Reflections...

So often it seems like this eh-- for ten days working with those colossal cravings we all lug around with us, among them (for me) the craving to think my own thoughts and roll in them and find ways to put them into words to express a point and when not doing so the enormous unpleasant sensations that come as a result. And now with the course done and the freedom to roll in anything I'd like, and it suddenly loses the vast import it once dad. Ah, the illusions delusions and smoke screens of this mad monkey mind!

I enrolled in the course and was given a card with a series of numbers that were to serve as my various identifications: separate numbers for cushion, enrollment, registration, cell, laundry, room, etc. The laundry was pretty interesting. For about ten cents you can get washed and ironed by the laborer staff, where they actually write your laundry number on the actual clothes in order to deliver to the right person. So I now have a “T-1” on every item of clothing I brought with me to India, from white thin cotton pants to socks with a “T-1” sewn into the fabric. (And to matters worse, as I am staying on here now, they made me change numbers, meaning I will now have clothing with the “T-1” crossed off and “JM” added...

Another interesting system was the hot water. Laborers are constantly seen cutting and hauling wood throughout the center, which is burned in giant furnaces, granting hot water to all on the Dhamma Giri compound from about 6.30 to 8.00 am. I did get to enjoy the bucket showers, thanks to a nice brush that really ex foliated the skin-- I learned grace au Maroc.

The center itself was great-- beautiful and exotic flowers carefully manicured and peppering the walkways, a day laborer watering in the mornings and staring inquisitively at the sahibs as they passed by. A huge pagoda with hundreds of cells (which can be built in this country at a total cost of only a couple hundred thousand dollars-- not long ago, after a long course, Guruji-- as Mr. Goenka is called here-- dug up the first earth himself where Tapovana would later be). I was assigned a top level cell that took more than a few of the tiled steps to reach. A small view permeated of the valley that Tapovana rests in and the palm trees hovering over the single accommodation huts below. A large and wide lap-like walking space made the perimeter of the male residences and one on corner, a high cement wall topped with barbed wire separated the rural village life with this austere and ancient practice within. But times one might hear the sound of women gossiping or children laughing and a quick glance (but stay with sensations while doing so!) might give way to a motor rickshaw treading over the dirt road or a handful of water buffalo being led from one place to another. Or during a sit the faint (or not so faint if you're not avoiding the distraction that the mind loves to pick up on-- I tried wearing earplugs on day 5 until the Teacher called me up on it saying that I must be equanimous with my frustration) loudspeaker broadcast of the latest Bollywood soundtrack, a Ravi Shankar-like raga, or some pundit going on in Hindi or Marathi.

The food was filling, enormous, and came in wide selections. Nearly every day I filled up my plate already when coming to the final few selections. Much of the time I had no idea what I was eating, or no less how to eat it. I tried to watch the Indians out of the corner of my eye to see just what they did with those fresh limes, or if the substance in question was sauce or soup or dipping sauce or what. Though with Indian cuisine you just put it all together, one separately prepared dish after another, and mush it all up to an unrecognizable mess and dig our hands and fingers (right only!) into it and eat away. Ah, yes, this really is India. Every separate entity carelessly blending into the other to create a truly chaotic and seemingly senseless and baffling (to a Western mind!) whole. Lots of chai, some kir with black stones in it (minutes after Guruji tells the story), buttermilk, chai, much more! Here's a photo of the individual huts the male students stay in...

Oh but the course itself! Didn't some purification take place amongst all this sensual pleasure? The support was just phenomenal. I've never experienced anything like it, outside of Dhamma Jyoti in Burma, which I was not nearly balanced enough at the time to take advantage of. When one says a center is strong, there can be some fear as to what impurities this powerful magnet will bring up. But it one is working properly, it is like, as a friend commented, slicing through sankharas like butter. Buttah! So many times I just tried to observe it objectively, effortlessly, knowing the closer I am the more Dhamma would ake care of it. And here at Dhamma Giri-- what Dhamma! The support is always at your back, and it really does make a difference. It felt so much easier knowing this to be so.

The reverse is also true-- I was very careful during the course not to start a trend to roll in destructive thought patterns, a strong vigilance that helped me to go to sensation when certain impurities came up I've never been able to do before. But on the morning of Day 11 I felt a certain fatigue and thinking the course was over, let myself slip into rolling in some cravings for some brief moments as I awoke at an early 4 am... and oh man, did that pound me with the full force of dukkha of Nature's Laws! It took hours to really pass through after that. An Indian friend in the US once told me DhammaGiri is so strong that if you start craving in the cells, and can't observe it, you had better exit the building, otherwise the consequences are too severe!

