Meditative Holidays

For Christmas this year I thought I would do something a little different. Rather than return to Canada to face the madness of Christmas consumerism and mass consumption. I decided to spend it in solitude.
But first, I had to return to London to sort out all of my possessions on this side of the Atlantic.
I’ve traveled quite extensively throughout the past year. My lease expired at my flat in London at the end of April, and I left the following day for two months in Kenya and Uganda. A friend of mine from university was kind enough to keep my boxes in her attic while I was away, and upon my return I ended up staying with her and her husband for a few months until my UK working holiday visa expired. My very loose plan was to spend a couple months in Europe prior to heading home semi-permanently for the holidays.
While visiting my former flatmate in Serbia, a journalist from Prague contacted me about work and within 10days of arriving I ended up on assignment in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. First doing a demining story and tourism story with her and then a feature on a deminer with another American broadcast journalist.
I returned for a month in Prague and found home once again (home has become decidedly more relative). Only a few of my friends had left the country and those that remained welcomed me back so warmly that it was though I’d never left.
Then I got the email. My friend in London was renovating her attic and wanted my stuff out. So with a week’s preparation I returned to the UK.
Living in Europe, using public transportation and cycling virtually everywhere (when I had a bicycle) has given me a different perspective on my previous life back in Calgary where I drove everywhere, including to the corner store.
However in Europe, rather that car/SUV emissions, it’s short haul flights that are one of their biggest contributors to carbon emissions and so, to get back to my story for those of you I haven’t lost in a tangent, I decided to take the bus from Prague to London.
There are obvious benefits to this type of travel. No airport or customs issues, the price stays the same whether you book 2-days in advance or 2 months in advance, they show movies and have a ride attendant (one who distributes tea and coffee to guests), there is a savings of 50-75% that what you’d pay for airfare if you consider the train/bus/cab ride to one of the 3 major airports in London and the carbon emissions are negligible.
But it is 18hours, I’m not quite as limber as I once was and the bus in both directions was packed. Either way, when I returned to Prague after my 4-day visit and day-and-a-half of travel, I was exhausted! Add this to 5 hours in Prague in which to pack and ready myself for the 6-hour train/van odyssey to Triebel, Germany and I was more than ready to retreat.
For those of you that don’t know anything about Vipassana meditation I encourage you to read their Web site (www.dhamma.org).
It is a meditation technique developed 2500 years ago by Gotama the Buddha. Over the centuries it had become diluted somewhat in India and other countries that practice. However in Burma it has remained pure, and the instructor S.N Goenka has returned the practice to India where it has now spread to the west.
In Germany, where I went for the 11-days pre-Christmas, there were 40 women and 30 men in attendance.
We all arrived on the night of December 12. I was exhausted. I signed in and gave up my mobile/cell phone, camera bag and all valuables to the workers at the center. I was one of the last to arrive so only had a brief chat with my two roomies prior to going to bed. A German woman in her 40s and a Slovenian. It was the last night we were able to communicate for 10days. We were entering a Noble Silence
Now when you read the Web site, it breaks things down for you quite clearly under the Code of Discipline. But I'll try and do it in my own way.
Every day started at 4am. A gong went off somewhere in the distance and you had half an hour to get to the main meditation hall for the 2-hour morning session.
Breakfast was served at 6:30 and consisted of porridge with hot fruit sauce, bread, jam, tea and fruits. The breakfast hall closed at 7:15 and we were allowed to do as we liked until 8. Then was the first of 3 mandatory hour-long meditation sessions in the main hall. The only area where men and women were allowed in the same room with one another and the instructor was always present. Afterwards, we had 2 hour’s meditation and a lunch at 11:00, always vegetarian. This was our last meal of the day.
From here we had the opportunity to ask the instructors questions, one on one or we could use the opportunity to relax until 1, at which point we had 2.5 hour’s meditation on our own until 2:30, the next mandatory session.
Then there was a short break in the afternoon and tea with fruit amidst on-your-own meditation until the last mandatory session that lasted until 7.
Until about 8:15pm we were shown a video with SN Goenka discussing the technique, telling stories and describing his background. Another short meditation and then bed at 9-9:30.
