Theravada Buddhist Meditation..one insight

I’ll tell you a bit about Theravada Buddhist retreats..they don’t work for all but did for me.

You are sensually deprived to a fault. No talking, no reading, radio, nothing, just meditation instruction and one talk in the evening by the teacher, oh yeah, then you can ask questions..

What they ask you to do is to try to be aware of all the nagging voices for the sensations that one is deprived of in this environment….after 3 days you’re crawling up the wall, but they ask you to persevere, seeing as you’ve made the effort to go there and commit.

In the meditation one is asked to just focus on the breath and every time the old inner dialogue kicks in, we are asked to try to arrest it as soon as you can and gently refocus on the breath..it took me one and a half 10 day retreats to get to the stage where I wasn’t paying much attention to all the thoughts and feelings….but the mind is seductive and being suddenly out of a job it tries to sneak in the back door by agreeing with you that this was a great idea and how we’re gonna do this for the rest of our lives bla bla

But then you see that one too and finally you get free of it all.. and then there’s nothing but space…………….then euphoria begins to rise and WOW biggest natural high on the planet, but that’s just the beginning..

Ok so with this euphoria, in my case I felt like I was made of crystal glass floating one foot off the ground, and it lasted a while, but guess what? You try to hang on to it of course, and it fades from that moment….time for a talk with the abbot….
He explained that the thing that was hanging on to this first taste of freedom was the same thing that was hanging on to all your thoughts and feelings in the beginning..ego, desire, I am, I want..and that all these graspings are suffering….yep I understood that bit…he said next time you get euphoria don’t get too clingy about it..so that’s what you do…so now you’re really passive about everything that’s thrown at you.

So now the real fun begins cos you’re in conrol, you see the wood from the trees, and by the way, they tell you that all thoughts, feelings, high and low are natural and not to be shunned, just seen..and by  now your standing in a different place and you can see the thought about your gas bill the microsecond it arrives..like a spark or colour..no big deal, just watch it and laugh..and the massive movements of our poor broken heart are like some brilliant movie…anything that arrives you can say “eh, what’s this then? and play with it and tell it to go and play out in the garden like a little kid.

Suddenly I imagined I was in an attic, this was new, like a dream within awareness, and I passed down through to the next floor and the next until I was in a dirty basement with rubbish and shit everywhere smelling bad. In the corner was a rat gnawing away at some crap.

He turned to me and said “Took your bloody time getting here, boy, didn’t ya?”

So there it was..I’d stood right beside the gut level anxiety that pervades the whole universe..and of course it was like fronting the school bully, game over, his power gone, it all disappeared. Then I felt very real… suffering had been understood, not banished you understand, but understood….it’s power diminished.

And that’s meditation, as taught by the best I’ve ever found..the real deal.

http://www.salparadise.eu