I was hermetically sealed within St Flannan’s in Ennis recently. I went on a 10-day silent retreat. I wasn’t alone. There were 49 other men and 50 women. It turned me upside down and shook up my understanding of mindfulness.
I shouldn’t have been shocked by the backlash of fatigue that hit me on my return to the real world. On my first day back I tumbled from sublime heights of insight and understanding into a livingroom chair watching daytime television. My body felt like it had been used as a punch bag. All I could manage was to load the washing machine to take care of two weeks worth of laundry.
It has taken several days to settle back into my morning meditation ritual. The 6am alarm wakes me up, but I find it hard to get out of the bed.
This morning was better. I was encouraged that the discipline I fought so hard for since January hasn’t been lost entirely.
The retreat was a genuine break from every-day responsibilities. Everything about the schedule was designed to help us withdraw, albeit temporarily, from the world. It freed us to take our attention inside.
Negativity
Life is hard for everyone. Unwanted
things happen; wanted things don't happen. And we tend to make things even worse when we get ourselves all worked up about stuff that does or doesn't happen. We can allow our minds to become so tense, so full of negativity, that life becomes unbearable.
We often wonder if we can ever find happiness, because something is always going wrong somewhere. To calm ourselves down, we often divert our attention from what's upsetting. We drink, shop, smoke and eat too much. Or we may
count to 10, repeat some calming phrase or prayer over and over again, or head out for a walk. And these coping mechanisms sometimes work, at least in the short-term. They divert our minds and we feel relief.
But while these strategies work at a surface level of the mind, we pack away and push down our frustration and disappointment. We add it to the clutter of our unconscious. We may appear calm but underneath there is a sleeping volcano, which sooner or later will erupt.
Stop running
Meditation offers a way to live that doesn't depend on diversion, distraction or escape. It invites us to stop running away and face whatever is happening in our minds. Without trying to get rid of or get over it, it gives us a way to earth ourselves back into our bodies. With a steady mind we can notice, accept and allow ourselves to feel the pain. Once we do this, it begins to lose its potency.
In this way we learn to notice and to take care of what's happening in real life, so that we can face outside with a clear and steady mind. This is what is called "Vipassana" meditation.
Strong emotion
It can be hard to steady ourselves in the heat of a strong emotion, such as anger. But what if we could learn to live close to our hearts so that we could catch these feelings before they get out of hand? This is where meditation really comes into its own.
When we become upset or distressed, two things happen simultaneously in the body. Our breathing loses its normal rhythm. We start breathing harder when we lose our natural peace of mind.
At a more subtle level, we also experience a sensation in the body that signals change. With regular practice, we can fine-tune our attention so that we begin
to catch these changes and listen to what they are trying to tell us.
We no longer need to get caught in a loop where we add fuel to the fire and get carried away.
Free to choose
Vipassana doesn't encourage anyone to retreat from the world, quite the contrary. But it does hold to the principle that finding a calm and balanced mind is vital to survive the craziness we meet everywhere we turn. When we learn to experience our own truth and stop reacting blindly to it, we find a path out of our misery. We become free to choose exactly how we want to live our lives.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health
tbates@irishtimes.com