I wrote this essay after my first ever meditation retreat:

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Two weeks ago I returned from a ten-day meditation retreat that I did over New Year's, from December 29th 1994 to January 8th 1995. The retreat was actually more like twelve days, if one includes the day getting there and getting back; both days had scheduled activities as well as the four-and-a-half-hour drive out to and back from Madera County, North of Fresno.

It was difficult to make the time off to go on the retreat. I have been saving my vacation time for a while, thinking that I would visit my older sister at her home in Switzerland this Fall. I have wanted to do this retreat ever since someone in a yoga class told me about it two-and-a-half-years ago, however, and I knew that it was time to go for it or admit that I wasn't serious about stepping into the fire of Buddhism, that I'd rather talk about it than live it. So, five or six months ago, when my friend Jules told me that she was going over New Year's and asked me if I wanted to go, I asked my supervisor Charlotte and her boss John for the two weeks off. It ended up that one of the two weeks was vacation time but that one was leave without pay, which hurt me financially somewhat.

The California Vipassna (a Pali (the ancient Buddhist language, similar in function as Latin to Catholicism) word for "spiritual insight") Center camp was in the woods in the middle of nowhere, near a lumber town called North Fork. There were trees all around, there was deer shit on the camp paths many mornings, and hawks flew overhead of us. It rained many days, sometimes torrentially (I didn't realize that it was raining torrentially on the coast as well until I got back), and snowed some too, but several of the afternoons were soothing and warm. Nonetheless, what I usually wore, indoors or out, was boots, two or three pairs of socks, jeans with long underwear and padded knee-length shorts underneath, two tee-shirts and three sweatshirts, and a hat. I was not very active (my metabolism slowed way down, as evidenced by needing half my usual food intake by the final day) and I get cold easily anyway, but, wearing so many clothes, I felt comfortable while I was there. My nose did run and my throat got clogged up, I had either allergies or a chronic low-grade cold, the whole time that I was there, however.

Going there was like being a monk for two weeks or like being in a non-violent prison. The schedule was to wake up at 4 am, sit in meditation for two hours, eat and rest, sit for three hours, eat lunch at 11, rest, sit meditation for four hours, eat fruit, sit for an hour, watch a video-tape discourse on Buddhist teaching and theory of meditation from the head teacher from Burma, sit another half hour, ask any questions we had for the assistant teachers (Americans), and then go to sleep, usually at around 9:15 PM. I followed my friend Cori's pre-retreat advice, and, after the first two days, slept through the first sitting, getting up at 6:15; those first two days, when I got up at four, I was tired and slow much of the day, but the other days, after nine hours sleep, I was, for the most part, sharp.

On arriving, we took Buddhist lay vows, not to kill, steal, lie, engage in "sexual misconduct," or do one other thing, I forget what it was, while we were there. We were totally segregated by sex, which made easier to follow our additional promise to not act sexually in any way while there (something, I found out later, that almost all people failed miserably to abstain from, mentally, while sitting in meditation). We were also not allowed to leave an area comprising a few buildings and paths, even to get anything from or put anything in our cars, which turned to be a rule that I came to appreciate; it made focusing on the mediation paramount and easier. We were not allowed to talk, make eye contact, gesture, or have physical contact with any other meditators, another rule that I came to appreciate for the same reason, although, people being people, there were plenty of little infractions. On the third night, for example, I talked for a while with a dude from my cabin who I knew, from listening to a question that he put to the assistant teachers, was considering leaving. I urged him to stick it out, which I am glad that I did. In general, I seemed to miss talking and found any reason I could to ask questions of the assistant teachers and to go to the managers with logistical problems, both of which were within the rules.

I didn't exercise the whole time there, which I missed, except for push-ups every other day and some walking. I could see how many good feelings I usually am getting from being mellowed out after anaerobic exercise (running and biking) and being pumped up by lifting weights.

