Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Current mood: accomplished
It´s official! I am in COMPLETE and UTTER AWE of myself and of the stuff I still manage to get myself into. I have DEFINITELY NOT lost my touch. I should freaking get an award or something! All I wanted was just a few days of quiet in a monastery to clear my mind out and re-focus and what did our fearless adventurer clumsily and unknowingly stumble upon? None other than THE PATH of ENLIGHTENMENT that BUDDHA HIMSELF developed and USED. And in URUGUAY of all places!!!!! And it was hell. Yet again, I simply have to take a step back and laugh at myself.
So this whole Path of Enlightenment was learned from a 10 day course. And this course, well... it was sheer and utter torture. Literally. In order to learn how to ditch the ego to become liberated, you had to learn how to simply ignore self-inflicted pain. This pain was the pain from sitting in ONE POSITION WITHOUT MOVING for the combined total of the 12 hours of meditation PER DAY (there were usually hourly breaks of 5 minutes). That´s right, EVERYDAY there was 12 hours of meditation. So, in 10 days I somehow managed to survive a grand total of 120 hours of meditation. Yep. 120 HOURS. I´m gonna say it again--ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY HOURS OF MEDITATION. And if THAT wasn´t bad enough you were forced to take a vow of COMPLETE and UTTER silence for the whole 10 days and were not allowed to communicate in anyway---be it eye contact or gesture. Now you would think no biggie if you had your own room. But no, you had ROOM MATES that you lived the whole time who you could NOT communicate with at all. Think about that for a minute. Spending 10 days in the same room with a complete stranger and not uttering a word to them. Ya. It was QUITE something. Also, there was NO dinner, so over half the time you were STARVING (THANK GOD I was NOT allowed to fast like I originally wanted to) And in addition to all of these rules, all books, cell phones, mp3 players, paper, pens, etc. were taken away so that you were left alone COMPLETELY with yourself without anything to do but think or meditate. Like I said. It was QUITE something. You all have NO IDEA what SHEER BOREDOM is like. NO IDEA. So. For ya´ll I have compiled a list of all the stuff I found myself doing to keep myself from SLAMMING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL. And here it is....
JULIA PRESENTS: You Know You´re TRULY BORED When...
*You look FORWARD to flossing and brushing your teeth 3 times a day.
*You do your laundry by hand EVEN THOUGH there´s a machine.
*You read the backs and little promotional attachments to BOTH bottles of deodorant---more than once.
*You become excited when you need to clip your toenails.
*You become equally excited when you clean out your toe jam.
*You look for pictures hidden in the ceiling (I found the face of Buddha).
*You actually DO examine your naval thoroughly and then actually DO contemplate it (in all seriousness).
*You take up practising old instrument fingerings on a broom.
Like I said. It was QUITE the 10 days. BUT, I got through it, and actually DO like the technique---not for TWELVE HOURS a day but here and there for an hour, sure! Anyway, if I´ve managed to convince or tempt any masochists out there, you can find info on Vipassana courses throughout the world at www.dhamma.org. As my professor of Vipassana said after every session....
May you ALL be in Peace....May you all live in happiness... 8:28 AM
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