Dry goods sharing

On July 20 1917-July 28, I attended meditation at the Prajna Center in Dujiangyan, Chengdu, and lived an isolated and extremely self-disciplined life for 10 days. On this 10 day, I meditate 10+ hours every day, get up at 4 am and go to bed at 9 pm. I was forbidden to eat vegetarian food and handed in all electronic products and pens.

Many friends are curious about what kind of experience Vipassana meditation is and how to sign up for it.

These questions will be answered below, and I also want to record this special experience in words, so that I can remind myself to be happy every time I see it in the future ~

First, put a question list of 10. You can choose what you care about to read.

Vipassana is an ancient meditation method in India, which is interpreted as "epiphany" in ancient Indian literature. It advocates training the consciousness of the present by observing the breathing and the feelings of various parts of the body, so as to obtain real inner peace, harmony and happiness.

Humans have benefited from Vipassana for more than 2500 years. The first person to discover Vipassana was Sakyamuni. Although Vipassana originated from Buddhism, it is not the same as Buddhism, and it is a practice method without religious distinction.

Yuval harari, the author of A Brief History of Mankind, has been insisting on Vipassana meditation for nearly 20 years. He began his first meditation in his life at the age of 24, and frankly wrote a brief history of mankind and the future, because Vipassana brought him a high degree of concentration and clear vision.

In the last space of A Brief History of Today, get to know yourself again: the mystery of human mind. He talked about the gains brought by Vipassana, and the following two paragraphs are extracted as follows:

In addition to yuval Harari, the famous soul writer Zhang Defen (who wrote Meet the Unknown Self) and the angel investor Li Xiaolai (who wrote The Road to Wealth and Freedom) also benefited from Vipassana.

2065438+April 2008, I saw the word "Vipassana" in Weibo in Sophia Kao, a radical school. When I first learned about Vipassana, I had the idea of going there, but I didn't know there was a Vipassana center in China.

It was not until 20 19 and 1 that Sister Xia Hong, a treasure girl, sent her to attend Vipassana in a circle of friends, which opened the door for me to enter Vipassana, so I especially thanked her and explained how valuable sharing was.

So I paid attention to Guan Wei and official website (there are some witness stories in Weibo, so I can go and see them if I am interested), but I didn't go until July this year because I didn't have time.

When I decided to go in mid-June, the registration channel for the July issue of 17 was not yet open, and I was worried that it would be cancelled because there was no teacher to take over. The next day, I immediately called the Vipassana Center to ask, and the staff said that they didn't know the specific opening time, so the website release shall prevail. Who knows, I can sign up that afternoon, and I am very happy for my wish.

However, I have always believed that it takes fate to connect with something: maybe some people have heard about Vipassana for a long time, but they will never go; Someone planted a beautiful seed as I saw it on the Weibo; Others experience it because they see the changes of their friends who participate in Vipassana. Some people know Vipassana in a book, and after searching online, they find it themselves.

If this article makes you attached to Vipassana, it may be a kind of fate.

1. Shield interference and center depth.

Frankly speaking, the first thing that attracts me about Vipassana is the ban on the use of electronic equipment. After all, in contemporary society, it is difficult to use mobile phones less, not to mention not using any electronic equipment for 10 days.

I have seen a video of He Laoshi, mainly about how he only uses his mobile phone for half an hour every day and insists on the changes after one week (you can watch it in Dream Town on WeChat official account if you are interested):

In short, there are rules to follow in developing the habit of using mobile phones less, but it is almost impossible to cut off the use of all electronic devices and leave time and energy entirely to yourself.

We receive a large amount of information actively or passively every day, and many times it will be irresistibly absorbed by the online world, so that it is still difficult to calm down in the dead of night. Vipassana only made a rigid requirement of "no contact with the outside world", and took this opportunity to give a legitimate reason to stay away from electronic equipment. Although you can't contact the outside world, if there is an emergency at home, you can contact everyone through the central telephone.

In addition to "no contact with the outside world", there is another requirement of Vipassana that may make talkative people particularly collapse, and that is "no words".

When many friends learned that I was going to take part in this exercise that I couldn't use my mobile phone, talk, listen to songs or read books, my reactions were mostly:

Can't talk? ! Isn't that to suffocate people? !

I can't stand it. .

Will you be speechless when you come back?

? How boring every day is! I am willing to help you wash clothes to kill time!

As an introverted personality, my main source of energy is my inner world, so I never worry about not being able to speak. It is in this extremely quiet environment and blank time that the clear self and true heart that are neglected because of busyness and impetuousness will emerge little by little.

