The question “Why do I sit?” is quite challenging. I notice that the reasons for the many things that I do change from one moment to the next. For example, before, I would read books because my friends read lots of books. I did not want to feel out of place during conversations with them. But now, I notice that I read to enjoy. It is fun reading, and reading is no longer for me a matter of being “in place” during conversations.
I guess the same pattern holds for sitting. I still remember the afternoon I arrived in Dasmariñas, Cavite for a Vipassana meditation course. Everyone was so quiet, there seemed to be a kind of tension in the air. One of the old students serving suddenly said that it was alright to talk to one another.
I was anxious over what would happen for the next 10 days. I was entering an unfamiliar terrain. Ten days! I would tell myself. Will I survive 10 days of meditation? I was also worried about my load of work. Ten days, again I told myself, this means stopping my personal production, my work, and the possibility to augment my income! Oh, will this be a 10-day loss?
So why did I want to sit at that time? Well, the answer may have to bring me back to some of my past experiences. I was tired, really tired, and I wanted to repose.
Just imagine walking for so long under the heat of the sun. Everything around you is dry and hot. Then a tree shade comes to view. Aha! An opportunity to repose. Entering that shade would mean sitting down for some time to recharge energies, to revive a good amount of joy, peace, and calm. Maybe a long nap will help.
This is how I understood my sitting at the start. I was willing to go through 10 days of sitting because I felt it would be a repose under the shade. I just needed it.
I have had big psychological limitations.
My social skills, for example, were very poor and it was quite difficult for me to sustain relationships, like friendship. I would often run into trouble. It’s not that I would create trouble. Far from that. In fact, I was the type who would rather remain discreet about anything I would do. But it was perhaps that over-discretion that got me into trouble. People just could not understand me. They would wonder how it was possible for me to stay quiet at one time and then discreetly start criticizing another time. Criticism was one of my more developed skills and I enjoyed doing it whenever an occasion would arise. With an eyebrow raised and with a sarcastic look, I would bite at others, gently though. Well, it was not always pleasing.
Now as I look back, I realize that underneath that critical self was a complaining self. I was complaining deep within. I was complaining about life.
I was also complaining about the political and economic situation of the country. I spent a good part of my life, so I believed, empowering the poor. I was present during the EDSAs.
The tension was increasing deep inside me. My view of the world became dark, and grew darker over the years. I developed an attitude towards life and towards the world. I told myself that everything around me was simply indifferent to who I was. Nothing in this world cared for what I wanted and what I desired. Yet, I thought that by my tantrums, I could force the world to answer my complaints.
I sensed that in meditation techniques, repose could be offered. I also sensed that it would be a different type of repose — it would be a more lasting repose. I felt that a meditation technique would equip me with tools to go through life calmly. I needed those tools.
I still remember the early parts of the 10-day Vipassana sitting when students were informed that the technique would be like a “surgery” of our inner selves. I had to come face to face with the fact that in my case, as in anybody else’s, the doctor would be nobody else but me.
I have gotten used to a religious-spiritual attitude that expected somebody else to take care of my “redemption.” I grew up as a Christian and I did take Christ seriously. But for a long time, I always thought that I can go through life with Jesus Christ doing everything for me. It was, I think, a bit of religious immaturity. At one point, I had to realize that Jesus wanted me to stand on my own two adult feet. I guess part of my Christian growth was to recognize that I had to be implicated in my own growth. I had to be responsible. In the Vipassana course, I saw the meaning of responsibility: I am a doctor to my own self. I had to have faith in the fact that there is a way of really facing suffering and misery, and I had to take the steps myself. This did not seem to be in contradiction to what Jesus Christ said.
The Vipassana technique was introduced, or rather discovered, by Gautama Buddha. Through meditation, the Awakened One gained a deep insight into human reality. The very mention of the name Buddha may have startled me a bit in the beginning. I was asking myself, “Oh, will this be heretical?” But the risk had to be made. Goenka, in his discourses, kept on repeating that the meditation technique had nothing to do with organizing a religious sect or a religious organization. It was completely non-sectarian.
The meditation technique in the 10-day course proposed three points to cultivate in the meditating student.
First, there is morality. Do not steal, do not lie, do not kill, do not lust, do not intoxicate. Who can ever be against these? Through these precepts, the meditating student starts to build a healthier life.
