this was written about a week and a half ago it just has been kinda crazy and alot of time without internet access...

A lot has been going on since the last time that I updated this. I left Dharmsala and participated in a semi-silent 10 day Buddhist meditation retreat. The first couple of days were really good. I had a pretty big interest in Tibetan Buddhism from my Buddhist philosophy independent study but since my teacher had been a Tibetan monk there was sometimes a language barrier so there were a lot of concepts that I only half understood and I definetly had some questions going into the program. The teacher at the retreat was Australian so he taught Tibetan Buddhism in a “western friendly” way and was just a really good teacher. It ended up being 4 hours of Buddhism a day so I definetly learned a lot but by the 7th day my brain was on Buddhism overload and I just spaced out the entire time. Even writing about it now is a little difficult because I am so sick of it. I learned so much, and it will be interesting to see how and if I apply some of the ideas/concepts to my life but right now I just need to be numb from it for about a week ahah. On the retreat I also learned how to meditate. It is completely different then I imagined it would be. I guess I thought the goal of meditation was to sit with your self and solve all your life problems in one go but its very different. We learned two forms of meditation – mindful meditation and analytical meditation. Mindful meditation works on your concentration and minfulness, basically learning how to live in the moment. There are different ways to do it but we focused on our breath…a lot harder then it sounds. One of the reasons why you focus on your breath is because it lets you be in the present. Most times of the day you are reliving the past or worrying about the future…very rarely are you just being…maybe never. I really really liked this meditation because even though it was impossible for me to do it made me realize some things about myself. I am one of those people that is constantly buzzing with thought and sometimes that is a good thing but I think I miss out so much on moments because I am too focused on the past or future (for example I will be eating really good food and after the first bite I will focus on seconds instead of appreciating and tasting the food that I have.) It is almost impossible for me to just be…which means technically the only way I see moments is through the past …I am not sure what I will do with this information but I would like to work on my concentration and appreciation of present moments because I think that this would make me much more of a happier person. Analytical meditation is a guided meditation where you focus on the Buddhist concepts that you have previously learned. What is interesting about Buddhism is that they teach you all of the material but then it is your job to meditate on it so that you can “experience the truth”…Buddhism stresses the importance on not just accepting concepts but analyzing them and looking for the truth of them through your own previous life experiences. This meditation was hard for me. I am not sure why I just wasn’t really into it.
Everyone had Karma Yoga jobs at the retreat which are basically just chores that everyone is assigned for good karma and to benefit the community. I got the best job by far…the ghong ringer! Most people had to wash dishes or clean the bathrooms but I got to walk around the property 4 times a day to signal that it was time to go to class or a meditation. I had a lot of fun with it and felt pretty bad ass…still do as a matter of fact haha.
So the “semi-silent” retreat ended up not being so silent for me. I broke silence around the 4th day. I was really into the silence at first and definetly got a lot of good thinking in but by the end of 4 days of 24/7 buddhism (teachings, meditation, no destractions like ipods or non Buddhism books, and no talking) I was just getting sick of it and needed a break. Suprisingly even though I was the youngest person on the retreat I was one of the last people to break silence. Of course when we were talking we couldn’t talk openly or a staff member would yell at us. So everyone would hang out right outside the property during tea breaks and talk. I met a lot of interesting people, many were travelers and just spent months and months traveling different places till they ran out of money and had to go home to work for a bit before their next trip. I think that a lot of people look down on this type of lifestyle but I found it fascinating. Everyone on the program was so kind. I am not sure if it was the people, an influence of the Buddhist teachings, or just the fact that I could appreciate it more in silence but everyone seemed overly nice. It was just so many little things like I signed up for the shower and went at the wrong time and a guy gave me his shower time, I had a really bad cough and everyday the people around me would ask me how I was feeling, my roommates would share their chocolate with me (which at first was a big deal because we couldn’t get any on tushita but then everyone ended up just going to the chai shop even though we weren’t supposed to) and just little things like that. It made me really appreciate the kindness of others but most importantly it made me think about the importance of being selfless and going out of your way to be nice to others. Previously I have always been really focused on myself. I never considered me to be a self-centered person, but now that I am looking from a different perspective I see how much I put my needs (even the simple ones) above others and I think that I really need to work on that. Of course it is important to take care of yourself I just think that many people could benefit from looking out for others more.
I learned a lot about myself and a lot about life while doing the retreat (oh gosh that sounds so cheesy haha). Buddhism focuses on the fact that all beings die and the impermanence of everything which the west kinda avoids talking about. At first it was very hard to talk about death and slightly depressing, but then I started thinking about how important it is to do that. I know people always say “live life to the fullest” but I don’t think that you can really understand that till you focus on the fact that you will die and that the time of your death is uncertain. My thoughts about the subject come in two parts. The first is that since we are getting closer to death everyday that we should not put things off that we really want to do and just to do them. Most importantly we should focus on just being happy, not fulfilling any socital expectations, I think that life is wasted otherwise. The other thought I have is that am so lucky to have the life I have. I am young and have access to so many different opportunities that many other people in the world would kill for so why not take advantage of them? Why not live every moment instead of becoming obsessed with things that don’t matter. Its kinda confusing to explain because so much of this is just random scattered thoughts…oh well.
Another thing that I took away from the retreat is how happiness comes from yourself. When we are upset we spend so much time blaming external factors but really they only play a minor part. Everything matters on the way you react to them. If you have a bad attitude then you will get yourself upset, we end up distorting the situation and making it seem a lot worse then it actually is. Think about it – happiness can really only come from inside, everyone has control over their happiness. This has been the best thing that I have learned and I have really been trying to work on my attitude and perception of situations. One example was yesterday we took a train to Agra. We bought tickets so we got seats but at the next stop people poured on the train who didn’t buy tickets and were just cramped in the aisles. Everyone was all over us when the train would turn and a lady even squished into our seat, but instead of sitting there going “this sucks its hot and everyone is pushing and squishing and there is no room to breath.” I just laughed and joked around with my group. I realized that this was what I signed up for, this was the typical train ride in India.
Okay on a completely different note, on the last day of the retreat I was completely exsausted and didn’t think that I could listen to anymore Buddhism or do anymore meditations. Of course on that particular day we were “blessed” by the surprise visit of a really important religious figure. Instead of meditation all day we were supposed to go to his teachings. I went to the first one in the morning and it was awful. It was 3 and a half hours long and we couldn’t hear or understand anything. During lunch I made the decision not to go to the afternoon teaching. My friend Christina felt the same way so we hid in her room while everyone went into the room. When everyone was inside we decided that we wanted to sneak out of the monostary and explore the town past the chai shop. Of course the room where the teaching was held was all windows so we had to go up through the woods. We found a stupa there which is a very auspicious symbol so we ran around it a few times which is supposed to give you good karma. We figured that after skipping the teaching and running away from the monastery we could use some good karma to balance it out haha. Eventually we found our way out of the woods and in the town. We met up with two other people who were also on the retreat and we decided to have dinner. It was so much fun even though it seems so dumb and not a big deal.