10 Days: Part II

The concept made a lot of sense when I learned about Vipassana in 2003, but there wasn't any  need and the value of the knowledge was not appreciated. 

As Nitin  Kamble whom I met on the last day of the course said.. "Life main Jhatke lagte hai  tabhi log  aate hai  yahan"  is so true, the quest to  gain equanimity  and a realization of the bigger purpose of life  will  complete my  reason of going to Igatpuri. The  10 days were the toughest, I dragged my  feet..literally mostly  due to  numbness after long  period of meditation and partially  due the serious effect  that it started  showing from the third day. I would  go to  the teacher everyday after the daily discourse  and ask why  I am feeling  like this? ...and he would say very  calmly ..It means your are doing the meditation right.  Well, thats interesting  but  How do  I deal with  it? I kept  asking this question every  day  till  day  7 when I got the answer ... he said.. stay  with it and it will  die.. don't create a craving or  an aversion towards it. Realize that there is problem,  observe the sensation it produces with equanimity and its strength would decrease...the more you crave or  hate the  stronger it would become... and it happened. Its  strange the way mind and body  works. As the deeds of the recent past surfaced... as quilt, cravings, hatred, intense love and what  not... I felt like running away ..everyday. When I shared this with  my teacher. .he said ..this is how i felt in my first course! 

From 4AM to  10 PM  everyday .. I counted. I would complete my  first half with  great enthusiasm  but the second half the efforts of the first started showing up. I din't sleep  for 10 days.. yes  thats  true, but i would get up fresh in the morning.. astonishing  but very  true. When I asked the teacher.. he would say again..with a calm smile "it means you are doing good"..How? Well ...the entire day all your mind is doing is observing and not reacting ..only  the body tired, the mind is quite fresh... I bought the idea...If I wouldn't have ..I would have definitely gone mad by worrying about my sleeping disorder. Vipassana is deep  operation of mind and you learn that through your experience not through  lectures.It gets intense as the days progress and at the end of each day you get to learn about the causes behind your experience and the next steps. 

10  days.. i forgot about my  work? The last day a NSD actor asked me  what I do for living? It took a moment to  recall that I work In HCL as a Business Analyst. And I was surprised..I never thought about my  work in these 10 days. 

But then thats the way a vacation should be ... when you are actually  away from the daily  routine... cut off ...and with yourself. I realized. It was tough to face the facts of the mind and body...i.e. myself. But I felt so  good at the end. A sense of real happiness at the end. So much that it brought tears rolling  down the cheeks..and you  don't crave for it....when was the last time something similar happened.. I couldn't recall.  

So what kept me going for these  10 days. One, quitting the course midways would have been embarrassing  and wouldn't have made things better. Two, I felt really good after each meditation session. Even though the happiness was for  a short while. But there was this thought which caught my attention on day 3 and still roams in my  mind every now and then. The first words that came out of Buddha's mouth after he was enlightened were:

Seeking but not finding the housebuilder*, I have traveled through the round of countless births. How painful is birth over and over again. Oh housebuilder! You have now been caught! You shall not build a house again. Your rafters have been broken. Your ridgepole demolished.  The unconditioned consciousness has been attained. And every kind of craving has been destroyed.

*Housebuilder can be thought as God or Creator, house being the body.

The above sound so good in pali ...but keeping  that aside .. Can you imagine this guy's happiness?!