GUEST WRITER: How to Meditate

[RETREAT SPECIFIC]:

AN INCOMPLETE GUIDE FROM AN UNDER-QUALIFIED SOMEONE

Casey Tait is a student, writer, researcher, and traveler based in the Western United States. She has been practicing Vipassana meditation for 5 years and it is one of the most important practices of her life.

She wrote this piece after her most recent 10-day sit at Dhamma Pasava in Idaho, USA.

Understand that when people say they are meditating, what they really mean is they are trying to meditate. This is what you will do too. Learn quickly that you will have to focus, that there is a truly equal relationship between what you put in and what you get out. Build your tolerance for pain. You’ve been sitting for a long time now—there will be pain. Notice how it moves in and out, notice how its intensity builds, how it paints your bones and insides through and through. Learn to live with pain so great, you think your body might crumble, your right leg may fall clean off at the hip. Learn this with a smile. The key will be in your reaction, in your dealing with this pain, and equally with its opposite. Watch things change. Watch as they metamorphose before your eyes. Once you learn that everything is constantly changing, know that nothing can take that knowledge away from you, not really, and try to hold onto it. It will help you. Try not to fall over when you eventually go to stand up.

Follow your breath. You are here, momentarily, and for now this is enough. It may always have to be. Get used to that. Understand, and repeat often, the fact that life is not, has never been, something that comes at you, but rather is something that moves through you. Peel off layer after layer, undressing in front of yourself. Look at yourself from every angle you possibly can. Wonder if you will ever be able to see all of yourself, and even more, wonder if you can accept what you see if you do. Wonder if maybe you can’t. 

Get agitated, unbearably restless. Question why you have decided to do this yet again. Accidently fall asleep in the meditation hall. Miraculously, you can sleep sitting in lotus now—so we’re done here, right? Just try not to snore—you’ll disturb the others. Swallow incessantly. Somehow, your mouth keeps filling with spit. Press your tongue, hard, against the roof of your mouth and the back of your teeth in an effort to make it stop. Eventually recognize this is also something you cannot crave or avert from. Let it be. 

Try not to look at others. Remember that everyone has their own trip; there is no comparison to be had. There never was. Wonder if this is when you stop talking forever; wonder how much better you could listen if it was. Get up and walk sometimes--you will need a way to help move food through after all that sitting. Try not to laugh when peoples’ farts become symphonic. 

Objectify yourself. See the solidified images you’ve built of yourself, the ones you share with others. See the statues you have of other people, all the construction that has happened in your mind. Ask yourself if it is possible to live ego-less and still have ties to the working world. Dissolve your solidified components. Become an abstraction. Wonder if you always were.

 Make up jokes in your head to tell people once you’ve come out of meditation. “Not enlightened yet!” you’ll say with a giggle when they ask how your retreat was. Wonder if they know just how very serious you are, and try not to make the giggle maniacal. Feel your heartbeat throughout your entire body; try only to feel compassion for yourself when you start to truly understand the life you have flowing through you, no fear. 

Let your dreams be weird—really fucking weird. Let pools sink into the ground and wonder if you can make gardens out of them. Let your dead relatives come to life. Question when you had a pornographic movie theater installed in your mind. Somehow, it’s found staff for 24/7 showings. Impressive. Let passion arise, and let disgust. Try not to get stuck at the show.

Try to forgive those you’ve felt hurt by. Try to forgive yourself. Struggle to. You don’t know if this is truly necessary to live, but you know you must do it. Not because someone is telling you that you have to, but because something inside of you is no longer letting you hold onto animosity. 

Make an island of yourself; you need to take refuge somewhere, as the outside world falls to pieces. All you really have, all you’ve ever had, is yourself. Be scared by this. Be humbled by it, too. Learn to be in love with it and the compassion it builds. Let things be scary, let things be lovely, let things be bright, let things be loud, but try not to be scared, just let things be, let things be, let them be. Forget how your voice sounds, let it be disembodied for a bit before you find connection again. Soften and soften and soften into yourself, into your intuition. It’s right there, it always has been. See things with new eyes. Wonder if you are changing, or healing, or both. 

Wonder briefly if you have started hallucinating—decide it is better not to follow this thought; the fox was probably always here. Get to know your violently active mind, and understand that you are only as insane as everyone else is… probably. Want to cut your hair, now. You need a representation of your transformation, something physical, obvious. Remember this is why you do not bring scissors. 

Feel the urgency that life requires. Feel scared for your dead relatives. Feel hopeful for them too, and try to let these thoughts go quickly—they will not serve you here. Dissolve momentarily, but truly, and wonder and wonder and wonder if you made it up. Let it be.

Observe that you are becoming like a cracked open egg, completely exposed. Wonder if everyone can see how vulnerable you really are. Start to understand you are having an experience that many people will never have, getting to know yourself in this way. Know that it will bring you closer to people in many ways, in ways you never imagined, but it will also take you farther apart. Recognize—only after—that people see something in you that you have rarely allowed yourself to witness.

Continue to go to the depths of yourself—as far as you possibly can. Stay as long as you can, and in the midst of your own personal darkness, try not to fear; instead, as you stay a while, wonder if you may also find providence here. 

A note from the writer of this article:

“Vipassana meditation has brought me more awareness to my daily existence than almost any other practice.

It is something that I cherish and recommend to anyone looking to deepen their relationship with themselves and life itself.”