Two weeks of kitchen duty in the California Vipassana Center, gave me new perspectives on meditation. We were about ten "old students" who cooked and served more than 120 participants in the course. My principal duty was tending to the high pressure dish washer. A job which, right after meals, became an intense, carefully choreographed, operation for me and the small ensemble that helped feed and clear the machine. At other times, I helped peel, cut, and dice the enormous amounts of vegetables required by the center's vegetarian diet. Three times a day, we participated in the group meditation sessions.
"Noble Silence", while a requirement for the students, was not imposed on the servers. We were instructed not to discuss our practice, yet the conversations inevitably turned to that subject. As a result, I learned that I was overly concerned about the amount of time my mind wanders away from the focus on bodily sensations. I am not that different from others sitters. On the other hand, I reconfirmed that during these periods of wandering, many meditators experience deep emotional episodes. Some re-live old wounds, other explore difficult personal relationships. I, on the other hand, usually find myself reviewing my "Todo" list. An experienced sitter described to me one instance when he felt that his daughter was dead. Even though he knew that she was perfectly healthy, the sadness he felt was so real, that he cried. I could not resist but tell him that when my mind wanders, it is usually planning how to make the dish-washing operation run faster. I could see his upper lip stiffen and his nostrils flare as he struggled not to laugh. After a moment, and a few deep breaths, the teacher-in-training, came up with the proper response.
"There is nothing wrong with that," he said, "maybe you will eventually come up with a better method of washing dishes and you would have helped the Dharma. You see?"
I nodded, and let the poor guy of the hook.
This period also prompted me to the question 'Why do I sit?'. In a book I found at the center, Paul Fleischman provided a thoughtful, poetic, answer to this question.
http://www.fudomouth.net/thinktank/now_pfwhysit.htm
I liked his response, even though it is as distant from my own experience as the distance between loosing a child, and operating a dishwasher.
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