30-days ago, I went for a 10-day meditation retreat.
It has 3 core concepts — Sheel (silencing body, and mind), Samadhi (mastery over mind through breath-focus), and Panya (experiential wisdom by observing sensations).
I started by giving away my phone, and took a pledge of silence — no eye-contact, talking, stealing, lying, or hiding. First 30-hours, focus was totally on breathing. By day-3, I felt a total awareness of subtle sensations on the nose and surrounding area. Next 70-hours, I took this awareness through body parts from head to feet and back up.
A bodily sense-organ (5 senses and mind) interacts with sense-objects (things, people, nature, light, sound, body’s electro-chemical processes). This creates a sensation. We experience multiple sensations every moment, gross to subtle. We live mostly reacting to the gross — creating cravings and aversions, in a pattern that follows this path within us — a sensation (collective cellular vibration, combustion, or a combination) like throb, pain, pressure, heat, beat, sweat, numbness, tickle, tingle, and more — goes to mind, where it’s sensed, perceived, felt, and thought over. The last stage, where thought gets born is mischievous. It wants more of good and less of bad sensations. But the truth of all sensations is — they are impermanent. They come, stay and in time, go away. This gap between truth vs expectations of sensations is where misery is born.
The layer between feeling and thought is where we can break the chain, and instead observe sensations as a witness. This leads to living more in-the-present-moment, rather than creating preferences or prejudices through thought. By day-10, I could feel, very briefly, a buzz of the body (Dhara-Prawaah) where I experienced a free-flow of energy, subtle vibrations all across. Even that is impermanent.
That’s all I know for now. Thanks 🙏
