During a ten day course, you learn two types of meditation: fixed attention and open monitoring. When your mind is concentrated—and when you’re not talking or looking at a phone, you’d be amazed how sharp it gets—you begin mentally scanning your entire body and observing the sensations that come and go without moving or reacting. It's tediously difficult because, even with a sharp mind, your thoughts still take you away to other places or you want to react to the pain in your body that comes from sitting cross-legged all day. This is just the loopy habit pattern of the mind. But slowly—and from my experience nothing happens quickly at a vipassana—your mind and body start to comply, and this compliance, this arduous changing of habits, has had repercussions in almost every area of my life. It’s created a kind of buffer between things happening and me reacting, and over time and with continuous practice, the buffer has become stronger.
No comments:
Post a Comment