VIPASSANA LESSON 2 How To Meditate Like a Monk or Buddha
My Experience of being a Monk for 10-days at Vipassana Meditation Retreat:
This is my perception;
This is my truth;
Take what you can and leave everything else behind:
Imagine you are offered a beautiful pudding and it has a small fruit stone in it, that the chef missed, you don’t throw the whole delicious pudding away, you remove the stone and eat the rest of the amazing pudding....
Do the same with this perception of mine from the 10-Day Vipassana Meditation.
Peace & Harmony to you.
You may also find that some content might be seen as a spoiler, if you prefer to do Vipassana without any prior knowledge DO NOT read, otherwise again, from my perspective, I had some prior knowledge and I think that helped.
To Vipassana:
Wednesday 7th June 2017 I left home at 12.30 p.m. and drove the 2.5 hours across Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and into Herefordshire, all gorgeous and green and hilly, a beautiful drive and arrived at the Dhamma Dipa mediation centre at 3 p.m. and registered after reading the things I would be giving up, Phone, Contact with world for 10 days, meat, talking, physical contact, eye contact, body gestures, female contact and late stays in bed as would be up for 4 a.m. starts !!
I signed anyway, turned phone off, took off rings, put them and wallet and car keys in the safe, and moved into my cell, a room with a single rail with 5 coat hangers, a thin open to air shelfed cupboard, a single bed with mattress and a side table, the room was 8 foot by 6 foot-ish.
The two loo and two showers were down the hall of this wooden single story building and shared with 19 others.
I moved in, taking shoes off at the door and putting in the rack as per the signs instructions.
I had my own sheet and duvet cover and pillow case, a double set for a single bed. I put these on the bed and duvet and pillow. Placed alarm clock on the table, set for 4 a.m. and then unpacked and had a wonder around the enclosure, the perimeter had signed saying 'no Male Students Pass Here', so I could see my world had shrunk to a small area within the larger 11 acre site. You can see the centres through out the world at https://www.dhamma.org/
I was in room A3, the next scheduled event was 6 p.m. for a talk, 7 p.m. dinner and 8 p.m. course starts and then Noble Silence started, no physical contact, eye contact, gestures, no talking, act like you are a monk ! I had purchased Tia fisherman pants (think baggy) for sitting down and meditating, as found my jeans cut off blood supply, so I looked more fisherman than Monk ;-)
The 6 p.m. talk was read by the centre leader and told as useful stuff about the centre and then the divider went across, the males sat one side and female the other and that was the last real glimpse of females for the next 10 days.
The meal was vegetarian and so were all meals from then on, with dairy free too.
9:30 Bed and 4 a.m. the Gong went off, one of the 'old students ' [ means you already did one 10 day sitting ] volunteered to wake the whole 100 men up with the gong, he went from barn to barn, some were old stables and barns converted, I was in a new block 😉.
I actually woke up at 3:45 a.m. and felt great, the place had a chilled energy to it.
I showered and was ready for the 4.30 a.m. in the hall, and so my days repeated themselves over the next 10.
3.45 a.m. Wake up ( though I did wake up 3 times at 1.30 a.m. and stay alert until 3.45 a.m. ! )
4.00 Shower, Loo, and I gave up shaving for the 10 days
4.30 a.m. Meditation
6.30 a.m. Breakfast ( Porridge and fruit, toast and tea )
8.00 a.m. Meditation
11: a.m. Lunch time ( Rice, Vegetables, Soup all tasty and filling - and pudding some times – best was the Apple Crumble and custard ;-)) - I made the mistake of once filling up the stomach, you won't do that again, sitting cross legged in the hall for hours with the stomach full results in some pains you would rather not have and trying to stop the gas escaping is a pain too !! 😉
1 p.m. Meditation
5 p.m. Tea break ( fruit x 2 and Tea ONLY)
6 p.m. Meditation
8.30 p.m. Disco that’s what I heard, the Discourse was a video session from the 1990's of teacher Gogenka { https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._G... ) explaining in detail the work done and to be done and lots of really amusing stories.
9.30 p.m. Light out.
REPEAT.
On day 10 we did do something different !