Awareness: benefits and dangers

About a fortnight ago, I popped into the Awareness Place bookshop down in the Bras Basah complex, and found a copy of The Discourse Summaries. I’ve been wanting a copy of this for some time, so I bought it, and have been gradually working my way through it since. It was buying this book that kind of woke me up again out of the slump I’ve been in for the last month or so.

The book is a transcript of the recorded talks played every night of the 10-day Vipassana meditation retreats organised by S. N. Goenka‘s Vipassana Research Institute. As I read it, I’m transported back to the Dhamma Hall in Thailand, where I’ve attended two retreats (so far), and I remember the benefits I experienced – of which, more below.

As I say, I’ve been fortunate enough to attend two of these retreats, and they truly have been life-changing. On the second, I was struggling with a badly hurt foot and ankle, which were a big distraction. The first was a tremendously powerful experience.

I went on that first course after I’d been in Singapore for a year, in the gap between the end of my contract and the start of my MBA. Following the course, I was heading off to China for the first time, to study Mandarin for a few months.

During that year, I’d been studying taiji gong with Nam Wah Pai, at Lorong 29 in Geylang. I’d completed the basic qigong set, followed by the 24-move basic taijiquan sequence. I’d begun the Xuan Xuan broadsword set – but it started three months before I was due to leave Singapore, and normally took six months to complete. So, I decided to accelerate my learning.

Now, so background is needed here. A lesson at Nam Wah Pai is three hours long: the first and third are spent studying whichever form your class is working on; the middle hour is spent with the entire school going through qigong exercises. In my personal experience, I found those exercises to be extremely effective and powerful – not immediately, but with practice. The qi awareness is then applied during the work on the forms. As a student, you attend class two nights a week, and learn the taijigong under the supervision of an instructor. You’re also welcome to attend the school on other evenings; in which case you practise solo, but can work with one of the instructors in the middle hour, while their class are doing the qigong.

So, with the broadsword form, to get it finished before I left Singapore, I started attending class four nights a week, for about two months, with some individual tuition sessions on weekends. I got to the point where I could do most of the form without needing to think about it, and instead was able to focus my attention on the flow of qi around my body.

In the last couple of weeks, strange things started happening. While I was going through the form, I started to get flashbacks, reliving memories of stressful experiences. It was very weird, a little disturbing, but I was focused on other things, and only mentioned it in passing to the instructor who was giving me private tuition.

In the end, it worked out very well for me: I discovered that the attention on the qi flow was very similar to the attention to physical sensations that is the focus of the vipassana technique. So, very shortly after I’d been getting these flashbacks in taiji class, I got the same thing on a much bigger scale on about the sixth day of the meditation retreat. By that time, though, I’d been trained, and prepared, and knew what to do and how to deal with it. In the theory of vipassana, this indicates that deeply-rooted karmic seeds, stored within the body and exerting a constant emotional influence, are being released and losing their power. It’s this that – in my limited understanding – helps vipassana practitioners to clear away their bad karma and avoid rebirth. When I was talking to a Buddhist nun in Bangkok earlier this year after studying vipassana with her, she mentioned that this was one of her goals.

So, buying that little book has been just the boost I needed. It’s reminded me that qigong works and is very powerful. It’s reminded me that vipassana works, and is very powerful. It’s also emphasised the need to have the right teacher. If I’d been working on those qigong techniques with no teacher, or with a teacher who didn’t understand the effects they could have, it could have been dangerous for me, I think. I’m very lucky that this all took place just as I was about to go on the retreat. It’s also why I either need to really boost my Mandarin, or find an English-speaking teacher, so that these issues can be discussed clearly.

Sorry, another rambling post, but there you are, it’s just a blog…

Added a bit later:

Let me just be clear, that Nam Wah Pai’s qigong techniques are powerful and effective, and that’s why they take their learners through a stuctured course under supervision. I deviated from that path, so the fact that I got these experiences unexpectedly shouldn’t reflect on them at all. I would confidently go back to them, and in fact hope to do so again (though this time to the school in Lorong 7; I know the instructors there better).

