[Lesson From serving at a 10 day Vipassana course in Tamil Nadu.]

Wake up call

The alarm goes off at 3:45am. I bolt out of the bed and into the bathroom. I open the tap to wash my face, the water is ice cold. I had been in Bangalore this time of the year but had never woken up this early in the morning. I bundle up with three layers of clothing, pick up the brass bell and open the door. A blast of cold wave hits me and I almost step back into the room. The 4am gong goes off from the meditation hall. I brace myself and step out. I am all covered up except my right hand palm and fingers holding the bell. The bell gets cold, my hand starts shaking. The bell rings on its own.

53 students. 13 in a dorm and 40 in individual rooms. I have to wake them up and get them assembled in the meditation hall before 4:30am. I walk into the dorm and close the door behind. It is warmer here. I walk up and down pausing a bit in front of each bed and ring the bell. I hear someone snoring. One buries himself deeper into the blanket. I shake the bell more vigorously. After ensuring each student has at least gotten out of the blanket, I head out to the individual rooms. There are four rooms per row and ten rows in all. I walk up and down each row, my hand still shaking. I pause in front of each door and move on to the next. I do a second round at the dorm and go to the meditation hall. Another server had already opened the doors and switched on the lights. We wait for everyone to get into the hall. 4:25am. Five cushions are still unoccupied. We look up the seating chart, note down the room numbers and head out again. This time I knock the doors. I send the remaining students to the hall and walk behind them. All seats are occupied. It is 4:36am. I make a face and my partner whispers, “It’s the first day, tomorrow will be better.” I have to wake them up three more times after every resting period at 7:50am, 12:50pm and 5:50pm.

I have never had a problem of waking up before dawn (if needed, that is) ever since I was part of the national cadets corps at school. So, every sign of reluctance shown by the students in getting out of the bed is a potential source of irritant for me (you signed up for this, didn’t you?). It is an opportunity for me to deal with my conditioned reaction. Every time I feel like pulling apart a blanket from a student or ringing the bell near his ears or worse, visualizing pouring some water on his head, I pause and observe the sensations that arise in my body. Once I notice that while my right hand is shaking the bell in front of a student buried in his blanket, my left hand had made a tight fist. My job is to convert these sensations and reactions into experiential wisdom – Bhavanamaya Panya. The more I watch the sensations and not react, the lesser becomes the urge to act. My mind then gets smart and says, “Don’t watch yourself because if you do, you will lose the steam to act. Act quickly otherwise this bloke is going to make you come back again all the way from the meditation hall.” I’d observe that too. And that too would pass. Everything will pass - “Anichcha” is the first wisdom. Now I am learning to know it through repeated, actual experiences and internalize the knowledge. Panya – it does not come from understanding the meaning of the words but from undertaking the practice behind the meaning.

In one of his evening lectures, our teacher, Shri Goenkaji says, “There are four kinds of people in the world: the ones who go from darkness to darkness; ones who go from light to darkness; ones who go from darkness to light; and the ones who go from light to light.” On the eighth day of my morning rounds, as soon as my bell rings near door number one, the light goes on inside the room. I smile to myself and when I near the second room, the light goes on. The next room and the next and the next, the same reaction to my bell. It is their way of telling me that they are awake. I realized that after seven days of non-reactive work, I get to experience, in my own way, going from light to light. I feel grateful for getting the opportunity to wake up people from at least their physical sleep.

Open Eyes Meditation

The assistant teacher for the course tells me that I should meditate with my eyes open for the three compulsory group sittings every day. When he watches the students, I should watch him for his signals. I may have to nudge a student who has started sleeping, fetch a student who has walked out of the hall, ask a student to fold his stretched out legs, take a student who has started twitching or crying to the teacher... Everyone suffers during their initial days of learning to sit on the cushion for an hour. Tall, short, lean, fat, young, old, rich, poor... all of them suffer. Mere sitting in silence, if not done with the wisdom of ‘anichcha’, then suffering follows. I not only get to experience this in my own sitting but am getting an opportunity to watch 53 meditators not believing in the truth that the pain in their legs, to which they are reacting by changing their posture, is transitory. There is Dukka (suffering) in the world is the first noble truth.
10 hours of sitting on the cushion everyday and asked to watch and not react to any sensation in the body, gradually the mind begins to accept that sooner or later everything changes. That reacting to the change amplifies and prolongs the suffering. There is dukka but it need not be endured. There is a way out of dukka. The first step is to acknowledge, experientially, that everything changes and hence not fall victim to our conditioned reactions.

I watch the assistant teacher straighten his back. It is comforting to know that even he needs to react. This ingrained habit of reaction can be overcome only by iteration. I see students performing a full blown ballet on their cushion on day one. As the days go by, slowly they learn not to react as much and start resembling Russian dolls that come back straight up after leaning onto any direction. From the least moving teacher to the student who has suddenly acquired amazing dancing skills, I am grateful not only to watch a range of human reactions but also watch with open eyes, meditation in action, so to speak, and see gradually the reactions dropping over ten days. Yes, there is a way out of dukka: non-reaction. It is the second noble truth.

