The large saucepan of bubbling porridge was hot when we gave the go ahead. But, by the time the gong sounded and the sitters had shuffled into the dining hall, it had lost its steam and a little of its metta. Whilst the sitters slurped and scooped at their plastic bowls silently in the dining hall, our little server team continued to work in the kitchen. We scrubbed clean the pots and huge but sticky wooden stirring spoons. Ever conscious and aware of the thin veil between us – the servers – and them – the sitters.
I had woken at 4am, not from the faint pulse of the centre’s gong but naturally. I was pleased. My internal timeclock had yet again heard my request, waking me at precisely the time i had visualised the night before. i roused slowly blinking at the ceiling. A mauve pink blanket covered my body. I thought through my early morning dreams and of all the possibilities of the day. The room’s air was warm and dry. It passed, like a soft wind, over my upper lip and into my nostrils, filling my lungs, and tingling my toes. Outside my window, the sky was not yet steel blue.
By 4:20am, I had doned warm clothes, and had ventured into the swedish dawn air towards the main house and our industrial kitchen. It was my job to turn on the boiling water urn at 4:30am, ready for the breakfast gong at 6:30am. I flicked the stove switch and then hastened to make the morning sitting, the wooden pine stairs down from the kitchen cracking with every step.
Like ghosts one by one the sitters filed into the Dharma meditation hall. Already inside my eyelids, I could hear the shuffling about me… bodies getting comfortable for the next two hours of mediation. Eventually, the hall became silent, punctuated only by yawns and early morning stomach pings.
Inside my mind, though, it was far from calm. Trying to just purely observe the breath and body sensation for a long period of time is harder than it seems. Memories, thoughts and fantasties appear like movie screens, and sometimes with them comes an accompanying body pain. Though, the technique disciplines the mind to just observe… I am sitting still. I am breathing. I am experiencing this. I am experiencing that.
Every now and again there would have a sort of breakthrough. A strong release, a sensation. Sometimes tension, heat, orgasmic euphoria, sometimes agony, or sometimes even a river of tears. i am breathing. The tears are welling up, the back of the throat hurts, the tears are coming out, the tears are running down the face. The tears are drying out. The salt from the tears is contracting and itching the skin. I am breathing. Its a strange but somehow wonderfully liberating experience. Maybe an hour or two goes past. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, the process and various outcomes being discussed by Buddah in 500 BC. It takes effort and time. The serenity is truely divine, though the equanimity is hard to stabilise. But then again changing deep patterns is always a toughy.
And, the sitters were doing this ten hours a day, for eight days. No talking, no looking at others…no killing a living thing, no bad actions to others, no physical contact… i am breathing..i am eating… i am walking… i am chewing porridge… i am shitting… i am lying down. After a time, even sleeping becomes a strange twilight zone. The clarity of the NOW exquisite
So there I was in mid-September, deep in the Swedish countryside, sitting as much as possible whilst cooking and caring for the every need of 40+ trainee angels. Learning how to be happy and truely serve others, whilst dealing with burns and bacteria, bins and stainless steel.
Yep, I am breathing. i am calming and clarifying my own vibration. i am going deeper into ones true nature, deeper into ancient meditative technique of Virpassana.
Some of my sweethearted fellow servers: Faid (Bangladesh), Elena sitting (Romania), Florence (France), Par (Sweden) and Lurya (Germany).
