The Experience

For a while now (since I went to India and people couldn't stop noting to me, "Well, that will be . . . an experience.") I have had an uneasy relation with that particular word, experience. I hated how vague it sounded, how people used it to say you have no reference for the feelings you are about to experience.

That was until I realized that experience is all we have. The feeling of the sun on your shoulders, the beating of your heart felt on your upper lip, the recognition of a song you love in a beautiful voice are all experiences. The memory of an embarrassment in the past an experience. The pain of watching crowds of people walk past savoring scoops of gelato when you've sworn to eat better an experience of its own. I recently took ten days to live like a monk at a Vipassana meditation center in the Burgundy region of France and it was an experience.

Waiting for the bus that would take us to the rural center, I met an English pilgrim in cat-eyed glasses. Talking to her of a pilgrimage trail called the Camino de Santiago, I asked her how it was to walk for miles on end on a pathway traveled by millions throughout history. "It was many things," she responded, the exact response I found myself giving moments later as she asked me how it was to travel in India. The same must be said about the Vipassana center, it was in fact, many experiences, and certainly different for every person who attends.

On arrival I was required to surrender my telephone, my wallet, any and all reading and writing material, food, drugs, and finally, my power of speech. Ten days is relatively little time, but count as your one and only activity the observation of breath and everything becomes bigger. The ten days I spent at the Dhamma Mahi center allowed me little respite despite my apparent inactivity and never have I truly felt so much experience was going on in, around, and through me.

I found the vow of silence easy, no longer did I have to watch my words trip around like wobbly toddlers, no longer did I worry the silence with idile talk and happily, nobody else did either. I didn't find the technique of meditation particularly hard, I like a well thought out method. I liked eating less and eating healthier. I liked waking up at 4:00 a.m. to the full and gentle sound of a gong approaching from afar in the dark. Washing my clothes by hand gave me an unforseen pleasure, especially since I had so few things to wash. Other people didn't take so favorably to the things I enjoyed. Expressing themselves by farting because they couldn't talk. Stealing food and hiding it in the room because he was hungry. One ground his teeth so loud that I could feel my bones vibrating in the night. Some cried from the misery of old memories, new fears, or the physical pain of sitting for hours on end. Another literally climbed the walls one night, waking me from a half sleep in his monkey impressions to turn off the emergency exit that shone like a nightlight.

Some didn't make it through the full experience, not content to walk the grounds (yes at times it felt like living in a retirement home), to listen to the thousands of birds singing in the fields and forest, not content to watch and see the myriad wildlife that lives at our feet, scarab beetles, spiders, and slugs that slowly feast on fallen apple flower petals. Often though, the hardship is easiest to recount, that is the first Noble Truth of Gautama the Buddha's teaching, life is lived in the realm of suffering and misery. Yet the moments of quiet, not labored by the birds or a distracted mind, the moment where truth simply rises up and fills you up, yet only recognized in the moment where it escapes forever, are beautiful. Freedom surprises you, so far I've only felt it on its way out the door.

By the time the tenth day came around (about 100 hours of meditation, a few pounds lighter, assured by the gentle, true, and reassuring words of Mr. Goenka) we all discovered again the world of words. We spoke softer, more carefully, and the silences deemed acceptable. Returning to Paris on the train I watched the rich green landscape roll by and I felt, quite unmetaphorically, my eyes were wide open. Even in the big bustling city itself I didn't get caught up in its chaos but sensed myself moving through in complete understanding of how I belonged to the moment and the movement swirling around me.

In this same peace I returned to my apartment in Avignon. My posters, my computer, my books, my bed, my clothes, my things, my things, my things! Suddenly a version of myself rose up and stood looking me in my wide open eyes. For ten days I cultivated my consciousness of being in the moment, of identifying only with the waves of ever changing sensations that washed through my mind and body. Now, these objects which for so long had been infused with my identity cried out to me with all their heart, that is, I felt that old attachment to them I had left behind. What can I do? Just remember that more than suffering, the world is the realm of change, annicca, this too will pass away as new things arise, to pass away again. This is the meaning, the experience.