New Zealand-My Family and Vipassana Meditation

Posted January 20, 2016

I was a bit nervous to get off the plane. I mean, not because of the country but due to the fact that I haven’t met my cousin in 17 years. Have no clue what he looks like now since we were still kids back then and he’s picking me up from the airport. I get through customs wheeling my cart and look up wondering which one is my cousin. We make eye contact and I say Kev? Then him and his girlfriend Janet smile and greet me, what a relief. I was pretty excited to see him after all these years and chatted away about life. We got in around 2 or 3am. My uncle was asleep but I woke him up with a big hug. I had to get some sleep in because I felt like a crazy person. I slept in around 11am and woke up to a very yummy lamb curry. It was so nice to meet my uncle again and catch up with my cousins Kevin an Kuru. Janet was extremely lovely on this trip and spent a lot of time with me. Her and Kev took me to Catherdral Cove, oh what a magical part of New Zealand. Just beautiful water and scenery, breath taking. This is my second time to New Zealand and I always think it’s very similar to Canada. The money looks the same, same beautiful scenic views, and it’s very easy to get around. I spent almost one month in New Zealand and wanted to head to the south island to do site seeing but it’s very expensive to travel aroun in New Zealand. By bus it’s
around $800 to do a 3 week bus tour, but that is only the bus ticket. It doesn’t include the hostels, food, or tickets to any attractions. If I wanted a fully loaded package with all of that included, I was looking at $3500. I could have rented a car but it’s a little lonely driving around
by yourself and I’m not 100% confident to drive on “the other side” of the road ha ha. I decided Ill come back to New Zealand with a friend or family when I’m older and do a proper tour of the glaciers, etc. It doesn’t all have to be done on this world trip. Instead I decided to check out the Vipassana Meditation Center they have here. I applied and got accepted for a 10 day silent meditation course which started on January 6^th and would finish for on Jan 17^th. Since I was late signing up, they had no rooms available and asked if I minded sleeping in a tent. I said no. I jumped at the chance to take this course everyone talks, especially being in a non developing country. I knew that if I was going to be silent for 10 days, I better be ok with my surroundings. No weird bugs bothering me, proper working toilets, toilet paper, separate showers, ha ha. Yes, I know, I’ll just admit it, I really love luxuries like this and really appreciate it now. I write this post as I’m about to board for Bangkok, who knows what this country has to offer me in terms of these conditions, ha ha. I arrive at around 5pm to the Vipassana training centre which is 1 hour north of Auckland on a shuttle which I caught from downtown. Oh it’s beautiful, in the woods, secluded, lots of nature all around. Immediately I am separated from the other male passengers in the shuttle that came up from me. The course has a female side and a male side and there is no interaction between both sides until the course is over. We are told that silence begins at 8pm and the schedule for the days in laid out for us. We begun that night in the meditation hall and were told to just focus on our breathing. After an hour, it’s lights out and I go back to my tent for bedtime. Now, I didn’t luck out in the draw for tents, I got an incredibly tiny tent that I couldn’t even sit up in. My allergies had to kick in just then. Sneezing, runny nose. I woke up at 4am, my alarm didn’t wake me but the gong bell did. I scramble to get my things and run to the showers. My time slot for the shower is from 4:00-4:15am in the morning and it’s 4:06 and someone is in my shower stall. At this moment I don’t know what to do so I knock on the
door. No one answers, I knock again. A girl opens the door, and I completely forgot my silence vow and say to her, “Hi, this is my shower time.” She looks at me strangely. I said, “Yes, we have time slots, here’s my name on the shower door Julie.” She gives me a dirty look and gets out of the shower. I have only a few minutes left, shower real quick and run to the meditation hall for our first group meditation session at 4:30am. I quickly realize this meditating this isn’t gonna be a walk in the park. To sit still and only focus on your breath coming through your nose and out through your news sitting cross legged on the floor isn’t the easiest of tasks. Your mind is racing of thoughts of friends, family, tv shows, movies, conversations, travel plans, the girl I kicked out of the shower, anything and everything it shouldn’t be focusing on. On top of that I couldn’t breath half the time. My nostrils were blocked due to these lovely allergies, I was dying. Our meditation schedule looked like this:

