What they say-is Storm, was more than A STORM- has passed away: MY EXPERIENCE WITH VIPASSANA

LAST TWO DAYS, made me realized
what VIPASSANA has done to me!!! Oh, that (physical) pain, i could just observe
and observe without reacting to it (no
medications, YAY!!!) and i TODAY i am ALL GOOD. YES!!! VIPASSANA is all about OBSERVING
THE REALITY AS IT IS, WITHOUT REACTING TO IT.

So, I joined vipassana on 17th june,
in a month i could see the difference. So coming back to my experience of those
10 days.

What they say-is Storm, was more
than A STORM- has gone . Difficult words! Hmm! But as difficult these words
seem, life was more much difficult. And with stammering, felt like worst. Why
me? Who, me, huh again? God, forget me please. All of us must have felt these
questions ringing the bells of mind for days and nights, in sleep and in
dreams, in fear and in anger. WHY ME? The answer of WHY ME was ME. The
question- WHO AM I was answered by VIPASSANA. When i joined the course,i did
not know anything about it, just the fact that it is a kind of meditation. And
it has helped fellow stammerers.

So when i entered the place, it
was quite, i felt nothing, when i met people over there, i felt strange
thinking “how can a person smile so much? All the time”. Hmm, i felt
weird, all the people were full of confidence, then why vipassana. I was the
one who has lost, i was the one full of misery and no confidence, and these
guys seem happy-go-lucky and blah blah blah….Buzzzz….”Shut up
mind” i said, and “Lets see how these 10 days treat you.”

So first day was full of shyness
and introductions, especially talks with my roomie, who was 19 yrs old (OMG i
felt, “oh ya, at that age i was also crying because of my L-O-V-E”
and that was the reason she came). So i had to fill the form, where THE REASON
OF JOINING was mentioned and i answered “I AM A STAMMERER“. Teacher
called me and told me calmly with a lovely face full of smile- “We cant
cure your stammering, but we can purify your mind, we can get you out the
misery.” I thought -” Life was miserable not because of only
stammering, but ‘N’ no. of other reasons, so even if it wont help my
stammering, i could really start my life afresh.” So with this positive
attitude, i managed to live the first day. The next day, we were supposed to
follow all the rules, first no eye contact and no talking, second, waking up at
4am (i could never imagine doing this!!), third, no dinner (OOOOPS I AM
FOODIE). Hearing all the rules made me understand that everything written on
website was not fake, it was actually true.

So next day started with wake up
bell at 4 am, i was sleepy. Everyday i either used to sleep in the meditation
hall or i used to think about breakfast. Anyways, first two days we learnt ana
pana mediation which functioned to
sharpen our minds, these didn’t seem tough when i compared them with third day,
wherein Vipassana was taught. It seemed scary, we were not supposed to change
postures for whole time (1-2 hrs intermittent durations totalling up to 10 hrs
of meditation per day seemed like a war). We had to observe our sensations-
both pleasant and unpleasant, had to maintain equanimity (no change in
postures) towards both, so that we can train our minds to become equanimous
towards happiness and pain . Well pleasant sensations (mostly vibrations) used
to feel like heaven, but for me, they never lasted long. I mostly generated
unpleasant sensations (heat, numbness, pain, sharpness). So first mediation
sessions i started with full determination that i wont change postures at all,
but still it was so painful that i changed my posture 5 times. And i
experienced mostly heat sensation (denotes anger). These sensations are generated
because of our past “sankaras (miseries)”. And it is said that
“Only when we remain eqanimous during meditation, that our past sankaras
will come up on surface, and if we again remain equanimous, these sankaras will
get eradicated”. Well, this is all science, as i can see. We were supposed
to try to calm our minds when we feel pain, at experiential level, only then we
will be able to calm our minds when we actually encounter a real life
situation.

Well, after experiencing sudden
heat sensations, my mind reacted really bad and got very agitated. My equanimity
just vanished straight away and i
changed my posture 20+ times during next session. This again made me
agitated and i went to teacher to ask her what is wrong with me. She smiled and
said -” Your old sankaras are just coming up on the surface.”

Next few days were miserable, not
just because of physical pain which i experienced due to constant sitting
sessions and heat sensation [I WAS ALL FEVERISH for rest of the days :(], but also because of all the sankaras coming up. The storm that i
faced during next few days made me realize that stammering is not the topmost
worry for me. There were few circumstances in my life which lead to increase in
stammering, those were the ones which are the cause of my actual worry. So i
tried to remain equanimous for these days, and at the end of the 10 days, i changed
my posture 4-5- times, which was still better than 20+ times.

At the end of vipassana, on 11th
day, we were taught the “PRACTICE OF HEALING”: Metta Bhavna. Here, we were taught how to spread all of our pleasant
sensations to others, thus spreading love, kindness, compassion and we were
made to learn how to love and how to forgive despite of feeling tons of pain.
Oh i was thrilled -“Did this work for me?”, i could feel pleasant
sensations all over when i practiced Metta Bhavna.

Few best things, which i learned
during these 10 days:

1. PAST IS PAST. Never think
about past and let it affect your present. The pain gets multiplied in the
manner you want it to multiply, else it just goes away in a matter of time.
(STILL TRYING TO FOLLOW THIS).

2. Cravings (for
things/people/situations we like) make us much more miserable, we just need to
understand that everything is impermanent (ANICHYA !!!!), even the happiness.

3. Aversion (for people or
anything we dont like) is also impermanent, so stop reacting if you feel bad
about something and just FORGIVE.

4. ACCEPTANCE (we know its importance
in stammering very well) is important in attaining wisdom. Observing the
reality of the moment and not reacting to craving or aversion made me realize
that i have to accept anything whatever comes in my way (accepting a
person/situations/mishappening, anything). Well i used to hate it when people
did not use to accept me the way i am, but i realized (two days back
only), I AM THE ONE WHO DID NOT ACCEPT
THE PERSON AS HE/SHE IS. The MORE WE ACCEPT THE MORE BETTER THE LIFE BECOMES.