The food was healthy vegetarian (die, criminal vegetables, die!), cooked vegetables, brown rice, tofu, weird sauces and herbs, breakfast cereals, soups, potatoes, fruits, tea and milk, casseroles, etc. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes it made me gag, most of the time I was happy just to have a break from wrestling with my wandering mind and was so focussed that I just ate it and concentrated one-pointedly on biting and chewing. They had a tea out each day called "Smooth Move", which was "a gentle herbal laxative". I passed on both this enticing brew and the stewed prunes with lemon slices that were put out each morning, although both were generally popular. Maybe they helped people to achieve the "free flow" that the teachers kept talking about.

The accommodations were livable (hot and cold water, heaters, plenty of lights) but the showers were primitive (and sometimes gave only cold water) and the bed was hard, my shoulder felt tweaked many mornings. Everything they have there is given by donations or bought with donated money, and I was overall impressed with how nice things were, considering.

I was in a bunk cabin with five other dudes, all but one in their twenties and new students. I hadn't talked with any of them more than a few sentences before the vow of silence fell (on the first night), and I wondered a lot about them during the course. I shared a bunk bed with and sat in the meditation hall next to one guy, a big, brooding, athletic chicano dude named Alvin. During the course, he looked to me to be angry and easily irritated, going through a lot of stuff and wishing that he wasn't there, I was a little intimidated, I tried not to rock the bunk bed too much getting comfortable before falling asleep, but on the last day I found him to be just a dopey, nice guy, happy that he had taken the course.

We learned three types of mediation while there. The first three-and-a-half days, we worked on a technique known as Anna-Panna mediation, which is focussing attention on the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. The point of this is to focus the mind, to develop the facility of clarity that Buddhists call "Samadhi," by releasing all distractions (other physical sensations, thoughts, the other people in the room) from our focus. At first, my mind raged and stormed, it was a torrential waterfall, I would be lost in thought, fantasy, aches and pains in my knees, plans and memories, wondering about the people around me, itching and fidgeting, etc. for five, ten, fifteen minutes before I remembered that I was trying to focus on my breath. Eventually, however, I "tamed the ox," I just let go of all distractions and returning to my breath without condemning them or in any way pushing them away, and my consciousness became a lake with shallow ripples, resting on the area right below my nose, for long stretches of time (I sometimes returned to chaos and anxiety, however, although this became less frequent). I used this first mediation technique throughout the ten days, whenever I needed concentration.

While I eventually found Anna-Panna to be helpful, I was initially angry, because I came there not being very fond of breath-focussing techniques, and they are certainly not Vipassna meditation, which I have studied before, and which is what I went there to learn. I didn't realize that they were going to teach us more than one techniques, and I thought that the Anna-Panna was their take on Vipassna. I was superelated when I realized the real order of affairs.

We learned this second technique, Vipassna, on the fourth day, and it involves bringing the consciousness through all of the sections of the body, part by part, sequentially (small parts - the top of one toe, a part of the scalp, the left eyelid, the back of the right bicep, etc.), and feeling the sensation that was there. We would try not to change any sensation, just allow it to be what it is. If the area was blank and unresponsive or was superintensely painful (as my knees and upper back often were) we were instructed to remain in the area for a while and just feel (or wait there, undemandingly and with equanimity, waiting for a feeling). We swept down the body, and then turned around and went back up again. There were also advanced instructions and variations on the technique that I will not try to explain.

The first time took me hours, it was incredibly painful and anxiety-producing, but I got to be faster and more familiar with the different parts and it got to be very pleasant. The basic point of the vipassna technique is: to keep on with it, to get out of one's rational thinking and to feel all sensations in the body with detachment and equanimity, to feel pain and unpleasantness without avoiding it, and to feel pleasure without grabbing after it or trying to hold on to it.

The last technique, called Metta-Panna (Love Meditation), was one that we learned cursorily on the last day, and it involved consciously ending our meditation by wishing to all beings in the universe whatever peace and equanimity of mind that we experience in mediation, and love and good fortune in a broad sense. So, you being a being in the universe, I wish you the peace and love of a meditative state, love and good fortune in a broad sense.

