Mind Matters Most - Chapter Three

MMM Three

Pure attention can melt potential illness before it can manifest

Now comes the tricky part: how to actually make things better before you’ve even become aware that something is wrong.  It is something that needs be taken on trust, for there is no way of knowing whether Vipassana Meditation is working until you have mastered the technique.  Getting to that point is not easy.   So much of it is “not easy” that I’ve heard the pain involved likened to that “of giving birth to a child.”  This was a woman practitioner's observation.  As a man, I cannot attest that claim.  But I can tell you that you’ll have to undergo a lot of pain, extreme pain, as you learn about, and eventually accept that something really is happening ‘inside.’

The initial practice in any meditation is focus.  Focus implies two things: firstly, bringing the attention to a point where it is concentrating on one thing and one thing only, and secondly, deliberately choosing to ignore anything which attempts to draw you away from that focus.  The sharper your focus becomes, the greater the power you have available to penetrate at that particular point.   Here we are talking about the physical body, but it can be any object of attention.

Now, in Vipassana Meditation, there is no use of imagination.  Neither is there use of words, or counting numerals, or the use of mantras.  In Vipassana, the practitioner is directed to stick with the ‘real.’  We are to stay with reality as it is.   As one teacher, Mr. S. N. Goenka, a Burmese born Indian, says, “Stick with the reality.  Examine things as they are, not as you would like them to be.”

The reality is that, in an initial ten-day retreat at a Vipassana Meditation centre, you are probably sitting crossed legged on a piece of foam rubber on the floor in a hall, eyes closed and concentrating �" or attempting to �"  on your breathing.   The natural breath, as it comes in and as it goes out.   No breathing exercises here.  No special technique.  Just sitting there observing the breath and making sure that, to the best of your ability, not one single incoming or outgoing breadth is missed.    This is to concentrate your attention.   You are to master your recalcitrant and rebellious ego-mind.

“Be like a guard at the gate, a sentinel.   Observe every single breath no matter how weak or strong.  Let not one breath escape your attention.”

Sounds simple.

The recalcitrant mind is the ego-mind

It isn’t.  The mind starts to wander almost straight away.  Or perhaps I should say your attention wants to go its own way.   A breath or two is missed.  You bring your attention back.  Then you’re off daydreaming.  You start to rationalize, “What the hell am I doing here?   This is stupid. “   Again you return to your breathing.  You do this again and again.  Quickly you realize there are really two parts to you: the part that decided and wants to partake and complete the Vipassana course, and a part that abhors the very idea of it.   The part that tells you to give up is the ego, the conditioned self, the self-image.  It is the real you that chose to undertake the work.  Your ego doesn’t like that at all.

If you give in, the ego wins and grows stronger, asserting that it is the real you.   If you don’t give in, the ego is thwarted and thus weakened.  However, weak or not, it will take more than a successful meditation course to rid yourself of it completely.   Still, you will have gained valuable insights, insights that ego didn’t want you to know about.

“Ten days of this!  I must be out of my mind…”

This thought occurs even before the first hour-long session on the very first morning has come to an end.  The ten days of meditation, starting a 4-30am and going until 9-30pm every night for at least nine of the ten days looms like a journey through the proverbial Valley of Death. 

“I can’t stand it.”

And well before the hour is up the pain in the legs starts.

“It’s unnatural to sit here like this.   I’m not used to it.  A chair, yes.   On the ground sitting on a ruddy cushion, no.”

And so it goes on.   This business of bringing the attention under the control of the will takes an almost superhuman effort, it seems.   Not only effort but persistence, fortitude, enduring the seemingly at times unbearable.

The day drags on.  “Observe the breath,” says the teacher’s voice from the loudspeakers around the hall.  “Keep your entire attention…your entire attention on the breath, as it comes in, as it goes out.”  

You are told to focus on a small area of the body, below the nostrils and above the upper lip.  “Feel the breath.  Concentrate!   Do not let one single breath be missed.”

What you resists persists

Without going into a lot of detail here, I will describe en brief how, over the next three days �" with around thirty-three hours of mediation on the breath on that particular little area of the face,   your attention is gradually brought under control.  Like the breaking in of a wild stallion, it gradually gives way to the persistent and gentle handling of you, the meditator.   You are the boss.   The ego is now much quieter.  

