10 days that shook my world

Frankly, I'm amazed at my own mind. As I sat on the cushion, hour after hour, day after day, I never failed to come up with bizarre, spontaneous, and sometimes even enlightening things to think about rather than calm my mind and just be in the stillness.

I'm a person with a mild addiction to music, my drug of choice for enhancing or steering the mood that I'm in or the one that I want to create. That's fine and dandy, until I'm resting on my gluteals on that little meditation cushion, in a dimly lit mediation hall on a converted farm in rural western Massachusetts, trying to just chill. Then, my own music comes back to haunt me. I'm sitting there, legs crossed, imagining myself to be looking as cool and serene as the Buddha, the ripples on my mental lake have finally settled, and I can smell the enlightenment cooking in just the next room. What happens next? Like someone put a quarter in the jukebox in a quiet central Pennsylvania roadhouse, the little arm of my tiny primate brain slides over, pulls one record from the many possible selections (curse my iPod, curse it for expanding my musical boundaries!) and drops it on the turntable. Next thing I know, clear as day, I'm nodding my head slightly to Fool in the Rain (Led Zeppelin classic), and wondering where my serenity went.

Throughout the 10 days, many songs came and went in my head. Perhaps the most frustrating ones are the ones that play over and over, or even worse just snippets of them on repeat. Some of Chris' Top Ten Neurotic Hits?

1) Fat Bottom Girls by Queen - hello?! where did that come from? I barely recognized it myself
2) Hard Candy by Counting Crows -not bad, wouldn't have minded it if not meditating
3) Guava Jelly by Bob Marley - classic, one of his original recordings, underproduced sound of just him and a guitar, great anytime you're hanging with friends in a chill setting, just not good for meditating in Massachusetts
4) Going Back to Georgia by Nancy Griffith w/the Counting Crows - another great one, good little ballad with harmonizing, boy I wished that would have gone away by day 5
5) Such Great Heights by the Postal Service - love that song! just not at 4:30 in the morning at the first mediation session
6) Here We Go - This is embarrassing, it's the unofficial/official rallying song for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Souvenir in my hippocampus from watching the Superbowl with 'Burgh friends in San Francisco. Thanks to Jeremy for stopping me from reaching nirvana...

Outside of the times that I wasn't too focused on wishing I was not in pain, or wishing that I had been deaf my whole life so I didn't have to hear the music, or trying to not go crazy, I think it was a wonderful experience to be there. 10 days of silence is very intense. It wasn't actually 10 days of silence for me. On day 2, I whispered to the teacher in answer to a question, "Sometimes." On Day 4, I said, "I think so, but sometimes my back hurts a lot." On Day 6 I said, "I'm feeling tingling sensations all over my body." Other than those moments I was totally silent. My roommate confirmed at the end of the course that I did not talk in my sleep.

10 days of silence is powerful. It really enables you to create a break in your life from all your ordinary routines, allowing you to make space for reflection and calm. Noble silence in the Vipassana meditation tradition means avoiding eye contact or physical contact with anyone else as well as vocal silence. You feel very much like you are on your own to cultivate a practice of inner work. There are past students of the technique there who help run the course so that you don't have to do much besides eat, sleep, brush your teeth, and meditate. They cook tasty vegetarian meals, set them out, do dishes after you, stock the bathrooms with necessities, and take care of any other material issues that arise. They do this because they feel that they got benefit from a Vipassana retreat for themselves, and want to facilitate that for others as well.

What did I discover? Hard to say in exact terms, but I ruminated on certain ideas again and again. I revisited the idea I've had before that I feel a strong need for security, and usually seek it by working to have other people like me and affirm me a lot. Out of this is growing a new dedication to work on develop a sense of security and meaning in my own self-worth - a path that I'm glad to be focusing on again. I had that moment where I realized that in general, I only really love myself, but I also had good moments where I felt like I could move beyond that at least temporarily and see a world greater than myself. I have taken home a good grounding in the recognition that everything in the world arises and passes away, and we can end so much suffering in our lives by remembering that and reacting less to the ups and downs of our lives. By reacting I mean aversion to unpleasant feelings and cravings for the pleasant ones, and the addiction cycles that begin with these aversions and cravings. I find it to be a powerful insight into the human condition, one which I had studied academically before but had yet to integrate into my life in a thoughtful way.

That's the basic rundown of my 10-day Vipassana experience. I highly recommend it, especially if you have at least a little bit of curiousity about self-examination through meditation. I can't say much more, except that in some ways, you had to be there. Oh, and I had the greatest roommate ever. Never kept me up at night, very accomodating, I hardly noticed he was there most of the time. Not very talkative, either, but seemed like a really nice guy.