It is good to be back home. I’ve been away for only eleven days but it was probably the longest eleven days of my life. I am back now, not just back home but back to my life and yet somehow this life feels a little different than when I left it. 

I knew i was going to do the ten day vipassana course but the reality of it didn’t hit me until the night before my departure. I was all jitters. How on earth am I going to meditate for ten hours everyday for ten days when I could barely make through a twenty minute session in the comfort of my own home? How on earth am I going to get up at four every morning? I have certainly gone to bed at that hour. What if I can’t do it? What if I am just so thick and stupid that I don’t get anything out of this excruciating experience? I had many, many fearsome doubts. 

I was lucky to be going up there with Sabrina. She has sat once and this time she was going to serve. Her calmness and experience soothed me a little and just knowing the fact that she’ll be around was comforting. So all the anxieties reached to their climax-we got there and it wasn’t as scary (Of course, nothing is nearly as scary as we imagine.)

I registered, had dinner with sabrina and met my three lovely room mates, then took the vow of silence in the meditation hall. From here on, I am not to speak, steal, kill or have sex. We were to cultivate a feeling of seclusion, so not even eye contacts with others. And the course begins. 

Day one was the hardest. The physical pain of merely sitting was almost unbearable. My body, which served me moderately well in the past was screaming with pain. My neck, my back, my butt, my thighs, my calves, my ankles… One pain would seem to subside when another stabbing one would start. The entire meditation hall was filled with sounds of Fidget. Sounds of people moving their meditation cushions, cracking of the bones, coughing, clearing of throats, scratching, swallowing, heavy sighs, stomachs growling, incessant burping… but when I opened my eyes to sneak a peek at how other people were doings, everyone sat with their backs straight and seemed as serene as the Buddha I have seen in paintings. 

Sabrina had told me before that every night we get to watch a video and I had expected it to be a colorful TV program which feeds my very deprived senses. After ten hours of meditating the first day, it was finally time to watch TV, Yay! They turned on the TV and all I saw was an old man in a white shirt sitting against a background of plain white wall… Where is the man standing in a crowded indian street with lots of sounds and noises, introducing Buddha to us? I felt gypped. So I readjusted my disappointed self and listened to the old man talk. He has a head of neatly combed white hair, eyes which always remained half opened, and two chubby cheeks that droop a little creating two deep lines by his nose and lips. He sweats when he talks and sometimes you can see a little spit on the corners of his almost always smiling lips. Goenka reminded me of Grandpa. The way he speaks to his students is exactly the way a loving grandpa would speak to his grandchildren. And he is surprisingly a phenomenal speaker. He likes to use metaphors and stories to illustrate his points and has a great sense of humor. Goenka likes to wave his right hand when he talks. At the end of all his discourses, he’d raise his right hand to his chest, close his eyes, smile and say, “may all of you be happy” and sigh with a fullness of bliss. So even without the music, and colors, listening to Goenka’s discourse became the favorite part of my day.

What can I say about the meditation itself? It was a lot of things. It was boredom, and pain. It was a restless mind, and an open wound. It was tears, and suppressed giggles. It was a bloated stomach, and constipation. It was all vibrations, and it was all numbness… Never once did I experience a bliss in my being during the meditation. Vipassana is certainly not a feel-good-meditation. But this bliss did come to me, when I ate silently by myself, when I brushed my teeth, when I walked on the gritty path outside… I was taken by surprise by how little I had and how great the happiness I was experiencing.

My heart felt so open that it was dangerous for my mind to wonder during the meditation. An image of Dad would flash in my head and I’d turn into a flood of tears. The thought of Sabrina leaving for Boston in September and I almost had to leave the meditation hall. The thought of reuniting with Anthony again… I didn’t even know how much I missed him until then. And I missed Kelvin so much. All of my doubts and uncertainties of our relationship melted away. He is one of the greatest souls I have ever met and I am lucky to be loved by him.

I feel like I haven’t even touched on what vipassana meditation is. I have to give it justice and say here that I truly believe in the technique. The main point of our lessons is that everything is impermanent. Our stress, pain, happiness, annoyance… anything and everything is impermanent. We were there to learn how to observe this truth and experience sensations without reacting to them.

Impermanence was the lesson and even though every minute seemed an hour to me during the course, it, too, was impermanent and came to a very happy end. When we could talk again, the entire centre was filled with an overcharged joy and excitement. Sabrina saved her day off from serving until this day and we went into the woods, found a perfect spot, sat down and poured out all the stocked up love and words we had for each other. I thanked her for bringing me here. It seemed the parting gift she had for me to prepare me for the times when she can’t be there to cradle my insecurities, my hurt and my fears. 

And then we got home. Kelvin was waiting with Fifi and is it possible? He seemed more excited than Fifi. In his arms, I needed nothing more. But there was more. During the meditation, in my repeated wondering off of the mind, I had fantasized many, many times of having a piano keyboard and playing it like a pro. When I got into my room, I saw a yamaha bag on the couch… Kelvin had saved up for awhile and got me a piano keyboard with dad and some of my friends!! It is the most beautiful thing… now I was really crying. 

One last thing before I finish this super long blog… I have been biting my fingers for over twenty years of my life. This is a habit I had given up to correct, but during the eleven days at the center, I did not bite my fingers even once and I am happy to say that I have no desire to ever bite them again. They are almost completely healed now. You should see Sabrina’s ecstasy when I showed her my hands