Day: December 14, 2009

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 5(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat. For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]
I remember back on day 2 (or was it day 1?), I had this weird thought, during Mr Goenka’s discourse:  “Wait!  What misery?”
He was going on and on about misery. We are all suffering. We’re suffering, even if we don’t know we’re suffering.  And then, of course…  vipassana is the presumed “cure.”
But, my thought is… is there really that much misery? Isn’t there a lot of beauty, too? A lot of love?And kindness? Some people are miserable, true.  Sometimes.  I was pretty consistently miserable, for many, many years.  For most of my life, even.  But I seem to be getting over that. Emerging from it. And the way to get over it doesn’t seem to lie in obsessing over how miserable I am. At least, that doesn’t work, for me.
So even if he’s proposing a “cure,” it seems very counter-productive, downright negative, to spend so much time going on and on about how miserable we all are. There’s no happiness, there.  Perhaps, with enough meditation, there may come about a kind of equanimity… but who wants equanimity to universal suffering? How about, instead, some just plain happiness? A better deal, surely…

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 5(a)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

One shouldn’t underestimate the sheer difficulty of simply sitting.  I think to be a successful meditator, you need to think seriously and intelligently about what I have decided to term the Technology of Sitting.  What position?  What cushions?  What other apparatus and support?  Etc.

Because, let’s get right down to it:  I spend a huge proportion of my time meditating thinking about nothing except the pain in my ass.  Or legs.  Or back.  Or foot.  Or wherever.  About how I should have moved such and such cushion to such and such location, how that would be so much more comfortable.  Maybe.

This school of meditation doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on position or posture.  They do require stillness, however.  Strong determination.   And stillness requires a modicum of, if not comfort, at least a kind of ease with one’s position and posture.

Therefore… I think a successful introduction to vipassana meditation might best include more overt and open discussion of posture and sitting.  A la yoga, or tai chi, or something, maybe.  Some kind of analysis and training on the Technology of Sitting.