4:30-6:30am Meditation in your room

6:30am Breakfast

8:00am-9:00am Group Meditation

11:00am Lunch

1:00 Meditation in your room

2:30 Group Meditation

5:00 Fruit Dinner

6:00 Group Meditation

7:00 Vipassana Video Lecture

8:30 Group Meditation

9:00 Bed Time

A total of 10.5 hours of silent meditation a day. Now, you’re not allowed to talk to anyone except the teacher or your female manager about comfort concerns. Everyone else you just pretend doesn’t’ exist and follow the schedule. Was it hard? Yes. To be in complete silence, not allowed to write anything, listen to anything, read anything. Just you, yourself, and you. You can take a walk during breaks and do laundry, which I did tons of to keep myself occupied. But that wasn’t the hardest part. It was the meditation bit. The first day, you focus only on your breathing, you can’t visualize anything while doing this, not even your nose. Just focus on your breath going in and out. Day 2, same thing except focus on your breath hitting a wall in your nose and going out. Day 3, focus on when your breath exits your nose and the sensation it creates on the parts of skin surrounding the nostrils. Day 4, focus on when the breath exits your nose and the sensation it creates on the entire upper part of your lip. Day 5, I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here cause nothing is making sense to me. The good thing is, I’m able to quiet the chatter in my head when necessary and focus on these exercises for 10.5 hour a day. Ok, well a slight lie, my allergies were so bad at the 4:30am meditation session that I decided not to go and give me fellow quiet friends a break from me blowing my nose and sneezing. I can only image how disruptive that all must be. Also, I needed a little extra sleep in the mornings, by the time I went to bed it was 9:30 and I was waking up at 6:30, giving me a total of 6 hour of sleep, I need 8 to function. Day 5 after the evening video lecture or discourse as they call it, it started to make sense what was going on. Slowly by breathing, we are focusing on different areas of the body, sharpening our minds. Now, you’ll feel an itch, a muscle spasm, maybe a hot or cold sensation, etc, all on a certain part of the body. When you feel this
sensation you’re not suppose to do anything. Don’t scratch that itch, leave it. Don’t react to any sensations you feel. Don’t think oh god, I have an itch, I hate this. You’re also not suppose to love a sensation or feeling. This is all about controlling your cravings and urges. Mirroring your real life as well. Not to become addicted to anything or become hateful towards anything either. I mean it makes sense in a way. The practice is on the belief that we have these deeply rooted “Sankaras” within us. Like having all this hate and obsessions bottled deep inside us and by meditating like this for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening you’ll be removing these Sankaras. Day 6 I really tried focusing on these feelings of sensations, but it’s not easy to pin point a certain spot in your body and I hope that you feel a certain sensation and at the same time you’re not suppose to want to feel anything. I pretty much gave up, I couldn’t see the point of doing this. Day 7,8,9, were all the same to me, I didn’t really get this type of meditation, all about rectifying misery in people’s lives. I mean, I learned that I really have to think about how I speak to my parents, my brother, and really understand their viewpoints in life. Minimize any arguments or tensions. I don’t have that much misery in me, ya maybe sometimes a little Debbie downer depression but nothing that I hate. Anyways, by the morning of day 10 we were allowed to speak and I got to hear other people’s experiences who had a lot of hate in the heart for various people and they’ve learned to manage it and enjoyed the program. So would I recommend the program? Yes, definitely. I think everyone should give it a go. You never know what you’ll get out of an experience like this. All the meals are vegetarian and I really did enjoy most of them and the lodgings were quite comfortable. It was good to get a little break from my mind too ha ha. The total cost of this meditation camp? Well it’s donation based so you can give whatever you want to them, it helps people in the future to come to the course. They have an outline of the basics of how much your stay costs there, and it was $240. I think that’s not bad for 10 days of meals, lodgings, includes electricity, depreciation of the land, etc. I’m glad I did the course but I’ll be keeping me eyes peeled for another course that I might prefer more. A girl that I met at the course said there’s this excellent course she took in Holland and more a work shop based course which helps you organize your thoughts. I think I’d be more into something like that but I’m glad I did this course.

After I came back to my uncles and realized it was time to go to Thailand to the Kombat Group training camp so I booked my ticket. The rest of the week I hung out with family, went and saw the Waicoma Caves with glow worms, and the Lord of the Rings Hobbiton Tour. Both tours were great but I suggest doing both tours in one day. I did them on separate days and the travel time to each destination which are near each other was about 3 hours per way. The caves were lovey and seeing the glow worms was pretty cool. Now the Lord of the Rings tour was awesome. Really one the highlights of my trip in this country. Being on set seeing Hobbiton was something just unreal. Great to see the Green Dragon Inn, you get a free beverage there as well while you’re there. You get to learn some very cool things about the set and the history behind it. Just a wonderful experience. After that tour, I came home, packed by bags, had dinner with my cousins and their “misses”, had a good chat with my uncle. Slept a couple of hours and then Kev came to pick me up and dropped me off to the airport. No issues at the airport and took the flight with Qantas. They had really good service on the airplane but when I landed in Bangkok I didn’t know what expect.