Category: Meditation

My experiences on meditation retreats.

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Chan Meditation- Self Inflicted Torture?

Self Inflicted Torture

Written by George Balarezo, Intrepid Global Citizen

The schedule looked brutal but I was thirsty for self improvement. The path to everlasting peace and bliss is a constant struggle but I was up for the challenge. This time the retreat was only three days long but much more intense than I had ever expected. The day started at 5AM and ended at midnight. For the really motivated students, the day started at 3AM. Three hours of sleep and then back to work. This was the schedule for my Chan meditation retreat and I had no idea what was in store for me during the following days.

Chan flourished in China, and later was imported as “Zen” into Japan. It has been practiced throughout East Asia for more than 2,000 years. Master Yonghua, a monk and former MBA educated business man, is renowned for his enormous progress on the path of enlightenment and came to visit us from Los Angeles to teach this powerful meditation technique. This was indeed a very special opportunity that I had to take advantage of. I rushed to the meditation center in Seoul and was ready to tackle the inner workings of the mind.

The first day I was to be given instructions in the beginners’ hall. Much to my surprise, it had the atmosphere of a self inflicted torture chamber. The Dharma hall resembled the hall of hell minus the fiery entrance. A female monk was sitting with us in the lotus position with arms flailing and pounding on the ground while howling in pain. I wanted to go run over in her direction and make sure she was okay, but I was instantly paralyzed from shock at what was taking place. A few minutes later, tears streamed down her face as she began to slap the back of her bald, shiny head. It seemed as if she had just put herself in a jujitsu submission hold and was trying to see how long she could handle it before tapping out. People came and comforted her to make sure nothing was wrong. “Leave her alone. She is working hard and doing a great job,” exclaimed Master Yonghua. “Doing a great job? At what? Hurting herself to the point of excruciating pain? Who is this monk anyway and what exactly is he teaching?” I thought to myself in anguish.  Suddenly, everyone backed off as she was now lying on her back with her legs still in the lotus position. After several more minutes of intense yelling and pounding on the floor, she finally came out of her bondage and let out a huge sigh of relief. Now she was sprawled out on the floor recovering from her face to face encounter with misery. The hue of her face slowly transitioned from beet red to that of a healthy human being. I was in utter shock at what I had witnessed. Why would anyone do such a devilish act to themselves? I stared at the female monk dumbfounded for a few minutes before collecting myself. I have to admit the masochist in me who enjoys the physical pain of endurance sports was rather curious. After all, I used to put myself through torturous physical exercise in order to achieve the goals I desired. The funny thing was I always learned to enjoy the pain.  How different was this anyway?

I was distracted by the big scene and failed to notice all of the others in the room around me. They were all grimacing as if attempting to hold back the expression of pain that the jujitsu fighter monk so as not to draw attention to themselves. I needed an explanation very quickly.

The meditation technique is simple. Essentially, the Chan practitioner sits completely still in the lotus position until they reach their physical and mental capacity for pain. Even after practicing Vipassana for several years, I still have not been able to contort myself into anything that even resembles a half lotus position. Therefore, my task was to sit against the wall with my right leg extended and left foot resting on my right knee in order to slowly build the flexibility to sit in the lotus posture one day. Although this sounds very simple, after several minutes of practice I found myself in excruciating pain and had no other choice but to release myself from misery. Master Yonghua stated that in order to build a foundation for the path to enlightenment, one must train themselves to sit for extended periods of time in order to eliminate our fear of pain and misery.  By experiencing pain and misery over and over again, one could build up a tolerance and eventually be freed from their aversion of suffering. Once one does not fear pain then nothing will ever be able to hurt you. Life can throw unexpected things at you and if you don’t know how to handle problems then it has the potential to eat you alive. Essentially, this was preparation for the worst day of my life, all the while preparation to be a champion in everything I do. One of my favorite quotes is from runner Steve Prefontaine- “I win because I can endure more pain than anyone you have ever met.” This indeed was championship training at it’s best.

“Sit longer and longer. If you can sit for one hour then sit for two or three hours without breaking your posture,” Master Yonghua stated calmly. “Sit for several days if you can. I will keep giving you tasks that you will absolutely loath in order to make you stronger,” he continued. I quickly realized I was just a novice at this point and would have to invest more than one hour per day into my meditation practice to make any significant headway along the path of enlightenment. Master Yonghua told us stories of himself sitting in the same lotus position for too long and tearing a tendon in his knee. This was from increasing his sitting time too quickly. He instructed us to stop if we started feeling fiery, burning sensations in our legs in order to prevent potential injuries.