I think I've mentioned that in addition to the 11-hours of daily meditation, you weren’t allowed to talk with anyone except for the instructor, that has been practicing the technique for over 20years and spent time with S. N. Goenka himself. This means no eye contact, no gestures, no notes (they took all writing instruments at check-in as well as all reading materials). The purpose being to maintain focus only on yourself.
Just for a moment imagine taking away all extraneous stimuli. No TV or Internet, no dogs barking in the distance or sound of children playing.
Complete silence.
All this while living in a compound and closed quarters with 80 people for 11 days; sleeping in the same room with two other.
And then add to the fact that you are sitting, for 11 hours a day.
Now I’d never really been quite clear on what that really meant. Meditation. And it obviously means different things to different people. Vipassina is by definition a method of seeing things as they really are. And a large part of our 10 days was a process of getting rid of our misery. This is something profoundly personal and everyone that participates in the retreat goes in with different expectations and ultimately has very different experiences.
I’ll touch on a few of the less personal things I experienced for those that are interested.
First, sitting still for an hour straight for anyone is a challenge, nevermind myself - mildly hyperactive and has undergone 3 knees surgeries. But after day 4 this becomes mandatory for 3 separate hours each day.
I can honestly say that I haven’t been in so much pain in years! And consequently when I did manage to do a full hour for the first time, it was a milestone in my sessions. I found I only really get going after 45 minutes and that is precisely when things start to itch, ache and torture the most.
Second, you spend the first four days focusing on the breath going in and out of your nose, fine-tuning it until it’s the small triangle below your nose. 4 days focusing on your nose?! For 11-hours each day?
Well yes, try it.
I like multi-tasking. In fact, I operate best when I have many things on the go simultaneously. And I have to say honestly that I have yet to be able to master this. To focus on such a seemingly tiny thing was and is, for me, the absolute challenge.
Although all of the extraneous stimuli has been removed, there is so much going on that you are still vaguely aware of. The girl beside you that can’t sit still, the man on the other side of the room that keeps clearing his throat, the girl that blows her nose at 15-minute intervals. And then there are your own thoughts. Trying to keep them from running away on you is a constant struggle. Over the course of the 10 days my thoughts were all over the place. There were tears on the second day, incredible creative inspiration on day 4, restlessness on day 8 coupled with intermittent euphoria.
After day 4 you start ‘sweeping.’ The energy that you learned to focus on such a small concentrated area at the base of your nose, you apply to your entire body. Head to feet, feet to head. Equanimously, patiently, ardously.
The theory is that certain sensations are a biproduct of your misery. I can tell you that by Day 6 I had a baseball-sized chuck of ‘misery’ in my lower limb and a golf-ball in my spine that took days to work out.
Although you are supposed to just observe these sensations, with my newfound control of energy I started attacking them. They hurt so much I wanted them gone and reckoned if I confront them it’d happen faster… not so. They just multiplied. I learned this quickly after a few days of observing, the larger chunks disappeared and it allowed me to relax further.
A lot of what I’ve written thus far is for those that are really curious, and there seems to be quite a few that are.
Although I think the whole experience is something that should be done, as I said before each experience is very personal and individual.
I can say that I had highs unlike those I’ve experienced under the influence or while doing any sort of physical activity.
I felt a simultaneously saddened and relieved on the last day when it was all over.
Thankfully, there is a day of social reintegration that is really essential.
Conversing and being surrounded by activity was initially such a shock to the system. I felt a little ill and had to return to the sanctity of my bedroom, where I found my roomies feeling precisely the same.
There was also communal effort to help clean the place up for the next group. I was on the storage room in the basement. And it was during this part of the retreat that I talked to a few people for the first time.
After 10 days, you inevitably develop preconceptions about those around you. Having never heard someone’s voice you have a lot of latitude in creating their character. So to find your myth broken at the end was serendipitous. And I was really surprised by the diversity of people there, a German yoga instructor, German fashion designer you’d perhaps expect, but a USAID lawyer and a member of the US army was a little unexpected.
Now a lot of you may have asked 'how much could this possibly cost?'
Well, it's free! For 10 days (well 11 if you count the first night) you have room and board and instuction. There is no obligation to pay anything. They rely soley on donations and donations only so that someone else can experience what you have experienced. You only give so that the experience can benefit someone else...
Now this in my mind was the way to spend the holidays.
The 6-hour train ride home was long. And to see things as they really are when your first stop is the main train station in Prague is a story left for another day.