“I” is a consumer

After arranging all the food items on the table, I lean back on the wall and wait for the students. They pick up their plates one by one and start filling it in their own unique ways that many times elicit surprise and humour at the same time. The students know that there is no dinner but only a light snack during the 10 days of the course. So they start filling up their plates hoping to compensate for dinner too.

The lean guy is already on to his third glass of ragi kanji, the elderly man lunges forward to snatch a piece of papaya meant for the old students; it says so on a sign board in front of the fruit plate. The same person, when everyone is done, looks around and fills a small bag with puffed rice to take to his room. Another one finishes his plate, calmly goes to the washing area, washes and dries his plate and stands back in the queue. Some folks have a glass of ragi kanji, then a glass of tea then again ragi kanji and again tea... they are caught in a loop until the bell rings.
One man wants to mindfully pour a spoon of sugar into his glass of tea. As his hand slowly travels from the sugar box to his glass, it shakes and some sugar spills on the table. I realize that each action has its natural pace and mindfulness does not always mean, ‘slow’.

They try all kinds of weird combinations: banana with butter milk, puffed rice with pickles, mix red rice and white rice. When the salad was finished, one guy poured the vegetable liquid at the bottom of the salad container into his Dal bowl.

Day after day, I stood there and watched 53 students eat for their body and their mind. Hence my observation of my own eating habits became super acute. Why am I stuffing a piece of roti with some sabzi in my mouth and then adding couple of spoons of dal on the top? Why do I need some pickle when I have three choices to go with the roti? Why am I constantly eyeing the ragi ball which for sure is not a good combination with the rest of the food? When I walk out to wash my plate, my eyes literally eat the leftover idly and coconut chutney from the morning.
The “I” forms and grows in a child as the child identifies itself with or differentiates itself from the people, objects and places it is exposed to. “I like this”, “This is for me”, “This is mine” and eventually, “This is me”. Or, “I don’t like this”, “This is not for me”, “This is not mine” and eventually, “This is not me”. Through acceptance and denial, the “I” grows. Both are forms of consumptions. And I got to witness this at the dining hall where the consumption happens, literally.

In the meditation hall, we learn to observe that everything is transitory. In the dining hall, I observe that the food, the taste, the sensation of satiation – all goes away. I know that every cell in the body dies and whole body is replaced with new cells periodically. Where is the “I”? The third wisdom is Anata, there is no individual “I” sitting inside the body or the brain. The whole technique of vipassana is to help a person, step by step observe his own body and mind at subtler and subtler levels and discover that there is absolutely nothing that remains without change that one can point to as the “I”. It is the constant attempt to grow the “I” through consumptions (cravings) and safeguard the “I” through denial (aversions) that keep the illusion of “I” alive. The dining hall clearly shows that neither the food nor the body made of it is Me. It is a long way from there to acknowledging that my mind is not Me either. But it is a start. And I am thankful for all the students baring their food habits in all their cuteness and weirdness and pointing me to my own habits. The detachment gained in moving from knowing “I am a consumer” to knowing, “I is a consumer” is very significant.

The more I observe the habit patterns in others, the more the observation turns back on me. I then have no choice but to be sympathetic to others’ habits and the suffering they cause to themselves and others due to them. Compassion is no longer a ‘nice to have’ quality meant for the rare and unguarded saintly moments of my life. It is a necessity if I want to figure out the innumerable tricks and experiments needed to beat the habit patterns in myself and share it with others. Sharing how I beat one of my strong habits is the best way to help others beat theirs. No amount of carrots or sticks is going to help as much as compassion.

At least under special circumstances like a meditation course, I am a little less reactive to snoring, less judging of someone not following the rules or filling up one’s plate and more compassionate towards the guy constantly burping in the meditation hall (in spite of repeated requests from other students to place him at a distance). I am more willing to share my blanket with a student who wants a second one because his bed is near the door which wouldn’t close well. One student leaves the course on the third day and I get his blanket. After I get a list of requests for soaps, shampoos, oil, brush, paste, cold cream etc., I talk to the course manager and ask him to buy them from the nearby shop and I pay for them. He agrees to do it but only once. A day later, I get more requests. So I share my third pair of socks with one, give my coconut oil to another and at the end of the course, knowing that my fellow server does not have a sweater, in classic Serve Space style, pull the one I am wearing and give it to him. Each one of these instances fills a grain of Punya (merit) in one of the ten very large pots of Paramis (collection of Punyas) that is supposed to work along with the growth of Panya. These forms of capital, Panya – internal and experiential wisdom and Punya – external and experiential merit, as they grow more and more, in a spiritual twist, lead to Shunya – Zero, complete liberation from suffering.

So, Panya + Punya = Shunya

It looks simple. Like E=MC2.

And perhaps deserves a Noble Prize (to the Buddha, of course)!

Posted by Ragunath Padmanabhan on Jan 18, 2016 | permalink