Back from ten day silent Vipassana Retreat

Jeanne has sent you a message on Architects of a New Dawn

Congratulations Ron,

and welcome to the club... tee hee. You are now an old student... and it only took ten days to earn your stripes... ten long days.

Have you heard that each day at a vipassana retreat is ten days long, so a ten day retreat is equivalent to 100 days.

But seriously, I'm happy to hear that you completed what may be the best thing you've ever done. And I'm happy to call you a dhamma brother.

I'm signed up to do a service period in Washington from the 9th to the 19th. I'm looking forward to it.

Metta,("metta" means loving kindness)
Jeanne
Ron said: "...having a hard time sitting over 30 minutes at a time."

Funny... who would have thought that sitting is hard?
On our first course, I glanced over at my husband at the end of an hour and he had so many cushions under him, that they looked like a chair. Now he uses only a small blanket folded over... just enough to slightly raise his lower spine. He swore at the end of that first course that he would never be able to be comfortable sitting... and now he is a marathon sitter.

...patiently and persistently, you are bound to succeed... I love those words.

Reply by Ron Alexander 22 minutes ago Jeanne said:
Ron said: "...having a hard time sitting over 30 minutes at a time."


...patiently and persistently, you are bound to succeed... I love those words.

Hi Jeane, thanks for your reply - my cushions against the backwall ended up looking like a throne, and I especially had a hard time during the one hour group sessions with the teachers looking on. However, I pleased to report that this morning I got up expecting a hard time sitting for one hour in my simple wooden meditation chair (I did add one cushion after all my "assskara" during the course). However, when I finally looked over at watch, I thought it would be between 30 & 45 minutes, and low and behold, it was 1 hour and 15 minutes!

I am trying to be equanimitous, instead of getting too "rah rah" about this. I asked Anand the teacher about "why not getting really excited about things like your team winning?". Expecting a lecture about how "pleasure samskaras were just as hurtful as painful ones in the long run", instead he simply looked at me with his clear eyes and beautiful smile and said:
"Why can't we be joyous every moment?"

Here is another helpful answer to me by Anand: as usual during meditation, besides using a mantra ("calmly and with equanimity" here), I was used to trying to develop my third eye - the sixth chakra. Here it kept getting blocked - felt like a hood over it. Anand told me "where did you learn that?" I told him from Swami Vishnu Devananda during a Sivananda teacher training course on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Anand replied:
"that is physical, here we work with mind and matter and mind is over matter." As we progressed in the ten day, I realized we developed awareness for whole body and not for special spots like the chakras.
One Love, ron

Love this people! Getting trained to accept reality for what it is, without wavering to and fro. To live in each moment, and try to enjoy it for what it is....What a concept!

Best,
Mike