The second day arrived.
I got up, scared. S.N. Goenka had warned us that it was going to be a difficult day.
I arrived at my meditation space at 4.30 am and sat in the lotus position. “Let whatever comes,” I told myself. However, in the first few minutes of the meditation, I began to feel a calmness not experienced before. I fell into a meditative state in which it was not me. I saw myself from the outside in. The stories did not come. I imagine that this will be the feeling we have when we die. I did not measure time, my knees did not hurt. The flow of breathing slowly marked the minutes, the hours. I didn’t know more. I heard the bell and woke up. I felt happy, rested. We went to have breakfast the same as the day before. Had I reached nirvana? I wondered.
The second meditation brought me back to reality. The problems of the day before were there. They had not left. It was a game that the mind had played.
We ate carrot soup, a pumpkin stew, boiled vegetables, and salad.
The third day was exactly the same. A good meditation in the morning, problems the rest of the day. We ate pot beans, a carrot stew, and a beetroot salad.
The colleague who brought me to the retreat, the lawyer, suffers an anxiety attack. He began to move from one side to the other. It was loud. He was like possessed. They had to get him out of the room.
At the end of that third day, Goenka reveals to us the real reason for attending the retreat.
“You have finished the third day. You have been aware of the challenges of the mind. You have perceived it and have struggled with it. Well. Now start the Vipassana meditation. Tomorrow we will focus on his technique. The real combat begins, but now, they are ready.”
The fourth day began. What was Vipassana? New students are asked to focus no longer on the breath, but on the sensations. We must travel with our perception, every space of our body. And until we register a sensation, whatever it is, move to the next space. And so, there you have me starting at the top of the head and waiting for a throb, a pain, whatever, and then moving to the forehead, then to the nose, mouth, ears, neck and so on until we reach the bottom of the head. The feet.
At first, I visualized myself as a cartoon, waiting for any tremor in some part of the body to move on to the next. I laughed. But in this constant process, not only did I begin to perceive sensations, but also energy. We are energy. There were times when I didn’t feel my body, but the energy that runs through it.
I was following the same film, but now I was registering it differently. It no longer bothered me. I just watched her go by. I knew that energy was not me. That was impermanence. Everything passes, nothing remains.
Goenka told us, we are a molecular structure. Everything is born and dies. At the moment we register those sensations, thousands of cells die. Aging is natural.
“Don’t explain it to anyone,” he warned us. Everyone who wants to know about this has to experience it.
“Every manifestation of a sensation is the product of a change”, he affirmed.
There is a guy who catches my eye.
He is tall, hairless, he looks like a soccer player. Very strong. However, he always walks alone. Desolate, with a sad look. If he was walking through an airport and I was a policeman, I would stop him. He might look like a terrorist. Just in case, I don’t go near him.
The following days follow the same dynamic. Tomorrow I will tell you the end of this monastic life.
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