a little bit about vipassana (slightly revised for phish-head types)

i’m counting down the days until my week in montreal, and funnily enough, one of the things i’m most looking forward to is sleep. sleeping all day if i want!! in fact, i think i will one day, even if i miss out on some music…just because i can. i am not a morning person, and getting up at 5 or 6 am every morning for the past 2 months has really been wearing on me. i can’t wait for my little music vacation. it’s going to be tiring too, but so fun. but, for something completely different, i’ve also been thinking about taking another 10 days this summer (or fall) to do another vipassana retreat. i’ve been thinking about it for a while. i did my first retreat last october.
i know you all don’t have too much of an idea what i got up to while i was away last year, (i’m not good like that). i checked in here and there to say i was having a blast. but there was more to the trip than that, more to why i went in the first place. i took off for a year to be amazed and humbled by the extremes of asia (which i was), but also to work on some stuff in my life…or so i hoped. i was afraid to hope for too much in that area, but truly everything i learned exceeded the hopes and expectations i’d dared (but feared) to have.
anyway, by the time september rolled around, 7 months of travel had tired me out, and i still had india ahead of me. india is not a place i wanted to go to alone and tired. but i knew i had to continue on to india. it was the big draw card for me all along, the place i’d been dreaming of since what seemed like forever, and where i also hoped to take on my mind.
so i went, of course, and headed right to dharamsala, into the mountains. it is as much tibetan now as indian, really. i spent 2 months up in those monkey-filled mountains learning about my mind…well, starting to! most of this time was spent learning tibetan buddhist meditation, which started to show me the ins and outs of my mind - my consciousness. then, after hearing about it from many people, i tried vipassana meditation (which originated in india but was preserved in its purity in burma-myanmar for thousands of years), which taught me about my body consciousness. you don’t have to think about it in a cosmic way (unless you want to), it can just mean being aware of your mind and body. the benefits of all this are real and long-lasting, but it’s all about practice. obviously the practice is easier when you’re on a quiet mountaintop, than when you’re working/ socializing/ babysitting/ jambanding/ consuming/ living/etc. i found the stuff pretty powerful…so powerful in fact i had to stop for a time afterwards…it was intense. (i dug up too many sankaras!) and so, my practice has fallen off…which is why i need to recharge those batteries (lest the diabolical delusions come a-creeping) and why i’d like to do a retreat again soon, to build on what i started.
i don’t have a problem finding the time. it’s just 10 days, and i’m the kind of person who finds a way to do what i want, when i want. but for people with full-on jobs they want to keep, 10 days is a long time to take off…especially to sit motionless on your butt in near-darkness for 12 hrs a day, which sounds kinda nutty i know. first there’s the lost income and second, if you had that much time, wouldn’t you rather go on tour (well ok maybe not these days…hehe)… to thailand or somewhere fun instead? well, maybe…but actually, 10 days is not so much really, for something which is going to improve your life, mental health and the appreciation of everything you do from now on…forever.
but thaiiiiiiland! ahhh yes thailand. i know…no thinking, lying on the beach in the sun, maybe some snorkeling. getting away from your problems, your worries, your cares, people. getting away from…your mind? nope, you can never escape your mind. it is not going anywhere, it’s always, always gonna be with you.
what if you had the opportunity instead to take 10 days and look into your mind, get to know it, find how to live with it more peacefully, always? that would be worth a lot...to find out what makes you unhappy. (hint: it’s not other people. it’s you.)
this is something that requires actual physical experience and a strong will. but you can’t get far examining your consciousness when you are living your daily life, there are just too many distractions. this is why you have to remove all distractions. so that it’s 10 days of just you and your mind and body. that means no speaking, no reading or writing, no music, no eye contact, no luxuries, no intoxicants, no touching, no responding to stimulus (ie. no scratching itches!), basic food. just sitting, cross-legged, eyes closed, darkness, not moving. it sounds rough, but it's also refreshing and peaceful to drop out like that, and it's how you’ll start to get to know your mind...i mean stuff you didn't know before. it’s amazing. you see how you work. how you perceive things. what you stress about, obsess about, what you daydream about, what you worry about, what you plan, what you hope, what you fear, what you crave, what you hate. who you have been. you can observe it while not being caught up in it. not to mention it's just really awesome to see how vast and powerful your mind is!
generally i think i’m a pretty relaxed person. but, sometimes i have a quick temper. hehe who knew this? lol. ;) a few of you i’m sure. i don't get angry often, but when i do, i overreact.
so many times, i tried to control my temper. ‘i won’t let it happen again’. but it always happened again, because in that moment, the reaction came before i could stop it. and even when i spent a millisecond or six thinking ‘i am freaking out, i shouldn’t do this’ i went ahead and did it anyway! mind patterns are so, so hard to break. i couldn’t do it. i made myself miserable over things. delusional. the root of this problem for me was deep down, and the years and years of conditioned response to it made it impossible for me to dig it up just by force of will. my mind in its current state was not strong enough to overcome it. i still haven’t overcome it all, but now i know i have a tool that works.
vipassana teaches you to see things ‘how they really are’, instead of how your mind perceives them. and the basis for this is to examine your body…to take your awareness into your body completely. you get to know every inch of your body and be aware of it. with this awareness, you can clearly see how your body feels when certain emotions happen. you all know how it feels… when you’re angry, you get all hot and bothered, flushed, blood boiling. when nervous…palms sweating, shortness of breath, mouth dry, heart racing. happy…lump in your throat, butterflies in your stomach. the boys coming onstage…CHAOS! these are all things we all experience, but vipassana takes it further…deeper.