I sat on cushions with my legs extended and my back against a post or the wall some of the time, but, most of the time, I knelt, with a cushion or a wooden bench supporting my butt. I have an injured right knee, a partially torn arterial crutiate ligament from a year ago, and it and the other knee would hurt like crazy. I think that I developed much strength of mind by keeping on with moving my attention up and down my body, keeping focussed despite the pull of these pains, and the pull of sleepy foggy sensations, body itches, the noises made by people in the room, thoughts, etc. Sometimes my knees would hurt so much, sometimes people would be very noisy, one time a bug crawled into my ear, but I kept on with wherever I was; this ended up bringing a great amount of bliss. On the seventh day, I sat basically still (my only large movements were to periodically sit up straight) for two-and-a-half hours straight; I was in great physical-pain/spiritual-joy the last hour.

I could have taken Ibuprofin to reduce pain and swelling in my knees, but this would have eliminated much physical sensation, so I would have been wasting my time on the cushion, since meditation necessarily involves working with pain with a skillful consciousness. I was a little worried that my knees would be damaged, but my knees always ended up fine and are fine now so this worry turned out to be typical of the tricks that the mind pulls during meditation in an attempt to hold on to its power. A truism about mediation is that it dethrones the mind as master of the organism and makes it just another component, a tool of the whole, and that the mind will put up a vicious and uncompromising fight to avoid losing the throne. William James said something to the effect of that the aim of life is to make our central nervous system work for us rather than against us, Alan Watts said we need to "get out of our own way," both of which I agree with emphatically, but if you look at someone like my sister Amanda her mind, her interpretive and goal-achievement-seeking psychic structures, may kill the host organism rather than give up control. It is clear to me that, in some ways, my mind is on the side of my organism, it is a powerful part that contributes effectively to the whole, but, in some ways, the only thing it is looking out for is itself, it could care less whether the rest of me is healthy or not.

I did often have a fear come up of becoming passive and weak by engaging meditation and Buddhism, and I don't really know if this is a tricky lie of the ego-mind, saying "you can't survive without me being in control," or whether it's a valid fear. Many people that I see involved in Eastern paths strike me as weak, passive, and scared of life, losers at life trying to opt out of the game, trying codependently to develop some trancendantly-supermoral "loving-kindness" and to do the right, morally pure thing out of fear. I see lots of people scared of emotion and the hustle-bustle of the real world. Also, some people whose opinions I respect and who I consider to be *not* caught in their ego-mind are somewhat critical of meditation for these reason. On the other hand, many Buddhist teachers and masters do seem to to be radiant, strong, naturally loving, fluid, effective, clear, peaceful, powerful beings, as do many other non-weak students, I find myself wanting what they've all got, they seem to have a clarity and detachment combined with a dynamic aliveness which is attractive. I have also seen myself go through meditative and other Buddhist practices with dubiousity and emerge on the other side strengthened (although the strength that I get is a relaxed, receptive, being, strength, which is strength, which does get me what I want); the whole theory of how meditation works, also, is basically cogent and believable for me.

Perhaps one answer is that one develops an ego and then transcends it; the idea is, first you "conquer" the world, then you renounce your conquest. One does the unnatural and difficult, one first goes out on dates, does job interviews, learns computer skills and foreign languages, memorized facts and procedures, and then one lets go and does what is natural. First one needs to learn to thrive in this plane of time-and-space and the demands implicit therein, and then one can be relaxed and cosmic about the press of those demands. Those that try to transcend before succeeding in the battle of life do so prematurely and end up being clearly "weak" people. But if this is so, should I be doing anger release and goal-achievement workshops instead of meditating, should I be trying to learn skills and be active politically and vocationally, trying to be stronger, more skillful and achieving, and save the Buddhism for when I am forty? Fuck if I know.

