Ch. 9 - A Taste of Stillness from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

ON THE MORNING OF the tenth day I interrupted my return to the hut following my breakfast to catch my breath on a high flat rock that afforded a view of the entire valley beneath the monastery. The dawn haze had burned off, revealing the neighboring valley, whose sharply edged checkerboard fields stood out in contrast to the surrounding jungle. Perhaps I romanticized by calling this place “jungle” when, in fact, farmland was everywhere. But there is so much unclaimed land in Ceylon that nowhere in the countryside are you so far from the uncultivated forests that you’d not have second thoughts about wandering off in broad daylight, much less in the dark. No cobras here, though, the monks told me. The mongooses made sure of that. One of them was staring at me from a rock higher up the path. His elongated, rodentlike body was covered with prickly fur that made him look as though he’d been dunked in motor oil. His snoutish face was kind of cute, though, and I’d often seen the monks feeding these animals in the courtyard, as a good turn, no doubt, for the animal’s appetite for poisonous snakes. ...

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 8 - Unmeasured Time from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF Ceylon has only eight million inhabitants, and as I stood idly waiting for a bus or walked through the streets of Colombo, the capital city, I no longer felt the constant psychic assault that I had been aware of in India. The most obvious difference, however, was that Ceylon was a Buddhist country. Even the most casual conversation easily turned to a common appreciation of the Dharma. There are probably no more Ceylonese who actually practice the heart of Buddha’s teachings than there are real practitioners of any religion anywhere, but everyone I met at least understood the value of his teachings and was willing to support those who really did wish to pursue them. ...

by Eric Lerner

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Realizing Change: Sébastian Bernier's Story

This a Pariyatti Presents... event of the Realizing Change Series: Sébastian Bernier's Story.

Sébastian Bernier

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Ch. 7 - No Way Off This Path from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

SIX OF US ARRIVED at the International Meditation Center in Rangoon late in the afternoon of the day the retreat in memory of U Ba Khin was to begin. A charming, middle-aged Burmese gentleman who produced movies for a living met us at the gate and immediately took us on a tour of the grounds. After all the build-up and expectation that had surrounded our trip, it was difficult to appreciate the fact that we were actually there. All we could do was gawk as we followed our host around. The most prominent feature of the Center was the arrangement of the meditation cells, the small individual rooms where one was expected to sit in darkness and silence for most of the day. They surrounded a large central pagoda that contained the shrine room where U Ba Khin himself had sat in meditation. Opening onto the shrine room were eight cells, which were also accessible by doors from the outside. ...

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 6 - Why the Buddha Sat Under a Tree from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IMMEDIATELY AFTER HOVER’s departure I had begun another retreat, and on New Year’s Day Goenka’s chanting brought to an end forty continuous days of meditation behind walls for me. An hour after the meditation ended, my monastic woolen shawl and white cotton pajama suit were tucked away in my bag, and I marveled at the strange feel of denim against my skin once again.

by Eric Lerner

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An interview with Rivers Cuomo

This a Pariyatti Presents... event interview with Rivers Cuomo, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the band, Weezer. He is interviewed by Kory Goldberg, co-author of Along the Path.

Rivers Cuomo

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Ch. 5 - Right Effort from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

TOWARD THE END OF the first week of the course, Hover introduced a new schedule for vipassana meditation which he had been shown on his recent trip to Burma. It consisted of six hour-long sittings each day in which the resolve was made not to move at all: two in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at night after his discourse, plus some hours in the early morning and after tea. It didn’t take long for this regimen to produce some very deep pain. Shortly after we began it, a rock-hard knot about the size of a grapefruit surfaced in my neck. It grew in intensity during each hour-long sitting until I could no longer hold my attention on any other part of my body. When I focused right on the pain, my body would be gripped by enormous tension and the knot would suddenly disappear. This thrilled me the first time, but it soon became clear that it only meant that the knot would be back the next hour, stiffer, larger, and more difficult to deal with.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 4 - Noble Silence from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

BENARES, THE SPIRITUAL CAPITAL of Hinduism, and the site of our next retreat, had been one of the most exciting places I’d visited in India or anywhere else in my travels around the world four years earlier. It’s a city of death and rebirth. Pilgrims gather there to bathe away their sins in the holy Ganges River waters and then patiently await the end of this life in order to be cremated beside the Mother of Waters. Saddhus and holy men mingle freely with the poor and the well-to-do. Everyone is a beggar at the end. The fires of cremation along the river banks produce eerie, smoky sunsets while the holy chanting of “Hare Krishna,” “Hare Krishna” goes on night and day.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 3 - A Peacock is More Than a Bird from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IN MID-NOVEMBER, after nearly three weeks of waiting, I finally took a train to a small city in Gujarat state in the far west of India. It was the nicest time of the year in that part of the country. The weather was warm and dry with an empty blue sky all day, and the area had a different feel to it than any place I had been. It was less intense, almost relaxed, and without the air of desperation that much of India had those days, as its economy teetered toward collapse.

by Eric Lerner

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Ch. 2 - Siva’s Smile from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner

IT TOOK A COUPLE of months to get used to the lack of drama that each hour of the ten-day retreat had contained. Hover had not given me much advice as to what to do next, except to keep sitting. Often I had no idea what I was doing, but I kept doing it at least one hour a day and although P, my wife, didn’t participate, she respected my effort. I hadn’t sat this evening, though, due to the rush of getting dinner before P and I went out. Now I wished I had. I wished I could be somewhere dark and quiet where I could close my eyes.

by Eric Lerner

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