Hi hi high,
First of all I try this slide feature to share my experiences in Lumbini with you. Lumbini is the birthplace of the Buddha. It is a small town in Nepal, close to the border with India. The place feels remote and is surrounded by wetlands. A stone in the Mayadevi temple marks the exact birthplace of the Buddha. He was born, outside in the open. He came into this world when his mother was traveling from Kapilavastu, the kingdom of her husband, to her maternal home. 300 years after the Buddha’s death, king Asoka erected a pillar to show his respect and gratitude to the Buddha.
It is a very impressive place, not because of the big, beautiful buildings but because of the strong energy that is emanating from this area. When I visited the temple, I had just finished a 10day vipassana course. After such a course the mind is very sensitive and sharp. After 10 days of intense clearing my own mind, the peace at the birthsite was relieving. This inner peace, this quietness of mind, that is the aim of all the hard work.
Dhamma Janani is the name of the Vipassana center. The center is still under construction. It looks not really nice for the moment. But they start landscaping and it will be improving. The people are very friendly. I was the only foreigner and they take good care for me. The Dhamma hall has a capacity of 200 people. But the accommodationbuildings are not finished yet. That is why only small groups can attend the courses for the moment. We were with 12 males and 10 females. Good group, good food, almost no disturbance so the ideal place to do the inner work.
It is difficult to share what was going on at the inside of me. It is a very personal experience. Intense, not easy at times but clarifying. There are almost no doubts left about the core of Goenka’s (the Buddha’s) teaching. That’s y there is a lot of space to let the purifying process do its work. The aim is to liberate ourselves from the automatic habit patterns of our mind. Because they are automatic, we are not free. The liberating happens from itself. The only thing we have to do is to develop our awareness of the feelings in our body and training our equanimity. This is a difficult word that just means stopping reacting, fearlessly accepting what we are aware of.
Although the core of the teaching is very pure, I feel some resistance growing towards the format in which the Goenka centers are offering this courses. Especially towards the strict and forced discipline you have to follow. This discipline is a reminiscence of the Burmese Theravada tradition in which Goenka’s teaching originate. I start experiencing that the same depth of awareness is possible in normal life. The discipline is useful to intensify the awareness and equanimity but for me it feels not always in balance. The purifying process of the mind needs balance and relaxing the mind is part of this balance. 10 days in full discipline brings to much to the surface at once for me. It feels like forcing a natural process that needs her owntimeline. That’s why I decided that this will be my last course in this tradition.
At the other hand, it became very clear to me that keeping the five precepts as base for this purifyingprocess is very important. A good explanation by Tich Nhat Han of these five moral advices you find here in Dutch and in English. I discovered that by training concentration, the mind becomes really powerful. It is important to use this power in a good way, for triggering the impurities and purifying them. Without these precepts, the power of the mind is easily misused to gain ego purposes. This leads us in the opposite direction of purifying the mind.
In the past I tried to keep this precepts as good as possible. But while meditating it became clear that on the subtle levels, I was breaking some of the precepts.
Especially honesty (right speech) and sexual responsability. I made up my mind no longer to talk about others to others. Sometimes people tell me something and while it is not clear for me that these are private or secret things, for them they are. Telling these things to others will hurt them. That’s why it is better completely to be silent about others to others.
Sometimes I exaggerate parts of my life to others to look better then I am. This is also something I try to avoid from now on.
When attraction arises in my mind to a girl who is in a relationship, I will not follow that any longer. Not by thoughts, speech or action. This is not an easy one because attraction is so overwhelming sometimes. I made up my mind to train my awareness so that I can catch this attraction in the earliest state.
It is also important not to be to hard for yourself when you break these precepts. Guilt feelings will not help you, on the contrary. They make your ego even stronger. The only way forward is to train your awareness and making up your mind that in the future in a similar situation, you will react not in the same impure way. I learned that forgiving myself is very liberating and useful to get rid of the guilt.
This morality may seem a little bit out of time, but if you start seeing that your own thoughts, speech and actions create your own reality, then it becomes so obvious that it is important to plant the right seeds to have the right fruits. If you are dishonest, you will be treated dishonest. Simple rule, but diffcult to understand.
That’s why Hi5! Hi to the five precepts for a high moral and happy life!
Ans
Posted by Ans 