After attending, I learned that the reason for not being in contact with the outside world and banning language is not only to create a quiet environment, but to avoid habitual reactions as much as possible. When encountering pleasant things, the body will feel happy, and when encountering unpleasant things, the body will feel unhappy. Vipassana requires equality, that is, not greedy for happy feelings and not hating unpleasant feelings.

Contact with the outside world and language conversation are easily affected. For example, students exchange their experiences of meditation on this day, because everyone's situation is different and their experiences are different. No one is more advanced than anyone else, but everyone can easily make a comparison. Once compared, you may fall into the game of pursuing feelings.

2. Work regularly, go to bed early and get up early

10 day course schedule is very strict. I get up at 4 o'clock every day and go to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening, which is very difficult for me to do at home. It is difficult for one person to persist, but it is different for a group of people.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, the bell of Vipassana Center will ring on time, and someone will ring the bell and walk to the door of each dormitory. Although I don't go to bed until after 9 o'clock every night, I am sleepy most of the time after meditation in the morning, and I really wake up after lunch break.

Regular work and rest plus a healthy diet, during which my skin is really getting better and better, and my whole mental state is also great.

3.？ Self-awareness, exploring the causes of happiness and pain.

I am a person who has no religious belief for the time being, but I am very interested in physical and mental things, and I want to know everything that can make people better and happier. I agree that "the external world is only a reflection of the inner world", and I also agree that "life is full of hardships" and "the journey of mental maturity is arduous."

On the long road of life, we keep chasing and taking. However, no matter how brilliant or dull we live, everyone can't escape the ultimate proposition of how to face death. Maybe people with religious beliefs can get rid of it more easily, but others can't answer this question, so they can only deal with it themselves.

Vipassana provides a possibility of self-examination. Why people are happy, why people are suffering, and why we can't get real peace, harmony and happiness inside. We may find the answer from our own bodies.

After coming back, I saw in Li Xiaolai's The Road to Wealth and Freedom that he listed several inherent benefits supported by literature:

But what needs to be explained here is that in fact, improving concentration is not the fundamental purpose of Vipassana, but the fundamental purpose of Vipassana is to purify the soul, and the improvement of concentration is a subsidiary role brought by meditation.

The detailed schedule of 10 observation is shown in the figure below. The most time-consuming thing every day is meditation, which takes 10+ hours a day. Three days before meditation, I practiced observing breathing, that is, observing the state of airflow coming in and out from my nostrils. From the fourth day, I began to learn Vipassana, that is, the feeling of observing all parts of my body from head to toe.

Before I went, I heard from my friends that sitting for a long time a few days ago would hurt all parts of my body, but after I went, I realized that there was still a bigger challenge ahead, because there were three hours of firm meditation every day for the next five or six days (divided into three times, each time 1 hour). The so-called firm meditation is to try not to open your eyes, let go of your hands and change your sitting posture 1 hour.

There is a 5-minute break between meditations. Everyone will use these few minutes to go out of the meditation hall to do sports and see the scenery. Bathing, washing clothes and other matters can be arranged for a long rest. The course is set to 10 days, because it takes at least 10 days to get started. 10 is the real beginning, and the real test is in life.

The courses I attended were all female students, and the number was about 50. Some courses are all boys, and some courses are for both boys and girls, but the dormitory, living area and meditation area of boys and girls will be isolated.

Before I left, I thought there weren't many people my age, but I found that there were many people my age or younger (the smallest one in this issue forgot whether it was 18 or younger). There are energetic college students, elderly people with gray temples, mothers who bring their daughters to attend, and daughters who send their elderly mothers to attend.

We are engaged in various occupations: math teacher, physics teacher, psychology teacher, psychological counselor, entrepreneur, Internet worker, Zen photographer, lawyer and college student. ...

People come to attend for different reasons: some are because they stop clinging to many things after seeing their friends come to attend, and financial resources are rolling in; Some people want to take this opportunity to cultivate their mind and adjust their personal status; Some want to cultivate strong concentration.

As for who is suitable to participate in Vipassana, I think this is inconclusive, mainly depending on whether you are interested or not. Some people think it is better to come back when you are old and have experience, but the internal magazine has opened a children's class. My little friend who lives in my lower bunk said that she especially hoped that her son would come. She felt that the sooner she contacted, the better. Some people think that successful people need to come, but facing death, pursuing happiness and achieving harmony are problems that all people have to face, and have nothing to do with fame and fortune.

This may be a problem that most people will worry about. When my friends learned that I was going to attend Vipassana, their first reaction was:

This is not a pyramid scheme, is it? Will not be brainwashed? Is it dangerous?

