Twelve Days after Vipassana(ویپاسانا)

زمان خواندن 8 دقیقه ***

12 Days after Vipassana (Observing the reality of truth as it is)

(English is my second language, so please excuse my mistakes and help me improve them :))

I learned about Vipassana about seven years ago and during these seven years, I tried one or two times to register to the waitlist but it didn't go through. I wasn't always sure about spending 10 days of my life just doing meditation. My internal conversation was like: how can I leave my life for 10 days? Is it required to spend 10 days just to meditate? Is it normal to do that? I will do it myself just maybe 10 minutes a day I don't need to do these radical trips, after all, I want to be normal. But the reality was I was so immersed in the distractions of life that I couldn't do it myself.

Years past and I started doing some online meditation with a very nice lady who had passed a 10-day course and she was offering online meditations. After each 10-minute meditation online I felt so relaxed and good that I thought with myself that all of my questions and concerns will be answered in meditation. Knowing that I registered for three centers at the same time and right on the day of my 42nd birthday one of the centers accepted my application. 

Having all sorts of anxiety problems and relationship problems in life and in my business, I was so excited that finally I can escape from all my anxiety and do meditation; something in the bottom of my heart was telling me that the answers to my problems are found in my meditation. I was so excited that I started to pack almost 5 days before, bought new towels and blankets and sheets and I started writing about my experience and I went to the center one day before, just to see the location. I camped in my car the night before the start of the course and showed up at the Centre very early, I remember I was the first person. 

For me, it was so hard to say bye to my 3-years old daughter and also giving off my phone and laptop. I was kind of addicted to my phone and computers, some days my screen time was up to 14 hours, basically all of my waking hours. 

After finishing that journey which was a long long journey inside, now I can say that this journey was one of the best journeys of my life a long journey inside my own world.

It wasn't all roses and good though, there were a few times during the course that I felt sick, I felt miserable and at least two times I decided to leave. With the help of some people in the center and just being a little bit more patient, I stayed there. 

Long hours of sitting had some pain showing up in my back and my legs and digging through my unconscious mind, my past and my relationships made me see nightmares and feel a lot of discomforts. I had enough calmness and time to review my bad dreams at night and learned from them, most of the dreams I still remember and they all had clues for what I did in the past wrongly and pointed me to the right path. I was talking to myself that I have no responsibility here, my sleeping bed and my food are ready, so all problems that I have are from inside! So I had no excuse to be unhappy! 

Growing up in Iran with some cultural similarity to East and to India and Berma where thease teachings originated, I could understand the teachings from a different prospective, I could relate to most of the ideas taught in Vipassana and what is deviation from that original teaching which is said is pure form of what Buddha taught almost 2500 years ago. 

But all the patients paid off, I can't describe what was my experience on the 10th day fully using words, I was a different person. I felt like a super-man driving out of the center my driving was totally different from before. My mind was working differently, I was a different person. All the problems and anxieties that I have been struggling with for decades seemed to have been vanished. The reason for that was because I was living in the moment. 

The course is designed in a way that puts your attention toward yourself, there is not a lot of outside things for you to direct your attention so naturally, you go inside, naturally, you direct your attention to yourself, and naturally, you start living moment by moment; breath by breath.

In summary, I got my soul back, my mind was so distracted and so stressed for long years that I could not sit still and did not have concentration, this was resolved completely, 

Depression and anxiety disappeared completely, it worked like hundreds of hours of consultation for me. Before that I could not read or write long texts, my mind had lost its sharpness and concentration, this alone could be a good result if you look for something in return from gaining from sitting for 10 days.

From a logical mind and from the outside it just doesn't make sense that you sit for 3 to 4 hours a day and do nothing. But in reality, the miracle happens when you sit long enough. 

After the 10-day course, I discovered that besides the world that we all see around us there is a bigger and better world, the world that is more important than the outside world; that is the world within us. If the world inside us is a mess, no matter what you do outside, no matter how luxurious, how amazing the outside world is you still don't feel good. And the moment your inside world is in order and your mind is in equanimity and you are in that meditative state, no matter how the outside world is like, you feel good and you are happy even if you are in a prison. Honestly that 10-days is like you are in a prison; as you have nowhere to go but inside. 

In that 10-days I traveled to my childhood, felt my childhood pains, traveled to the future up to the last breath, and mapped my life and future plans. I had ideas sprouted in my mind. I learned a new way of living, a better way of living.

After two days of finishing the course, I already missed that, Doing one-hour meditation per day as my current commitment to myself, doesn't give me that meditative state that I have gained in the 10-days. I'm kind of addicted to meditation right now, any time I have nothing to do I will sit down, close my eyes, and pay attention to my breath and my body. It's said that your body is the only really that connects you to the mind-matter world. 

On the last days of the course, you learn about sharing your merit and love with others.  I hope this writing has a little bit of that in it and hopefully it helps people toward getting into the world of meditation and changing their life and the world for better.

And finally, because the world is a world of give-and-take and everything is influenced by capitalism, I just want to analyze this from a businessman's perspective. This is a 10-day vacation! it's totally free. Your accommodation and food are already paid for, all you have to do in return is to work on yourself for 3 to 4 hours a day. Even for a business-minded person, this is a great deal, you just sit and get services from very nice people. The only commitment you have is to sit for 3 to 4 hours and work on your own mind and purify your mind. Do you know better pay or an easier job like this? So even if you are a business-minded person it's a great deal, I recommend you to take this deal. Give it a try yourself, the first lesson of Vipassana is that, you have to experience yourself and give importance to your own experience and do not rely on other people's knowledge, so these were my experience to give you just an idea, go to www.dhamma.org to experience yourself.