I would be feeling better by now, but I felt more unhinged than ever. I felt wild.

When the Sinhala discourse was over in the main hall I rushed in to see the plump assistant teacher. I pointed to my head and told her that I felt bad, that something was wrong. She gave me a vague smile as she left the hall and told me to tell the primary teacher. I turned around to looked down into the primary teacher’s broad face, suddenly realizing how much taller I was. “I feel bad,” I repeated pointing feverishly to my head and widening my eyes. “You go to bed,” she said and walked past me to her little teacher’s platform next to the tape player. I noticed that the plump assistant teacher was gone, so I decided to just go back to D-Block and try to go to sleep, but with the nap in me I knew it would be rough.

Lying on my bed I curled up on my left side with my knees to my chest. “I just think it’s a really bad idea to do this sort of thing outside of your own culture,” I rationalized. “In America they probably have more support for people like me,” I told myself, plus I knew there wouldn’t be the language barrier thing. I flopped over to my right side. “They would probably tell me that this is great,” I thought. “They would probably tell me that a big, bad samskara is rising and I am working it out.” But I wasn’t sure that I accepted that paradigm. I still had no faith in the process. “You are really handing your mind over to this man on tape,” I reflected, “And that’s weird. That’s surrendering a lot of power, and for what?” I wondered into the darkness. I tried to make out the rafter with the strange knot in the wood and see some knew shapes. All I could see was a woman on her knees.

I eventually feel into a restless sleep and was suddenly wide awake. I listened for the bell, but there was no bell, a light came into the D-Block window and for minute I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was. I didn’t know if I needed to get up for the early morningf I needed to get up for the AM the AM sitting, if I was already late for the AM sitting,d the see some knew shapes. All I cou sitting, if I was already late for the early morning sitting, or if I needed to go back to sleep. I pulled up the mosquito netting and reached over into my backpack for my cell-phone, my only means of keeping track of time. When I turned on my phone the time was 11 PM. “I must have only been asleep for a little over an hour,” I realized with horror as the arduous task of going back to sleep stretched before me again as I re-tucked the net and rolled over on my stomach.

I woke up to the bell at 4 AM after drifting in and out of sleep. I dragged myself out of bed and up to the meditation hall for Day Ten, the day of Metta, the breaking of the Noble Silence. I knew that we were supposed to go home on the morning of Day Eleven, but I knew that I was done. “I’ve been on this mountain for ten days,” I reasoned. “Once I hit Metta and the silence is broken, I’m done, game over.” As I walked up the steps in the darkness for the last time I wondered what else they were going to do today after silence was broken and I really could not imagine.

When I settled myself on the floor I cautiously tuned into my breath. I didn’t want to have some sort of profound meditation experience. “I’ll just sit here and observe respiration and that will be it,” I told myself. When my mind drifted I thought about going home to Kandy, taking a hot shower, giving Dan a big hug, and then watching some football. I knew Dan had a bunch of the college bowl games downloaded onto his computer and zoning out to sports seemed like the best thing. “But I need to stay awake,” I reminded myself. I knew if I napped then I would probably be up all night. I gently returned to my breath and felt my tiny sips of breath pass through my nostrils until the bell for breakfast rang.

Walking down the hill to the chow hall I saw a big white sign with the schedule for the “Metta Day” painted on it. From 8 till 9 there would be the Metta meditation. Then they would give back passports and valuables, then in the afternoon there would be another hour-long Metta meditation and they would sell T-shirts and books. In the evening there would be another discourse DVD, then on the next morning another Metta meditation, and then people would leave. “If they are giving back passports and selling T-shirts, it’s time to go,” I decided. I knew that leaving this time would be easy because the primary course instructor didn’t have the command of the English language to convince me otherwise. “Besides,” I reasoned. “I’m running out of toilet paper, it’s time to go.”

I ate my breakfast of white rice and yellow potato gravy with gusto. I had made my decision. When I got back to D-Block I started packing my bags and at eight I headed up to the main hall. “Let the secret be revealed,” I thought as I sat down on the floor. The teacher played a tape of Goenka talking about how when we are miserable people we make everyone around us miserable. All of the office staff joined the meditators in the hall for the meditation. He went on to explain how when we became Vipassana meditators we found true happiness, true love, and we needed to share this with people and encourage others to experience the Dharma. The message was then repeated by the taped Sinhala translator. Then we were supposed to perform a loving-kindness meditation while Goenka chanted in Pali on the tape.

“This is it?” I wondered. “Are they kidding?” I thought, shocked. I realized that my expectations had built Metta up into some sort of sophisticated meditative tool that we were building toward all along. Sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up to my chest, I felt re-affirmed in my commitment to leave. When the meditation was over I approached the primary teacher on her bench. Sitting in front of her I said “I’m leaving, I’m done.” Her mouth puckered.