The pain can become so intense that it feels, at times, that a hot iron is being held to certain parts of the lower legs as one’s ankle bone digs into a shin.   The burning seems so real.  “Oh, God!  I can’t stand this!”

“Do not move.  Stay with determination the full hour.”  

Excruciating pain �" which, quite suddenly on occasion, is miraculously gone.  Perhaps due to the flow of adrenaline into that pain-wracked body you wish to hell you didn’t own.   But whatever it is, to go “through the pain barrier” and into calm repose is something one has to experience to believe.   Pain can only last so long.  But the more you fight it the longer it stays.  What you resist persists.

Hours of intensive concentration and all of this is just the forerunner to one’s introduction to the real meditational technique �" Vipassana.

The introduction to Vipassana

Sometime during the early hours of the fourth day there is a change in instruction.   Now, the breath coming in is to be ignored in favour of any sensation which arises on that little area below the nostrils and above the upper lip.  “Any natural sensation.” says the teacher.  “ No imagination.  No speculation.”

“ It could be an itch.  It could be a tingling.   It could be the feeling of sweat or mucous there.  It could be a throbbing, a pulsing.  Or a feeling of pressure or lightness.  Whatever it is, concentrate on it.  Bring your entire attention to it.   Ignore everything else.  And if the feeling fades, bring the attention back to the breath until another natural feeling arises,” says the teacher before his voice fades out.

Stay with it!

Half a day and a number of hours of concentration goes by and by the mid-afternoon of the fourth day of meditation one can easily feel sensation arising and passing away in that little confined area below the nose.  And it is at this point that one is instructed to sit - and this time sit for two hours without moving.  You brace yourself for a hard time.   It is during these two hours that you’ll be introduced to the technique proper: Vipassana.

 

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Earlier in this book I said that we have sensations occurring within every part of our body.  I also said that those sensations are not experienced until they rise to a certain level whereby they can be felt.    In the hours spent in Vipassana at a serious meditation course such as described above, the sensitivity of the pratitioner is heightened.   This is because our focus has been honed to something considerably finer than that of the average man or woman.   We have become sharp; we have a heightened awareness, and that awareness is now under our control.  The verbal chatter within our minds has stopped.  We’re seeing things in greater detail than we ever imagined we would.   We observe the veins in the leaves of trees, the scurrying of ants, and the faintest sounds of nature.   It seems we’re seeing things as we’ve never seen them before.

 A lot of this sharpness is lost, of course, once the course is over and we return to the world outside of the meditation centre.   However, it is not completely lost.   The continuing practice of two daily sessions of practice, keeps the sensitivity and, to some extent, the concentration sharp.  We have turned a corner.   There is no way we will ever be quite the same again.

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I’d now like you to try a little experiment which will perhaps give you inkling into what I mean when I say that we have “sensations in every part of our body.”

Sit comfortably.   Now, once settled and in a situation where you won’t be disturbed by any outside source such as the radio, television, people walking in, talking or phones ringing, do the following:

Bring your entire attention to any part of the surface of your body.   Just a small area, say, no bigger than the surface a coin.   The point you pick on your body could be, for example, on the outside of the upper arm.  It could be on your leg, even your foot.    Let us say that you decide to pick a spot on top and in the middle of your right foot.   Okay, now you are to bring your entire attention onto that area.   Keep it there.   Do not let your concentration on that spot waver.   Feel for any natural sensation, anything at all, provided that it is something real, not imagined.   Keep up a steady, continuing concentration.

At first you probably won’t feel anything.   You may be tempted to give up.   Keep it up.  Keep it up.  Eventually you will feel something.   If you don’t feel it the first time you try, try again later. As I said, eventually you will feel something.   And then you will realize that by sustained concentration you can actually feel - by will power - a sensation on your skin in this area. 

Before you started, you were not drawn to this area of your body at all.   Like the rest of your body sitting in that chair you were not aware of anything.   The weight of your body in the chair.  The feel of the back support against the small of your back, your feet on the floor �" nothing.   You were deep within your own thoughts.   Now, you realize, that by being aware and giving over to concentration, you can actually will yourself to feel even quite subtle sensations.   You’ve probably discovered something about yourself you did not know before.

