Dr. Nicki Crowley
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Just recently, I experienced a ten-day residential course to
learn the technique of Vipassana meditation. Like most people who
embark on such an exploration, I was looking for something. What I
found was a door into something more profound than I could have
imagined. I feel so excited to have had this glimpse, but I have
hesitated to write this article, realising the impossibility of
adequately conveying such an experiential process neatly on two
sides of A4! So in the true spirit of Vipassana, I will 'surrender'
to the experience and just tell you what it was like for me.
A few years ago, the thought of staying silent for a ten-day
retreat, with only two meals punctuating eleven hours of meditation
each day, would have sounded extreme to me! But one's life
experience and priorities change, and so three weeks ago I arrived
at the Dhamma Dipa centre in Hereford having read the timetable,
feeling vaguely confident 'I could do it' and at home with the
following principals of Vipassana 1: It is not:
- a rite or ritual based on blind faith
- an intellectual or a philosophical entertainment
- a rest cure, holiday, or an opportunity for socialising
- an escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday
life
It is:
- a technique that will eradicate suffering
- an art of living that one can use to make positive
contributions to society
- a method of mental purification which allows one to face life's
tensions and problems in a calm and balanced way
The meaning of Vipassana is to see things as they really
are, not as they appear to be. I had read that Vipassana
meditation aims at the highest spiritual goals of total liberation
and full enlightenment. As a by-product of mental purification,
many psychosomatic diseases are eradicated. However, the purpose of
this practice is never simply to cure physical disease
1. I did want to cure my painful knees though. (In the
last couple of years the pain sometimes prevented me walking up and
down stairs comfortably and I had finally been diagnosed with
bilateral effusions of unknown aetiology).
Ignorance, aversion and craving are, according to this teaching,
the three causes of unhappiness. With continued practice, the
meditation releases the tensions developed in everyday life,
opening the knots tied by old habit of reacting in an unbalanced
way to both pleasant and unpleasant sensations 2. For
the psychiatrist interested in psychological approaches for
physical disease, and the potential healing aspects of altered
states of consciousness, the Vipassana concept of the 'mind-body
matrix' is intriguing.
On the first evening, after the Noble Silence began, we sat on
our mats. I felt quite comfortable wrapped in a warm blanket on my
cushion until my head started to pound. It was as though my head
was in a vice and I felt sick. I could not do the meditation; I
could not think my way through the pain, and I could not even 'not
think'! I was just this huge mass of tension, not knowing what to
do with myself. I lasted until the meditation ended and fell into
bed, feeling insecure in the knowledge that I had no Brufen with me
and that the gong would be waking me at four o'clock.
I made it though - I got up and went into the hall. Ten minutes
later, I ran out and threw up. No way, could I continue. I went
back to bed. I had already failed on day one!
I woke with the next gong and realised I needed some food. The
breakfast made me feel a little better (porridge and a choice of
cereals, fruits, toast and spreads). I had a hot shower. The sun
had risen and I went for a walk. The gong sounded again and I
followed everyone into the hall.
For the first three days we were taught simple breathing
meditation. This focussed our attention on the breath as it was in
that moment, not how we wanted it to be. I followed the natural
rhythm of each breath into my nostrils, feeling acutely the
sensation around the edges. Sometimes I lost concentration. If I
got annoyed with myself, my headache started, so I was gentle with
myself. I thought about a lot of things. Some of them got me upset
and then I noticed my breathing speeding up, reminding me to stop
thinking and to just to follow the breath.
Each evening we watched a video of S.N. Goenke, the renowned
teacher of this technique. Indian by descent and once a successful
businessman, Mr. Goenke first learned the technique of Vipassana in
Burma where it is an established part of Buddhist practice. Since
then Mr. Goenke has been instrumental in spreading the teaching
worldwide. His insights seemed always to be pertinent to exactly
what I had just experienced that day, and I assumed that others
found the same. Despite the Noble Silence, there was much laughter
from all of us as we watched him speak. On that first day, he
explained that when we sit, mind and body come together like cold
water being thrown on hot coals to put out the fire. I remembered
that initial sizzling of my 'mind-body matrix' and reflected on my
apparent disconnection.
