From: Marcel Kessler [marcel.kessler@dreamweb.ch] Sent: Dienstag, 26. August 2008 18:19 To: marcel.kessler@dreamweb.ch Subject: on the road again... kathmandu Attachments: durbarsquare.jpg; thinley.jpg; ladhoka.jpg; timetable.jpg; behappy.jpg namaste! after more than 2 years i finally managed to feed my travel bug again, he was almost starving... it s not a very long trip, and 2 of my 8 weeks of holiday i spent in a big scout camp in switzerland (see www.contura08.ch), but better than nothing... the original plan was to go to tibet, but developments since april forced me to make a plan b, which was booking a flight to nepal, and then see what i could do from here... now, after the olympics, it might be possible, but instead of spending a fortune and not having any liberties (there would be a guide around me all the time), i decided to stay in nepal... (see pic durbarsquare) after visiting one of my former tibetan students (see pic thinley) and the small but great orphanage project of a friend (see pic ladhoka) i decided to join a 10 days vipassana mediation course... basically, this is more or less a self-imposed imprisonment, as for 10 days you are not allowed to speak (not even gestures (this is called "noble silence" ;-) )), write, read, listen to music, do sports or leave the premises; instead you get up at 4 in the morning and sit cross-legged for 10hrs a day... (see pic timetable) (what follows now is a very long and boring description of the 10 days, but there s one part in CAPITALS that is important to me, so just jump to that and you will get my message ;-) ) when i read and heard about this vipassana-thing (basically means "see how things really are" (even though you ve got your eyes closed most of the time), for more see www.dhamma.org) for the first time, while being in india, it sounded interesting, but i didn t feel like i had 10 days to spare for doing nothing... now, after 3 days of noisy kathmandu, i was like "ok, let s see what happens if i have to spend 10 days with my inner self...": day 0 in minivans, we - that is, about 20 westerners and 80 nepalis, men and women between 18 and 80 - got driven to the meditation centre, a nice and quiet (yeah, finally!) place outside kathmandu. we were given rooms and dinner (tasty indian food (unfortunately vegetarian (but otherwise, we would already break 1 of the 5 precepts, ie. not to kill...(others are no stealing, no drugs, no lies (that s one reason we were not allowed to speak) , and no sexual misconduct (and to help us here men and women would be completely separated (and if our paths had to cross, then one of the people working there would act act like a traffic policemen))))). (hope i got the brackets right...) after some instructions, noble silence was declared... day 1 my song of the day (*): fidelity [regina spektor] as dreaded, there was this bell at 4am, and at 4.30 we where sitting in a big hall, next to me some guy whose name i wouldn t know for the next 10 days... we were told to concentrate on our breathing, how the air goes through the nostrils. so that s what i did for the next couple of hours... or rather tried to do, as most of the time, my mind would do something completely different, and once in while realise that it was supposed to just watch the breath... day 2 my song of the day: contura song (that s the song of the scout camp, so you can already see that my mind was still not doing what it should...) we were still supposed to watch our breath, but i was busy with not falling asleep, finding a position in which my back and legs would hurt less, wishing for a massage and checking the time when there would be the next break, breakfast, lunch or dinner (which turned out to be just a small bowl of cereals and half an apple (and people who were doing this not for the first time (yes, there are ;-) ) would just get a tea)). day 3 my song of the day: country roads, take me home (obviously, i should not be here...) basically, we still had to do the same, but the area we had to concentrate on became even smaller, we had to observe any sensations (pressure, heat, tickling, itching, whatever) in the small area below the nostrils and above the lips... surprisingly, gradually i really could concentrate... and i realised that when so concentrated, i could quite easily remember things of the past (not that this was the goal of the exercise...) SO, I HAD QUITE A LOT OF FUN DOING SOMETHING I CALL "MEMORY SURFING"... I WAS VISITING PLACES I VE TRAVELED TO, AND REMEMBERING ALL YOU COOL PEOPLE I MET ON MY WAY... AND THIS IS ONE REASON I M WRITING THIS LONG MAIL, TO SAY THAT I FEEL REALLY GRATEFUL TO HAVE MET YOU, BE IT IN ABERDEEN OR PERTH, BANGALORE OR ULAN BAATAR, HERE IN KATHMANDU OR BACK IN ZURICH, OR SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN... THANK YOU! I DO HOPE YOU ARE FINE, AND WOULD