Sunday, February 4, 2018

Vipassana - 1st October to 12th October, 2017

Vipassana - 1st October to 12th October, 2017

I first heard of Vipassana when the film actress Amala spoke about a course she attended where everyone maintained silence for 10 days. For some reason, the idea appealed to me. After that, I came across information about the course off and on but I just did not seem to find the most convenient time for a course.

2016 November had seemed like a good time to plan to attend the 12 day session in Dharamkot near Dharamshala, and I was very pleased when my application got approved. I had chosen to attend the course at Dharamkot as I was eager to be able to spend 12 days in the mountains, and the weather in October/November would hopefully not be too cold for me. The form for application for a session is normally enabled only for a couple of days before the centres get the allowed number of applicants, so being able to apply and actually getting a confirmation is quite a feat. However, the ITC Retirement Programme was scheduled around the same time, and as that was not going to be offered to us every year, Ravi and I chose to go to Agra, and I cancelled my confirmation. This year, I sent in my application on 31st August, while in the Calcutta Airport, before boarding a flight for Paris. Not having been able to attend the programme last year, I was really thrilled when I received the mail from the Centre at Dharamkot, confirming my attendance from October 1st to October 12th.  The advantage of Dharamkot as a location was that I would also get to spend time with the family in Delhi.

I left for Delhi on 30th September which was Vijaya Dashami day. It really felt very strange leaving Shashank, Kanishk and Supriya behind in Cal with Ravi. I went straight to Usha’s place, and then in the evening, took the bus from ISBT to Dharamshala.  At the bus stop, I got chatting with a young woman, Vaishali, and it turned out that she was also going to Dharamkot for the same Vipassana programme.

On 1st morning,  both of us got into a cab that took us up to Dharamkot, right up to the gate of the Centre, charging us 200/- each. The time was only 6.30 am and we were obviously the first two participants entering the place. An elderly caretaker showed us to the ladies’ section of the center, and asked to freshen up in any of the rooms there.

              

     Entrance                                      Office                                        Registration


He said our rooms would be allotted to us only after the office opened at 9, and breakfast would be available from 8 a.m. in the dining hall.  Lunch would be served around 12.30.


The Dining hall was two floors above the office, and the A wing of the rooms was another floor above. It really felt like it was very far away when we lugged our suitcase up the stairs to the rooms.  The room was a very tiny one, with a folding bed with nylon tape, and a thin mattress. There were two blankets folded up neatly but no cover for the mattress or the pillow. We were told that these would be given to us after registration, when the rooms were allotted. The room I used looked damp but it at least had an attached toilet, albeit very tiny. I just decided to suspend all judgement till I was allotted what would be my accommodation for the next 10 days.

I spent a major part of the morning sitting in a tiny café outside the Center, having lots of black tea and watching the tourists – as it was the start of a long weekend, there were lots of backpackers and carloads of tourists heading for Triund, the peak which was visible from Dharamkot.

The participants started trickling in post lunch, and registration forms were filled. We were assigned individual laundry bags and lockers to keep away our phones, all writing and reading material and anything else that could possibly distract us from the meditation practice. I had a choice of either sharing a room with another meditator and having an attached bath, or a single room with the common bathing area. Since I had seen the clean (except for cobwebs) toilets and bathrooms, I chose to have a single room.


Corridor with rooms oleftA


   

     A Block entrance                                      Corridor with rooms                                    Twin sharing room

I helped myself to an extra blanket from the common storage area in anticipation of it becoming colder, as it started drizzling during the evening.  The printed pillow cover and sheet was not something I would have ever chosen, and the mattress was torn in the edges but I decided to be calm and bear with it – one of the good points of being an observer rather an active participant, I guess.

                              

       Breakfast                                                                Lunch
  

          Meal schedule                                                                                               Dining Hall

Quite a few of the ladies were not first-timers and it was good talking to them and getting a peek into what was ahead for me. One of the first things we learnt was that the Silence period would be over on the 9th day of the programme so we could connect with family over the phone a day earlier than expected. 
           

         Noble silence                                                              Timetable

The ‘Mauni’ or Noble Silence was to start at 6 pm, after a dinner of very tasty khichdi, over which we made friends and had conversations that became louder and louder by the minute.  For this day only, the door separating the Men’s and Women’s section of the Dining Hall was open.