One piece of theory that makes sense to me in explaining the whole Buddhist meditation trip (and one that I learned in a Humanistic Psych course my senior year at UCSC) is as follows : there are two modes of consciousness, the receptive and the goal-focussed. The receptive makes no demands on phenomena, it accepts all as it is, it is the more comfortable of the two, it is just aware of how things are without agitation, it is how one feels while falling asleep or while relaxing in a hot tub after a full day of physical work - you can think of people that don't like you or important tasks left undone but it doesn't perturb your peace, somehow it is all ok and will all work out. Getting to this mode of consciousness is a central point of alcohol and drugs. The goal-focussed mode, however, does not accept reality as it is, it feels a deficit to things as they currently are, it thinks in terms of better-worse and right-wrong, it is striving towards something that is currently not present, and its extreme manifestations could occur during an antagonistic argument or right before an externally-imposed deadline - one feels incomplete, one feels a need to change something. My psych teacher said that his take on Buddhism was that meditators are trying to achieve a receptive state of consciousness at all times, even while arguing or while struggling with a deadline or doing anything else. That makes sense to me, and seems like a laudable goal that I am committed to.

A different issue: the meditation teachers wanted us to become viscerally aware of certain Buddhist teachings through the meditative process, for example Anicha (everything, mental or physical, inside of me or outside, is impermanent, constantly rising and passing away), Anata (there is no ultimate "self" or soul beyond physical and mental processes), and Dukkha (human reality, conditioned by experience, is suffused with suffering), but I really didn't, and I wasn't about to *try* to do so, that seems to me to be the opposite of the meditative mode of consciousness. I got a little irked with the lengthy meditation instructions that kept telling us to look for these things. It seemed like Buddhist fundamentalism, contrary to the Buddhist teaching of trusting one's phenomenological experience over metaphysical religious dogmas.

One insight that I did naturally have is as to what was strongest and most frequent in pulling my attention away from the objects of meditation. It seems clear that I have superstrong mental attachments to fantasies about being a rock star, thinking about rock stars and bands, theorizing about why I am behaving and feeling as I am, and sexual fantasies (the whole retreat, I continuously checked out the female side of the room, but then again many other people seemed said to me later that they had done plenty of out-checking themselves). It became clear to me, experientially, that these things often run me, I am not running them, and that my attachment to them *uses* me and is not healthy for me-as-organism (as opposed to me-as-self-image).

Sitting on the cushion, hour after hour, my mind wandered plenty, sometimes it would be gone off on a thought, plan, memory, analysis, etc. for fifteen minutes before I remembered that I was supposed to be trying to meditate. I had, however, little sense of "I've failed" and I had little analysis or searching back as to why I had wandered off, I just returned to my technique without hoopla. This made me happy, because, many times in the past, I have been rigidly self-critical and self-punitive while trying to maintain a meditative witness-consciousness. The first day of learning each technique (i.e. days one and four) were difficult and painful, I was often trying to force the technique to work, but, especially towards the end, I was more and more able to be in a receptive state of consciousness, just letting the mind-body process happen, as it wished, just watching it without needing it to be any certain way, just being the big fish, watching the waves bob up and down, not being a frantic swimmer swept up and down and almost drowned with each passing wave. I just calmly and serenely swept my awareness up and down through my body, the same way each time: I had removed the drunken-monkey ego-mind, with its compulsive drivenness and its demand that it get its way, i.e. that I do whatever jumps in my mind to do and that I think about whatever it jumps in my mind to think about.

