Day 5: The Truth
Today, I saw a white stray in the campus and missed Maxx. He paused and looked at me as though sensing he knew that I was missing my boy. I was not sure if speaking to the stray counted as breaking my vow of silence. I resisted the urge to whisper to the stray. I wondered if Maxx missed me.
We were served only two meals a day. The puffed rice we ate at 5 pm with tea (and a slice of fruit on some days) kept the hunger at bay till breakfast the next day. Not eating the third meal of the day has not been challenging for me. In fact, I plan to continue with this new habit post the camp as well. Today though, I got greedy at breakfast. I went back for a second helping of upma and I felt stuffed to my gills at the post breakfast session.
To compensate for the over eating, I walked like a woman possessed at break times today
I noticed the assistant teacher (AT) switched off the aircon and the fans in the meditation hall a few times today. She seemed to enjoy watching us squirm on our cushions when it got really warm inside the hall. Then again, I realized that she was doing that to help us be equanimous to both the extremes in temperature. She was putting our learning to test.
Observe and not react was what we were told to follow religiously
I must confess. I experience little waves of sleep when I sit down to meditate. When my head jerks, is when I realize that I haven’t been alert while scanning my body for sensations. I start all over again.
Today we start the practice of ‘adiththana’, to stay still during the hour long meditation. It seems like something I will fail at since I have had to keep changing my seating position more than a few times every few minutes. Goenkaji says when you can keep still physically, it is possible to still the mind. Maybe that is the trick I need to practice if I want my mind to stay with me during the entire course of meditation?
My first attempt at adiththana was a miserable failure. I had severe spasms of my upper back. Try as I might I was unable to be equanimous to the pain. The back rest that the AT had generously given me to use seemed to make the pain worse. I decided to go back to my cushion on the floor for my second attempt at adiththana. I trained my mind to remember that any discomfort I felt was impermanent and would “rise and diminish” since the body and everything in it is constantly changing. I knew I shouldn’t cling to pleasant feelings nor have aversion to pain.
“ anichcha, anichcha, anichcha”
At the post lunch break, I saw the gardener meddling with her smart phone. There she was in the oasis of serenity, with only the chirping birds punctuating the air with their chirps and she was busy on her phone. I felt sorry for her. Or was I jealous? I missed the access to my phone just then.
I tried my old floor seat during the afternoon session, to check if my second attempt at adiththana would go better if I sat on the floor. And it did. I still changed my pose twice but I was able to ignore the painful upper back spasms and the random itches I felt throughout the body. It was possible to observe the gross chunks of sensations I felt in my body and manage it with my mind being detached to the body. I addressed my pain,” Yeah I know you are there. See you around when I come back to scan my back. Hopefully you will be gone by then” and sure after multiple scans, it was gone. The pain was impermanent.
The AT seemed a little displeased that I had moved back to the floor. She sent the sevika to chat me up about it who said she will have to remove the floor level wooden chair if I didn’t need it anymore. I smiled bravely at her and permitted her to remove the piece of awkward furniture not without giving her a piece of my new found gyaan -
“My pain turned out to be impermanent. Anichcha. This too shall pass”.
I outdid my first two attempts at adiththana at the third session today. Even though I had to cross and uncross my legs a few times to keep them from becoming numb, I stayed as still as a rock on the upper body and didn’t open my eyes till I heard Goenkaji say the three magical words “bhavatu sarva mangalam”
The evening discourse was hilarious and made me laugh till I was tearing up. Goenkaji seemed to know exactly what was running through our minds during the adiththana sessions. He knew that the hour passed very slowly during the adiththana. He knew we were alright for 30 minutes and somehow pushed ourselves to sit for 45 minutes and then gave up. He knew we had begun suspecting that the AT had forgotten the hour was done and she had missed switching on Goenkaji’s audio to signal the end of the hour. He knew our predicament and empathized with us. This Goenkaji is a talker. He was one of us tonight.
The more I hear him speak, the more I am intrigued by the man. I wanted to read up about Goenkaji.
Ah, if only I had access to my phone
Tonight I learnt that when I experience pleasant sensations in my body, it leads to clinging and when the sensations are unpleasant, then I feel aversion or hatred. If I can manage to look at the sensations in my body, even briefly, without clinging or aversion, I have taken the first step of not creating new “sankàràs” or memories of clinging and aversion from past experiences.
This is Dhamma, the law of nature, the truth. This is the path of liberation, of freedom.