There was an old Vietnamese monk in the back who did not look a day younger than 85 years old. The old man was famous for sitting in the lotus posture for nine days straight without eating, drinking or using the bathroom.  He stood up during the course to offer his piece of advice, “If you can sit for three hours, then you will be able to sit for nine day.” Legend has it that he made the jump from three hours of lotus sitting to nine days. I glanced over in his direction several times during the course and saw him sleeping in the lotus position several times. Nothing phased him at that point.

Over the course of the retreat I realized how intense my aversion to pain is and set a goal of increasing my peak sitting time by two minutes per day. My time learning Chan that weekend left me humbler and more physically and mentally exhausted than I could ever imagine. I was extremely exhausted after the three day retreat. It was as if I had ran marathons for three consecutive days in a row. I limped out of the temple worn and torn from going to battle with myself, but somehow looked forward to putting this tool to work during my daily life. I am extremely gracious to Master Yonghua for teaching a tool essential for mastering the art of life and death. Enjoy the pain that life brings and nothing will ever be able to harm you!

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Tears of Peace and Ten Days of Silence

Tears of Peace and Ten Days of Silence

Written by George Balarezo, Intrepid Global Citizen

I sat in excruciating pain as an ax crashed down on my knee. No eye contact, speaking, writing, reading or non verbal communication for ten days. One hundred hours of meditation in ten days- all done sitting on the floor with my legs crossed. “I do not recommend you sit in a chair, just observe your pain. It is only a bodily sensation,” the meditation instructor advised.

Vipassana meditation is not about listening to the sound of birds chirping and achieving instant bliss and inner peace as we may commonly think. It is about coming out of your suffering and understanding that every experience, emotion, thought and bodily sensation arises and passes. Ten days invested in coming to a deeper understanding of this universal truth at the experiential level. When we experience high or low points in life, it is very easy to accept the saying “this too will pass” at the intellectual level. Vipassana meditation is about experiencing this for yourself through observation of your body sensations and respiration. “If Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha sat here and maintained his same posture for hours on end until reaching enlightenment, then I can at least complete this course,” I told myself three years ago during my first ten day Vipassana course in Bodhagaya, India. After all the pain and suffering I came out successful and was able to observe my physical pain in a more objective manner and had a higher pain tolerance. I mentally prepared myself for the challenge that awaited me at Dharma Korea and was ready to get back into the practice.

The Schedule

The wake up bell rings every day at 4 AM and your day is packed full until it is time to retire for the night at 9:30PM. Two meals are given each day- at 6:30AM and 11:00AM. A glass of tea is given at 5PM.

Hunger Games

I have always been a big eater and am never one to miss a meal. Therefore, the new eating schedule was one of the biggest challenges for me. I often found myself hungry by 4PM and had a hard time believing I would have to wait another 14.5 hours until my next meal. Vipassana teaches that all cravings arise and pass and hunger is no different. I found myself reasoning that nothing negative would occur as a result of restricted caloric intake. Before the course, I did extensive research on the benefits of intermittent fasting which helped myself overcome my hunger. I was becoming healthier due to my new eating schedule and hunger is only a product of hormone spikes at certain times of the day due to years of maintaining the same eating pattern. Native Americans would eat whenever they felt the urge, often going days without eating. It was only until European imperialists came and labeled natives as “uncivilized” due to their eating habits was the three meal a day habit made into a cultural norm.

The Romans only consumed one meal a day around noon. In fact, breakfast was actively frowned upon. They were obsessed with digestion and eating more than one meal was considered a form of gluttony. In the Middle Ages monastic life largely shaped when people ate. Nothing could be eaten before morning Mass and meat could only be eaten for half the days of the year. It’s thought the word breakfast entered the English language during this time and literally meant “break the night’s fast”.

I could feel my hunger arise and pass throughout the ten day period. When 9:30PM came around I was too tired to think about food and would pass out for the night with no problems. Often, I was able to focus on meditation with greater intensity during the two hour morning session right before breakfast, or the last two hours of my fast. Perhaps the Romans were onto something.

Physical Pain

Sitting on the floor with my legs crossed for ten hours a day is not the way I usually spend my day. I have always been a high energy person since childhood and sitting in one place has always been a challenge for me. I put myself through a lot of high intensity circuit training and weight lifting drills everyday but rarely stretch my body before or after. During the ten day Vipassana course I paid for a lifetime of ignoring my post workout stretching session. My knees often felt as if someone was squeezing a vice around them, especially during the one hour periods when you are not supposed to move your body at all. The last fifteen minutes would often feel like two hours as sweat would pour down my face.

