The Battersea Park Road to Paradise by Isabel Losada

Author:Isabel Losada
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Battersea Park Road to Paradise
ISBN: 9781780281896
Publisher: Duncan Baird Publishers Limited
Published: 2011-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Day nine and I missed the 4.30–6.30 meditation completely and went back to sleep – till 5.30. I only realized this when I noticed that I was the only person out of the 40 women who was using the showers when we were supposed to be meditating. It does seem that I am the only bad person here.

Brief bit of teaching this morning was again fascinating. We are, as we know, both mind and matter. The body is, at the atomic level, just a collection of high-frequency vibrations. I’m sure that’s not explained with scientific accuracy, but you know what I mean. We are made of subatomic particles, right? We are energy. So …

Imagine a teddy-bear-shaped sponge. If the bear is new and you pour water onto its head, the water will flow freely through from its head to its toes. This is similar to what we are trying to achieve by running our mind through the body. A free flow of subtle energy is created when the mind moves through the body freely.

In case you’ve never done anything like this, let me try and show you. Put the hand that is not holding this book down on your lap, the table, or whatever. Now become aware, in a focused way, of the sensation of your fingertips touching the surface. Now see if you can pick up any sensation from the part of your fingers between the tips and the finger joints. Then between finger joints and knuckles. Then slowly move your attention through your hand, being aware of any tiny, subtle sensations, until you reach the wrist. OK?

So, to go back to the bear … if your body, like mine, is not free of complications like a sponge bear’s, then when you run energy through your body you get stuck. For example, I can focus on the crown of my head, but as I get lower down I find that my forehead won’t allow me to feel any sensations unless I stop to relax the tension in the nasal passages. Here they teach you not to try to change the situation. Not to stop and deliberately relax the muscles but just to observe (repeat with me) ‘with a calm and equanimous mind’. We are constantly reminded not to react to any negative sensation with aversion or positive sensation with clinging – ‘just observe reality as it is and eventually it will pass.’ Everything does, both the good and the bad. So he is teaching us both awareness and equanimity. These two are, he explains, ‘like the wings of a bird or the wheels of a cart’ and equally important.

The whole process is beginning, finally, to make sense. Now I think I understand a little better what Buddhism is talking about when it teaches that 1) life is suffering and 2) there is a way out of suffering. According to Mr Goenka, this is it.

As to how all this will apply in the real world, I guess we’ll find out

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