What am I talking about? Get caught up on Part One.
On day three, we finally learned the actual technique of Vipassana meditation and the real torture began. Vipassana is a body scan meditation. You start at the top of the head, move to the feet, and then go back up the body. My mind was ecstatic to finally have something to do, something else to focus on. After two days of just breathing any sort of stimulation felt like Disneyland.
A recording of S. N. Goenka guided us through each area of the body. We started at the head, just observing what we could feel. Then the face, the neck. I didn’t feel much of anything. But when I got to my left shoulder, I immediately felt an incredible amount of pain. The sensation was so intense I couldn’t believe what was happening and I didn’t understand how it could be. It felt like my shoulder was being dislocated. If I was sitting at home and this started happening I would have gone to the ER. And if they had asked me how bad my pain was on a scale of 1-10, I would have said a 10.
As someone who has broken a lot of bones and gotten a lot of stitches, I have first-hand experience with traumatic injuries. I have gone into shock after an accident and experienced the adrenaline rush after. The pain was so real, but my heart rate felt normal. I wasn’t sweating or shaking or hyperventilating like I should be when experiencing that level of physical discomfort.
We were not supposed to move at all for the entire hour of the Vipassana mediation. I tried to continue to scan the rest of my body, but couldn’t get away from the burning in my shoulder. Every minute I was fighting with myself to stay. I used a lot of positive self-talk to get through it. I kept telling myself over and over that I could do this.
I have dealt with chronic pain in my neck, back, and shoulders since I was very young. I went to specialist after specialist, and have tried all kinds of treatments and exercises. The more I learn and the more I try different remedies, the more convinced I am that the pain I experience is at least partially psychosomatic and stress related.
While I was meditating, I told myself over and over: you (the pain) don’t win this time. This time, I win. And then, when the hour was finally, finally over, the moment I opened my eyes and moved my body, the pain in my shoulder completely disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t know what to expect going into this experience, but it certainly wasn’t this.
The pain kept reappearing for the duration of the meditation course. Sometimes the pain would go down to a six or seven, but other times it would be back up to a nine or ten. After a few days, my shoulder started aching slightly when I wasn’t meditating. But the pain gave me something to focus on and actually helped me to get through all ten days. That’s how bored I was.
Sometimes the hour would go by so quickly that I was startled when it was over. Other times it passed so slowly that I thought they had to be fucking with us, they had changed the schedule and we were actually sitting there for much, much longer. In addition to the pain, I would experience a pleasant tingling sensation, sometimes all over my body. I would feel like I was floating or that my body was super heavy, that my hands were being pulled right through the floor by some warped gravity. It was startling to realize how powerful the mind is, and how much of my physical experience could be dictated completely by my mental experience.
As humans, we really are so adaptable. By day seven or so, things started to feel routine. Exercise was not allowed, but we could go for little walks on the paths around the property during the breaks. I would slowly pace along the trail in one direction, then the other. I would sit by the pond and watch the coi fish swimming in slow lazy circles, a reflection of my own confined movements.
At one point, someone started marking trite little “little laugh love” style phrases all over the dirt of the paths with a stick or on the benches with pine needles. A peace sign or the word “Smile.” I was so, so annoyed. I was irrationally angry, an indication of just how little I had to react to from the outside world. First of all, don’t tell me what to do. Second of all, we were explicitly told to not read or write, so why would you think it would be okay to mark up communal areas with your “positive affirmations”?
What surprised me the most was how physical my experience was, not mental. My thoughts flitted from one shallow topic to another. Sometimes songs I hadn’t heard in decades would float up in my mind, or snippets of movies. I didn’t have any major insights or breakthroughs, or any deep thoughts at all really. I didn’t come away with a direction or renewed sense of purpose. I didn’t get what I came for at all.
But what I learned, and have continued learning, is what I understand the teaching of Vipassina to be. Vipassana makes a big deal of distinguishing itself from religion. It is not affiliated with any religion, and they will tell you over and over that anyone of any religious or spiritual belief can come, learn, and benefit from practicing Vipassana-style meditation. This is all very true, but it is also true that in the videos, S. N. Goenka talks about Buddha every night, and the principles of this style of meditation are derived heavily from Buddhism.
I was unfortunately raised Christian, and as part of my recovery process, I wrote off any form of organized religion long ago. Despite this, I have continued to cultivate a passing interest in different religions over the years. I want to understand why people keep inventing god(s) to the point that they truly believe they are real, in a material sense. What human need does that serve? And when I first started learning about Buddhism I confused it with stoicism. I thought that the philosophy was to not react to anything, to repress all thoughts and feelings.
What I learned during my meditation course was to just observe. That the perfect meditation practice is actually reacting to everything, but reacting appropriately, and seeing things as they actually are. This can be and in the ideal world would be done every waking moment, not just when sitting in silence, because it simply means being aware,
So much of how we move through this world is based on past experiences. So much is conjecture. This makes sense, our brain developed to recognize and predict patterns so that we could avoid danger and comply with social standards to facilitate group cooperation. These things keep us safe. It is no wonder that we do it literally all the time. It is our mind’s job to keep us safe, not happy.
But when we take just one step away from all that we have already learned and been taught we can see the world with a fresh perspective. We can see things as they are, not as we would like them to be or think that they are. And when that happens, we can react accordingly to everything that we are actually experiencing. Not underreacting or overreacting, which is what most people normally will do, as a coping mechanism based on their past experiences.
The idea of Vipassana is that you first learn this through the framework of your own body, and then you take it out into your daily life. When I am sitting and meditating, I am scanning my body and just observing. If a sensation is painful or pleasant I am just observing, I am learning to not form an aversion to pain or an attachment to pleasure. Then, when I am out in my daily life, I am not trying to stop how I react to a situation, positive or negative. But I do try to remember to observe my own reaction to what is happening. Am I happy? Am I angry? Am I tired? I don’t try to figure out why, I just take the time to observe myself and the feelings I experience in my body, without forming an attachment or labeling the experience as “good” or “bad.”
The ultimate lesson of Vipassana is that everything is temporary. All physical sensations and states of mind come and go. Forming an attachment or aversion to anything doesn’t make sense. The idea of suffering coming into play is obvious when we experience mental or physical pain. But suffering also occurs when we form an attachment to something pleasant, because eventually it will go away. And when it inevitably does, we will suffer as a consequence.
According to this style of meditation, suffering is always a choice, regardless of what happens. Because things are going to continue to happen, things will always change. Once we accept this simple fact of life, we can fully celebrate the highs and mourn the lows of life. But when we allow these experiences to pass without forming attachments, we reduce our own suffering.
On the last day of the course, when we could talk again, I didn’t have much to say. All I could do was smile, and I wasn’t even all that sure as to why. Nothing in my life had changed, and I certainly didn’t know what I should do or even wanted to do next. I didn’t know if I was going to be happy or how to build a life for myself that I wanted. I didn’t know if I was even going to be okay, and I still don’t.
Here is what I learned. Financial stability is a fundamental aspect of being happy. But I had to learn the hard way that it is not the only aspect. Maybe not even the most important aspect. I am not my accomplishments or my career, the art that I make, or how much money I do or don’t have. I am not my relationships or the places I have been. I am not my hobbies. So who am I without all this external stuff?
Right now, I believe that I am how I treat myself, and by extension other people. I decided to try to learn to love myself, so that I may love and serve others. We are here to take care of each other and the planet. Everything else is a distraction.
Leave a Reply