Back from Bangkok

Well, that was fun. Four nights in Bangalamphu, the old aristocratic area and still pretty old-fashioned. I stayed in my usual guesthouse, with a view over a pretty Wat, with lots of trees, and monks’ quarters (I think) built in traditional Thai style. The street’s only a block away from Khao San Road, so a haven for backpackers.

It was really good to get away from Singapore and my usual routine for a while, with no particular need to get anything done.

Some impressions and things that flashed past:

• the crowds of holidaying ‘individuals’, with their pattern-book tattoos…
• the American looking for shoulders to bump so he could call out the other guy…
• the tattooed German girl who asks the time, then offers a rose accompanied by insults…
• winter migrants, fleeing the European winter to live in Goa…
• so many Chinese tourists!
• the crusties winning ‘moral superiority’ by drinking on the steps with local beggars…
• Thai waiters scouring the alleyways on mopeds, searching for the guy who’d jumped his bar bill..
• the women from Chiang Mai working dawn to midnight, peddling ‘authentic’ tribal gewgaws they ‘made themselves’…
• drinking beer with Koreans who spoke next to no English, and with an Irish reiki master…
• cries of fear in the small hours from new arrivals who’d stirred up the street dogs…

Also, due to the change in routine, the heat, and introspection: sleepless nights, listening as the sounds of revelry died out to be replaced by the soft murmer of Thai conversations, and at last, only by birdsong.

This being the first time I’d stayed longer than a night, I did a fair bit of sightseeing – the Royal Palace, the Emerald Buddha, Chinatown. Thailand’s much cheaper than Singapore, so I had planned to do shopping, but a credit card malfunction put paid to that, and severely limited my spending!

That turned out to be a REALLY good thing – bad card, good karma I guess! It convinced me to check out the meditation classes at Wat Mahathat – something I’d been thinking about anyway, but might not have done if my cashflow hadn’t dried up… The monastery’s Section 5 is apparentlyvery wel-known for teaching foreigners about meditation (the page that links to is only in Thai, btw).

I went on two consecutive days. On the first day, I joined a two-hour class in Vipassana meditation. It was different to the version I’ve previously learned at the Goenka retreats, but with the same aim. The class was run by a nun from the north of Argentina. Afterwards we had a long talk, along with the other student – a shaven-headed young Englishman who was new to Buddhism. Among many other things, we discussed the absence of an individual soul in Buddhist thought; instead there’s a “stream of intention” (not a good explanation, but that’s my fault), which is the sum of all your cravings, actions, and habits of behaviour. This is so deep we aren’t conscious of it – but this is the root of all the times we say “I don’t know why I did that”, or “I can’t help it, it’s just the way I am”, or “I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t help myself”. After what happened the Friday night before I left, that made a lot of sense, and kicked off what I hope will be a positive change in attitude – and persuaded me even more that vipassana meditation is the best (and only?) way to clear out these negative habit patterns…

The other positive consequence was that I went on the second day to do solo meditation. Someone else was doing the same: a woman a bit younger than myself. We both stopped at 11am, since section 5 has lunch from 11-1. We spoke briefly over the free lunch provided by the monks and nuns. She was Japanese, but had spent 5 years in India studying, and becoming qualified in, classical Indian dance. She’d set up her own school in dance and yoga back in Japan, and had come to Thailand to learn more about Vipassana.

I had to check out by 12, so couldn’t stay long. But… all the way back to my guesthouse, I was thinking that this was someone really interesting, and wouldn’t it be a shame to never see her again. So, after checking out, I went back to the monastery to resume the conversation. We talked for longer, before I had to leave again to head off to the airport. Actually, we’d talked so long that I’d missed the last possible bus that could have got me there in time, so I had to take a taxi It was worth it, though – for whatever reason, it’s been a long while since I met someone so interesting. Actually, only a few since I moved from Beijing…. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep in touch!

Angulimala

It may not be obvious to all readers of this blog that I am actually a very angry person. Not all the time, of course! Usually, it won’t be apparent in my behaviour. Much of the time, even I won’t be aware of it. But deep down, there’s always anger, bubbling away, looking for a reason to explode.

Where does this anger have its roots? Back in the UK, the circles I moved in were extremely political, and I found it a very unpleasant experience. It’s high-pressure, very manipulative, and ego-driven. Without really being aware of how it had happened, I suddenly realised that it had changed me, and that I’d become quite an unpleasant person. Even I didn’t like myself.