If my strangers have been there and come back safely and live a normal life, I may also be skeptical. Before I decided to go, I looked up many experiences, stories and gains shared by others online, and I was relieved to see the management details described by others.

The Vipassana Center was founded by Mr. S.N. Goenka (who is also the teacher of yuval Harari, the author of A Brief History of Mankind). It is a special place for learning Vipassana. There are 200+ Vipassana centers in the world, among which there are 6 in Chinese mainland, including nanzenji Vipassana Center (Fujian Province), Dandong Shuang Ling Vipassana Center (Liaoning Province), Dujiangyan Prajna Vipassana Center (Sichuan Province), Qingdao Vipassana Center (Shandong Province), Beijing Yongqing Vipassana Center, Shijiazhuang Jingxing Lingyan Temple Vipassana Center (Hebei Province), as well as foreign countries such as India and the United States.

I don't know much about other centers, but Dujiangyan Prajnaparamita Vipassana Center is not a temple, but an independent place. There are no monks here, only students and staff from Vipassana.

The first international Vipassana Center was established in 1976, and the operation of each center has been very mature. According to the experience I participated in this time, all the links involved in 10 day have been standardized, and even the emails, short messages and short messages posted on the exhibition board every day have fixed templates, so even if there are different teachers, different managers and different volunteers in each period, the whole process is in good order.

Specifically, you can feel several details:

■? Keep valuables

On the first day of registration, everyone will get a cloth bag and a sticker. We put our mobile phones and valuables in our bags, and write our names on stickers and stick them on the mouth of the bags.

The staff will lock all the bags in the big safe in their room (locked in the safe is what other participants said, but I didn't see what they did with the bags) until 10 when the bags were distributed, and then I will open the sticker myself.

■? Assign a unique number

Everyone has a number, not only the number of seats in the canteen, the number of seats in the meditation hall, but also the number of shoe racks outside the meditation hall. There is a unified method for the issuance and recycling of license plates.

In addition, I saw on the Internet that someone asked the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee about the compliance of Dujiangyan Prajna Paramita Center 20 17, and the official reply was that it was indeed a formal registered business place.

However, it is worth noting that there are indeed many meditation classes outside the Vipassana Center on the market. I don't know them in detail, so I can't draw a conclusion, but I still doubt it through some details.

My little friend lives in my lower berth. She originally wanted to attend a meditation class in Xi 'an, where she collected tuition fees. This alone is very different from the meditation class in Vipassana Center. Because the meditation study in Vipassana Center is free, as to why it is free, we will talk about it in Q7. If you really want to experience Vipassana, it is safer and more reliable to go to Vipassana Center.

■ Mainland Vipassana Center

1.？ Log on to China intranet.

/

2.？ Click on the menu bar on the left.

Select any Vipassana Center and fill in the form to register.

PS: Generally, registration will be opened two months in advance. Nanzenji and other older Vipassana centers are quite popular and need our immediate attention.

■ Other Vipassana Centers

1.？ Log on to the International Vipassana Center Network

http://www.dhamma.org/zh-HANS/locations/directory

2.？ Choose any Vipassana Center.

Click on the directory to select Vipassana Center.

3.？ Submit an application for registration

On the registration page, click the registration button next to the course in a specific time period and fill in the registration form.

PS: The website says it may take two weeks to get a reply, because there are many applicants.

■ precautions

After the registration is notified by email, the inland Vipassana Center needs two rounds of confirmation: the first round of online system confirmation, and the second round of SMS reply to the traffic information of the individual arrival. If you are missing any item, you will be disqualified. The time nodes of the two rounds are different, so don't forget to confirm. I heard someone didn't sign up before. I haven't experienced other Vipassana centers, but I feel it should be similar.

Meditation in Vipassana Center is free. At the end of day 10, no matter how much you donate, you can donate according to your own wishes. There is no mandatory requirement.

It is said that when India implemented free education, S. N. Goenka was advised that India is a very poor country, and many people will come here for free education, and they will not be able to afford the expenses of so many people. The teacher said, it doesn't matter, as long as they can keep studying, it won't be so easy to meditate for more than 10 hours every day, and the food here is not so delicious. Later, someone left halfway because they couldn't hold on.

When free is practiced in the west, Mr. S. N. Goenka is also advised that people here will not believe that free things must be a scam in their view. The teacher said, it doesn't matter, everyone will accept such a good thing. Later, Vipassana Center opened one after another.

At first, I saw that it was free, thinking that I only provided benefits to those who came to study with donations from their predecessors. Later, I learned that there was a reason for the release. Because once the tuition is paid, people will have demands and will constantly emphasize "me" and "mine", such as "I paid the money, how can there be such a poor food?" And "I paid, what should my room be like?" But if everything comes from donations from others, people will not take it for granted, but will be grateful.

