Vipassana Meditation Day 13

am 1 hr

I had not enough energy to move through the body. Some awareness of breath. Some sense of including the whole organism. The old knot right of spine, centre of back appeared and disappeared within minutes, a much lighter prod than previously. A chopstick rather than a dagger. Instead of deep scanning, it was more about the mind and thoughts, and how a thought and the reaction to that thought are all in the same movement. I can’t profess to say they are the same, but they are of the same thing, the same movement. The thinking, ‘I hope this is over soon,’ contained within it the response of. ‘No, it is never really over, this is what life is like.’ Somehow within the end of the first thought, the seed of the response is embedded which geminates into the response. Where the two meet cannot be easily defined, nor is it clear that there are two. Or three or four or however many responses are in the chain. It is becoming clearer how reaction to sensation, to pain, to thought, to whatever, defines what that thing is, and either keeps it the same for next time, or, if there is a different reaction or no reaction, it has the freedom to change. This must be something like liberation. And it goes a long way to explaining the notion that the brain creates our world. It could well be built upon some very basic responses of towards/away, craving/aversion.

pm 1hr

Weekend compromise: lying down. I did this quite a few times on the retreat and sometimes dipped in and out of sleep, as I did this evening. Left arm shook. Back arched and neck propped forward. Movement very slow across body and where I’d gotten to was forgotten several times. Both feet: extreme scrunching, into the arches.