I managed to undo the damage. Fate, or perhaps good karma, enabled me to get out of the environment that was locking me into that behaviour. That was the start. What really changed me for the better was attending a 10-day meditation retreat organised by the Goenka Foundation. This had a tremendously positive effect on me; afterwards, I felt totally cleansed, emotionally and spiritually. My anger was completely gone, and I felt transformed. This ‘small enlightenment’ was instrumental in my eventually becoming a Buddhist, and led me to change what I planned to do after my MBA – which was about to start.

Unfortunately, the MBA is also a high-pressure, ego-driven environment, and old habits resurfaced. Gradually, I wasn’t able to keep up the meditation, and began to react to events again with anger and frustration. The lessons and benefits of the meditation didn’t entirely go away, and continued to help me – plus, I was able to attend classes at Odiyana, which helped. So, I never became as nasty as I had been before.

But.. the year post-MBA has been very stressful, and that negativity has been boiling away behind the scenes. Some events over the last few days have stoked the fire, and last night, I just lost it; I wound up being a real asshole to someone who had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just rudeness, nothing more, but they didn’t deserve it and I feel remorseful, not that I can do much to remedy it now.

I suppose that if I can’t undo it, I can at least try to learn from it. Lesson one is meditate, meditate, meditate. Meditation regularly increases awareness of sensations, and teaches disengagement from them; recognising the stirring of negative feelings, and learning not to let them take hold. If I had been stronger in my practice, I wouldn’t have accumulated so much rage, and I would had have been able to control my temper. Secondly, the importance of sangha – that is, engagement in the Buddhist community, to learn from others and benefit from their support. Trying to learn and practice alone is much harder.

So why am I blogging about it? Well, if I can look at this action of mine, and take lessons from it that help me to be a better person, perhaps the message will help someone else to avoid making the same mistake. Secondly, putting it out there may help me stick to my resolve to practise more seriously.

It’s perhaps the right time; I was told that the the Year of the Dog was going to be unlucky for me, and it’s certainly been far from my best year ever. Maybe this is its parting shot. The Year of the Pig should be better, and I’ll try to get it off to a good start by trying to reform. And the title? Well, if even Angulimala, through effort, could become enlightened then I, through effort, should at least be able to be less obnoxious.

Thinking about death

No, I haven’t got all morbid, don’t worry. As I mentioned before, I’ve rather neglected my meditation and Buddhist studies of late, so this week I’ve started paying more attention to them. On Tuesday night, I went along to the Basic Buddhism class at the Odiyana Centre, and last night to the Awaken class at the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. Coincidentally, both classes focussed on the transience of life, and the inevitability of death – and so the importance of preparation for death.

Tuesday’s session over-ran, and we didn’t have time for discussion (this happens a lot – Wangchog gets carried away, and always has just a bit more he wants to say before the end of the class!).

Last night did have group discussions. In my group, there was quite a variance in our understanding of death, of how negative karma affects rebirth, and so on. One woman said she was afraid of dying in her sleep, because then she wouldn’t be able to control where she was reborn… I’m not sure that’s how it works…

Quite a few people thought that karma, and bad  karma in particular, can’t be changed; once you’ve got it you’ve got it, and you’ll just have to suffer the consequences. Here I’m on shaky ground, but I don’t think I agree with this. The way I understood this, as taught in the Goenka retreats I’ve attended, is that karma is purely internal to us, and is carried within our ‘mental continuum’, from life to life. So, there is no third party with karmic record books, saying “Aha, 500 lifetimes ago you told a lie, therefore in this life you will suffer a penalty”.

Rather, we carry the karmic seed ourselves, and ourselves create the conditions that will allow it to flourish. These seeds have strength, and are able to develop, because we are attached to them, and give them their strength. Through meditation, however, we can – with hard work, and persistence – identify these seeds of bad karma, and undo our attachment to them. Thus, they lose their strength, and their effects are weakened, or even negated entirely. As our practice becomes stronger, we can erase initially the bad karma from this lifetime and, eventually, all the bad karma we have carried with us from previous lifetimes.