Bravo!   You are on the road to tremendous self-discovery, if you decide to pursue this.   But from the aspect of your own personal health, you are now onto something very few people know about.   If you keep it up, you will be able to ‘purify’ that is, ameliorate and eventually eradicate the sankaras that have, or could in the future, plague your life.  You are practicing preventative mental health.

Good health is a bi-product

It must be stressed however, that good health is not the primary objective of Vipassana Meditation.  This is a spiritual practice.   The eventual aim is no less than enlightenment.  But good health is certainly one of its wonderful byproducts.

What actually happens when one is introduced to the actual practice of Vipassana Meditation is your discovery that you are able to focus on any part of your body and feel a sensation.   But this is only the beginning.  By systematically moving the centre of attention from one area of the body to every part of it, one little movement at a time, you become aware that, yes, you can feel sensations in just about every part of your body.  Some remain blank, some easily respond to your concentrated attention and a sensation is felt.   In a Vipassana course, the technique is  explained, and by repeated concentrative efforts, more and more of the surface of the body becomes amenable to your mental gaze.   There is hardly a spot on your body where you cannot feel some sensation or another.

Then comes a shock!   You are no longer just experiencing sensation on the surface of your body.   Your concentration �" which can be likened to a beam of attention �" is actually penetrating inside the body.   You are going within �" literally!    None of this is imagining you’ve gone within.  You have gone within.

More practice and you go deeper.  Eventually you reach a stage where you can actually feel the shape of the bones in your body.   It is almost as if you are reaching and sliding your gaze around various bone forms.   You can feel the line of your jaw, the way your teeth fit into the jawbone.  In a very real way it seems you’ve almost developed a sort of Xray vision.   You can’t feel your whole skeleton at one time, but you have reached a point where, in and around the area you’re concentrating on, you can feel the internal structures of the harder tissues.

All solidity gives way to…

Eventually even these give way.  Suddenly there is no more resistance to the probing, concentrative beam of your attention.   You are not only able to go within; you have now penetrated right through to the other side.  And as you systematically scan your body from head to toe, toe to head over and over again, you realize a lot of things.   However, I won’t go into them here other than to tell you that it is around this time that you become aware of the sankaras within you.

As you scan your body you realize that there are some blind spots, places in which your attention does not penetrate or only partially penetrates.   There is resistance.  It’s something akin to the repulsion of two similar magnetic poles.  Your willed penetration is pushed back.   If persisted with, the resistance becomes a physical reaction; your breathing might become erratic.   In some instances the reaction might be quite violent.  S.N. Goenka, the Vipassana teacher under whose tuition I practiced (albeit just with audio and video tapes) likes it to “throwing water on a charcoal fire.” The reaction is immediate.  The body might react.  A groan could be emitted, or a cry of alarm.   Sometimes you shake momentarily as if in horror.

You realize that it is not the real you that is responding in this way, it is your body.  It is about this time that you realize that though we have an extremely intimate relationship with our body, it is not the essential us.  We own it, albeit temporarily, but it is not the quintessence of what we are.   Like our mind, it is not the real decision-maker.   We own both, but we are neither.  We are the decider-free-of-ego.  We are the Observer.  We are what we know ourselves intuitively to be.

The most important tool

Why did I call this book, Mind Matters Most?    Because mind is our most important tool.   Or to be more specific, our focused attention is.   But, unfortunately, the mind is so little understood.  I certainly do not claim to understand it, for that little four-letter word covers so much.   But I do know that the mental constructs, the verbal thought, the visualization, the mathematical constructs, all ideas, are not us but of us.  We’re the conduit.  We channel them.   We, the real us, is something else again.   The Ancient Chinese had a word for it: The Tao.  And the Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, stated, “That which can be described is not the Tao.”   Can you describe the you that  has looked out through your eyes from infancy until the present day?   Everything has changed since the day of your birth, except that which is witnessing your world.   The flux of everything and every thing arising and passing away, the growth and decay, the ever-changing seasons, all is change.   All except the real you.