The Coordinator spoke to the gathering at 6, re-affirming the rules and regulations and answering a few queries. The conclusion of his talk signaled the start of the Meditation course. The group walked up to the Dhamma Hall (the meditation centre) where cushions were laid out on the carpeted floor, 6 rows and 6 columns deep for the ladies and similarly for the men, with a section of carpet dividing the groups. All the cushions faced a large screen, and two raised seats for the male and female teacher/guide.

We were all given a tag with a number on it, called in one by one by name, and told to locate the cushion with a number matching ours. All this was done in almost total silence, except for the names being whispered.  

The session started with an introduction given by Mr S N Goenka – this was a precursor for the days to come – all instructions to the group were pre-recorded, interspersed with some chanting by Shri Goenka  himself.  The instructions were in English first, and then repeated by him in Hindi. The male guide mostly just repeated the instructions at the end, sometimes all he had to say was ‘take rest, take rest, take rest’. 

The time from 7 pm to 8.30 was allotted to a discourse by Shri Goenka, and while the Hindi discourse was projected on the screen in the Hall, those wishing to listen to him in English were instructed to walk up to another meditation hall. One of the girls had suggested that I listen to his discourses in Hindi as they were better, but I decided to first try the English, as I was a bit concerned about my ability to fully understand the complicated terminology. 

After the discourse, which covered what we would be doing the next day and some clarifications about some of the practices, we all returned to the Dhamma Hall for another half hour of meditation before retiring to our rooms at 9 pm.

The pattern for the next few days was strictly according to the timetable. The three mandatory guided meditation sessions were held from 8 to 9 am, 2.30 to 3.30 pm and 6 to 7 pm in the Hall, and for the rest of the time, depending on the instructions, we were expected to meditate either in our rooms or in the Hall. Basically, 10.5 hours every day were allocated to meditation.

 I got used to waking up at 4, washing up and being at the Hall by 4.30 and sitting there till 6 when we went straight for breakfast.  I reserved the time after breakfast for cleaning the room and a bath, a short walk, and then sitting in what became a favourite place watching the trees and a few low peaks far in the distance.  The period post lunch, from 11.30 to 1 were the toughest for me – time weighed heavily on my hands, and with nothing to do except just sit, I was very soon bored out of my wits. I really feel I would have enjoyed the process more if I had something to do with my hands for just half an hour during this break. Quite likely it was expected that meditators would use this time to catch up on their sleep but since I slept by 9.30 and got a good 6.30 hours of sleep, I wasn’t able to sleep in the day time. Also, to leave the sunny open area and spend time in the small damp room was not encouraging at all. Very often the non-guided meditation sessions and the constant sitting in a darkened room became a bit too much for me, and I would get out of the Hall to take a walk or sit in the open. I saw quite a few of the participants doing the same thing. Since the silence was maintained anyway, I suppose we were not breaking any rules.



                   My favourite space

                Path to the Dhamma Centre


Through out the next few days, the monkeys really proved to be the best entertainment for us – they would arrive in gangs, making their way overhead, jumping from the trees onto the hard plastic sheets that were laid out as roofs to over the paths connecting the various buildings, and swinging down to the grassy areas to sun themselves. It was really funny to watch how they would walk right up to any lady sitting on the grass, even reaching out to touch her if she didn’t immediately move away.  That touch was enough to send the lady scuttling away, and was the signal for the rest of the gang to come and settle down. The grooming session was really a sight to see, and it was made more hilarious by the fact that this break is when most of the participants could be seen grooming themselves.



The Meditation practice:
On the first day, we were instructed to concentrate on the breath moving in and out of our nostrils, without in any way actively changing the pattern, but observing the process. The mind would tend to wander all over the place and we were instructed to try and bring the focus back to the breath, without feeling any irritation about not being able to control our minds. The focus for the next three days was basically on watching the breath, first at the nostrils, then up the nasal path, and finally only at the space between the upper lip and the nostrils. It was all about learning to observe rather than being a participant by focusing on a tiny part of our body.   On the fourth day, the actual Vipassana process was taught – this involved focusing our mind on every part of the body one by one, starting with the fontanel at the top of the head and ending at the toes, and then repeating the process in reverse order.

By the sixth day, when we had learnt to move our focus from part to part, we were advised to allow the flow of thought to cover more than one part, watching the sensations at each spot. and then finally the whole body at a time. The process then became to allow the ‘dhara pravaah’ to travel up and down the body once or twice, and then to focus on each part of the body and then to repeat the entire process – basically alternating between the full body and individual parts. It was a very powerful experience and I could really feel the warmth spreading from the top of my head to my toes. 

