It's 4:30 a.m. I'm with 100 others, sitting still. I try to focus, but my mind constantly wanders. In or out of the meditation hall, there's silence and isolation. It's maddeningly difficult. I'm not sure I can make it through the rest of the 10 days. Why would any sane person want to?
For me, the answer involves some personal history.
A generation ago, I spent a year in India. When Indians asked me if I was a spiritual aspirant, my stock answer was: "I'm a spiritual buff- erant. I want to get there twice as fast."
This wasn't altogether a joke. My goal was to reproduce, through spiritual practices, the psychedelic experiences I had had. At times, I came close: When breath control and visualization techniques worked right, I could put myself into a hypnotic trance and feel my consciousness floating in air, looking down at my inert body.
Eventually, I became husband and father, with responsibilities and mortgages. In India this is called the "householder" stage. Still, during the past 20-some years, the period in which my two sons have grown to manhood, I have held on to the notion that someday I will go back to India and be a spiritual aspirant again. Clinging to this idea--while living the life of a householder--has become, over the years, increasingly burdensome, and led to deep funks.
A friend, sensing my malaise, directed me to the Web site for the California Vipassana Center. I was intrigued. It promised no mysticism, no dogma, no belief--just experience. Vipassana, it said, means to see things "as they really are." It is a technique--of meditation and silence--that "will eradicate suffering" and purify the mind. The goal is nothing less than "total liberation and full enlightenment." And the fee? That's up to each student, after finishing the course. Donations enable others to attend. If you can't afford anything, that's OK, too.
The Web site material did not hide the difficulty of the technique. But it seemed worth a try. In the grand scheme of things, it was only 11 days of my life. I signed up.
On my way to the retreat center in the Yosemite foothills, I pick up two women who had contacted me because they needed a ride, and off we go. Both are in their mid-40s and have been to the center many times. One is a stock trader in Chicago, finishing a year's sabbatical. The other is a playwright living in L.A. Both are excited about doing the course again. This bodes well. If these two assured, articulate women are happy to go back, how bad could it be?
