Tired Of The Sound Of Your Own Voice? I Have The Solution… (Pt3)

Mmmm, another idealistic portrayal of meditation. It's like how I think of smoking... The idea is quite appealing, but in practise it's a whole other story. PS. I quit smoking years ago

To bring you back to the present, it’s around 0500 on day 1 of my 10 day vipassana meditation course. my fellow students & I have been given some rudimentary instructions regarding the practise the night before in the hall just before the noble silence kicked in. Basically we were told to sit silently & breath through our noses. Not to control the breath & not the try to imagine any visions or images. We were also told not to verbalize anything, even something seemingly innocent like just saying these instructions to yourself. Just to focus on the sensation of the breath from the area above the upper lip to the area just inside the nostrils. We weren’t told much more than this. For me these instructions presented a challenge from the word go for multiple reasons as I will now detail (Disclaimer: Prepare for

Tired Of The Sound Of Your Own Voice? I Have The Solution… (Pt2)

Ommmm. Oh wait, I'm not allowed to say Om in Vipassana. Damn.

So there I am, asleep in my tiny bed in the dorm room, my dreams bouncing around through space, colliding with the 7 other unfortunate souls I was sharing the room with. I was probably dreaming optimistically about doing these ones (pic to the left) when all of a sudden…

*DING*

“Hmmm, that must be the bell, I think I’ll go back to sleep… ZZzzzzzz.”

*DING*

“That was a lot louder this time. I guess it’s 4am, great.”

*DING*

… & on it went, this dude walks around the whole centre colliding a rubber mallet with a large, resonant, hunk of steel also known as a bell every morning at 0400, then does another round at 0415. *DING* I decided to wait

Tired Of The Sound Of Your Own Voice? I Have The Solution… (Pt1)

What Meditation SHOULD Be Like

As I sit here drinking a mighty-fine scotch at a mighty-fine price* I think back to a time when there was no scotch. Actually, there was no anything really, except for endless hours of meditation & me alone with my (fucked up) thoughts. What follows is my account of a 10 day Vipassana meditation course at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains on the out-skirts of Sydney NSW in Australia.

If you’re still reading this, I suspect you fall into 1 of 3 schools:

School 1) “I’m interested in doing one of these courses myself.”/”This sounds intriguing.”

School 2) “Why in holy freakin hell would you do more than laugh at the sheer incredulity caused by the mere mention of this concept!?”

School 3) “I love to read about anything that Ryan has done because he is AWESOME.”

So clearly school 3 are the coolest of the bunch but don’t worry, I’ll cater to all 3 of the schools, that means you. So I’d been meaning to do this thing since forever. ie. About a year before the course I attended towards the end of ’09 but I had to keep putting it off, mainly because of my job working at