Imagine a rough couple of buildings laid out on rolling hills, where the sky is wide and the sunsets are all a postcard.
Listen to the voice of the wind in the trees, to the shrill verse of strange birds, the familiar roar of some cows nearby.
4 in the morning. The dawn is still far, the Southern Cross shines in the sky on time. The sound of a gong breaks the silence of the night, the vibration remains in the air for a long time, unreal. Little by little ghosts that move silently and decided, ignoring, appear and disappear all swallowed by the same building.
2 hours after a gong again. The light of the stars gave way to the long shadows of dawn and again silent figures moving from one building to another. Finally they start to breakfast. Porridge, cereals, baked apples, bread, butter, jam. No one speaks, the look is lost away to an imaginary horizon, it remains only the noise of rattling dishes and a kettle for hot water.
Imagine having to drive a Formula One car and should do to win while the Pamela Anderson of 20 years ago are doing you a job. You can't do it, the result is you go to continually bang on all sides. For me the first day was so, the mind that slipped by all parties, a blender of images and emotions, with no way out, while i was looking for a position where my back or the knees didn't hurt me.
Technically, the first three days we worked with Anapana, the technique where you observe the breath and you need to concentrate the mind. The rest of the time we worked with Vipassana, the technique where you observe- without reacting - the sensations in all parts of the body whose objective is to train the unconscious part of the mind to free from the attachment or the tendency of unconscious mind to react with uncontrolled anger or desire to bodily sensations.
The theory behind this technique assumes that when something happens to your conscious mind, starting from models that in mind, welcome an assessment by the incident. The body expresses this assessment through a sensation and the unconscious mind perceives and creates the feeling anger, if the feeling is unpleasant, or greed, if the feeling is pleasant. Anger and greed generate suffering and suffering generate unhappiness.
The technique, training the unconscious mind to understand that all sensations are temporary, trains it not to react or to be fair. Moreover, when the unconscious mind does not feed on anger or greed, brings old feelings to the surface from which - not reacting - you can leave. Eliminating the reaction to the feelings we are freed from suffering and therefore from the unhappiness.
According to the teacher Goenka, this technique was invented by Gotama the Buddha 2500 years ago and passed in its original form from master to disciple only in Burma, today's Myanmar, the country of origin of Goenka.
But beyond the technical details that probably can be found along with a host of other information in the website of Dhamma, these days were for me a great opportunity for reflection on me, spirituality, the concept of Truth.
As regards the technique, I am convinced of his goodness and good faith of those who teach. The fact that needs to be practiced 2 hours a day, plus a weekly community meeting, plus a full-immersion for 10 days once a year, strikes me a little bit. How many things could really help myself to practice 2 hours a day?
The fact is, it seems, everyone has their own truth. Every movement, faith, religion is convinced that their way is the best for themselves and, often, even for you. Someone tolerates or accepts that other routes may be good but in the end, its is really the best and this passes, it passes always.
My idea, whose I don't claim originality, is that as the only truly viable revolution is personal, you can only get a personal and experienced Truth.
I mean. Fine searching for the truth in what they say parents, teachers, friends, society, religion, but if this truth does not experience it in my life as a scientist would do, how can I be sure of his goodness? In particular, if I don't train to exercise my critical sense, how do I know who I am and what I want from life? Waiting for me to tell my father, the chairman of the board, the Pope? And if he tells you and you feel unhappy, who ask for explanations? And if you do everything they say you and you still feel unhappy what do you do? You resign yourself to unhappiness? Change dealer?
I have long looked for a person from which getting answers that I couldn't give me. In the end the best responses were of who did not respond at all. How can I ask another what is best for me? Can not find the answer? Beat your head, take risks, make a decision, taking responsibility, grow up.
Even I disagree with those who decry all institutions. The institutions are imperfect, sometimes harmful, but necessary. Have a duty to give stability to society, to be a reference to the human attempt to improve, its are a memory of this attempt. Who denigrates, often ends up in my opinion to assimilate the non-institutionalized thought, friends, media. For example, I met many people who believe that heterosexual and homosexual love should be considered in the same way, but they don't know why. It is obvious. For love is love. What's love?
If I meet someone and I seem he has a harmonious life, happy, I find light in her eyes, serenity, for me is a person from whom to learn something. But every person is special, it's a miracle, and as I do not expect necessarily what works for you works for me, so I expect to be able to learn something from everyone. I was thinking this during the course, watching a sunset, I realized that each one is unique, the golden light with which each of them illuminates the landscape will never be exactly the same. How much more each person!
I believe that many have read the famous book by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, which tells a version of the life of Buddha. During her life Siddhartha experiences different spiritual experiences to reach enlightenment. This to me is a good way, the experimentation.
Like everything, with good sense. There are thousands of religions in the world, 120 different types of meditation, classical, free thinkers, philosophers, guru, so on and so forth. I am convinced that nothing happens by chance, that when you start the search the life puts you ahead of what you need and being able to choose is the first fruit of training in critical thinking.
Neither do I want to be a guru. I try to share the fruits of my experimentation, unpretentious. I think in an ideal world it would be great if everyone did this, and we discussed how and what to make experiments, as in the theory of test that you study in psychology, centered issues such as happiness, well being and quality of life, without measure with the measure displacement of the car or square metres of home ownership.
I wrote a story. Luisa and Antonia do the same work and have many things in common. One of them, however, is an experimentalist. It's just a story, with all the limitations of a story, first of all that I wrote it in speed but, I hope, with the opportunity to be illustrative of how I could change the lives of an experimentalist.
In the end the greatest gift I can make is to let your freedom. Get what you need from me and experiment it, if you want. On your way there is written only your name.
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