Free!

Was released back into the real world today after my 10 days of silent confinement. The meditation course was a lot harder than expected, in fact possibly one of the toughest things I've ever done. The silence and other strict rules (the best of which is in the pic above) weren't that bad, although it made the breaks almost intolerable, with no reading, music or talking allowed - basically no form of entertainment at all! The point of it was basically to discover the Buddhist philosophy of letting go of cravings for pleasant things and aversions to unpleasant things (as craving and aversion are the cause of humanity's misery). It was quite uncomfortable for me with my feeble and inflexible back and legs to be sitting on the floor for the 10 or so hrs of meditation a day. Then, after a few days of honing our concentration of our bodily sensations, mainly by focussing on breathing, we were told that three times a day we had to meditate sitting in the same position for an hour without moving. Which is very painful. And in the meantime we had to focus on our bodily sensations.

Possibly worse than the pain was the diet (only breakfast, lunch, and a small evening snack) and the early mornings. Those of you who've seen me in the mornings will know that between waking up and breakfast I'm pretty useless at anything. So getting me up at 4am for two hours of meditation before breakfast was never gonna be a good idea. The session ended up an exercise in perfecting the art of sleeping sitting up - so that I looked like I was mediataing and wouldn't be woken!

The point of the course was basically to learn through mediation not to react to pleasure and pain, and that misery is caused by these reactions. I didn't buy into the details of the Buddhist philosophy (delivered over cassette buy a guy with a hypnotic voice), but the message was good and it was good to get some head space. And I can now bear the pain of sitting still for an hour without fliching. But I can't always bear the boredom!

In Varanasi now, by the sacred River Ganges where people bathe, worship and get cremated. Looking forward to the Holi festival this weekend, when the triumph of good over evil is celebrated by people running round the streets throwing paint at each other! Then off to Cambodia...