I rarely slept well and I had superintense dreams many of the nights, especially towards the end (a time when many "impurities" of consciousness were boiling off of me each day as I sat on the cushion). These dreams were not nightmares, they were not terrifying, but they were unpleasant, disquieting, wrong somehow. Many of them were starkly sexual. In one of them, on one of the nights almost at the end, all five of my family of origin (my Parental Unitoids and my sisters Elisabeth and Amanda) had a therapy session scheduled in a posh San Diego country club, beautiful architecture, huge stained glass windows three stories tall, dark grey wrought-iron posts supporting the ceiling. Most of the people in the club were beautiful women in their early twenties, lounging around in lingerie and bikinis. It took me a while to realize that they were prostitutes, provided by the club, free of charge. I was inhibited from approaching one of them out of some fear or another, but Amanda ate one out in a back room, with Lis coaching her on technique (as the other three of us waited, late for our appointment). I complimented Amanda for pushing her boundaries, for trying something new, but she offhandedly corrected me that it was nothing that she hadn't done before, and I suddenly realized that what she was saying was accurate (in real life, this is anything but accurate). My mom was, contrary to how she would be in real life, only mildly chiding about our lateness, and she was, again unrealistically, amused by and mildly turned on by, not disgusted by and critical of, the call girls being there. I wondered why there weren't men's men, frat boys and their older equivalent, taking advantage of the women, and, just as I wondered, a few appeared and did, in a low consciousness, mildly abusive way. Then, the five of us were up on a balcony, looking down on the main room, in antique red-velvet chairs, sitting around a beautiful antique oval table. Our therapist, who I somehow knew (in the way that one somehow knows things in dreams) was not very competent, and I knew that it could get bloody, we would have to fend for ourselves cuz he wouldn't do much to keep things sane. He was Persian or Arab, but was a psychoanalyst, and spoke with the thick German accent of Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls. He asked what the problem was, why mi madre Jane had scheduled the appointment, and gestured for Lis to start. She started to sob and then burst out crying as she spoke, explaining that, "Coming home has been basically nice, but all the fighting has been miserable, especially" (looking at my mom) "when you hit me, that is so humiliating." She was bawling at this point, and my mom interrupted her, and, rolling her eyes away from Lizard and up towards the ceiling, said "Oh, Lis, you're so full of shit with this whiney crap. I didn't hit you" (I knew that she had) "and besides, you make yourself out to be a victim with everything". I was feeling superprotective of my sister and mad, so I jumped up and, crying, yelled, "Mommy, you're so full of shit, mommy, you're the full of shit one, mommy, I love you, mommy, but the fact is that you are incredibly full of shit about these things." She looked at me, coldly, and bellowed, "YOU`RE the full of SHIT one," but I would have none of it, crying, I kept repeating myself, "You're so full of shit mommy about whether or not you hit us, mommy, you're pride always gets in the way of you seeing the truth..." I woke up right at the end of that scene, feeling weird and uncomfortable and itchy all over. No wonder: one need not be Dr. Freud to see some intense meaning, symbolism, and psychic movement in this dream!

The first thirty-six hours after the vow of silence was lifted, I was super-high, euphorically happy. I was in my body, keeping the meditative awareness going, as I finally talked to many of the other people from the course, male and female. I was funny and personable and charming, they were funny and personable and charming, everyone was funny and personable and charming. I finally talked to the other people in my bunk, Alvin the brooder, Alex who wanted to leave, and the other two. The other people on the course that I talked to were interesting to a person - a stripper, dead heads, yoga teachers, a former hipster from Berlin, a karate super-black belt, cult members, and, mostly, nice groovy personal-growthy people. I felt in a let-go mood, not interested in making friends, a little burnt out and overwhelmed, missing my friends back here, so, despite having gone through the war with these people I didn't exchange numbers with many people - those that I did were one 36-year old supercosmic sculptor from SF who struck me very positively, a woman that I had seen at a relationships course in Oakland and who I thought was groovy, and my bunk-mates Alvin and Alex. I talked with one of my three Vipassna crushes (women I had repeatedly checked out during the sitting sessions), a woman whose name turned out to be Alison, but not the other two.

The course was free of charge, but they do ask for donations from old students, i.e. someone who has completed at least one course, to help fund future students course. On the last day, I became an old student, and I gave my donation. I figured that what I was basically doing was paying for my stay, and I had heard that it costs them about $175 per student per ten-day course, so I gave them $200. I asked one of the managers, and she said that a couple people gave $1000, a few $500, and some gave $20, some $50.

There was one homeless man on the course, I wonder how much he gave. This guy seemed like a weird-o to me, emotionally troubled and not following the instructions, I steered clear of him and avoided all eye contact both before and after the vow of silence was lifted, and then, on the car ride back, I found out that he was a homeless man that another meditator had brought because he (Mr. Homeless) is trying to get his shit together and turn his life around. I felt terrible and wished that I had talked with him. Finding that out about him changed my perception of him instantly.

