The Adventures of Bindi Girl: (2012) Read Online Free
Author: Erin Reese
was triggered by the reading I was doing the night before, from a book by a Rinpoche who was the actual founder of the center. In the text, Rinpoche describes the philosophy of death embraced by many Buddhists: to look each day squarely in the face and say, “This is the day I will die.” If you think about it, it’s true: we are simultaneously dying every moment, and being reborn every moment.
Therefore, if today is the day you are going to die, how will you live today ?
So when I woke up in the morning on Day Three, I asked myself, if this is the day I will die, is this place where I choose to be? Is this exactly what I choose to be doing? Paradoxically, asking myself this question catapulted me straight out of the study center that invited me to ask it in the first place!
The timing was perfect. I happen to have dropped out of the course just one day before a Vipassana insight meditation course was to begin just down the road! A Vipassana course, as taught by S.N. Goenka and assistant teachers, lasts a total of twelve days, with ten days in absolute silence. I had completed my first such course in California last year.
I questioned myself. Am I really ready to sit for eleven hours a day—no speaking, no journal writing, no reading, and no food after eleven a.m. (except lemon water), making a complete dissection of my consciousness? I suppose so. After much prayerful consideration, I went ahead and arrived at the course the next day.
Vipassana is a technique of the Theravadan Buddhist meditation lineage, and there are free study centers around the world organized by S.N. Goenka, an Indian lay-teacher (not a monk) who was raised in Burma. Goenkaji (as his students refer to him) studied this form of meditation under a Burmese master named U Ba Khin, and was so deeply impressed by the method—that of uncovering the true nature of impermanence ( anicca )—that he devoted his life and financial resources to setting up meditation centers all over the world.
The day after I quit my corporate job back in California, I went straight into my first ten-day Vipassana course. Afterward, I said, “This is by far THE hardest thing I have ever done in my life.” A few months later, after I had trained for and ran an entire 26.2 mile marathon, I still said, “Vipassana was even harder.” (Incidentally, Vipassana meditation helped me tremendously during the actual marathon. After about Mile 20, I used “witnessing” techniques of awareness of respiration and sensation in order to observe the mental and physical pain rather than identify with it. It worked, and helped me cross the finish line.)
Believe me—and I know the mothers out there will mark my words—I feel I could endure a natural delivery if I were to ever have a child. Maybe that’s naive of me, but through witnessing techniques, the type of pain I have been able to observe is tremendous.
Part of this Vipassana meditation technique involves not becoming averse to unpleasant (“pain”) sensations or attached to and developing craving for lovely little vibrations and tingling sensations (“pleasure”). From Day Four of the course onward, participants must sit in a single posture for one entire hour without moving a muscle.
This may seem completely easy. Yet, consider that you are on your bum for eleven hours a day, sitting on a hard cushion in a position that Westerners are simply not genetically predisposed to tolerate! And that’s just the physical challenge; the mental test—asking oneself, “Can I do it? Why am I doing this? Who cares?!”—is another dimension altogether.
In actuality, the silence part—not speaking for ten days—is a beautiful thing. I have come to fully enjoy silence. In fact, since practicing serious meditation, I have become increasingly sensitive to much of the mindless chatter that floats around my head most of the time.
Speaking of chatter, I was thinking a lot, and trying to reel in my monkey mind, swinging from branch
Therefore, if today is the day you are going to die, how will you live today ?
So when I woke up in the morning on Day Three, I asked myself, if this is the day I will die, is this place where I choose to be? Is this exactly what I choose to be doing? Paradoxically, asking myself this question catapulted me straight out of the study center that invited me to ask it in the first place!
The timing was perfect. I happen to have dropped out of the course just one day before a Vipassana insight meditation course was to begin just down the road! A Vipassana course, as taught by S.N. Goenka and assistant teachers, lasts a total of twelve days, with ten days in absolute silence. I had completed my first such course in California last year.
I questioned myself. Am I really ready to sit for eleven hours a day—no speaking, no journal writing, no reading, and no food after eleven a.m. (except lemon water), making a complete dissection of my consciousness? I suppose so. After much prayerful consideration, I went ahead and arrived at the course the next day.
Vipassana is a technique of the Theravadan Buddhist meditation lineage, and there are free study centers around the world organized by S.N. Goenka, an Indian lay-teacher (not a monk) who was raised in Burma. Goenkaji (as his students refer to him) studied this form of meditation under a Burmese master named U Ba Khin, and was so deeply impressed by the method—that of uncovering the true nature of impermanence ( anicca )—that he devoted his life and financial resources to setting up meditation centers all over the world.
The day after I quit my corporate job back in California, I went straight into my first ten-day Vipassana course. Afterward, I said, “This is by far THE hardest thing I have ever done in my life.” A few months later, after I had trained for and ran an entire 26.2 mile marathon, I still said, “Vipassana was even harder.” (Incidentally, Vipassana meditation helped me tremendously during the actual marathon. After about Mile 20, I used “witnessing” techniques of awareness of respiration and sensation in order to observe the mental and physical pain rather than identify with it. It worked, and helped me cross the finish line.)
Believe me—and I know the mothers out there will mark my words—I feel I could endure a natural delivery if I were to ever have a child. Maybe that’s naive of me, but through witnessing techniques, the type of pain I have been able to observe is tremendous.
Part of this Vipassana meditation technique involves not becoming averse to unpleasant (“pain”) sensations or attached to and developing craving for lovely little vibrations and tingling sensations (“pleasure”). From Day Four of the course onward, participants must sit in a single posture for one entire hour without moving a muscle.
This may seem completely easy. Yet, consider that you are on your bum for eleven hours a day, sitting on a hard cushion in a position that Westerners are simply not genetically predisposed to tolerate! And that’s just the physical challenge; the mental test—asking oneself, “Can I do it? Why am I doing this? Who cares?!”—is another dimension altogether.
In actuality, the silence part—not speaking for ten days—is a beautiful thing. I have come to fully enjoy silence. In fact, since practicing serious meditation, I have become increasingly sensitive to much of the mindless chatter that floats around my head most of the time.
Speaking of chatter, I was thinking a lot, and trying to reel in my monkey mind, swinging from branch
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