Two weeks ago I finished my first 10-day Vipassana retreat. I'm still writing it up. I'm still processing it.
At the risk of reducing a complex adventure into bullet points, the most profound insights I had were the high level of stress, misery, and hatred I have been living with all my life, and the power of equanimity to reduce this suffering.
Post Vipassana, I'm realizing how deeply in grip I still am to the deep cravings I've lived with all my life. I didn't experience much in the way of craving while I was in retreat, which is surprising given that I had to give up internet, reading, writing, and eating anything substantial after noon. Very little of this bothered me, perhaps because I was more than distracted enough by the habits of petty aversion and ruminative memories of anger.
I've given up meat. And for a good week when I came home, I didn't feel any strong need to watch Netflix, or binge eat.
Craving found it's way in through the Kavanaugh hearings. Like many North Americans, particularly women, I was glued to the television, as though somehow the confirmation, or shaming of Brett Kavanaugh, will wash away all the shame I experienced as a lost teenager in the era of private Catholic schools.
By yesterday I was watching, non-stop, the last season of Nashville and inhaling a bucket of pasta in cream sauce.
This morning I woke up with a bloated stomach and a headache, feeling as though every thing I had learned had been washed away. But I sat, and it suddenly hit me how intense the sense of peace and balance had become in my life as well. I was able to rest in equanimity, make a vow to correct, maybe by visiting the weekly sitting in my neighborhood, and giving up food this evening.
I've only got one episode of Nashville left.