On the car ride back to Santa Cruz (to drop off two friends) and then over the hill to Menlo Park, I kept my attention moving through my body, I kept on with the meditative technique that I had been doing for the week and a half, I kept on feeling relaxed and mellow. I gave a ride there and back to a man named Brendon, a friend of my friend Jules (who I also drove); driving to the meditation, right after two tough weeks (including four somewhat unhappy days in San Diego for Christmas), I couldn't stand Brendon, he seemed full of himself, immature, and impolite to me, and I felt clear I didn't want to drive him back, but, then, upon leaving, I found him funny and warm and I felt full of love for him, my brother in meditation and in humanity. This was a result of the purifying, centering effect of the meditation technique, I believe.

The Burmese teacher that we watched on video tapes and who is the grand poobah for this meditation center and for twenty or thirty others around the world is named S.N. Goenka. He is a charismatic, formerly successful businessman who turned from a superficial Hinduism to making his life revolve around Buddhism when meditation cured him of the debilitating headaches that he suffered at the height of his wealth. On the positive, his lectures were genuinely funny and inspiring and guiding and informative. He seemed to have an advanced and accurate view of the work and the joy involved in the meditative path, which he communicated wonderfully. Also, the way that he set up his centers showed a great deal of wisdom as to what is needed by meditators - I felt a trust that he and the people running the place knew what they were doing, I felt taken care of. On the down side, I felt like he is mildly fundamentalist. He claimed to have nothing against other religions, but he seemed to constantly diss them in little (although funny and, usually, accurate) ways. He also seemed to have a weird messianic thing about his specific lineage of Burmese Buddhism being the only true branch of Buddhism. One more problem that I had was that, in addition to his inspirational talks and his easily comprehendible stories and analogies, he threw out lots and lots of ancient Buddhist mental theory and terminology, the twelve co-arising thises and the five impure thats, much of which I was already familiar with, but that I thought would be a turn-off for a beginning student and much of which seemed inappropriately introduced as absolute Truth.

His lectures and the set-up of the camp involved much focus on morality. His philosophy, as he stated it, is that meditative practice can only really bloom and is only really a help to the individual and the society if it is in the context of morality. At first I balked a little, I live in the post-modern, relativistic, post-Nietzsche age, where we all know that morality is arbitrary and repressive. I grew to find the emphasis inspirational, however. I realized that the Buddhist precepts of morality, far from being repressive, actually serve to make me feel better about myself, more able to look people in the eye, and are ways of being that I feel good knowing that other people in relationship and community with me are attempting to follow. Also, the continuous emphasis on giving of one's time, energy, and money ("dana"), rather than being irritating and guilt-inducing, as it usually is for me in a Christian context, left me feeling inspired and uplifted. Perhaps it is because I genuinely feel an alliance with Buddhism, and genuinely feel like it gives to me, which makes me feel like I genuinely want to give from out of that emotional abundance.

I was fascinated with the white people who seemed to be making this meditative path/organization/community the primary focus of their life, i.e. the assistant teachers, the long-time students, and some of the senior volunteer staff. They seemed to view all the rest of life from the primary viewpoint of this Buddhist sect's teachings, many of them had taken several month-long retreats and courses and teacher-training courses, they all called Senor Goenka "Goenka-Ji" (Indian for something like "Sir Goenka" or "respected Goenka"), they all meditated daily, they all seemed pretty sure of where they were going (enlightenment) and to what their primary commitment was (the organization). It was *not* creepy or cult-like, it was actually kind of inspiring, like a heartfelt generosity and commitment evolving out of a heartfelt gratitude to the meditative technique and the Goenka Vipassna organization (and Goenka, personally). I envied their certainty, but I doubted that I ever could or would want to match it. I've seen too many divergent paths that all seem to get me free and functional to fall so totally in love with one. I do hope to continue my involvement with Vipassna meditation, perhaps with this organization, perhaps with others (The Spirit Rock Center in Marin, the International Buddhist Meditation Center in L.A., maybe some of the Zen centers around the Bay Area), but I doubt that I'll ever be as uni-focussed as these folks were. Actually, who knows who I'll be when I'm forty? Maybe I'll be super-devoted to one spiritual or psychological path.

