A SLOW DANCE WITH SILENCE
Imagine a place cut off from the rest of civilization.You wake up at four a.m and meditate for ten hours a day.The meal of the day is lunch at eleven a.m .You leave hear in complete silence with a hundred other people who you can't talk for ten days.Sounds crazy? Welcome to the world Vipassana meditation,a boot camp for the mind.
If I knew how tough it was going to be,I would have in chickened out,but my friend said,"Think of it as a slow dance with silence'.With that thought mind I checked into the meditation centre in a rural area abut six km from Pallavaram on a sultry Wednesday evening and surrendered my phone, my wallet and myself for ten days.
We were woken up the following morning by a loud gong and at four thirty a.m. the meditation started.There were just a few simple instructions given on hoe to observe your breath as it comes and goes .I thought to my self this is going to be easy-no mantras to learn-no auto suggestion -just observe the breath.A few moment later,I realized how difficult it really is to just observe the breath. In a few breaths,my mind had wandered ;it had drifted to some old memories which triggered thoughts,plans and worries about the future.I was hurtling at great speed between the past and the future,unable to concentrate on the simple task
Vipassana means insight or to see things as they really are.The first in sight I had was about silence.I realised that even in a quite environment conducive to meditation, the main noise was not from the outside, but from within my head my mind was chattering, planning,worrying,judging,liking and disliking.The absence of external sound is not what silence is about.
An even bigger insight was to find that the tools I use to make decision everyday -my mind -was not in my control.During the evening discourse it was explained that the problem of a wandering,uncontrolled mind was universal,and it need to be trained with patience and persistence.Far from a beginning slow dance with a silence, this was turning out to be a wrestling match with my mind.
For ten days,I see -sawed between silence and pain,the pleasant and unpleasant,and I did what I was asked to do-observe.The last morning, we were getting ready to go back to the real world;A world of noise,phones, emails,texts,arguments and constant struggle of just trying to get by.My mind felt as if it had been put through a washing machine and all the muck had been cleaned out.I looked around to say good bye to silence,my elusive,dance partner, and I couldn't find her.It took a while to realise that she was with me.At the end of ten days,I realised that the dance and the dancers had become one.
We were woken up the following morning by a loud gong and at four thirty a.m. the meditation started.There were just a few simple instructions given on hoe to observe your breath as it comes and goes .I thought to my self this is going to be easy-no mantras to learn-no auto suggestion -just observe the breath.A few moment later,I realized how difficult it really is to just observe the breath. In a few breaths,my mind had wandered ;it had drifted to some old memories which triggered thoughts,plans and worries about the future.I was hurtling at great speed between the past and the future,unable to concentrate on the simple task
Vipassana means insight or to see things as they really are.The first in sight I had was about silence.I realised that even in a quite environment conducive to meditation, the main noise was not from the outside, but from within my head my mind was chattering, planning,worrying,judging,liking and disliking.The absence of external sound is not what silence is about.
An even bigger insight was to find that the tools I use to make decision everyday -my mind -was not in my control.During the evening discourse it was explained that the problem of a wandering,uncontrolled mind was universal,and it need to be trained with patience and persistence.Far from a beginning slow dance with a silence, this was turning out to be a wrestling match with my mind.
For ten days,I see -sawed between silence and pain,the pleasant and unpleasant,and I did what I was asked to do-observe.The last morning, we were getting ready to go back to the real world;A world of noise,phones, emails,texts,arguments and constant struggle of just trying to get by.My mind felt as if it had been put through a washing machine and all the muck had been cleaned out.I looked around to say good bye to silence,my elusive,dance partner, and I couldn't find her.It took a while to realise that she was with me.At the end of ten days,I realised that the dance and the dancers had become one.
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