Vipassana Diary - Day 1

Day 1 - 24 Aug, 2009.

Deary Diary,

I'm in so much pain. And meditating is not relaxing, don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

At precisely 3:50am, the morning gong rang. There's not much point in harping on about just how early 4am is, you know how early it is. So early that I've never once called it early before - when discussing the hour of 4am, it should only ever be referred to as late.

I lay bed for a few mins before I staggered to the bathroom and poured some cold water over my head to wake up. The showers here are traditional Indian showers (buckets). One big bucket to hold the water, one little bucket to do the pouring.

My room is actually quite nice. It's simple but clean. It also has two beds, and since I have no roomie, I have some privacy and plenty of space to spread out.

After my cold water wake-up call, I dragged myself up the hill (it's not a very challenging hill, more like a gentle slope, but everything feels steeper before dawn) to the meditation hall to commence our 2-hour pre-breakfast meditation. Again I just sat there and daydreamed, squirming a lot to try and find a comfortable position.

At 5:30 Teacher joined us. He started playing the first of our course lectures. It began with about 5 mins of chanting, and then a series of meditation instructions in Hindi and English. And I'm not summarising when I write this, but all I have to do is watch my breath. That's it. Just sit there, eyes closed, and focus my entire attention on the breath flowing in and out of my nostrils.

I know that seems simple enough, but I could barely go 30 seconds before images of cricket, beer and naked ladies would begin to commandeer my thoughts. I didn't have a good session this morning.

6:30 was breakfast, followed by a few mins of free time to organise yourself.

We started meditating again at 8:30. Another poor session. Concentration has never been my strong suit. I keep getting angry at myself for not being able to do something so seemingly simple.

At 9:30 Teacher joined us again and we started the 2nd of our lectures. Same instructions: just breathe. 2 more hours of watching my breath. Well, 2 hours of sitting, and about 3 minutes of actual breath watching.

By lunch (11 am), my back was really starting to hurt. I never get back pain in the outside world, but in the outside world I never sit unsupported. The searing pain only made my concentration worse and the 4 straight hours of post-lunch mediation useless.

We had our dinner at 5pm, followed by another hour of meditation. I must have adjusted my position at least 20 times and never once found one that provided any relief.

At 7pm we sat down to watch our daily DVD discourse, taught be the lovably charismatic Goenka, the father of the modern day Vipassana movement. He talks, he talks a lot, but he's great to listen to, and when he made a joke about how much people hurt after the 1st day, everyone let out a relieved laugh. It's comforting to know I'm not the only one in agony.

Another quick half hour of spine torture at 8:30 and then off to bed.

This is going to be a horribly long 10 days.