after Vipassana
Wow My experience at the ten day silent meditation lies beyond my ability to describe textually. It was realllllly realllly amazing. The first 9 days started out great, and went downhill, downhill, bad, worse, terrible, give up, forget this, I will never ever ever ever do this again. The 10th day started out at the same level of terribleness... but then our vow of silence was lifted and the speaking began. Most people started chattering; I stayed in my own space, crying.. the nightmare was finally over; I had done it. Finished. Done. Wow. I engaged in conversation once I felt basically better, but assured people I would never again take the vow of NO WRITING. During the 10 days I had become so so so so Amazingly Distracted with things I wanted to _write_: dreams, emails, computer programs, until the desire just consumed my every available brain cell. No way I could meditate in that crazy nightmare of brain activity. (( A good point of even that experience: I have found quite an ability for my brain to memorize / visualize a lot more than I guessed I could. )) However, once I had expressed my desire to write, it sorta went away.. during the 10th day, as I was connecting with my co-meditators turned new friends Will and David.... things got better. And better, and better (though I was still not allowed to write because the course ended on the morning of the _11th_ day) until in the last 1.5 hours of the entire course, on the 11th morning, everything transformed: I will absolutely do this again and hugely recommend it for anyone who wants to change their life and is realllly willing to work. http://dhamma.org I wanted to give back to the organization, and was blessed with the perfect opportunity: the very next day after our course was a 1-day kids' course: 3 boys and 3 girls (children of parents who have done at least one 10 day course) participated; I was able to support their first steps into Vipassana meditation. Plus we had a lot of fun with summer camp type things: name games, painting, sculpting clay, watching a puppet show, running around outside, sprinkled around four 15 minute meditation periods. It was really great! -------- Today I plan to ride north to the Japan Sea, where there's a famous bridge that must be viewed upside down: Amano Hashi Datte. I've heard it's one of the three top viewpoints in Japan. It's about noon now, as I'm sending this; I doubt I can get there before dark, but I'll check it out tomorrow, hopefully with clear weather! I'll probably be back in Tokyo within about 2 or 3 weeks, depending on innumerable factors. I hope everyone is fantastic! Blessings - Rob