28 January, apparently Saturday...

Organized chaos... in the Universe, in our comprehension of life, in our thoughts, in the way we move or talk, in our feelings or in the birds going South. Varanasi train station is also organized chaos. I've never seen that before... Hundreds of people, everywhere, mainly on the floor, with their own places, food, toilets, with their own hope... to get into the next train. We were going to Gorakhpur from Bodhgaya and had to change in Varanasi. We didn't know they had one of their Mehlas (religious feasts). And we didn't know they'd all want to take the same train we bought tickets for. How to describe... lake of people. Sea... Ocean... with inner rivers and boats. With luggages and prayers. Noisy, stincky, pushing, swearing, crying... Someone told us they changed all the sleeper coaches into the sitting ones. If you've ever taken a train in India, you'd understand what I mean if I say organizes chaos, right? Indian don't buy tickets to sitting trains, they just go. But when you have thousands of those who just go... Police was rude and violent. Somehow we managed to find someone who would help us to squeeze into our coach. Terrible. They through out five or seven people for us three. Difficult to be equanimous. Difficult not to gasp. C'etait infernal... Then in the train... you couldn't step - people EVERYWHERE, literally. We had to find out places and convince people that we had right to occupy them (actually not a problem - the policemen were outside shouting on people through the window and nobody protested, they just had this crazy inner wave of anger towards us...). We tried to sleep on our benches surrounded by faces (close to me there were 4 women sitting on the floor, and some more in my feet). In the middle of the night more policemen came and there was a fight and they were throwing people out again and then nicely asking us if we were ok, if our luggage was safe. Sad... specially when you understand that it's all about money - the ticket I bought was 80 rupees, 1,5 euros and it gave me right to be treated as a human being. Sad, again and again. Well, let everybody be peaceful and happy, policemen included! At the end it turned out to be less drama than I thought and we even had sandwiches and tango music for breakfast!

So we arrived in Lumbini, for that had to go through 101 small things - rikshaws, immigration service, busses, dust, people, traffic, long walk with bags, screaming monkeys. Crazy day! Oh, Lumbini... Buddha was born here. There are tens of monasteries around, have never seen that before, it's a big supermarket! The town turned out to be a one-street village, like in a spaghetti-westerns. Pretty clean and with nice people... Everything much more expensive than expected, but I supposed it's due to the wave of tourists coming from India to spend their obligatory gap of two months outside the country. Locals are spoiled by the amount of money floating here as well (Lumbini is a UNESCO-heritage place, but everything is done in a real wannagenna style, roads go out of the plan, money disappears etc)

Right now in the vipassana center, on a short 3 days self-retreat - after the previous course ended they nicely let us stay, providing food and shelter. I am supposed to meditate, but now it's 21.34, there's no light, and if I sit and concentrate on my sensations, I immediately fall asleep, so I decided to write all this instead. See you  soon!

Be Happy and don't forget to chew!

(oh, the lights are on again, I'll try to do some vipassana...)

More of vipassana

It's been one week I am out of the center, and since then going up to Dharamkot every morning to meditate for one hour (they have open meditations for outside students). Can't concentrate, sitting there and thinking thinking thinking of anything from banoffee to a biggest hug :) How can you do it once out of this environment when they cook for you, when nobody talks when the only thing you have to do is to go from your residence to Dhamma Hall and back and talk to the monkeys on the way.
Would really love to go back for some days, but it's sooo old and humid up there while down here it's +25 on the terrasse and the banoffee has just been eaten :)


Listening to my first audio-book , it's David Deida, Enlightened Sex (read if you can find it if not ask me!), a super-talk about the feminine and masculine aspects of our life, about the onenness and about how to work on your relationships. Really a must! Have more 42 gigas of info to work at until Wednesday!


Sending you Metta

LOVE

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

VIPASSANA

So let me tell you about what I'm doing now, at 6500 km from Marseille, in the middle of a forest at the bottom of Himalaya...

It is my second vipassana cours. What is vipassana (for those who wonder if I'm at any sect or whatsoever:)? 

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Vipassanā (Pāli) or vipaśyanā (विपश्यना, Sanskrit, Tib. ལྷག་མཐོང་, lhaktong; Wyl. lhag mthong) in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the true nature of reality. A regular practitioner of Vipassana is known as a Vipassi (vipaśyin). Vipassana is one of the world's most ancient techniques of meditation, the inception of which is attributed to Gautama Buddha. It is a practice of self-transformation through self-observation and introspection to the extent that sitting with a steadfast mind becomes an active experience of change and impermanence. In English, vipassanā meditation is often referred to simply as "insight meditation".

In the Theravadin context, this entails insight into the three marks of existence. In Mahayanacontexts, it entails insight into what is variously described as sunyata, dharmata, the inseparability of appearance and emptiness, clarity and emptiness, or bliss and emptiness.^[1]

In a broader sense, vipassanā has often been used as one of two poles for the categorization of types of Buddhist meditation, the other being samatha (Pāli; Sanskrit: śamatha). Samatha is a focusing, pacifying and calming meditation, common to many traditions in the world, notably yoga. It is used as a preparation for vipassanā, pacifying the mind and strengthening the concentration in order to allow the work of insight. In Buddhist practice it is said that, while samatha can calm the mind, only insight can reveal how the mind was disturbed to start with, which leads to prajñā (Pāli: paññā, wisdom) and jñāna (Pāli: ñāṇa, knowledge) and thus understanding, preventing it from being disturbed again.

The term is also used to refer to the modern Buddhist vipassana movement (modeled afterTheravāda Buddhism meditation practices), which employs vipassanā and ānāpānameditation as its primary techniques and places emphasis on the teachings of theSatipaṭṭhāna Sutta. The primary initial object of investigation in that style of meditation is sensation and feeling (Skt: Vedanā).

So here it is my second cours. And I am serving, which means I'm taking care of those who are silent, meditators. We are four servers for 40 meditators (female area). Last time I did vipassana it was so absolutely different, I felt like being in a bubble, coping with lots of fears, pain, being frustrated and impatient. I have no idea if it is the fact that I am allowed to talk (Nobel Speech) and meditate less, or if I just became calmer and more balanced after this summer, but it seems to be rather easy to concentrate and I am not tired at all, even if we sleep much less here. Actually, I really think I got into Metta, the meditation of eternal love and acceptance, that we, servers, practice every day. I just feel how my anapata is open and how sometimes there are floats of energy from it. They say that you get a double effect when serving, cause we are taught to meditate with open eyes, to be concentrated both on the inside and outside, we are more alert and vigilant (if you heard Goenka-ji speaking you'd understand me:). And we don't have this impression to be cut off the world, which is also nice. 

Ok, I'll go and do some stretching, it's my turn to rest. 

Oh, by the way, the food is great here, just perfect, Indian, not too spicy, veggie, fresh made. Mmmm chapati, dhaal, halava

Ah, and as it is cold and humid here, everybody is sick  looks like Eskimos, with blankets on their head, wool socks etc, and me I'm going around in a pullover... seems to be Marseille sun that I'm still keeping in my blood.  Just got some herpes, which never happens to me. They promised to get some ayurvedic cream, great! So long putting on some toothpaste :)