Seeing these people also makes me think how in this fractured, post-modern era, with a loss of any over-arching, compulsive philosophy or religion, everyone seems to find their own little community of belief, and often picture themselves as some of the few elect who have found meaning, who have found a refuge from the storm. People find their twelve-step group, their farmer's collective, their Junior League, their renaissance revival group, their academic sub-specialty (with its conferences and journals), their union, their Scientology center, their musical subculture, their tattoo-biker crowd, their Unte-Reader-idea-discussion-salon, their Elk's club, their therapy group, their E.S.T. course, their fundamentalist Christian church, the crowd at their favorite bar, their deadheads, their sports team, their extended biological family, their second amendment gun-rights grassroots political action cell, their Star Trek fan club, their meditation organization, their left-wing political organization ... you get the idea. It constantly amazes me how the people around me all seem to find their little religious-philosophical community that gives their life meaning, their little "us, in contrast with the world" group (although I believe that most groups that I mentioned don't have a confrontational attitude literally), and how little people seem to realize that other people find their little oasis of social support and philosophical meaning to life in a very different manner (or even that other people do so successfully at all).

Well, enough out-there intellectual analysis. One other thing that was interesting was a dude from Madras Province in India named Nirmal, to whom I gave a ride to the center (he got my name and number and the fact that I was willing to give a ride from the Center staff). I liked Nirmal a lot, I found him interesting, intelligent, and polite. He said that he was surprised when he came to America, to further his career as a programmer, at how impolite, money-and-career-minded, and hurried-not-leisurely-or-relaxed Americans seemed to be, in contrast with Indians. I can believe it. We talked on the way there, and he got a ride from someone else back, I would have been bummed to have lost his company had I not been too relaxed and centered to get bummed out about much. ? ?It tripped me out that he was Indian but devoutly Christian and that I am an American, interested and engaged with Hinduism and Buddhism. I wasn't sure if he would balk at the meditation and the attendant teachings, his being quite Christian and all, and, without reacting or losing composure, I watched my mind run that concerned thought through itself during the days I was sitting on the cushion. Nirmal ended up loving the meditation, however; he said that he saw it as a great discovery as to how to actualize the teachings and example of Jesus Christ (I am sure that he came from a tradition with a less restrictive, sickness-demanding, shit-for-brains interpretation of the Bible than that of many American churches). He told me that he respected my background in Buddhism, which had me feeling honored, and asked me how he could continue his exploration of Buddhist meditation. I told him that I would help him to locate books, classes, and groups, if he really wanted, but I told him that I felt that his life would be better if he learned some about western psychology, to learn how to communicate, have fun, and generally rock out, seeing as how he was already peaceful, introspective, and polite. He laughed and agreed with me and told me he appreciated my insight into him, which, again, had me feeling pretty honored.

I expected to feel euphoric, connected, empowered, and happy when I returned to Menlo Park, as I often do after personal-growth workshops, sweat lodges, or other such experiences. I didn't. Immediately upon returning home, I felt calm and centered, but also aware at how my centered consciousness was being pulled away by all sorts of distracting bullshit, which scared me; I didn't want to have worked so diligently only slip painfully back into all of my lazy and destructive habits of distracted and uncentered mind. The world seemed too busy, aggressively-marketed billboards by the side of the road seemed obscene, people seemed disingenuous and superficial, rock music seemed too frenetic and noisy, and my room seemed filled with too much crap, too many bright and busy posters, CDs, books, clothes, papers, appliances. Being back at my house on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the 8th, after being around people for so long, I felt lonely, which was exacerbated by the fact that my server was down the two weeks I was gone (which I only found out later), so I had zero e-mail messages awaiting my return. My heart was warmed by the many phone messages full of love waiting for me, however, which maybe I created for myself by the warm e-mail messages and Christmas cards that I sent out right before leaving for the retreat.

