Sunday reflections 8 - The bright side of winter!

Yes there is a bright side! We are watching the Canada Sweden gold medal Olympic match up today and I am itching to get my feet into a pair of ice skates and zip across the ice. Oddly enough, I learnt to skate in Dubai in 1984, smack in the middle of a blistering summer at the Al Nasr Club ice skating rink. I did not even have an inkling then that I was Canada bound. I rented skates and persisted day after day over the 8 weeks I spent there. I took to the ice like a fish to water even surprising my niece's trainer.

After we came to Canada, my husband and I bought ourselves skates but were too embarrassed to stumble on the ice. So after a couple of tentative tries, we carted them from house to house, as we moved around, finally donating them to goodwill. Likewise with cross country skis which we used a little more, over a couple of winters on the beautiful wooded trails close to our Blind River home. Our move to Toronto saw us gravitating towards all things Indian in an attempt to create a comfortable cocoon for ourselves and introduce our child to her heritage. Luckily for Utta she took to winter, having moved here when she was just 18 months. As a toddler, she loved playing in the snow and would refuse to come inside while I froze watching over her. She learned to skate, play ice hockey and ski downhill. It's no wonder she does not complain about winter!

My favourite pastime in the winter is complaining about it. And yet we live in a nation whose tag line for the Olympics was "we are winter" and where the winter scenes just take my breath away! I love the hush of a snowy day, walking on a crisp cold day and recall with fondness a well deserved hot chocolate after a couple of hours of exhausting but exhilarating cross country skiing. Like everything else it's always that first step. Rather than recoil and cower inside with confused thoughts about winter - all irrational and learnt - I am determined to tackle the great outdoors. Skating maybe? I am sure there is a rink around the corner from me and a pair of rental skates available for a song. I just need my brave face. What greater motivation than making my daughter proud and perhaps one day skating with her. I hope to blog about my skating experiences which hopefully do not include tales of broken bones! (Ok ok - no more negative thoughts)

And how about those Canadian athletes!!

Sunday reflections 7 - 3 Epiphanies

It is 4:30 am and I hurry towards the meditation hall. The two hour meditation leading up to breakfast has it's highs and lows depending on the previous night's sleep. It is a striving to embrace that elusive experience of Shuniya, the point of stillness, which ironically cannot be achieved through effort but comes from totally letting go of the conditioning that everything comes with effort. There are no great aha moments, just the excruciating drag of time from minute to minute. I try to be fully present through the aches, pains and tingling as well as the vastness of time as I observe each breath, gently forcing the mind back every time it runs into the future with craving for the hot oatmeal, toast with tahini and the piping hot cup of tea that awaits the close of the meditation or to past Chennai experiences of decoction coffee. Anything to occupy it. With eyes tightly shut, and determined to make an honest effort, I focus, mildly distracted by the footfalls and the rustle of clothes of others who have dragged themselves from bed to settle on their spots. By the second day I realize I can tell who has come in. I am particularly tuned in to a young man who sits along my row, with a fully shaven head, white and gleaming. He wears a hoodie in a dark colour to go with his light coloured pants and appears the keenest of the lot. I cannot see his face and would dare not make eye contact, breaking the precept of noble silence. I play a little game of making up his story in my head to test how close I have come, when the silence is broken on the last day. He is clearly married but did he still flirt with the idea of monk hood, I speculate because of his ostensible intensity?

Anyway, I anchor my practice to his, since competition is what I know best. I will out meditate him. Stay motionless, while he shifts positions, remain glued to my spot eschewing the need for washroom breaks and outlast him past the breakfast gong. It works. I barely know how the first hour has passed heralding the soothing chants that mark the second hour. The next day when the gong strikes the wait does not seem long at all. Odd. Now I cannot wait to get back in the hall to meditate. I have an incentive. I want to outdo and outlast this young man. Although the meditation itself is great, and even unbeknownst to myself I am quietening the mind, it is only on day 4 or 5 that I wise up to the egocentricity of this incentive whereby I am treating meditation as a competitive sport! I then begin noticing this habit pattern that underpins decisions I make in life. This is not to say that competition is bad. However, there are times when competition does not engender the best outcome. In those instances, alternatives may include finding a middle ground or withdrawing so as not to cut one's own nose to spite a competitor. It may be a while before I am actually able to alter my reactions, but at least now I am noticing?! How interesting! This is one of three big epiphanies I have.

