Day: December 18, 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 9(d)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

This is a very grim title. But actually, it’s not a negative moment.  There’s a raucous rock song by a group called Zeromancer, entitled “Doctor Online“. It has the line “1-800-suicide” as part of its chorus.

It is stuck in my head, this evening, after a minor epiphany. I’d returned to my room, after tea…  after my weeping during meditation earlier. After my loss of equanimity.

And I somehow decided, or realized, that setting aside “desires and aversions” – losing my attachment to these things… this seems like a kind of “spiritual suicide.” I mean… its our desires and aversions that let us know that we’re alive, right? If we no longer have desires and aversions, mightn’t we as well be dead?

I think the more nuanced view is that it’s not that we’re to get rid of desires and aversions, but only that we’re to lose our attachment to the results of our actions that those desires and aversions engender. But Goenka, in his presentations and discourses, utterly fails to convey this nuance clearly. And the more blunt view (which seems to prevail in a lot of Theravada) that nirvanna (enlightenment) is all about letting go of desires and aversions altogether seems too shallow to me. Too much like quitting the world in the name of happiness. Too much like giving up.

So the song was stuck in my head.  But it restored my equanimity. Although it left me with a certain degree of apathy vis-a-vis the meditation program.

[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 9(c)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

I am in the bathroom, and I notice an ant. The ant appears to be damaged. Wounded. The back legs don’t seem to be working very well. I worry that maybe I stepped on it accidentally, or hurt it some other way.

The ant is trying to climb up the wall. It will make it up one foot, maybe two feet. And then it will fall down to the floor.  It will walk a little way along the base of the wall, and the climb the wall again.  And fall down.  It did this 5 or 6 times.

Trying.

Trying.

Trying.

And then it walked along the base of the bathtub, around behind the toilet, where it stumbled into a spider web.  It struggled, there, for a short time. And then stopped.

Shortly before, I’d returned to my room after 5 o’clock tea. I was restless, and frustrated, and sad.  I was looking forward to doing push-ups in my room.  This was, perhaps, the first time ever that I’d looked forward to doing push-ups.

Stir-crazy: I did 150 jumping jacks, and 30 push-ups.

As I did my illicit exercise (it seems it’s not technically considered desirable to have aerobic exercise during the intensive meditation course), I thought about “the world pushing back.”

What does this mean, the world pushing back? We can’t stop wanting things. We can’t stop feeling aversion to things. Desire and aversion are things that let us know that we’re alive. That’s the world, pushing back. Just like being down, doing push-ups:  the world pushes back, hard. That’s gravity.

I’m not sure what I’m getting at. I guess I just feel that to speak of eliminating desires and aversions is ridiculous. It’s like choosing to be dead. You can only let go of your attachment to the outcomes (results) of actions brought on by desires and aversions.  But that’s important. I think about David White’s discussions of the philosophy of non-attachment as outlined in the Bhagavad Gita.

[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 9(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

..

I took some pictures after the course ended and I got my camera out of storage. This is the previously-mentioned cat, named Snort, coming out of her barn where she was hiding from the cold wind

This is a close up

[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 9(a)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

Do I need to say more?