Mountain meditation

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1-12 August

You are cordially invited to join me as I do my impression of a mountain hermit and travel to a remote Himalayan valley and meditate for 10 days. I participated in my 6th Vipassana course at a small center about 100 kms west of Leh. I thought 6 courses was getting rather obsessive until I met another American guy from Colorado who had sat in 12 courses and served on 9 courses, and he was only 28 or so! Needless to say, he was pretty calm and happy. The teacher was a retired bank official from down near Mumbai and somebody had told me he had taught 57 courses before this one.

In Spain I had heard of "gypsy camps" which are not full-fledged centers but operate on a temporary basis as the need arises. They sounded like they were a bit more free-wheeling and adventurous than the permanent centers, with a greater chance of more things to go wrong. Of course, I imediately wanted to try a gypsy camp and this gave me the perfect opportunity. Here in Ladakh there can't be a permanent center because it's just too damn cold for most of the year. This camp had no electricity and the only water was from a spring. All food was cooked with propane and the taped instructions were on a portable CD player run off batteries. What the camp lacked in amenities it made up for in nature, however. We were at the end of a narrow valley and the camp was in an apricot orchard with cows and a stream running all the time. I also saw some kiang (a wild ass) and Himalayan marmots. Two meditators on separate occasions saw a large wild cat on the edge of the property and each time they described the size of the cat they put their hand slightly above knee level. The only candidates would be a snow leopard or a Himalayan lynx; as sightings of snow leopards are impossibly rare I'm putting my money on the lynx. Also the little valley, with no electricity, was perfect for star-gazing. The meditation hall was about a 5-minute walk uphill from the camp and, as the day ended at 9:00 at night we came out of the meditation hall in the dark. As everybody practically ran back to the camp to go to bed I would wait for 10 minutes or so and have the whole place practically to myself, with the promise that I wouldn't go to bed until I saw at least one shooting star.

There were 40 meditators during the course - 20 men and 20 women. There were people from Canada, USA, Spain, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Latvia, India, Japan, New Zealand, France, and Austria; almost everybody was in their 20s and 30s. The only way to get out to the place was eithe a local bus or hitch-hiking, and the bus brought most everybody about 4-5 hours before the course started, so there was a good opportunity for everybody to talk for a good while, and the remote natural setting I think really helped to make everybody more relaxed and happy. It felt almost like a little festival before the course started and after the course ended when everybody cuold talk again it felt like a college reunion. Many people stayed a few days more in Leh and the festival atmosphere continued - but this time with electricity, better toilets, and coffee.

For me, there were no major revelations or experiences this time, but everything about the 10 days just felt very very calm and the 10 days went by quite quickly. Even though I've heard the same instructions and discourses 4 or 5 times now I still learn something each time. This course I picked up on the idea that the physical sensations of the body are in a constant state of flux, always changing, but the new thing was that the mind that is observing the constantly changing matter is also constantly changing and is never the same from one moment to the next. It took me while to get the hang of that idea and many times I just sat there repeating "new moment, new matter, new mind". All in all though (help) the journey into discovering (I'm) how the magical mysterious mind (being) really works continues to be (brainwashed) a fascinating process and it's really amazing what a strong and seemingly real illusion our brains produce and maintain nearly every single moment of our lives. What fascinating creatures we are!

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