by the way i’m no expert on any of this…i just want to share with you all what i did, because it has been really valuable for me.
so anyway…if i can be completely aware of my bodily sensations at a very subtle level, and learn, through meditation, how to NOT react with attachment or aversion to the sensations, then, when anger arises, although mentally i may not be able to recognize it fast enough (or have enough control in that moment) to stop my reaction, my body immediately recognizes what is happening. and by having trained my body not to react, to remain balanced and calm, i can stop that outburst before it happens. the body and mind connect. i can let the anger pass away.
i’m still working on it of course. it takes a while. but the change is there…even if it means i don’t react just 1 time out of 10, that’s something to build on. which is good.
so enough about anger…what about happiness? happiness means getting what we want… surrounding ourselves with things and circumstances that please us, feeling comfortable, finding the ‘right’ person for us, external things falling into place, making sure our world is pleasing to us. of course when we don’t ‘get what we want’, we get unhappy. we like people when they act the way we want them to act, when they make us feel the way we want them to make us feel, when they do things we like. we don’t like people who do things we don’t like, who make us feel things we don’t like. and so we let external things dictate whether we’re happy or not.
one analogy i love about this…i can’t remember the exact phrasing …from a book i read by sharon salzberg…
it’s like putting a spoonful of salt into a glass of water. we are a glass of pure water, and the salt makes us unhappy (salty! hehe). we try to stop salt (things we don’t want to happen) from coming into our lives. we fear salt. we worry about salt, a lot. we do anything we can to protect ourselves from salt. but the salt is the thing we absolutely can’t change. there will always be salt coming along, it’s useless to try and stop it. but what if you put that same spoonful of salt into a huge lake? the salt doesn’t affect the water much at all. so the idea is not to rid our lives of salt, but to create in ourselves a vessel so spacious and boundless, that the salt will not affect us so much. then we can accept the salt, and no negative event can cause a particular reaction in us.
she says it a lot better though…hehe. but if you want to relate more personally to the story, just sub in “character zero set closer” wherever the word “salt” appears. ;) it works!
the reverse is also true, may be more true…i know it is for me…when i have something i love, i hold onto it for dear life! i turn into tommy boy with his little pet sale…hehe. having unhealthy attachments to things, situations, people, bands ;) which i can’t possibly keep for all time has probably been the single greatest cause of whatever unhappiness i’ve experienced in my life…that inability to ‘let go’. it’s like a sweet reba jam that you don’t want to end, ever! or you know that feeling sometimes near the end of the second set where you’re having such a great time but you start to feel upset because you know the set is going to end soon and you don’t want it to stop? attachment is probably the toughest thing to overcome…for those of us who have had relatively fortunate, blessed, happy lives. a hard thing to do…enjoy it all now, love it fully, but be ready to let it go, cause it will! (even phish...although i wasn’t around last summer and i was busy in paradise, i still can understand how you all felt. when the breakup happened, i didn’t feel anything, but only because i lost my phish 5 years ago…already went down that rough road. i suppose in a way i was lucky in that, at my last show, i had no clue it was going to be my last show. that must have been hard, not only the set coming to an end, but knowing it was the last set you’ll ever see coming to an end. yikes. Anyway, it took years for me to get over my attachment to phish. how about you? ;) i guess we’ll see)
another image which has remained in my mind (and also would be much better to read the actual story, hehe) is from the book ‘siddartha’- the image of the river. we think of a river as something permanent, in a way, but actually it is changing in every moment. the water you see in that river is gone in a second, replaced by more, different, water. it’s a continual flow. and life and every moment of our lives is always changing, arising and passing away. WE are always changing, in every moment! becoming aware of that, experientially, is actually pretty cool.
similarly…“we may think of the light of a candle as something constant, but if we look closely, we see that it is really a flame arising from a wick which burns for a moment, to be replaced at once by a new flame, moment after moment…there is no real “being”, merely an ongoing flow, a continuous process of becoming…each of us is in fact a stream of constantly changing subatomic particles, along with which the processes of consciousness, perception, sensation, reaction change even more rapidly than the physical process.” - s.n. goenka
or, tweezer. of course there is something real that is tweezer. we can define it with a name…but at every moment it’s always different and changing… it’s all a process, it’s always ‘becoming’.
this is getting long eh? hehe. well anyway, like i said, i’m no expert, just a beginner, but that’s what’s great about vipassana really, anyone can benefit from it, and you notice the benefits right away. just being more aware of yourself and objective about change, is huge. so, if you are interested in this, try it out! i think it’s pretty cool. link below.
by the way, vipassana is not a religious practice. the buddha taught it, but it is not a religion or part of one. anyone can do it. it’s completely practical and anyone who is willing can do it. once you do the course, you can take it with you anywhere, do it anytime, as much or as little as you need. but you will always have a tool, which will help you break those patterns in your mind. even if your life is pretty good, there are always little things…wanting to be less stressed, less dissatisfied with work, less sensitive, less jealous, etc. which aren’t so little at all really!
(it’s also free. as in no money. past students who have benefited from the teaching donate money to run the centres, so that people can try it for free.)