BE HAPPY TO MEET YOU AGAIN, IN ZURICH OR WHEREVER... day 4 (vipassana day) my song of the day: is there anybody out there [pink floyd] (seems i felt a bit locked in...) the first 3 days actually were just preparation, to calm our minds... now we would start with the real thing, which was: observe any sensation on the whole body. wow! ;-) obviously, the predominant sensation would be pain... now the goal was just to observe, but not to react, ie. if there was pain, not to have aversions, and all the time knowing that everything is always changing, nothing is permanent, so sooner or later the pain will stop. well... day 5 my song of the day: comfortably numb [pink floyd] (actually, i don t know the lyrics, nor the melody, and...) ...i also didn t really feel comfortably numb, rather very uncomfortably numb. as there was a new rule, which was not to change posture for 1 hour. so the sensation i had in my lower legs and feet would just be "aehm, are they still there?" (and, i few days later, i would also learn that, with one foot asleep, walking is very difficult, so one should not get up too quickly...) day 6 (half-time, yeah) my song of the day: society [eddie vedder (into the wild soundtrack (great! (also the movie)))] same rules, still comparing our sensations... it s supposed to be one of the hardest day, and yes, i was asking myself what i was doing here (especially during the session from 4.30am to 6.30am, completely drowsy, and without breakfast), but i wanted to see what happened during the whole 10 days, and sometimes things started to feel not that bad, i felt very relaxed, i enjoyed the calm and quiet atmosphere surrounding me but also inside me... day 7 my song of the day: lightning crashes [live] (don t know how that came up) instead of observing one part of the body after the next, we were now allowed to kind of "sweep the body". and sometimes i would get a really cool feeling, like a vibration in the whole body (reminding me of some bang-lassy-experience)... now again, the goal was not to be craving for this sensation, but just observing it, as also this is impermanent, and one would become unhappy with craving or aversion (this is the basis of the theory of vipassana) day 8 my song of the day: smoke on the water (actually the early morning scenery was more "clouds in the trees" than "smoke on the water") disregarding the "noble silence" and looking at my russian flatemate's face at 4.25am just before going down in the meditation hall, i had to smile, as his face was expressing just one thing, probably like mine: "i wanna go back to bed..." 2 more days to go... day 9 my song of the day: some song by [nirvana] (don t know the title, but isn t that appropriate, as the final goal of the technique would be to reach exactly that place...) ...but i guess i m still far away... though i definitely got better, was relaxed, had less pain in the legs and enjoyed the clarity of my mind... and i was quite happy (how could you not, if on every sign they put up (and there many, and more each day) they would write "be happy" in the corner... (see pic be happy)) and the end was not too far away anymore ;-) day 10 (last day) my song of the day: none (or maybe this chanting from the teacher, which i found very uncool at the beginning, but somehow, i guess i got used to it (but i would not by a cd at the end of the course, like some others did...)) today at 9am, we were allowed to start talking again... and it was quite strange, and at first i had to sit aside and just wait for a few more minutes... but then i was also curious to find out more about the people sitting around me, and how they ve been experiencing it... everybody was quite happy, according to the theory because we cleaned ourselves from some old sufferings and some misery - which is probably true - but, i think partly also because we "made it" and were "free" again... there would still be some meditations in the afternoon, but concentration was gone ;-) so that was 10 days with myself, and these are my lessons learned: - i can shut up for 10 days - i can sit still for 1 hour - people (including me) walk funnily after sitting still for 1 hour - i can get up at 4am for 10 days - i don t like getting up at 4am for 10 days - i m ready for some action (that s why i ll go rafting tomorrow ;-) ) for those who made it reading until down here, congratulations... i m sorry, but i guess that happens when you are not allowed to write for 10 days... ;-) take care, and be happy marcel (*) the idea with the song of the day is actually not mine, i got it from the cool book "holy cow" by sarah macdonald... "We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents" - Bob Ross Marcel Kessler, Friesenbergstr. 9, 8055 Zurich, +41 44 463 39 53, +41 76 343 46 46, marcel.kessler@dreamweb.ch, page: www.dreamweb.ch, skype: kesslema