My worry evaporated immediately when I got back to work. I found myself extraordinarily centered, and I saw a new way of being at work that I can't remember having ever seen possible before; I knew that I wouldn't be that peaceful the rest of my life, it probably wouldn't be a permanent and total change, but seeing the possibility was inspiring and confronting of my self-pitying bullshit. Again, I was the big fish, far below the ocean's surface, calmly and dispassionately watching the waves violently crash up and down, rather than the drowning swimmer, desperately holding on as the next wave crashed in on me. As always, some people at work and in the rest of my life would be extraordinarily nice and some people would be dismissive or passive-aggressive, and it was all mildly interesting, very minorly impactful on my inner peace. I felt my centeredness and peace disappear, little by little, with each spacing out on some mental exercise or with each unpleasant conversation, and to deepen with each work-task completed and with each pleasant conversation, but, for much of that first week, especially the first two days, I felt a warm and powerful peace that was far beyond the vagrancies of the moment.

I am glad to be back in my life, emotional and psychological issues, cooking my own food and going to work, lifting weights running and yoga, music and reading, friends and dating, even though some of my bad habits have returned, I am nowhere near as centered, clear, relaxed, filled with spiritual love, naturally morality-minded, and resistant to the little addictions and other compulsive behaviors that make me unhappy as I was immediately after the course ended. I feel significantly more of that than I did when I left, however, and the last two weeks have been filled with even more victories, clarity, and good feelings that my life is normally filled with. It is clear to me that the benefits of meditation, which are many and are, with effort, powerful, are not garnered just from one ten-day retreat; like anything else in life, i.e. having friends, breathing, physical exercise, etc., it involves constant practice as long as I am alive. I have made it a point to do some formal sitting since getting back (i.e. four hours last weekend) and have been focusing on my breath as I drive or fall asleep, on the soles of my feet as I walk, etc. I feel like doing the retreat renewed my faith in meditation and also in my life, both of which, I can see on this side of the experience, were dimmed (and are probably dimmer now then what is possible and optimal and what will be for me in the future).

A Buddhist meditation teacher who I have some audiotapes by, a nerdy dude who teaches in Los Angeles named Shinzen Young, says the following about meditation (and I think that his little model here also applies to the process of psychotherapy and other similar pursuits): what most people do when confronted by the slings and arrows of life is to tighten up and turn away. This works for a while, people can tighten their muscles, make their breathing shallow, deny that they care about the issue, say that it is all the other person's fault, and otherwise pull the defensive shit that we are all so familiar with, and it works, to a point. But, after a too much of this, someone is all tight and rigidly defended, miserably half-alive, covered with an armored shell that is itself covered with the shit.

What meditation does is to teach someone to do the opposite of tightening up and turning away; instead, one opens up and turns towards the shit (disappointments, other people's hostility, other difficulties) as it flies in. Eventually, one becomes so open that the shit hits and slides right off, their is no pain or suffering, i.e. an enlightened person cannot really be said to be "patient" because nothing irritates them, they never have any irritated feelings that they have to be patient with, they are so open and fluid that nothing in life tightens them up. For most of us, though, we spend most of our time in an awkward intermediate stage, where we are opening up to and turning towards the shit as it flies in, no longer tightening up and turning away, but it hits us dead on as we struggle to open up all the way and it *hurts*. I have felt myself going between all three states since returning, tight and armored, opening but feeling the sting of life, and so open that it all slides right by.

I guess that one of the primary signs of what the course did for me has been how generous I have felt since returning. I have managed to resist many of my spontaneously-arising kind-hearted impulses, but I have, for example, felt naturally compelled to buy an excellent book on meditation that I received as a gift years ago (JOURNEY OF AWAKENING by Ram Dass) for my bunk mates Alvin and Alex and for my friend Eric Hoverston, who is considering taking the ten-day course. I have also felt inspired to provide information about the course to various friends and family members, telling them honestly what I think that they would get out of it, and to write this testimonial of my experience, which is by far the longest motherfucking thing that I have ever written to be sent out over the Internet. If you have read this far, then I sincerely thank you for your interest and in your taking the time to read my writing. I hope that it clarified something for you or provided you with some vicarious life-experience.