Sitting there with that craving as it built up greater and greater towards the end, I gave into it less than I had in previous courses, and the unpleasantness was intense. I could see clearly that the external objects were meaningless. I knew I didn't really want them, so I stayed with the craving itself and its sensation. At times I felt like a heroin addict going through withdrawal symptoms-- more so around noontime when i wasn't meditating, but lying down observing sensations-- my body was fervently craving for a fix to make the discomfort go away. I could have given a small one by allowing the mind to roll in some funny memory-- or sad or happy or strange memory for that matter-- but I saw only too clearly that would only offer a temporary escape, truly a quick fix to satisfy the intense sensation, and would then leave it needing more, and more and more often, which knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, has been the habit pattern of the mind. I have a craving to check email and I check it, to read the newspaper or lay in bed an hour longer or watch a movie-- nothing wrong with any of this, but the craving that accompanies it-- oh, dukkha, dukkha! It really is craving for the sake of craving, never being satisfied with what is, and to be still with your craving, to try to make friends with the screaming and impatient child that it is-- oh, the body can shake and contort and just want that fix to make it all go away... (here is a picture of the gong at Dhamma Giri)

A Global Pagoda is now under construction near Bombay that ultimately will house upwards of 10,000 mediators. To hear ab out the project in detail it is truly a massive effort that will have reverberations possibly through the world over. A main pagoda will be the largest in the world, and the biggest structure of any kind without a single supporting inner beam ( it is all done through crating interlocking stone pieces). Four smaller pagodas si at each side, offering interactive exhibits depicting the life and teachings of the Buddha. Once completed, it will be one of the main attractions of Bombay (although it is just off the water on an island from the city), and may attract many people to come just to see it, while also revealing this path that exists to purify the mind. Check it out at http://www.globalpagoda.org/

So the course ended well, Days 10 and 11 were unsettling as usual though, trying to figure out where I will sleep at this large complex and what I will do. Everyone tells me a different story, often regarding very important matters and everything changes, this morning being told I would not be able to serve the upcoming course and was to leave immediately, then told a few mor things in the afternoon and by evening a surprised AT assuring me I could stay as long I wished and could give dana through gardening or office work or even at VRI. Nothing is easy for us Westerners in India, and the tighter we hold on the worse it is. Dogs lie in the middle of street ignoring the Indians but revealing snarled teeth to dirt stained white legs. To send this very email I have endured Internet places that didn't work because the connection was down, electricity was out, and when I finally found a place, was told I had but 20 minutes to check 12 days of email because the owner had to be on for business. Then wading through the goat pee alleyways and fly covered cows roaming free on the street, the Hare Krishna music to use my fiend Kedaar's laptop in his bungalow and upon touching the ports receiving a strong flow of electricity (ooo I want electric currents I want electric currents!)

Back at Dhamma Giri endless tour groups view the grounds, many Indian families staring the exotic sahib literally open mouthed, following with their eyes every movement, my WalMart Nalgene water bottle being stared at through its blue tinted plastic like a magical elixir. Even i the course groups came as far as the gate and followed me with their eyes as if I was in the zoo. Once I Heard the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of little feet. I turned to find hundreds of school children marching past, on day 7 or so and coming from the cell you can imagine my sensations!

I had some friends in the course and some friends of friends-- the Danish name I recognized and realized I had heard of him from my Pakistani friend who I met in Jaan, meeting a guy straight from a Bollywood flic and finding out he's a top ranked squash player who smpetes at international tournaments and happened to have one hell of a course. And all the funny thoughts in the course-- whatever you do don't allow decision to be made! One of the most curious had to do with a movie I saw on the fligt over-- “Wedding Crashers”, a comedy about two womanizers who pretend to go to weddings only to pick up on girls. I thought of how interesting it would be to keep Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn but turn it into this intense and thought-provoking drama about how the deeply immoral acts perpetrated by these characters slowly eat away at their soul as they experience the fruit of their actions...

Well, this has been one burst of reflection here and now all the new food I have given this wavering mind. :) Guess that fix has now been taken.

Much thanks to those who have been sending metta my way. It was been appreciated and will be reciprocated in kind. We have a lot of work to do. :) What can you say? You are bound to be successful, bound to be successful...

For photos of Dhamma Giri/Dhamma Tapovan, click here!