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Published: February 17th 2007
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5-17 February
I decided that another 10-day Vipassana meditation course was necessary because I felt so calm and curious and intrigued after the first course and I could feel that this was diminishing as time went on, with drinking and smoking and not finding the time to sit for an hour in the morning and evening each day. I could also tell that it didn´t feel right and so it was time to get refocused.
This time, however, I decided to serve the course rather than just sit. This means that I would help cooking for 50-55 meditators and 12 other servers/teachersand see to it that they had everything they need so that they could meditate with as few distractions each day. So everyday if I managed my time right I could fit in 4-5 hours of meditation each day, cook breakfast and lunch for over 60 people, read, and practice Spanish with the other servers in the kitchen (although the meditators can´t speak for the duration of the 10-day course the servers can talk because of the logistics of getting everything done on time in the kitchen). It´s actually quite a good place to practice Spanish
So my daily routine for this course was:
4:30-5:30 Meditation
5:30-8:00 Cook breakfast and clean up kitchen and dining rooms
8:00-9:00 Meditation
9:00-1:00 Cook lunch and clean up kitchen and dining rooms
1:00-2:30 Rest
2:30-3:30 Meditation
3:30-6:00 Prepare food for the next day, put out light afternoon food and clean kitchen, etc.
6:00-7:00 Meditation
7:00-8:00 Meditationlisten to discourse
8:00-9:00 Prepare food for next day and clean up kitchen
9:00-10:00 Short meditation and meeting with the teachers about the day and the next day
10:00-10:30 Bedtime
It was extremely hard work but I never really felt tired, and for me it was wonderful to be in a kitchen again and cook food all day long. And the food was really good - paella, couscous, salads, breads with lots and lots of olive oil, etc. This Vipassana center apparently has more desserts then any other center. I also met some fantastic people and now have contacts for staying with people from Barcelona to the south of Spain. My Spanish improved and I can now speak at about the level of a 2-year old with Turrets Syndrome.
And the process of just sitting there quietly, looking within and experiencing everything firsthand
just becomes more and more fascinating. All of our problems are sitting there, because we and only we create our own problems, not anyone else. And the more you sit there and observe all of these stupid horrible problems that you yourself created, the more you realize just how monumental the task is to correct these problems, but you also realize that it is possible and that you are the only one who is truly capable of correcting them.
On a more practical level, my body hurts so much less than during the first course. Whether this is a result of more meditation practice between my first course and this second one or whether it´s that I´m sitting for only half the time each day, I don´t know. But take it from me, it is so much easier to relax and concentrate when your body is not screaming in pain. I am finally starting to understand how meditation can be peaceful.
It is very hard to relate in words what I experience by observing changes in my body, and I feel the best I can do is relate some of the more obvious sensations. This course I became aware of Buddha´s famous declaration that ¨The entire universe is nothing but vibration and combustion¨. At times I would sit there just intensely aware of my body constantly, incessantly vibrating at various levels of subtlety. This then leads eventually to the direct realization that we and everything else in the world is impermanent, constantly vibrating and changing from moment to moment, and once we finally and completely understand this impermanence we are free. For we delude ourselves into thinking that we are permanent and we attach such a terrific ego to this delusion that we think everything in the world revolves arounsd each of us. As soon as we truly understand through direct experience that we are impermanent there is no hiding place for ego anymore, and all delusion created through ego is gone, and we´re free.
One other vibration experience was listening to some chanting at the end of one session and becoming aware of the sound vibrations hitting my body and penetrating ever so slightly deep into my core. It was so sublimely peaceful to hear this deep chanting of the words of the Buddha in Pali, the language of the Buddha, and then feel all of this wisdom directly penetrating into my body. Nothing lasts forever, though, and I´ve never felt those vibrations again since then.
The meditaton center itself sits on maybe 10-15 acres of land on top of a hill, overlooking the mountains of Parque Natural de Montseny. It consists of a large and small meditation hall, male and female dormitories, facilities for volunteer staff and teachers, and a kitchen. The kitchen is really quite small for having 6-7 people in it cooking for 60 people but it is well organized and somehow it all gets done.
After my intitial course in Kathmandu I wrote about how the entire organization is run on donations and volunteers. I found it very niteresting that this particular center was originally a yoga center that charged money but wasn´t successful, and now as a free Vipassana center it is full every course with about 110 people a month here and is thriving.
Because of all I learned during this course it was easy to decide to stay on for another course and work in the kitchen again. But first it was necessary to make the most of a few days off between courses.
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