Meeting My Demons

 On a hot, muggy July afternoon, I set off for the four-hour drive north to Drogheda.    I was on my way to my first Vipassana Retreat - 10 days of complete silence.   Ireland was in the 11^th week of a heat wave and while it wasn’t insufferably hot, the countryside looked jaded and already the leaves were starting to shrivel.   

Vipassana Ireland does not have its own centre and so they rent a boarding school which means retreats can only take place three times a year during the school holidays.     

     Registration took place in the cafeteria which was separated into men and women only zones by seven-foot high room dividers that ran through the centre of the room. We are asked to surrender our phones and any writing materials.  I considered hanging on to mine but in the end I gave them up as I did not want to compromise the experience. 

Every morning at 4am, we are woken by a gong, By 4.30am we are found sitting on our mats in the meditation hall and focusing on our breath for 12 hours with meal breaks until 9.30 that evening.   The meditation practice for the first three days involves sitting upright and concentrating on the small area between the upper lip and nose.  You are asked to focus on the breath coming in your nostrils and the breath going out through your nostrils. Nothing else.  

          All your needs are catered for; your meals are prepared, you do not need to clean, drive or go anywhere.  With no TV, books, writing materials, mobile phones or Wi-Fi, alcohol or people to talk to, you have no choice but to listen to the endless patter that passes through your mind.  

     The whole idea is that with nothing to do and nowhere to go with none of our usual distractions to turn to, we are obliged to pay attention to our bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, emotions and whatever else arises. 

        Tim Parks in his book, Teach Us To Be Still warns that under these conditions all your demons come up.  I was intrigued to meet mine.

Demon 1         Taking Things Personally

 The meditation hall is visually divided in two halves, one half with 40 women and the other 40 men.  Rows of blue mats, each three-foot square, were arranged neatly in eight rows of 10 mats per row in front of a raised dais on which sat our teacher.   The ‘Old Students’ - those who had previously completed a 10 day retreat - sat in the front row while the newbies sat behind.  Each person was assigned a mat and we were told this is where we have to sit for the next 10 days.  My mat was the last in the second row behind the old students.  Next to me on the inside mat was Britt from Berlin. Her bed was directly opposite mine in the dormitory. 

The windows in the hall did not open so the fire escape doors, one at each end of the hall, were kept propped open all day.  Being seated a mere 10 feet from one of these doors, I found the breeze heavenly.

I didn’t have a meditation shawl, so I used one of the blue blankets supplied.  That first day my hands were hot and itchy.  I didn’t know where to put them.  The breeze from the open door helped but I couldn't decide if I was hot or cold and kept adjusting my shawl.  Twice as I re-wrapped myself and adjusted my legs for the millionth time, I accidentally clipped Britt on the arm with the blanket.  Since I was not permitted to speak or make eye-contact I didn't apologise.  I resolved to be more careful. 

The following morning at 4.30am as I settled onto my mat, I noticed Britt’s was bare and remained so for the next two hours.  I wondered where she was as I definitely saw her get out of bed that morning.      At the sound of the breakfast gong, I slowly rolled onto my right side in an effort to get my circulation going and gently unfold my aching knees. It was then I spotted Britt sitting at the back of the hall leaning against a wall.  Immediately, my brain flooded with poisonous, paranoid thoughts, "Stupid B****!  She couldn't handle a little fidgeting.  I wasn't still enough for her purist ways."   

          As the days went by and we passed each other in the corridors or on the playing fields, Britt would occasionally try to catch my eye and share a sympathetic smile.  I blanked her: she'd burned her bridges.  

On the 10^th day, when we were permitted to speak again, Britt dashed up to me in the dining room and taking a chair next to me, breathlessly announced, "I've been dying to get to know you."           I acknowledged her presence but kept eating. Britt eventually sensing my coolness made a move to leave.  It was then I asked her why she had moved to the back of the hall.    Britt sat back down again and told me she had complained to the teacher that the open fire escape door was making her cold.  The teacher refused.

       "And then,” she continued, “do you remember those birds!?”     The meditation hall was surrounded by loads of trees in which resided rooks, crows, seagulls.  Every bird in Drogheda seemed to be in those trees and for some reason every evening at 7pm they would just kick off and make this incredible racket.  I found them a welcome distraction.  Again, Britt asked the teacher to close the doors but he refused.   However, to address her complaints, the teacher arranged for her to move as far away from the doors as possible.    

As I sat there listening to her earnest explanation, my body flooded with guilt. It was not Britt’s choice to move. It wasn’t her fault.  I held a grudge for nine days for a slight that did not in fact exist and deliberately kept the resentment stoked up all that time.  How shallow and self-absorbed was I to think that Britt’s actions had anything to do with me.  So sure was I that she ‘slighted’ me, it never crossed my mind that Britt might be suffering and that she was simply doing what she could to make her experience more bearable.

       I always sensed I took things personally and tend to lose perspective easily but this episode completed knocked me off kilter.  How many hundreds of people up to now had I misjudged?  How many potential friendships have I lost out on because I assumed the worst intentions behind other people's actions?  

       A friend, Mary Coleman who I met on my second retreat, recommended the book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  In the book he quotes, "Nothing other people do is because of you."  The book is good and listening to the author read the book on YouTube is even better.