I rode my bike to this place, in the flat part of Nepal, near the border with India, where, in 623 B.C., Buddha was born at a place called Lumbini. Of course, back then, Buddha, whose real name was Siddartha Gautama, supposedly attained enlightenment (although he did that in India), and developed a meditation technique called Vipassana that would enable everyone else to do the same.
To make a long story short, he was really popular for a while, and then he wasn’t, then his meditation techniques were lost, but later resuscitated in what is now Myanmar, and then brought back to India and popularized around the world in the 20th century by a guy named S.N. Goenka.
He looks like a pretty cool dude.
Me, fellow Vipassaner Tom, and some Nepali guys in front of the Vipassana Center. It looks like a prison, but that’s ok! Because if you do a Vipassana, you have your eyes closed for about 18 hours a day, so it doesn’t really matter what anything looks like.
So Chris, you crazy hippy, have you gone totally Buddhist on us? Well no, but I’ve had several friends who’ve tried the Vipassana course, none of whom are Buddhist, and all of whom gave it rave reviews, so I’ve been wanting to try it for quite some time, but didn’t have the chance until I just happened to be heading in the direction of Buddha’s birthplace. But before I jump ahead of myself, let me describe the whole process.
Goenka developed a short-term course geared at jump-starting a potential meditator’s meditation practice. Think of it as a boot camp for meditation. The cool thing is that there is no religious mumbo jumbo involved, so you aren’t expected to pray to Buddha, recite prayers (or anything for that matter), light candles, etc etc. So what do you do then? Basically, for 10 days, you don’t talk, read, write, listen to music, or make eye contact with anyone, and you attempt to meditate for 12 hours per day. Each day’s schedule went like this:
4:30 – 6:30 Meditation
6:30 – 8:00 Breakfast
8:00 – 10:00 Meditation
10:00 – 11:00 Meditation
11:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 2:30 Meditation
2:30 – 4:00 Meditation
4:00 – 5:30 Meditation
5:30 – 6:30 Snack
6:30 – 8:30 meditation
8:30 – 9:30 video lecture
9:30 – 4:30 Sleep
So when you’re not eating or sleeping, you’re meditating. But what does it mean to meditate? According to the Vipassana techniques, you sit cross-legged with your eyes closed and attempt to prevent your mind from wandering by making yourself aware of your breathing and other sensory input, both internal and external to your body. If you try this for the first time it’s actually almost impossible for you to keep thoughts from popping into your head for more than a few seconds. But with practice, you can increase that length of time. The feeling is sort of like being ‘in the zone’ when doing some kind of intensive task-based activity that doesn’t require self-reflective thought, like playing a sport, running, shooting a gun, or knitting.
But what’s the point? Well, the idea is you are basically conditioning your mind, and in the process making yourself more introspective, attentive, thoughtful, and gaining a greater sense of equanimity. Basically you are trying to make your mind more perceptive so that you can become a better person.
So does it work? There is certainly a lot of scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation, which seems to basically be Vipassana-style meditation techniques, can improve all of the mental attributes described above. If you don’t believe me, just google it and read articles from reputable scientific journals. They even offered mindfulness meditation courses at the UW, where I went to grad school.
But what do I think? I don’t know. The Vipassana experience was certainly super intense. Not communicating with anyone or having any experiences to speak of for 10 days means that it’s basically just you and your mind, together, with each other, in a constant struggle. In the process of trying not to think about stuff, you inevitably think about just about everything that ever happened to you, many times over. Every mean word anyone had ever said to me came rushing back in, announcing itself and begging to be examined. All kinds of random little good memories popped into my head, and I found myself surprised to remember that this or that thing had actually happened to me. Certain life events, big and small, were mulled over again and again, and each time I caught myself thinking about them, I attempted to bring my mind back to its intended task, which was to concentrate on the breath entering and exiting my nose, or the sensations pouring over my skin. Even though my meditation abilities did seem to improve slowly, inevitably all those thoughts just kept coming back again and again.
By the end of the course, I felt like there was nothing left to examine, which brought a certain sense of relief. And also, basically not having had any experiences for 10 whole days, (except when a giant rhesus monkey lunged at me when I looked at him the wrong way. Man I hate monkeys), when I came out of the center, every little experience seemed new and unusually intense. Car horns seemed super loud. Colors brighter, people’s voices more defined.
Although I think I might do another Vipassana again in the future (there are Vipassana centers all over the world, check out www.dhamma.org), I don’t think I’ll become a regular meditator. For me anyway, the most interesting thing about Vipassana is the way the course is set up, and I think that the mental isolation for 10 days is what had the greatest effect on me. I also think that I get much of the same benefit of the actual meditation from other activities, such as riding my bike! Finally, although I think it is probably really beneficial for some people, I feel like I’m pretty emotionally and psychologically even-keeled already, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who claims to be a zealous meditator who also seems like a particularly introspective, emotionally calm, or exceptionally enlightened person, so I remain skeptical as to the long-term benefits of meditation.
But I highly recommend trying out a Vipassana course at least once in your life. It will probably be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.
After the course it was party time! The other Vipassaners and I hung out in Lumbini for 2 more days just eating and talking. Everybody needed some time to recover and compare mental notes. It turns out that we all had really similar experiences. And then there was this festival! With cute kids in a trailer!
And Sha, another fellow Vipassaner, from China.
And these serious looking fellows playing not-so-serious-sounding music!
More people in trailers!
And Kelvin, an Aussie cyclist who just happened to be passing through!
All around the Lumbini complex, there was Buddha stuff from all kinds of different countries.
And the Peace Pagoda! What are you pointing at, Sha?
Like this Zen rock garden from Japan.
And the Burmese temple
And the Chinese temple (above and below)
This was also the Chinese temple
And the Austrian? temple. Weird. Looks like the Parthenon.
Above and below: The Tibetan temple
And then there was the actual birthplace of Buddha.
Complete with prayer flags
And this is the building built on top of the spot where Buddha’s mom’s house was.
More prayer flags!
And prayer balloons!
And a tree shot through some prayer flags!
Oh and then this happened. Mike is heading south, to volunteer long-term at a reforestation project called Sadhana Forest, and I must continue westward to Istanbul, so after more than a year on the road together, it’s farewell, bro! It’s been good shaky, keep rollin’.