Though I am certainly no Buddhist scholar, I think I’m backed up in this by the story of Angulimala, the killer who must have accumulated unthinkable amounts of bad karma and yet, through practice and meditation, was eventually able to achieve enlightenment in that same lifetime.

What does this have to do with preparing for our own death? My own view is that I have been close to being killed on a number of occasions; I once tried to count them up, and got to about eight, I think. So I know very well, that death can arrive suddenly and without warning. When people fear a lingering death from illness or whatever, it isn’t really death, but pain that they’re afraid of – something else entirely. I guess this means that I feel we should try to make sure that every day, we try not to accumulate any new bad karma, and we should meditate regularly to diminish the bad karma we already have.

Note that I say “this is what we should do”! I can’t say I am succeeding particularly well, but I’m working on it!

From a Bangkok cybercafe

Blogging this from a Bangkok cybercafe, having arrived from the meditation centre yesterday. What can I say? Wow….

This course was tougher than the first one last year. I took a lot of frustration and anger that had built up during the MBA, and it took me fully five days to clear that away. I was also incredibly tired after the exms, and the 4am starts didn’t really allow me the chance to recover, so maintaining concentration was pretty tough – especially in the sfternoon sessions when the heat of the Thai summer built up! Despite that, I made some real breakthroughs in my meditation technique, and I feel totally refreshed and invigorated – and more determined to maintain meditatition in my daily routine. All week, I had intense bad dreams, meaning that deep-rooted sankaras were rising up; many other people on the course had the same experience, I discovered later.

It was also great on the last day of the course to talk to my fellow meditators. Some were really incredible people, with fascinating life stories, and it was a pleasure to meet them.

Anyway, tonight it’s back to Singapore, and on with things. I have so much to do before I fly to Beijing on Thursday night… I checked my exam results online last night, and they were OK: mostly As. As expected. I just scraped through MBO, but a pass is a pass, so I’m happy. I did better than I expected in MA, so that was a pleasant surprise! The quantitative subjects are all out of the way now, which is a relief; the courses I’ll be taking in Beijing are all qulitative, so I don’t have any big worries.

Flying

‘ve spent most of the day at Jurong Point today. I had a late start due to not sleeping well again, and then read up on a case study for MBO. Anyhow, so I went to JP to check out the prices for the various flights I’ll be making soon. It turned out that the travel agent there could offer good prices, so I spent a while booking everything. The best part was, they could arrange my Chinese visa for me, which means I don’t have to go to the Embassy in person (which I was planning to do tomorrow). Thanks to the new budget airlines, I’ve got a cheap flight to Bangkok to go to the meditation course. The bad news is that I have to check in at Changi at an ungodly hour in the morning. The good news (apart from the price) is that I’ll get in to central Bangkok mid-morning, so there should be a good chance of getting reasonable accommodation. My flight to Beijing, back to Singapore (for the 1-week summer course) and back to Beijing are also confirmed, though I don’t have to pay until my passport and visa get back to the travel agent next week. Because I hadn’t expected to get the visa application done today, I had to get a passport photo taken in one of the shops at JP and I say without doubt that it is the worst photo that has been taken of me in many years! Still, despite my concern about the weight I’ve put on over the last year, I still look thinner than I did a few years ago!I’ve been informed that I’ve been selected to participate in the ‘Singaporean mid-decade national survey’. Participation is compulsory, of course. This being Singapore, I immediately wonder how random this is… I’m invited to fill in a form online, which has been happily timing out for the last hour or so. I though Singapore was meant to be a super-advanced, highly internet-ready nation? Their statistics section obviously got passed by and have their server running on a crappy old 486, judging by its performance. Oh well, got a few days left before the deadline. Have to submit to a phone interview too, sometime… Eeek!