thanks for reading :)

Links:
info about vipassana meditation as taught by s. n. goenka

And some links to other interesting places I happened upon…
i met this monk in dharamsala, who escaped from tibet after being held as a political prisoner and tortured, as many were and still are. he runs an organization called gu chu sum, which helps tibetan refugees in this situation by giving them support, a place to live, job/skills training, etc) (kinda interesting side note - he spoke about how when refugees came to india, countries in the western world volunteered help with counseling to help them recover from the torture. but the tibetans did not respond at all to western psychiatry. the doctors tried to help them work through feelings of hate, guilt, shame, despair…but the tibetans did not have these symptoms which we in the west would associate/encounter with torture. because of their view of karma, they accepted what happened as karma and did not hate their torturers, but could even feel compassion for them. i’m not trying to say that the tibetans do not suffer or have scars…they just have a different perspective. and karma is too huge for me to even begin to try to discuss...) i just wanted to add about this so that you can visit the website if you want, it’s a really good organization.
tibetan children’s village is for children who have left tibet but lost their parents or their parents had to go back. if you are interested in things tibetan, it was a neat place to visit.
i stayed at tushita meditation centre for nearly 2 months and did meditation and retreats. i learned so much here!
an amazing, hilarious and crazy nun i took a course with at tushita started the liberation prison project which teaches meditation to prisoners (the scary ones).
for those more scientifically-minded, the dalai lama does a yearly conference with top scientists of the world, to discuss the mind and life , how meditation affects the brain and body, etc. it’s really interesting stuff.

Lady Justice

Whenever my dad asked me what I wanted for a law school graduation present I told him I wanted a purple leather briefcase or a life-sized Lady Justice statue.

In case you don’t already know, Lady Justice is fucking awesome. She stands on a rock while thinking about justice. Her right foot supports her while her left foot smashes a snake on top of a book about justice. Her right hand holds a sword to show the true power of judicial authority, but also so she can stab people and snakes that try to obstruct justice. In her left hand are the scales of justice used for balancing and weighing pros and cons, rights and wrongs, sometimes one wrong against another wrong, and even punishment against a wrong. Most importantly, Lady Justice is blindfolded to show that justice is not subject to influence. So if you ever try to bribe Lady Justice, you’ll have to whisper in her ear and wave the money under her nose because she certainly won’t see you winking while pointing to the satchel of cash. She is draped in robes and cloth and sometimes has a fancy decorative breast plate taboot. She’s like a superhero... of justice.

Lady Justice is known primarily as ancient Greek goddess Themis, but some of her current features also come from Themis’s daughter Dike, and also the Roman goddess Justicia. Themis was a badass, of course, and was said to have been the "organizer of assemblies". She appears in the book Homer three times, each time to restore some "order or control over gatherings." Dike was actually not a goddess of justice, but not divine justice, and instead of a sword she held a staff. She was in charge of apportionment of things among mortals, protecting individuals, and restoring social and political order. Her features included thunderbolts since she was daughter of Themis and Zeus. Therefore, if you asked Dike "Who’s your daddy?", she would have to answer "Zeus", just like basically every other god or goddess in existence at the time. Last of all, the Roman goddess Justicia was a virgin forced to live among the sinning mortals until it became too much for her and she had to take flight and became the constellation Virgo. Our modern Western court houses and law offices hosting Lady Justice statues are depicting Justicia with her sword and the scales of justice, stepping on the snake and subsequently smashing its neck into a book, standing on one foot, wrapped in a bunch of cloth, all while blindfolded. Told you she’s fucking awesome.

Anyway. When my dad asked me what I wanted for 2324=468=836=XROQDF>2323873;:773:ot1lsi">graduation, I told him I didn’t want a briefcase even though I should probably have one for court and even though that’s what my Boppa bought him for his law school graduation. It would probably hurt my shoulder regardless of whether it was a handle or a strap. I need to be balanced which is why I like my backpack – even though I do look like such a student, especially when I have the waist strap buckled, or when I knock someone over by turning too quickly on the bus. I knew I should have something more grown up and it had to be something that can hold my laptop. So my dad commissioned Henry Tomkins to make me the sickest laptop backpack ever. It’s both purple and professional, plus it holds my laptop and has great pockets.

So here she is, Lady Justice, the best gift I have ever gotten. Symbolizing fair and equal administration of the law, fair and equal distribution between the left shoulder and the right. Thank goddess I’m not blindfolded so I can see how purple it is.