Meditation

3-14-2007
I'm sitting in my room in Pokhara Nepal trying to figure out what to say about the last 2 weeks, I think pages could be written without my experience and what I've learned, instead how bout I try to sum in up in a paragraph in my concise hit the main points way? OK, so I spent 10 days in a Vipassana meditation course in Kathmandu, 9 days I didn't speak or make eye contact with the other 70 participants (half men half women, 15 westerners the rest Nepalis). The day started at 4am and ended at 9:30 with over 10 hours of sitting meditation broken by eating and rest periods. Difficult? Yes. Valuable? Yes. What did I learn? Simply the nature of all the problems in my life, but not in an abstract philosophical way but in a very real this is true for me because I can observe it kind of way. First and foremost this technique is not associated with any organized religion, it is the way the Buddha became enlightened but does not promote or disallow any other beliefs. The basic idea is this, 1-Don't Sin 2- Do Good Things 3- Examine Yourself. And in examining myself what did I learn? That my unhappiness is self imposed by either being attached to impermanent pleasant things or having aversion to the same impermanent unpleasant ones. Unwanted things happen in life and wanted things do not happen but by not understanding this reality of life I expect the opposite, I want things to go my way and when they don't I create suffering where it didn't exist before. I hope this is clear. This basic idea is something I believed to be true before but through sitting with eyes closed and using the tools of breath and sensation coupled with observation I came to understand this reality is a much more clear way. If your interested check more about Vipassana at www.dhamma.org