States of consciousness

The Sixth Sense has been out for five years now, so I guess it’s OK for me to reveal a plot device… which is that ghosts don’t realize they’re dead, recalling the incident that killed them as a near-miss, and continuing to believe that they’re alive. If there was such an event for me, it was two years ago to the day: I was in Paris, about to cross the Boulevard St. Michel (I think). The traffic goes north towards the Seine; I was crossing from west to east, and about to leave the pavement to a lane divider in the middle of the road. Looking right towards where the traffic was coming from, the lane nearest me was empty. An instant before I stepped into the road, I looked left for some reason: to see a bus travelling fast, inches from my head. The bus lane, which is what I had been about to step into, runs against the flow of the rest of the traffic. If I had taken that step, I would have died, without any doubt. It isn’t the first time I’ve been a step away from death (back in the days when I was rock-climbing regularly, let’s just say that a rope I thought was firmly anchored wasn’t attached to anything at all except me), but it was so totally unexpected it left me kind of numb, unable or unwilling to process what almost happened.

This memory floated up just now as I was practising Taiji sabre 108 form; three times in a row, the movements just flowed. I didn’t quite achieve the state of no-thought, but it was close. I’ve experienced this kind of “spontaneous memory” during Vipassana meditation, which teaches us to react to the experience with equanimity, so that past emotions and experiences lose their hold on us.

More about the meditation retreat

A couple more things about the place where the course was held, more to keep my memory fresh than to illuminate you lot! It was so cool – well, the temperature was no less than I’m used to, but the humidity was way, way lower… Delightful… Nights were very chilly, and I had no blankets for the first couple of nights… Mist in the treetops in the early morning… Stars very clear and numerous, and Mars very bright: I haven’t seen more than a couple of stars at a time in over a year. A huge full moon for the first couple of nights, especially beautiful from the pagoda steps… Tree frogs invading the sleeping quarters and clinging to the straws of the brush that was used to remove them…

Just in from the New Year festivities; a bit early because I’m still sleep-deprived and need to hit the sack. A very happy year of the Monkey to you all; may it bring peace and prosperity to you all.

Back from meditation retreat

So, back from Thailand. What to say? The meditation course was fantastic; I feel mentally clearer and calmer than I have for years. It was hard going at times; the regime was spartan, with hard beds, cold showers and 4am wakeup; the first few days especially were physically very hard, as my body adjusted to sitting cross-legged for hours. Later days were mentally and emotionally tough as the concentration techniques started to clear out accumulated emotional baggage. The teachers say that 10 days is the bare minimum needed to learn Vipassana techniques, and I definitely feel that I’ve only made the intial step; this is something that needs to be worked at regularly over a long period – but I’ve already seen enough to convince me that it works!

The course also provided a rare opportunity for contemplation; for a news junkie like me, ten days with no Wired, slashdot, Plastic, or BBC was a real change of pace, and a chance to think about priorities, undisturbed by quotidian distractions and pressures. I’ve already decided to change the focus of my MBA, based on a clearer assessment of my personal priorities and interests. Perhaps I’ll talk more about that another time.

Another great aspect of the course was the variety of the participants. Most were Thai, of course. Those of us who weren’t Thai were a really mixed group, all with very interesting stories to tell. Some were professionals taking career breaks for various reasons, others were students travelling after graduation, some were regular attendees. There was a mix of nationalities – Belgian, Canadian, English, German, Italian and so on! At this point, let me say hi to Paula from Switzerland, who may well read this! If you do, email me!

I’ll put down some more thoughts later on; right now I need to get on with my packing before I leave for China.

Off to Thailand

So, the first stage of next year is arranged. Last year I read an excellent book called ‘A Fortune-Teller told me‘. The main text of the book was pretty fascinating, but what really gripped me was the coda, in which the author describes a meditation course he attended in Thailand. Based on the information in that chapter, I did a bit of googling and came to the conclusion that he must have attended a Vipassana course. I had some experience of meditation when I was in my teens, but I was too young to really appreciate it then, and basically dismissed it as hippy rubbish. (Imagine Cartman giving an opinion on meditation, and you’re pretty much there….) More recently, I’ve begun to realise the benefits of it, and had been meaning to get back into it – but you know how it is, when you’re trying to do something new like that without any support, it’s almost impossible to stick at it. Anyway, my impending ‘employment-challenged’ status gives me the ideal opportunity and, as it happens, they are offering a course near Bangkok at the ideal time for me, So, I’m off to Thailand in January for a 10-day introduction to meditation. They fund themselves through donations from ex-students, so the course is free for new students – which means I just need to pay travel costs (although I should be able to give a donation at the end, I guess).