I'm a fidgeter, always have been. As a kid I'd always squirm around in my seat and drum my fingers on the table. If my parents had any rhythm they would have found a drum teacher for me instead of slapping my hands and yelling in exasperation, "stop it!" If for no other reason, this was enough to make going to Sunday school and church painful. I did pretty well during my construction years but when I got a desk job as an engineer, I seemed to find many more excuses than anyone else to get out of my chair. I'd get up to go talk to someone instead of calling their extension. I'd go to the library or down to the shop at the slightest provocation. I managed.
So I knew going into the 10-day meditation that it would be a challenge to sit cross-legged on the floor for extended periods. When I was in Pakistan, I would sit with the guys on the floor for lunch and would only make it a few minutes before I had to adjust my poor, aching, western, 58-year-old legs. What little meditation I did back home (about ½ hour a week when I don't miss Sangha) I do on a bench with my legs folded back underneath it. With that I can sometimes survive a half hour or so without too much difficulty, but not much more.
So I entered the retreat with some trepidation over this matter which was not alleviated when I saw the schedule. The meditation periods would start with a 2-hour session from 4:30 – 6:30 am. After some breakfast and a short break we'd come back for a 3-hour session from 8:00 – 11:00 am. Lunch and a good long rest period would be followed by the make-or-break 4 hour session from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. Finally we'd end the day with 3 hours of sitting from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. Over the 10 day retreat, this would represent about 5 years of sitting at my current pace.
Before the retreat even started (day 0) we had an informational meeting of an hour and a half followed by another gathering in the meditation hall which included a short (1/2 hour) sit. Even this was torture for me so I went up to the teacher afterwards and told him of my predicament, thinking I might be able to score some extra pillows. "No problem" he said, I could use a chair. While my ego wanted to protest this obvious sign of weakness the others would see, my legs convinced my mouth to remain silent, saying only, "thank you."
I started the next morning (day 1) in that chair and couldn't help but notice that I was the only one (of about 50) who required such a crutch. I felt like the big Sahib. Even with the chair, I still had pains in my neck, shoulder, back and butt (apparently my butt is only rated to about 150 lbs, not the 170+ it has to bear). So during the morning break, I fashioned a cushion by putting my thermo-rest into my sleeping bag stuff-sack, pulling the draw string and filling the thermo-rest with as much air as I could manage to force into it. This created a large, firm sausage-shaped pillow that I could sit astride, with my legs folded back.
I used this pillow exclusively for the rest of day 1, all of day 2 and the beginning of day 3. But even so, I had to shift between 4 different positions, at times enduring a lot of agony before succumbing to the shift.
If I've been told once, I've been told a thousand times that I must lift with my legs. But during breakfast on day 3 I did not take heed of this ancient wisdom and lifted my spoon filled to the brim with an oatmeal-like substance without using them. The result of my reckless action was a disturbance in the force field in my lower back, right side.
As far as back spasms go, it was not a particularly serious event but it was an ever present source of difficulty during my meditations and made my sittings an even greater challenge.
By day 4 I decided I would have to resort to a natural cure that I have used in the past for everything from any type of stress to fighting off a cold. Vigorous exercise. I used to get on the treadmill during lunch when I worked as an engineer and found the resulting endorphin-induced calm afterwards consistently helpful. I also knew that the heat generated by some exercise would help melt the knot in my back.
I was lucky enough to have a private residence so I started to run in place in my room during the morning break. I'd already been busted for picking up litter on the grounds during an earlier afternoon break (one is supposed to meditate all the time, not just during the sittings) so I had to hide this forbidden activity by closing the translucent windows.
I would run in place for 30 minutes just before the 8:00 am sitting and would be rewarded by a sit that not only was relatively free of pain for at least the first half hour, but was also accompanied by a calmness and quiet mind that was otherwise quite rare.
I would hang my clothes on a hook in front of me and change into my swimming shorts when I ran. I'd set the alarm on my watch, take off my glasses and start. My feet would protest mildly at the start but soon I was running in place with little difficulty. Again I was consciously grateful for my new heart that continues to function as it was designed. I continued this forbidden activity for the remainder of the retreat, always grateful for the results.
I don't remember which day it was, but during one of my runs as I looked up and gazed without intention in a generally forward direction, I saw it.
In the folds of my underwear, hanging on the hook a couple of feet in front of me was a distinct image of a meditating Buddha. There was a long slender nose disappearing into the forehead made from a convex undulation, with 2 long almond-shaped eyes, both closed in meditation, formed by concave indulations on each side. Even the overall shape of the face seemed very Buddha-like, though I suppose that someone not in a Buddhist retreat might see in it a face that looked more like the aliens reported to have been observed in the Rockwell, New Mexico region of the U.S.
I was intrigued and then amazed as I looked at this image, realizing that if nothing else it represented a new art form (brief relief). I'm quite blind without my glasses, so much so that it is important that I not forget where I put them since, with their slender wire rim, they are quite invisible to me. My vision is so bad that I can't see the top letter on the charts and it was once described as 20/2000. That is, I see at 20 feet what a person with normal vision would see at 2000 feet (almost 6 football fields, including end zones). So I wondered how this image might change when I put my glasses back on and saw "the reality" of whatever I was looking at.
Figuring that without the freedom for my brain to fill in the vagueness with something that I might subconsciously want to perceive, I was more than a little surprised to find that with my glasses on, the face of the Buddha was still clearly present in my underwear!
This was now getting serious. After all, it's not every day that I am witness to a miracle such as this, for by now that is what I felt it was. I would have taken a picture of it since I was pretty certain that no one would believe that this image was as clear as I would claim, but that technology had been placed in a locker with everything else that might have detracted from my meditating experience. This included my cell phone, all jewelry, good luck charms, books and writing implements.
I pondered for a moment what to do. I mean if this had been an image of the Virgin Mary instead of the Buddha, it may have formed the beginning of a major shrine for the world's Catholics. For a moment I had a vision of a huge line of pilgrims making their way from far off lands to look at my underwear. I also imagined that were it the Virgin Mary, this might be leveraged into a considerable financial return for me as well as the Bodh-Gaya Vipassana center.
But this wasn't the Virgin Mary, and so my next thought was of Buddhist sand art. Monks will sit hunched over a Mandala, often chanting while tediously spilling bits of colored sand into the complex pattern, which days later results in a brilliant design of great beauty. But because everything arises and then passes away (Anicha) and we should therefore have no attachments, they take this work of art down to the river and dump it in.
And so, with no disrespect intended, I took my underwear down and put them back on.
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