I worried going to this one day Vipassana, so close to the last month, that I would end up with some kind of Vipassana fatigue. But in the end I had one of the most productive meditation days I can remember. For a full day I felt like I was on a true break from my self, the voice in the head, the constant craving and giving into self-referential thought.
Today, as I write this, I'm not as strong, so it's worth going over the insights that made it easier to live in a place of peace and focus.
In anapana, I surrendered to Goenka's voice telling me again and again to let go of effort, to let the dhamma do the work, and that my one job was to be aware of breath and the sensations of the breath at the nostrils. The breath began to turn like a wheel, like it did last month. For a few minutes I was so concentrated on this movement that everything evaporated and I felt myself disappear, not much but a point in a sea of white light that began to emerge.
In Vipassana, Goenka changed the instruction slightly. My one job was to observe the sensations as they were, not as I wanted them to be. That job kept up for the rest of the day was enough to shut down that default network for most of the day.
This didn't mean a day of white light. It mean a day with a lot of stress rising up. But I sat with the resistance and by the time we were ready to metta, most of it had dissipated.
Protect the dhamma and the dhamma will protect you. In the context of a day of feeling more in touch with the dhamma than I have before, this made more sense, and I hope a deeper impression on my psyche.
Goenka reminded us that Meditating twice a day is like washing the mind, and that our job is not to feel great sensations, but to build our faculties of awareness and equanimity.
Doing this will give us mastery over the moment. And in gaining mastery of the moment, we find ourselves becoming masters of life.