The Joy of Pain

I had a major breakthrough during one of my hour long, no movement sessions. “I am just sitting here and this is giving me pain. Not from movement, but from sitting here!” I thought to myself. I suddenly burst out in laughter in the middle of the silent meditation hall as the idea of experiencing excruciating pain from remaining sedentary for an extended period of time seemed like the most ridiculous thing I could ever fathom. Here I was, a guy who used to jump over stacks of hurdles at 1PM in Texas summer heat,cycled through fiery hot Middle Eastern deserts and the world’s highest elevated highway. Now I was going through pain from sitting in one place. “This should be nothing!” I thought to myself. After that moment, my pain level decreased dramatically and never came back. Your mind truly does create and destroy pain itself. By the tenth day I started to enjoy my physical pain. Many times in life we can’t avoid painful situations so the only thing we can do is try to enjoy them. All pain is created by my interpretation of reality.

 
A Mental Roller Coaster

In society we are often encouraged to never show our emotions or feelings and keep busy or distracted instead of facing our demons. Don’t act too happy, never cry in public, don’t lose your temper and get angry. People often relieve their stress through external simulation such as alcohol, drugs, food, television or keeping busy on the Internet. By rejecting our emotions we become smaller and smaller and have constant inner wars with ourselves. Inner peace can only be attained by accepting and absorbing all of our emotions or else they will come back to haunt us at the unconscious level. Vipassana meditation makes the practitioner deal with all of their inner impurities at the deepest level of the abyss. Most of us only close our eyes when we are unconscious. By keeping my eyes closed and rejecting all external visual stimulation during my waking hours, I was able to reach deep into layers of my mind that I did not even knew existed.

The surgical procedure into the unconscious began from the first second I closed my eyes. Every major event in my life replayed in slow motion as the incision became deeper and deeper. Focusing on the meditation technique is an impossible feat to accomplish ten hours per day. The mind wandered back and forth, as emotional events I never had the courage to look in the eye suddenly reappeared one by one. The bottled up teen angst that I failed to deal with in a productive manner during my adolescence turned me into a raging beast. The following moment I would be hysterical with laughter as my mind decided to replay one of my hilarious moments on the road in a small country village in South Korea. The chatter in my mind seemed endless and I had the realization that there was nothing I could do to control it. I was indeed a slave to my mind but I was determined to set myself free.

Tears of Peace

The rain was pounding on the ceiling as the summer crickets just stopped their loud roar. Suddenly the meditation hall in the South Korean village turned into a hub of peaceful energy that I had never experienced before. When any emotion becomes overbearing and too strong tears roll down our faces. Sadness, joy, fear and anger often make us tear up. My eyes turned moist as the peacefulness I experienced became overwhelming. Suddenly, my face and neck were soaking wet from the tears this new powerful emotion I never new existed before produced. Perhaps I absorbed the peaceful energy in that room from the forty other people that were sitting alongside me.  All I had been doing was observing my respiration and bodily sensations for ten days with my eyes closed, but this hit me by surprise. At that moment I had no cravings or aversions to any thought or emotion that my mind could potentially create. It was as if the bruises and scars of my past had all been healed at the same moment. Tears of peace are something that everyone should experience in their life- no chemical substance is needed.

Negative Energy Shield

After finishing my third ten day course I felt as if no negative external energy could ever enter my plane of existence. Cranky or angry people that I often came into contact with did not stand a chance of penetrating the shield I was now carrying. After the course, an old woman came and started yelling at me because the staff at the meditation center did not pay her for the watermelon she sold them. She mistakenly thought I was a staff member and was trying to cheat her out of her money. I quickly noticed that my inner reaction had changed immensely. Normally, I would have became agitated and perhaps even snapped back at her. Not this time. I smiled at her with compassion and patiently explained that I had nothing to do with the watermelon and would relay her message to the staff when they returned. She stomped away in her anger. The old woman tried to pass on her negative energy but I refused to accept it.

A few hours later, someone bumped into me by accident as I was carrying a cup full of hot water that spilled on my hand. I just observed the hot sensation in an objective manner and did not react negatively like I normally would have. I smiled in peace as the other person quickly apologized.

I felt like a superhero whose negative energy shield could never be broken. This was the reward at the end of my third 100 hour meditation course. Like anything else in life, it took hard work and determination to arrive at that state of mind. Maintaining practice is also imperative as any skill diminishes if not practiced properly. The taming of the mind is a constant struggle that I will always deal with. The battle continues!