It's the 9th day, and I have no more energy to take this unbelievable pain, or the desire to fight it back




In October 2002 I heard a Vipassana master came back from India after many years and he is going to hold meditation courses for the first time there. A relative who took this courses in India once a year persuaded me to take this chance. So, I went for a 10 days vipassana course.

That was the first time I was going to be in a serious meditation class. I'd been told students are suppose to avoid talking during the course, and not to communicate with one another or use cell phones for whole ten days. Being silent for the first time in my life, I realized it was to be quite unique experience. I was an internet addicted at the time and most of the day I was listening to music, a noisy life perhaps to not to hear my thoughts. I knew it was going to be anything but easy.

In there, for the first time I saw myself from a completely different point of view, from outside. I noticed how self-centered I was before, and that I'd made myself numb with all that noisy routines, to overlook the truth inside.

When I got back, I wrote the memories of that ten days, and it surprised me that I remembered all the details, I mean we are talking about me, who forgot to pull out my scooter's key after parking it four times! Seriously I don't know how I still have it.

-8-8-8-

The common hall is so silent that, when someone in the other end swallows, I can hear it from near the fire place in the other corner.
Every body is hungry. The breakfast was at 6 , after the morning (4am) meditation. I can imagine they are all spoiled people just like me, always having the refrigerator beside them, or at least I'm sure all of us had the freedom before to nag about the hunger at least, but here, our stomachs are those who can speak only, and they are doing it in special ways, making unique voices like GHAAAARRRR GHOGHOROMMMMEEE..EEUUUUEEEEEE...

When they rang the bell for lunch, the drove of hungry ladies ran to the next room, and suddenly every body was blue; all the meals were made by soya. There was no meat of any type.
I had something else to worry about though. I had a serious knee pain since 7-8 years before, after I crashed in shemshak, the waviest ski run in Tehran. The whole ski thing was a mistake anyway, I was not doing any other exercises and thus my body was not ready for such a heavy thing at all.
Anyway I knew I was not going to have joyful hours, the hope of getting a chair also had been shattered by a short comment; it'd be of no use if not on the ground.

I was thinking of run off if it hurts too much, when the head dalma worker gave everyone a paper to sign, and said after signing this we can't leave the place until the end of the course.

To be continued

Painting: a detail of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1498; wood cut; Albrecht Durer.