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Published: March 23rd 2010
Well hello everyone!
It has been a rather long absence, I know... I have been doing a number of absolutely amazing things which I will catch you all up on right now!
I spent a nice weekend in Fort Cochin at the beginning of March seeing lovely fishing villages and saying goodbye to Sarah and Lucy who I am missing very much! We had a great time, although on the last night I spent there before heading up to Mumbai I was alone as the girls had to go back to Tiruvalla. Some strange men started knocking on my door for about an hour at like 11 at night and I was so afraid because they started rattling the door handle and tried to get in so I started screaming at them to get away and slept the rest of the night with my little swiss army knife next to my head... so in the morning I went out and the guy at the front desk starts freaking out, apparently Sarah hadn't made it back to the apartment (her and Lucy had left separately) and Lucy was trying to call the hotel to get a hold of me to find out what the deal was and all the knocking was just the guys from the front desk! They said they were terrified I was going to jump out and stab them (which I probably would have!) but that they were glad I was so tough so I could take care of myself! IT turned out that Sarah had gotten on the wrong train, and she eventually made it back ok...
I arrived in Igatpuri after 30 hours on a train, dirty, smelly, and with pee on my right foot due to an unfortunate incident involving the train going around a sharp corner while I was using the toilet... I had a brief stopover in the Mumbai train station and everyone was so NICE! This man cleared out a whole line of people so I could buy a ticket and another woman in the washroom blocked a lady who was trying to cut in front of me. Getting to Igatpuri was slightly stressful as I broke two of the main rules of solo female travel:
Rule 1: Don't take food from strangers on the train. There have been a bunch of incidents of people getting drugged and robbed on the train so this one makes sense, but when a group of about 10 Hindu ladies on a pilgrimmage start pulling out paper plates and piling them with delicious homemade food from containers in their handbags and then offer some to you, I think an exception can be made! They kept grinning at me and pinching my cheeks and even though we didn't speak the same language I had a really special experience just smiling and laughing with these ladies. Not to mention that the food was some of the best I've ever had!
Rule 2: Don't arrive anywhere after dark. This one was totally my fault, I was so eager to just get to where I did my vipassana meditation that I ended up getting there at like 10 at night. This nice older man was sitting across from me and after questioning me extensively about my plans and learning that I didn't know where I was staying or the address of the ashram told me very sadly and seriously "I don't think you planned this very well...", and made me promise him that I would find the station manager once I got there and have him take me somewhere to stay. So I did, and the station manager sent me off with a security guard who walked me down the street to a perfectly tidy and clean guest house (and Mom, before you freak out about me going off into the night with strange Indian men, the guy was like 60 and the approximate size and weight of my backpack, so GOOD LUCK trying to overpower me!).
I was in Igatpuri to do a 10-day, silent meditation called vipassana. It was originally taught by Buddha and basically teaches about non-attachment as a way to peace and harmony in your life. For 10 days you sit for about 10 hours a day in meditation, observing only sensations on your body and my experience went something like this:
For the first 3 days you are trying to only be aware of respiration - not changing it or trying to control it in any way, just observing it as it is (as this is the reality of that moment). But your mind and body don't want you to do that - they don't want to sit quietly. So they start throwing up all KINDS of things to distract you - aches, pains, pleasant memories and awful memories, fears and anxieties about the future, things you're looking forward to, things you need to worry about, etc... it's absolutely unbelievable the things your mind dredges up when you are trying to be quiet. On the third day something particularly painful came up and I almost started crying - one woman actually did break down and all I could think was "I feel EXACTLY the same way".
On the fourth day you start observing sensations all around your body, from head to foot. This was a tiny bit easier for me to focus on, but not much. Your legs and back hurt so much that it's hard to get around the pain to feel the subtle sensations and basically the whole time I was plotting how to push my friend Tessa (who told me about vipassana) into the Ganges when I see her next month... (but Tessa if you're reading this I love you so much and am so glad you told me about it!)
The point of the meditation technique is to teach that sensations are impermanent; they rise and pass, come and go, and like physical sensations, mental sensations do too. The key is to overcome the natural instinct to REACT to what is happening, be it pleasant or painful, and understand only that all sensations have the same quality of impermanence. Initially I was quite resistant to this idea; sure I want painful sensations to be impermanent, but not pleasant ones! I want to keep happiness in my life!
I had expected the experience to be really peaceful and quiet, a bunch of white-robed figures gliding around the campus smiling beatifically at each other, then laying about the meditation hall and going on wonderfully vivid guided meditations to new plains of spirituality (I don't know where I got all this from; the website is quite clear about how serious and hard the work is!). Forget all that; most people are trudging around the campus with looks of agony on their faces, due either to serious muscle pain or awful memories that have resurfaced - I know I was. It was, without a word of exaggeration, the most difficult experience I have ever had, both emotionally and physically.
But on the 8th day something new happened - I was having a lot of trouble with one big question on my mind and it was proving to be a big mental block to sitting there quietly. As my mind obsessed over this one thing, tears started rolling down my face - my body hurt, my head hurt, I couldn't get my mind to focus, and I had a really difficult question on my mind that I couldn't seem to find an answer to. All of a sudden, the answer came to me and I felt like a huge amount of weight was lifted off of me and I could suddenly focus. I had a really intense experience of vibrations running all over my body and was able to sit without moving for over an hour, which I hadn't up until that point.
It was amazing, and really peaceful. I finally understood that yes, sensations come and go and so do experiences and whether they are good or bad, they do not all last forever and I will be ok in the end. Understanding that pleasure comes and goes doesn't mean you can't have happiness - true happiness comes from knowing that life and nature will continue to move forward no matter what and by not reacting we are able to stop tying knots of anxiety in our minds - we spend so much time running away from pain and running towards pleasure that we spend too little time just being in the present moment.
I don't think I've explained this very well at all so here is the website for the organization: www.dhamma.org if anyone wants to learn more. All I know is that I have a tremendously good new way of looking at life and the course it takes and I feel much better about everything now! I would absolutley highly recommend the experience to everyone! They have meditation centres all over the world.
I am going to wrap this up now because everyone is probably quite bored! I'm in Mumbai right now and am going to be in a Bollywood TV commercial this afternoon hahahah!!
OK Much love from the motherland to all of you, I wish everyone the most happiness and love and harmony!! Namaste!!
xoxoxo
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Thomas Nietmann
non-member comment
Meditations
Hi shannon; as usual you have written eloquently and beautifully. I always enjoy your posts, this one more than most. I have been on retreats myself and the things that can occur are amazing and sometimes painful. I really look forward to talking to you when you return. Please keep up the great writing!