Second, there is focusing and settling down. It is really not so easy to live a good ethical life. Why? Because the human mind is just so distracted. There are just too many things going on inside and outside of us, we find it difficult to settle down and really decide, calmly, on leading a very clean life. Do we not run into so many temptations in this world? Do we not compromise, at times, our deeply held values? So it is necessary to cultivate a mind that is clear, lucid, and focused.
Third, there is wisdom or insight into our deepest reality — who we really are. A big lesson that a meditating student acquires is the futility of being egoistically attached to so many things and beliefs. There is so much change and impermanence around and within us, but we lead coagulated lives. The smooth flow of life is always hindered by our tendency to hold on to things, people, and beliefs as if we can own and control them completely. The ego is too imposing everywhere. Although every given moment is new and unique, the ego tries to play the game of permanence, obsessed with what is already gone and with what is not yet and might never be. The 10-day course helps equip the meditating student to see through the illusion of it all. That is why Goenka would say that in Vipassana meditation, one learns the art of living each moment to the fullest.
Looking at these three points, I myself realize that nothing in this ever contradicted my own spiritual direction. In other words, there was nothing heretical in what I underwent during the whole 10-day course. I was engaged with cultivating something truly human inside of me — an ethical humanity, a tranquil mind, and a wise insight into my own self. It is very adult in fact.
So, I did have a reason for undertaking the 10-day sitting. But at the end of it, my reason had evolved.
No, I cannot expect the repose that I was hoping for. A few days after the course, the reality of my daily routine started to swing again. The shade had withered, the leaves had fallen. What season will bring in new greens? I realized that it was not the shade that I could rely on. Even repose is impermanent.
I recall someone telling the story of a person in India very advanced in the spiritual life and very advanced in meditation. He fell ill, very ill. Days before he died, he was complaining of so many pains. What ever happened to all that concentration and all that sitting for so many years? Were they finally useless? I guess they would be useless if sitting would be understood as a medical balm that will stop all pain. Pain is very much an undeniable part of human reality. Sitting is not to create a new illusion of eradicating pain.
Goenka would always remind the student meditating about one word: equanimity. During an hour of sitting, anything can happen actually. I never had the experience of returning to where I left off in my last sitting. Each sitting — and each split second of sitting — is always new and different. Two sittings are like two different poems. One sitting may be blissful, while another blistering. There is still in me a strong temptation to seek the bliss all the time, as if I can have possession of the sitting process. When something unpleasant springs up, I do tend to get disappointed.
There are many things happening during an hour of sitting — the mind and the body always have new things to present. But Goenka says, “Be equanimous.” This helps me go through sitting, and it teaches me what it means to sit. It is not the nature or quality of thoughts and sensations that matter, what matters most is equanimity. In spite of all the changes, stay equanimous. Do not be governed by the event. Sometimes, Goenka would say, “Watch how long an experience would take.” It will not take eternity. A person doing Vipassana meditation is led to cultivate the attitude of equanimity and see how experiences change constantly.
While sitting I would like to follow this invitation to remain equanimous. Sitting, even for an hour, is like a laboratory telling me about the conditions of everything else in my life. The experience of sitting is very much like my daily life. So many thoughts and sensations take place, and in life there are millions of reasons to complain and millions of strategies to crave for control and ownership of people and things. It is tiring, who does not need the repose? But it is more than the repose that I now need because life will continue with all its slings and arrows. So while I sit, I slowly acquire a new tool, namely equanimity. This is a very useful tool, helping me to tighten the loose bolts of daily life. I still remember the very first time I got hold of a ballpen. I was so young then. The instrument was made of glass, and the point was hard steel. I looked at it and saw that it had a very small crack on it. So from the very start, it was already broken, in a way. Now, I do not know where it is, I do not remember what happened to it. But I made good use of it. It reminds me of what it might just mean to go through my own daily life, which is already broken in a way. But each moment has a story to tell. I suppose I sit to teach me how to listen.
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A 10-day Vipassana meditation course will be held from Feb. 27 to March 9 at the Sico Farm in Dasmariñas, Cavite. For inquiries, call 639-3047, 0916-9708578, 0917-8004464 or 0918-9283760 or e-mail vipassana_rp@yahoo.com.