By day four, I was feeling calm and centred. Now the teaching of
Vipassana itself was introduced. We were taught to scan our bodies,
from the top of our head to the tip of our toes. We were required
to notice any sensation, anything at all, and:
- Neither to like it or dislike it
- Neither to avoid it or to linger on it
- To remain aware and equanimous.
Over time my perception became more acute, detecting each and
every sensation - sometimes gross pain, sometimes a change of
temperature, or a subtle pressure. I understood that these
sensations are the embodied aspects of our experiences and that
reflection on them leads to deeper understanding. They become the
substrate of consciousness and serve as important links between
psyche and soma 3.
Three times a day there would be a one-hour sitting of 'Strong
Determination'. We were encouraged to remain physically still, with
the mind maintaining equanimity. This practice enables the
dissolution of deep dysfunctional patterns of the
bodymind4, our sankharas ('mental defilements' -
essentially either craving or aversion) and which are said to
underpin emotional and physical pain.
In each of the evening discourses, we were urged to work hard in
order to optimise our time and commitment to this practice. I felt
determined to do this properly, and now that my head was settled, I
had to deal with the pain in my knees. They hated staying in one
position, bent or straight, and so I sat there, in a half lotus
position, determined to get to the root of this dilemma. After
thirty minutes the pain was unbearable and my knees were screaming
to move. I was determined to remain still. I forgot about being
equanimous and tears were streaming down my face. The words
screamed out in my head, 'I've GOT to move!' I felt so desperate
and trapped that I had to move, which was also agony.
Defeated again! I had failed to complete the hour of 'Strong
Determination.' Ironically, having experienced that pain and
finally moving, my knee joints were more flexible and some of the
pain subsided.
I went to speak with the teacher and asked her whether the
object of the meditation was to break through the pain barrier. She
reminded me about the need to remain equanimous. Did I think I
could I find a different position? She gently told me to just try
some more.
I did. Now I understood. I needed to remain equanimous as well
as in full awareness of the pain. The key was not to generate more
negativity. I had the image of a penitentiary self -flagellating
monk, which through this new awareness felt so negative and
self-defeating.
At the next sitting, my knee pain disappeared and remained
absent for the rest of the course. But the new position presented
me with another physical dilemma - back pain! I spoke to the
teacher again, and with my new understanding explained that I
didn't want to generate another sankhara by putting my back out.
She gently suggested that was unlikely and to try again, as long as
I did not think I was going to lose the balance of my mind. I
smiled at myself. I hoped not.
By day six, time was beginning to lose its external
essence. I had been sitting on my mat for several days now and
was becoming posteriorly challenged on my allocated mat, (number
11). My mind still gently contemplated itself. In this space,
images of duality began to flood my awareness. I thought of the
figure 11 and the twin towers crashing on September
11th. Maybe half of the figure 11 was spiritual light
and half was dark, the resurgence of that shadow from which we
cannot escape? In order to maintain balance through the pain
emerging in both my hips I became aware of the image of a pair of
scales. There was a small figure on each side, like pawns
from a chess set, one black and one white. I concentrated on
keeping the scales balanced and remained completely
still.
Suddenly the scales broke! In my mind's eye, I decided to
hold one pawn in each hand. Sometime later, my awareness
'clunked' down a level. There was nothing there! Then I
became aware of a strong, tingling heat, like an electric current,
dark and sparkling all at the same time. It started at the
base of my spine and moved up my trunk, shoulders and neck
and over my face and scalp. It did not cover
my forehead or nose. I was awestruck by this state of
energy as it started to creep further up into my
nose. I just stayed with it, part of me observing and
part of me being with this warm black sparkling electric
current. This was a physical experience; I became aware of a
clear space flowing up into my head behind my eyes. At the
same moment, I felt a unified peaceful sensation in the centre of
my forehead. It was the most exquisitely tender, compassionate
feeling that completely touched me and I just sat there on
my cushion with tears silently pouring down my face.
