Impermanence and suffering

Everything changes, that was a lesson you could not fail to learn. We were on a strict regime of meditation, the bell rang and a new session began. Like dogs even our salivations were controlled by the bell. We sat and meditated, we walked and meditated, and we even stood and meditated. In fact we ate, washed and stretched meditating.

The worst sessions were the afternoons. It began with an hours walking in the hot sun dreading the upcoming standing meditation. Then you stood for an hour. I made a pact on the first day if I could stand for an hour I could do the 10 days. Then on each of the 10 days of course, I had to complete the hour. There were no other chick novice meditators who made the hour, I showed extreme stubbornness. I would like to say I reached divine levels of enlightenment but I didn't, I suffered. My entire body hurt and I could hardly meditate at all because my feet ached so much and my legs ached and I was so consumed with the obsession to stand for the whole hour that it was my only focus. The breath be damned I focused on the pain and the goal - to last the hour.

So, when the next hour of walking came, I was delighted, it was sheer relief to be walking again. Once that was done it was sitting and after 3 hours on your feet you were soo glad to be sitting down. All the while aware that soon enough you would be back on your feet for the last drudge to suppertime. The last hour of 5 hours straight meditation could be heaven or hell but guaranteed your feet were always sore.

The physical toll was as hard as the mental in the first few days. The body does not like to be suddenly put into a totally different routine and use muscles it is unfamiliar with and it will ache at you. No more does the mind like to have its shield of endless thinking observed and not in a reverential way.

I do rather make it sound like the whole thing was hellish and at times it was, but it was also amazing. There were times in walking, sitting, standing where you reached such a level of contentment with the present, the footstep or the breath, that nothing beyond or before could interfere. There were hours that just flew by, disappeared whist you remained content with just exactly where you were. The long hours were the ones where you piled on the Duka (suffering). The ones where you counted up the hours done and hours to go; or got miserable about the crap dinner you were going to have; or the fact you would rather be looking out into the jungle than walking seemingly endlessly up and down, up and down the track. It is incredible how many layers of suffering you can create of of what begins as just impatience and modest dislike of a situation turning it into a pure hell of mental torment, all of your own creation.

view of the jungle

Everything changes, good or bad but the idea I think, is that by maintaining a core of contentment it doesn't matter too much what happens. That is not to say you stop caring, just that you are less attached to the physical. That is the physical self which will grow old, wrinkly and die and that is if we are lucky and don't get knocked from the perch early. Also the physical world and we aren't just talking butterflies here we are talking universes.

I thought I had found something permanent the seasons, not individually but all together, there will always be a season and one that I enjoy. Always there for me to be happy about. In an interview Steve quickly slashed that one the world will end and with its seasons as will the universe and with its sunrises. Impermanence is not just on a me level it is so much bigger.