Lessons from the 10-day refuge

Meppen, after 10 days of imprisonment - freedom! The nearest point of nirvana I've ever been :)

I spent 10 days in Germany, meditating in total silence and mental separation from other meditators (there were around 100 people, women and men also physically separated). I had no previous experience with meditation, I only went to enrich my life with new experiences and to take some time off in this quite an important period of my life (this year is going to be my last in Tartu and I’m setting steps for the future).

I knew the schedule ..

- the 4AM wake up
- no eating after 12 o’clock (only tea and some fruits)
- 10 days no music, books, writing, speaking or any other kind of communication with others or outside world
- the main activity to sit and meditate, meaning observing your mind and body

.. and it seemed to be a challenging and interesting thing to try.

And it was, though I felt like running away for several times, but more deeper experience for me than just “new” and “interesting”.

Now after the camp I don’t feel too much like talking about it, as I realise how much I’m in the beginning. I was again nobody, with zero knowledge, with weak and doubtful will, new ground and new perspectives. I hadn’t experienced such world, I had never looked inside of me in such way and I was suprised of the sense everything started to make. My previous thoughts about becoming a better person and controlling my reactions were suddenly in a very practical level and I saw how much work one must actually do to influence your automatic reactions.

I also realised I’m full of crap, full of information I don’t need and emotions from long-gone events that still have some effect on me then I think about them. Long-forgotten movies started to play in my head, I rememberd even the names of the characters from stupid soap-operas I thought havn’t left a trace. Weird pictures from magazines popped up, computergames on which I used to spent hours, songs and their messages, meanigless activities I’ve done in name of “resting”. Wow, this is all stored somewhere, everything is there! I knew that before, right, but I had never felt it. So I realised how carefully I have to choose what I surround myself with, because that all has an influence on me. After the camp walking in Osnabruck the violent messages from different commercials struck me especially clearly.

So though I’d suggest everybody to try it themselves and then give their personal evaluation, I’m not going to promote it or explain in small details what we did and why it was good. I might probably just sound freaky, as if I had gone through some semi-religious experience and have lost at least 1/3 of my analytical thinking. I wish the changes in my life would be noticable, but very likely they are so tiny, that even myself will start to doubt sometimes if anything changed at all. But all these tiny changes aren't build on an empty place and tiny+tiny+tiny equals to small. I start more and more believing into hard work instead of quick success.

Just a remark - I will for sure follow my nature and you will hear some Vipassana jokes in coming times, because it’s fun to think back to it as well, the chanting and guiding lines in fruity Indian accent that keep going in my head. But it was more than that.

Here are the key thoughts I put down after experiencing them, which is different from knowing things with your brain:

Everything changes – change is the law of nature, so there’s no point to hate something as it changes, nor is there a point to crave for something as it changes too. Pain is temporary, joy is temporary – this is life. Nothing is worth to be stuck with it.

Everything that happens is totally neutral, you give the evaluation and react according to it. You can control your reactions, so you can control everything that happens to you in life.

Nobody can hurt you without you letting it to happen.

Your mind and body are strongly interconnected. Your thoughts become what you do and influence how you physically feel

Discipline and order in your daily schedule increases your physical and mental abilities, boosts energy levels and improves your memory.

I’ll leave a link here and if you decide to try it yourself, you could let me know, I’d be glad to talk about it with someone who has his/her own reasoned view about it:

http://www.dvara.dhamma.org/en/courses/index.html

And one thing more – yes, I’m going to write more in English from now on. I wrote in Estonian before to express myself in a language I feel, not only speak, to pass on the details and colours of the thoughts. Let’s see what happens in a more international language, hopefully at least some clarity of thought remains:)