“New students need to stay,” she said.

“I’m done,” I said calmly.

“You need to stay to see the final discourse,” she scowled at me.

“I’m done,” I repeated, shrugging. She remained silent and I left the main hall.

I felt a rush of adrenaline as I walked back to D-Block. I grabbed my cell-phone and called Dan from the back of D-Block, near the big Bodhi Tree. “I’m done,” I told him on the phone. “I thought you were coming home tomorrow?” he asked.

“Nope,” I replied happily, “I’m done now. I made it to Metta and the breaking of the silence,” I explained. “Not everyone is done, but I’m done,” I finished.

“Great!” Dan exclaimed. “Shall I send Manju?”

“Send him on up baby,” I replied. “By the time he gets here I’ll be all packed out.”

After I hung up the phone I rounded the corner to see Delia. “I’m done,” I told her.

“I want to be done!” she replied.

“Ok,” I said, “My driver is coming in about 45 minutes. I’m packed and I’m going to get my passport.”

“Did you tell anyone?” she asked.

“I told the main teacher,” I replied. “I just said, ‘I’m done,’ and she was like ‘yap-yap-yap’” I joked, making a “talking” gesture with my right hand, “But really I don’t think she cared,” I continued. “They’re giving back passports and selling T-shirts today, it’s over,” I finished.

“Ok, I want to be done,” Delia mused, “but I feel like I need to talk to the assistant teacher, she really helped me that day I was upset.”

“That’s fine,” I replied. “Do what you need to do and I’ll meet you near the office in 45 minutes if you still want to go.”

“Ok,” she nodded, and headed back up to the main hall.

I got my passport back, made my donation, and when I returned to D-Block to grab my bags Delia was almost done packing. “I just need to get my passport,” she told me smiling.

“Cool,” I replied, grabbing my bags.

“Are you going?” the Japanese woman asked, emerging from her enclosure in the back of D-Block.

“Yeah, I’m done,” I replied. She nodded.

“You made it,” she confirmed.

“I can’t believe you did this more than once,” I told her, “That’s amazing.”

“The first time I tried, back in Japan, I ran away,” she explained. “Then I came back to it and finished it. At first I felt very, stirred up inside like you,” she gave a nervous Asian laugh, “and it took me a long time to understand what had happened,” she added compassionately.

“Well, maybe I’ll sort it all out too,” I admitted. Hearing the whine of a three-wheeler engine cresting the hill I added, “But for now, I’m done.” The Japanese woman laughed and continued on to the bathroom.

“I think I hear my driver,” I told Delia through the curtain to her enclosure. “I’m going to wait up there.”

“Ok,” she told me. “I just need to get my passport and I’ll meet you.

I walked away from D-Block without looking back. As I crested the hill, Manju saw me lugging my bags and got out of the three-wheeler to take my bags and position them behind the back seat. “My friend is coming too,” I told him and he nodded. Delia crested the hill after me, we put her stuff in the three-wheeler and she went to retrieve her passport and make her donation. Once we had Delia in the three-wheeler we started down the hill.

“So, what did your assistant teacher say?” I asked once we were through the Dhamma Kuta gates.

“She was cool with it,” Delia replied, nodding. “She said that the evening Dharma DVD is about continuing your practice, so she said, ‘just continue your practice.’”

“That’s good,” I replied. “Honestly though, I’m not sure that I care to continue this practice.”

“Yeah, I don’t see it as a stand alone thing,” Delia agreed. “I learned some things, but I like the type of Vipassana where you observe your thoughts too,”

“Yes!” I interjected, “I kept waiting for that too!”

“I thought that we would do the body for a few days and then work up to it or something,” she added, “But it didn’t look that way.”

“Nope,” I replied. “I think for me I learned some things I’ll take into my yoga practice and other things I’m already doing, but I don’t feel like dedicating myself to this method.” Delia nodded in agreement.

“Oh my God, and the chanting!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, I couldn’t stand that chanting,” I agreed.

“I had a serious aversion to the chanting,” She explained, “it really bothered me.”

“I think the Sinhala just like chanting,” I commented, “It’s all in Pali and some Hindi, so it’s not like they understand it either.”

We continued discussing various aspects of the practice and our experience of the practice all the way back to her house in Kandy. As we approached her neighborhood we wondered why we didn’t hang out more. “Because you live across town,” I said, “and transportation is such a pain in the ass and there is no public culture here, so there aren’t a lot of good central meeting places.”

“I guess that’s it,” she conceded. “It just keeps everyone really isolated.” I nodded my head in agreement. When we pulled up to her house we swore to at least go out to eat when she got back from another round of field research. Riding on alone behind Manju straight into the noise and activity of one of Kandy’s main streets suddenly seemed overwhelming. I found myself focusing on my breath passing through my nostrils and I felt a bit more at ease.