My going out of vipassana

13 November 2011

Ok, here I am for MORE ))) Need to make my own blog I think, it doesn't work so well here in Livejournal, at least it seems as if I am writing from my new life into my past one...

So, let's start

The bases of the vipassana meditation  I've described before. But how does it really go? Well, you start with waking up at 4 AM, going directly to the Dhamma (big meditation) hall, sometimes with no shower, cause the water pump switched off during the night (hehe , India-India :). Then 2 hours sitting meditation, focusing on your sensations and feelings. Then breakfast, then rest, one hour strong determination meditation without moving or opening your eyes, pause, mediation until 11 AM, lunch, meditation from 1 to 5 PM with a small break, then tea (for old students only lemon water - better conditions for concentrating when your digestive system is sleeping), then meditation from 6 to 7 PM, evening discours with Goenka-ji (the best part of the day!), then more meditation and then dodo ))) and moreover - all that in total silence, you have a right to talk to your assistance teacher and manager in case of urgency. 

That's how it usually looks like technically. What you experience is so difficult to describe that... you'll have to go and do it to get an idea. You work a lot with sensations in and at your body, with respiration, you go through your past life/lives, stones that are holding you down or make you unhappy. You totally concentrate on yourself and go in the deepest levels of mind and body. This time it was different, cause I was serving and one can talk (and does talk a lot actually)))! You talk to other servers, to the teacher, to the cours manager etc, talk talk talk. The second day I thought my meditation practice was really not ok, cause I couldn't concentrate and was not meditating much. But actually you make serving which itself is something more than just a meditation and really feel the benefits (access to the teacher for talking, seeing how the students go through their own difficulties from the practical point of view and deeper love and understanding, acceptance and respect from the emotional one). This meditation is very peculiar, it lets you be here and now, be present and go through every of your fears and blocks that manifest themselves on a physical level. 

Then comes the last day, when you're allowed to talk. Everybody gets overexcited, you finally you get to know people that you have been following for 10 days but whom you haven't really MET. It's a crazy day with lots of energy float and mixing mixing mixing. Usually one gets overwhelmed by the amount of new info but this is the soft way to prepare yourself to get out in the real world with monkeys, rickshaws, smells, people-people-people, new life and new you.

As for the benefits of the meditation, I'd say this time I feel calmer and more balanced. Also in a great need to be alone from time to time. But here I found a great friend Christa, one of the servers, a French brilliant most beautiful and intelligent girl  with whom we spent hours and hours sharing. 

Ok now in the guest house up up on the hill, cold and humid. Happy. Tomorrow going to meditation at 8 (usual open hour meditation for outsiders) and then moving to a new place (warmer and closer to MacLeod Ganj, where EVERYTHING is), playing cricket and talking about tantric energies and balancing of Shiva-Shakti and chackras.


Pictures are coming