The second one relates to my need for purpose in everything I do. Here, there is the realization that there is "no pizza in nirvana" (Sharon Salzburg) and no outcome to look for on a cause -effect linear scale. Transposed to everyday living it is the idea behind karma yoga where you don't look to the end but the reward is in the experiencing!

And the third epiphany? Well it relates to my romantic ideas on everything including spirituality. Oh how wonderful that this young man may be on his way to becoming a monk. For starters, fresh out of 10 days of practice, I do not indulge my curiosity to find out. It really does not matter if my speculation is right or wrong. After all this is about his life and his journey and not fodder for my entertainment.

Silence and Sensation

Equanimity just looks on and observes, while calmly settled in composed neutrality. It is manifested as the quieting of both resentment and approval. Gautham Buddha

I am back from my Vipassana retreat in Alliston, Ontario where nestled in the wilderness of Canadian conifers is Dhamma Torana, the Centre where I strengthened my meditation practice while observing ten days of noble silence. This could have been the lower Himalayas in the winter, so pristine the snow and serene the beauty of the land. The only sounds I heard till we broke the silence on day 10 was that of the gong to herald wake up, meditation and meal times. With 60 other enthusiastic meditators I trekked from the women's dorm to the meditation hall and the dinner hall in a cozy triangle, between the hours of 4:00 am and 9:00 pm never otherwise venturing much outside. The days consisted of long hours of observing my breath and sensations in complete silence, in the large Dhamma Hall or in my individual cell. The first two days were challenging with aches from sitting cross legged on a meditation cushion for 11 hours. However, except for a few rocky moments from emotional upheavals brought on by the intensity of the practice, on days 4 and 6, it was an extremely comfortable and natural state for me to be in. The quiet of the winter just deepened the inner silence I was able to scale.

Besides the sheer experience of delinking from all sensory stimuli, there were some marvellous benefits that I enjoyed from this retreat.

I main lined with the Buddha and my heart brimmed over with gratitude for his contribution to bring real peace and harmony with a non sectarian practice that just involves observing breath and sensations to eliminate past conditioning and habit patterns. Pure Vedanta with "how to" instructions. I am committed to continue on this path to bring greater detachment, unravel old habit patterns and to live without the reactivity that comes when the the mind and body are out of sync!

I met amazing young women who on day 10 just stunned me with their wisdom and purity. There is such a thing as an old soul. One 20 year old's experiences on the spiritual path since age 17, simply floored me. Another young woman said she did not have any place to go to after the retreat, but that it had brought her the clarity to understand what she wanted to do. Her husband was there, of course segregated from us, and she told me, with unbelievable serenity, that he might decide to become a monk! I wondered how these women have such courage to be so detached and uncompromising in their life choices,

Another "benefit" came from deepening my practice by volunteering to clean up washrooms and public areas. These are the "privileges" that an old student can sign up for and I did.

A further benefit was re-learning how to live life by strict rules. In a world of silence, systems and adherence to rules is of paramount importance so you don't get in people's way while taking care of your own needs. There are those of us who are rule bound and others who keep shifting the lines. I have assessed myself as belonging to the second category. So such reinforcement was really useful for me! I am replicating some of it at home with instruction lists and weekly menus! Let's see for how long this lasts!

Living the life of a nun has its advantages in that you get by with the basics, live off the charity of others and simplify life to limit it to few activities. I ate the wholesome breakfast of oatmeal, fruits and toast and lunches of rice, pasta or couscous with cooked veggies and salads with great relish and made do with just herbal tea at dinner time. I was present in everything I did, from showering to washing to walking on the snow, without the distractions of sensory clutter and choice.

I hope to do a ten day retreat every year and longer ones in the future.

We all know the benefits of meditation. Here is one of myriad scientific articles coming out on this topic. (http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/mindfulness-meditation-causes-specific-molecular-changes-in-the-body-uw-madison-study/meditation/ ). If you want to get established in a daily practice within an environment that is non-religious/sectarian/cultist, I highly recommend Vipassana. Also, if you are intimidated by the austerity, don’t be. There is so much love and compassion in the environment there that you are allowed the privilege of sitting on a chair if you cannot cross-legged on the floor, or if you wish to meditate in your room, rather than in the hall. You are also provided a meal in the evening if you cannot bear the thought of going to bed on a hungry stomach. Most amazing off all are the changes that you will see come over you and their positive impact on your relationships, productivity, focus and overall well being. If you are able to set aside 10 days, give it a try. It's free and works based on the pay it forward principle! You will come away enriched and become part of a wonderful community of volunteers who run the Centres worldwide! Check out www.dhamma.org.