On the final day, we were taught the process of Mitta – spreading goodwill and wishing the benefits of our meditation to be spread to our family and friends and humanity at large.  Unlike Vipassana where we internalize all our feelings, this involved imagining all the goodwill spreading outwards from us.


Vipassana as a practice/concept:

The idea was that every sensation in our body was a physical depiction of our experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant.  The pleasant sensations kept us rooted to this world, thanks to the desire to feel more such pleasures.  Similarly the disgust for unpleasant thoughts or feelings prevented us from rising above the unpleasantness in our lives, thereby slowing our steps to Moksha or Nirvana.

The word that was constantly repeated as the perfect feeling to have was equanimity – this would help us to watch pleasant and unpleasant sensations in a balanced manner, not reacting to either type of sensation. Each time we allowed ourselves to watch a sensation without reacting to it, it tended to go away from our body along with the feelings behind the experience.

This would help us understand that every thing in this world is impermanent (Anicca – Pali word), and passes away, with or without any intervention from us. The human body, like everything in nature, is made of tiny atoms and there is constant breaking down and reconstruction at the cellular level, leading to this impermanence.

To quote from http://www.vridhamma.org/The-Experience-of-Impermanence-through-Vipassana - The great Vipassana meditation teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin, wrote: "Impermanence (anicca) is, of course, the essential fact which must be first experienced and understood by practice." Anicca is a gateway, an opening. The complexity and multiplicity of the phenomena of the world can appear like a thicket, but as a person walks the path of Vipassana meditation, suddenly there is an emergence from the tangle. Anicca is the clearing. U Ba Khin wrote: "Anicca is the first essential factor-for progress in Vipassana meditation, a student must keep knowing anicca as continuously as possible." The pali word anicca is translated into English as impermanence or change. But anicca is not merely a concept. Far more, it is a sign, a marker like the stone cairns a pilgrim encounters on one of those cloud-hugging paths in the Himalayas, signposts to indicate the trail that other true pilgrims have blazed. Anicca is a word-indicator that points to a fact of reality beyond any concept: the ceaseless transformation of all material in the universe. Nothing is solid, permanent, and immutable. Every "thing" is really an "event." Even a stone is a form of river, and a mountain is only a slow wave. The Buddha said, sabbe sankhara anicca-the entire universe is fluid. For the practitioner of Vipassana, anicca is a direct experience of the nature of one's own mind and body, a plunge into universal reality directly within oneself. "Just a look into oneself", U Ba Khin wrote, "and there it is-anicca."

Afterwards :

By the afternoon of day 9,  after Mitta, the period of Noble Silence ended, though the two Meditation sessions would continue, and silence was to be maintained in and around the Meditation Hall. Along with being able to talk to each other, we were also permitted to access our phones and other belongings. It was wonderful to be able to talk to the family again, and to actually be able to read.

There was a lot of chatting and lunch was a very noisy affair – actually too noisy after the long silence.  The chatting carried on late into the night. The next morning, some of us helped to clean up the Meditation Hall, and the store rooms, and prepare the place for the next Vipassana programme. It was very relaxing to be actually doing some strenuous physical work. We then packed up and left the rooms, which had been our home for 10 days. This was followed by a walk down to Mcleodganj, and a noisy lunch with 8 friends. A Whatsapp group was quickly formed, and photos shared. While the group then split up to go shopping, I picked up some tiny gifts for the family and then headed back to the Centre.




 I had a  wonderful hour of meditation at the Tushita meditation centre next door, and then went down to a café called Morgan’s Place which turned out to actually be Murugan’s place (!) to read in peace. The feeling of having achieved something really difficult stayed with me as I watched the Triund peak in the distance.


                    Morgan’s Place

                    Triund from Morgan’s place

Vaishali turned out to be my co-passenger on my return too. The bus ride back to Delhi was uneventful for the most part till we then got stuck in a traffic jam near Ashoka Univ, Sonepat, for almost 2 hours. It was wonderful reaching Usha’s place finally.

I do not have a specific time for meditation but I feel wonderful when I do manage to spend a few minutes in silence. Vipassana, instead of becoming a distinct activity, seems to have become a part of me, and that, I think, is exactly how it should be.

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