The long lost post...

This post was originally written in July?… maybe August 2009…. it’s been sitting in my draft mail, unfinished… unedited. It’s been calling out to be posted for months now… so now, I’ve decided to listen to the cries of words unheard and share with you the un-ripened fruits of my mind. Enjoy… It was originally called “Nothing lasts.. but nothing is forgotten”

***Warning: The following email contains scenes of profanity, flatulence, bad jokes, puns and pointless references to 80′s, 90′s and 00′s pop culture. You have been warned ***

So where to begin? Not sure… not sure. You see, the thing is that as most of you know, when I last wrote you, I was just about to head off to my 10 day Vipassana mediation course. During the course, I had much time to myself to think and ponder and occasionally meditate. In my head, I’ve composed this email so many times over and I’ve been cursing the fact that I didn’t have a laptop to be able to capture my ever so clever thoughts and comedy routines for you… and now, that I’m out, well… I’ve been having the hardest time putting any of it down on paper… and yes smart asses, I’m well aware that I’m not writing on paper. Ok… so the Vipassana course… hmmm… it’s really a difficult thing to write about and share with you as it was an incredibly personal experience and putting it in to words is next to impossible. I can talk to you about the ritual, the early morning wake ups, the food, the fasting… but to really get to the core of the experience would be like asking me to talk about the core and inner working of myself, which if ever any of you want to get in to I’d love to chat, but this is not really the place. Everyone who meditates, does yoga or follows a certain spiritual path does so for different reasons, and like them I had my own agenda. I assume that most of you.. or at least one or two of you visited the site www.dhamma.org in order to get an idea of what I was doing. All I’ll say here (in the serious part of this novella) is that it was a great experience… physically demanding, and mentally challenging. Deeply rewarding. will I do it again?… I think so… yes. I’ll definitely be sitting on my own at home. Will I sit in again on another course… that’s a tougher question to answer… we’ll see… but more than likely yes.huh? boring you say? my analysis is boring the crap out of you?…

right..(cough) (cough) (cough) (cough)

ok folks, I know you really want to know the dillio… now for the real analysis. WHAT THE HELL?!!!! Seriously! WTF?! Did I sign up for the wrong mediation class?! Holy shit! It was as if I was in a tantric S&M course! It was long, painful and there was NO happy ending!!! I though this was supposed to be some sort of Jedi Academy! What about the Jedi mind tricks? I wanted to learn the mytic’s secrets of turning lead to gold, levitation and the secrets of Jedi kamasutra… but NO! NAY!!!! You know what I got instead? do you want to know!!!? Every night for an hour, while sitting in a dank, humid poorly lit (yes read cultish!) room I got lectured by a small chubby Burmese/Indian who sounded like Yoda but inflicted pain like Darth Vader when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed! OH MY GANESH!!! breathe and be aware he says…. oh believe you me I was aware!!! of the ^#@%!@ing pain!!…. feel equanimity? Equanimi-WHAT!!!!? Nobody told me to bring a frickin’ dictionary to this course!!! Speak English! I have to do this for how long!? 12 hours a day!!! WHAT!!! FOR 10 days!!!! WHY DIDN’T anyone tell me about the pain?! Annicha he says… annicha… who the hell is Annicha! She’d better be cute! (sigh) Actually, “annica” is the Pali word for the natural law of impermanence. Essentially the definition is that everything changes all the time, nothing lasts. uhhhh… yeah… the fucking pain moves around the body like a cheetah on fire, it might not be permanent but it still hurts! WAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Oi… and what’s up with waking up at 4AM?! Isn’t sitting for 12 hours a day in noble silence not enough! ok ok… and now a word about noble silence… now for those of you who do not know, Vipassana course is meant to be taught/studied/practiced in what is called noble silence. Noble silence goes above and beyond the normal ideas of being quiet… it is the practice of zero communication with your fellow mediators. No talking, no eye contact, no nudge nudge wink wink… nothing, nada, niet… now some purists would even say that that should and does include bodily functions such as coughing, burping and farting…. however at Dhammashringa (the Kathmandu Vipassana centre), this was most deinitely not the case. Actually, the silence let alone the noble silence was quite frequently broken by people passing the noble gas (I’ve been dying for at least a week now use this joke… I’m so clever ;-p ) That’s right…. it was toot-tastic in there. It was if someone had invited the entire brass section of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and asked them to play some sort of weird John Coltrane free jazz piece. Needless to say, after the first couple of farts, the entire meditation hall resemble a giggling gaggle 10 year olds! … sigh… One of the most marking post course conversation I remember happened after the course on the 10th day when we could speak again. I was waiting for the bus back to Kathmandhu/Thamel and a Nepali who had sat he course with me came up to me and said, “I admire your concentration.”

“Why’s that”, I asked.

“Well, when ever someone farted, all the Nepali started to laugh their heads off and had to leave the hall. But when I looked over at you; you were still meditating… eyes closed, mouth shut and not moving… like a rock.”

“But I know you laugh… I see your face turn so so so red…. so I know you laugh hard inside.”

so true… so true…