The next day I woke with a streaming nose and a tight
throat. I intuitively felt that something had been released
from that area, not just intra-psychically but now
physically. I am not exactly sure what this was but I think it
happened because I had touched that deep place in the unconscious,
beyond thought, what the Vipassana teachings refer to as the
'mind-body matrix' where mind and body meet as the continuum they
truly are, and energy can flow as a connected whole.
This experience left me feeling profoundly clearer and lighter.
When I spoke about it to my companions at the end of the course, I
heard similar stories.
I wondered, as a liaison psychiatrist, whether there might be a
therapeutic place for this technique in hospitals. I am not sure.
The purpose of Vipassana is not merely the curing of disease but
the essential healing of human suffering. It is a process that can
be facilitated but not prescribed. The concept of maintaining
equanimity towards one's pain, the embodied shadow of the psyche,
flies in the face of Western medicine, in which the aim is to avoid
suffering as much as possible. Do we want to look below the tip of
the iceberg, or just shave off the sharp edges when they protrude
from our unconscious? Do we have the strength, and the courage, to
face our shadow and dig it out by the roots or shall we continue to
run from it?
For myself, learning how to maintain equanimity while going
through the suffering has cleared my mental and physical heaviness
and left me with renewed vitality. I feel I have touched upon huge
wisdom. But it would require a profound change of attitude in
medicine and psychiatry if as a profession we were to move our
healing potential further in this direction.
I would like to end with a quote from Robert Johnson's book
'Owning your own Shadow' 5, in which he reminds us of
the fundamental principal of the balance which we need to find
within us:
'This ideal of balance is illustrated to us every day of our
American lives but rarely noticed. Observe a US dollar bill, which
is often in our hands. There is a pyramid with an eye at the apex.
The bottom of the triangle represents the duality of our
perception. On the ego-shadow axis, we see the pairs of opposites:
right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark. As long as we
concern ourselves with this scale the best we can hope for is an
endless contradiction. But if our consciousness is sufficient, we
can synthesize these warring elements and come to the all-knowing
eye at the central point. On the dollar bill, the eye is raised
above the opposites to indicate its superior position.
Light from this central place has no opposite. Like the Grail
Castle, it is outside time and space. And we find it in a moment of
transcendence. In a flash, what looked like a grey compromise
becomes a synthesis of dazzling brilliance. Our own (Christian)
Scripture tells us, 'If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be
filled with light' (Matthew 6:22). The singleness of the eye, the
centre of the seesaw, is the place of enlightenment. This
represents a whole order of consciousness; the inscription on the
dollar bill - novus ordo seclorum - promises that new age'.
References
- Vipassana Meditation: Introduction to the Technique and
Code of Discipline for Meditation Courses. http://www.dhamma.org/
- Hart, W. (1987) The Art of Living: Vipassana
Meditationas taught by S.N.Goenke Vipassana Research
Institute
- Chandarimani, K. Vipassana Meditation: A Tool for Mental
Health Spirituality SIG Newsletter No. 4 June 2001
- Pert, C. (1999) Molecules of Emotion Pocket Books
- Johnson, R. (1991) Owning Your Own Shadow Harper
SanFrancisco 1993
For further information about
Vipassana meditation, contact the Vipassana Trust, Dhamma Dipa,
Harewood End, Hereford, HR2 8JS. See also http://www.dhamma.org/ and www.vri.dhamma.org . I would like
to thank Dr. Kishore Chandarimani for sending me his papers on
Vipassana and the teachers and helpers at Dhamma Dipa for their
commitment to this work.
© Nicki Crowley 2002