The day I got home from my first Vipassana meditation course, I put away my mala, all my books on Buddhism, stopped my daily recitations, prostrations and chanting. I went to the course as a devout Buddhist and came out agnostic. The absolute perfection of this is Vipassana is one of the 40 meditation techniques that Gotama Buddha taught over 2500 years ago. While meditating during the course I realized that Buddhists made up Buddhism and I wanted no part of something so contrived. But I felt so lost without my regular daily routine. I never thought of myself as religious or reliant on ritual and I was. But all of these rituals were something that didn’t come naturally to me – they were things that someone else taught me to do.
The Buddha said he couldn’t tell anyone what enlightenment would be for her, he could only relay his own experiences, that it was up to each individual to discover for herself what enlightenment was. Vipassana showed me that I was following someone else's path to enlightenment. It was someone I admired, but I was being shown down a path to something I couldn’t comprehend.
The first time I planned to go to Vipassana I was feeling pretty anxious. The course was to start November 1st and at that time I was a part of a wild party crowd that took celebrating Halloween seriously. The night before the course was starting I was up until 7am dressed as Marie Antoinette with the big powdered wig, period piece dress undergarments and all. I did have a head, but with makeup professionally done to appear that my head had been cut off and put back on. Most of the night I was tripping on mushrooms and drinking unfiltered sake right out of the bottle.
I had signed up for the course months in advance and about a week before it started, I began to wonder if it were such a good idea to go. During the six weeks leading up to the course, I had undergone a strict regimen of alcohol, absinthe, LSD, MDMA, sleep deprivation and promiscuous sex. I was having fun, but I also felt empty, shitty and alone.
My third husband and I had split up just four months earlier and I was ramping up my escorting career for the second time. I was convinced that when I came back from Vipassana, I'd have to find another way to make a living. I figured I would become so enlightened that I would no longer be able to drink alcohol, smoke, take hallucinogenic drugs or have sex with strangers for money or fun. I was ready for whatever turn my life might take.
The course schedule is very rigorous and requires 11 hours of meditation a day. Besides maintaining what is referred to as "noble silence" (no talking, looking at or gesturing to anyone) you also have to refrain from using or even possessing any phones, radios, tv, books, paper, pens, pencils, malas, prayer beads and there is to be no praying, yoga or chanting. Participants are allowed to ask the teacher specific questions about the meditation technique if they have any but that's the only talking allowed.
Now after several years of practicing Vipassana, I understand that all of those activities are too extroverted and take away from focusing on yourself. It's funny because I never thought of reading as an extroverted activity, but it is because it takes you out of yourself and into another world. Praying does too…
When I came back the phrase, "it made me more me" summed up my experience with Vipassana. It was there that I came to the realization that escorting was my path to enlightenment. That I had to give it my all and alway be present when I was with my clients. It was an odd revelation for me. It made sense and I KNEW it was true, but it was just so odd.
The "Buddhist" practice that has always resonated with me has been meditation. That is the most pure and beautiful thing I have ever done – get to know myself by being with just myself. I experienced myself as myself while at the Vipassana retreat. I experienced my own impermanence, my own pain, death, pleasure, ignorance, bliss – cycling circling, toppling stacking, stretching, bright darkness, I saw/felt/heard (couldn't tell the difference) that there is no edge. I experienced so many things, they are no longer concepts to me – I know them I am them…at least at this moment – but that's all there is anyway…
Finally a person that puts some real work into a blog. I do like what you have done with the blog.
This means that you are not the doer of deeds, nor the thinker of thoughts. I would say that you ARE both doer of deeds and thinker of thoughts if you ACT on those thoughts.
buddhism isn’t tyring to sell you anything. it doesn’t have ulterior motives. it’s not tyring to persuade or deceive you into joining or buying anything. it’s just.. there.