Nagarjuna Sagar tales – Eight

Meditation and lessons

The first two days of meditation was a torture. Even 10 minutes felt like sitting on a cactus heavy on thorns. At home I manage an hour with just one change; a strong right knee gives me 45 minutes to an hour and the weak one gives the rest. I felt inept; memories of my first ten dayer in March 2008 were not so embarrassing. The knees felt unusually stiff, like a rock tied around.

            I could only infer the changed climate for my plight. The air here was nippy, gale winds throughout the day, the atmosphere felt a lot light on the nostrils.   

This place vibrates splendidly. There were 14 meditators on the male side and everyone seemed to have better control. Ashutosh at 60 sat like a sage lost in his meditation as did the 26 year banker from Himachal Pradesh. Even the ebullient lawyer next to me sat still, I felt completely out of place and guilty too. I spoke about my issues to the teacher and she wasted no time in giving me a corner place. At least my discomfiture would not disturb others.

I loved the Dhamma Hall. It is the first time I found myself in a circular shaped hall and dome shaped roof and red brick walls. The circumference of the hall makes for two concentric circles – the outer to store pillows and cushions, or chairs while the inner one accommodates 30 meditators. As a meditator you get a semi-circle view of the sylvan settings where birds, rains, gale winds run their acts.

The walk to the pagoda from the Dhamma Hall is a climb up an uneven slope on wild grass and patches of hard red soil that feels a lot of gravel on the feet. There is a twin path running almost parallel to one another. Men and women are strictly segregated. The Buddhists were smart, they knew a mere glance can at times torpedo the peace built over a lifetime. The pagoda faces the Krishna River as it flow in to the Nagarjuna Sagar dam. The Dhamma Centre is on top of a hill that looks down as you see the waters flow gently into the reservoir.

I used the meditation cell well (number 12); experimenting on postures and even theory. We are trying to improve “prajnya” – so avoid sanya and sankara in meditations. Feeling the body sensations (vedana) is to dissolve the sankara. Which means the focus of meditation is to “improve observation faculty”; reduce the “evaluating part” and the “reaction point”.

I loved walking with that plastic cover (Dhamma Nagarjuna cared for meditators at every level) on a drizzle. The food was exceptional; they even served payasam for one day, chapattis rolled in ghee, I went heavy on ragi jawa at breakfast. One can safely remove coffee and tea from the breakfast with healthier substitutes. They also had hot ginger water; that painstaking care was visible. They respected meditators and got me feeling a lot warm on the place.

My mind felt keen on bird calls; there is a world of small birds here. The walk from the quarters to the dining hall is over 400 metres is on a small mud path across a thicket of shrubs, boulders, and trees. Just walking to the dining hall four times a day got the body more than its share of exercise: breakfast at 6:30; lunch at 11:00, lemon juice for dinner at 5:00 and for those who opted for English as a language for evening discourse. There is a mini dhamma hall with a giant television screen for the purpose.

On the eighth day the noble silence ended, there is a real bonhomie. These faces you run into at the clay drinking pots or at the dining hall or the dhamma hall or the common toilets and you feel a vague connection. But once the silence vow is lifted, we feel like comrade-in-arms. There is a congratulatory air on completion. Each meditator goes through a gamut of emotions; from depths of despair to flights of happiness. You persevere and that makes us appreciative of ourselves and others. Neelakanthum a retired banker said,” Fear is ingrained deep in the mind.”

Damodara Rao came of the metha with rapture in his eyes. He made a good companion till Guntur. Said he,” I worked so hard to provide for my daughters. Now married both of them use my wife as a servant maid to look after their tiny tots. You can earn millions of dollars and yet be inconsiderate. They don't realize I need a wife to manage the house here.” He spends most of the time on spiritual activities. I told him about my issues. I relished his compliment,” Sathya, you are a very decent man.”  

Mr. Rao speaks Telugu with a fluency of a native that he is. The humour and sarcasm is barely on the surface. I loved the way he spoke to the lady conductor who looked stern as a school teacher before a stationary bus: will you go now to have tea and coffee or are going to start right away? She relaxed with a smile, each time she caught my eyes there was this suppressed twitch of a smile. We were in the bus for four hours and I realized: everyone suffers from a crippling problem. The courageous ones are those we don’t lose their charm or zest. They reserve enough peace and kindness to others INSPITE of their daily pinpricks or storms. Living is never a perfect dream, it is a serpentine road with more snakes than ladders. Like 11 hours of meditation in a day, we persevere.

Every Vipassana retreat reveals a dimension about oneself. Our level of understanding the world more or less equals our understanding of oneself. The more you have a grip on yourself the more adept you are in facing to the issues of the world. If UNDERSTANDING was my take from Chengannur in 2011; SELF-PITY is my lesson of Nagarjuna Sagar.

I am diffident in nature and self-pity runs so deep and pervasive that I did not realize its mischief till this week’s meditation showed me up. I am apologetic about a lot: heart surgery, poor health and erratic job nature; none more severe than the loneliness that consumes me. When a woman walked out on me, all these failings flared up. I realized in Nagarjuna Sagar: One is permitted to be sad or depressed or grieved but self-pity and shame drowns every positive attribute. Self-pity is such poison; a trace and it turns the milk container to curds.  

I felt born afresh; I have taken my entire lifetime to learn this simple lesson. That’s the beauty of Vipassana: you realize on your own. Nature essentially is an ally and it is therapeutic. We are all trying to be better than yesterday, or at least aspire to. Each one of us is given a separate exam paper; each must build his own subways and arteries on the road. There is no template or precedence to take any solace from. Living is about trying.  

The Volvo ride from Guntur to Chennai was fantastic, the next door chap a real nuisance as I kept shoo-ing him away. At last found some sleep and reached Central at 7:15. For all the travel I did not feel the exhaustion, that itself made me feel exuberant to face the issues of the day. The date showed 29th July on the watch and so it was.