In addition, meditation emphasizes "no self", and it is necessary to simply observe the feelings of the body, not to raise greed and hatred, and to dilute "I" and "I". Everything is not allowed to be personalized, which is also a manifestation of "no self".

■ Accommodation

The facilities of each Vipassana Center are different. It is said that the conditions of Dujiangyan Vipassana Center are not very good. Some Vipassana centers have standard rooms or single rooms, but the venues here are very concentrated. Dormitories, canteens and meditation halls are integrated, and wind and rain will not affect the sunshine.

The accommodation in Dujiangyan is two rooms in each dormitory, with two bunk beds in each room. Toilets and bathrooms are public and provide hot water 24 hours a day. Public goods include hair dryers, drinking fountains, dehydrators, dryers, clothes hangers, basins, and some laundry products left by our predecessors (you should bring them after use). Disinfected bedding and chopsticks will be distributed after reporting.

Dujiangyan is humid, and some friends will not be used to it. If it is sunny, you can take a quilt pillow to the big platform to bask in the sun.

■ diet

Breakfast and lunch are vegetarian, and dinner only serves fruit and juice. Although it is a vegetarian dish, there are quite a few kinds, including porridge, coarse grains, pasta, hot dishes, nuts, fruits, pickles and so on. It's really delicious ~ I also got into the habit of drinking a bowl of lemonade for dinner in the next few days, and my skin felt better ~

■ Traffic

The specific route will be explained in the notification email. Because of the remote location, for the sake of safety, don't wait until late on the day of registration.

In addition, at the end of the return trip, there is no empty tricycle at the door (although the Vipassana Center will provide a master's phone number, it is in short supply and it is safer to prepare yourself), so it is best to leave a tricycle master's phone number when you go (that's how I operate); If you really forget to leave it, and you really can't find the car, you can look for the mobile phone number left by others on the pillars or various pillars of the shop opposite the gate. We saw a master's phone on the post of the shop.

In the email sent by Vipassana Center, the items that need to be carried with you will be stated. There are three things not mentioned here:

■ shawl

In summer, the air conditioner is on in the meditation hall. Blowing air conditioning for a long time is not good for joints. Remember to prepare a shawl if you go in summer.

■ Toilet water

There are many mosquitoes in summer, so you should bring enough toilet water and wind oil.

■ Lunch box

If you don't like using your own chopsticks like me, this article can be ignored directly. I bought a three-box lunch box with chopsticks and spoons on the surface, which is also very convenient to clean. I'm happy to use it myself. But I don't know what magic my lunch box has, especially for small animals. Almost every morning, small animals come to visit ~

First of all, I don't support attending without telling my family or explaining to them. Losing contact 10 days is a terrible thing for families who don't know the situation. In my opinion, this approach is also a bit irresponsible. Seeing some friends traveling in the name of traveling online, or telling their families one second before handing in their mobile phones, makes the whole family very anxious.

Secondly, try to communicate with your family while ensuring everything is safe and formal.

When I first told my family, my husband understood, but my parents thought I was crazy.

No matter how I explained it on the first day, they decided it was a dangerous place. After all, we live in different times and environments, and I certainly understand their incomprehension and worry.

After I calmed down, I communicated for the second and third time, letting them know that there was no problem there. If there was an emergency, they could contact the center and ask for a number to find me. All my friends around me had been there to reflect, and so on. My mother still couldn't understand it until the night before I left.

But in the end, I went, because I felt that as an independent adult, there was nothing wrong with making decisions independently and being loyal to my heart to do meaningful and growing things on the premise of ensuring my own safety.

Later, I communicated with my friends at the same time and found that everyone would encounter the same problem more or less. The way to do this is to communicate more and share more, and let parents know what we have done in this 10 day.

Of course, the above is only my personal experience, and it needs to be considered in combination with everyone's different situation. If you really want to attend for some reason, but you can't go, it doesn't matter. Maybe it's not time yet. I believe everything is the best arrangement.

This time, the number of dry goods reached a new high, and the typesetting ranked suspicious in life. However, if we can let more people know Vipassana, just like last year, I think it's worth it!

Before I joined Vipassana, I read a lot of online materials, and the information I got was basically pieced together, so this time I integrated what I knew and experienced. I hope everyone can master more comprehensive content as much as possible just by reading an article!

If you have any other questions, you can leave a message alone! I hope everyone can get real happiness and harmony!

* The above unmarked source pictures are all taken by individuals or obtained from copyright-free websites.