I arrived at the Vipassana center in Essex County, Ontario at 11am with 4 cigarettes left and the good intention of making it through the entire program.
10 days. 10 hours of meditation each day. 10 days of ‘noble silence’. 10 days of vegetarian breakfast and lunch - and no supper. I thought the hardest part would be the silence and my friends agreed. Not a word. No touching. Sure there were no sexual acts or thoughts for the duration, but that was livable. And the no lying/no killing bit I was already doing, so I just had to keep that up.
Pulling into the sprawling, treed grounds of the center, I was greeted in the parking lot by an Indian man with a broad smile who wore pajama bottoms and a Northface jacket (I would come to know this as ‘the uniform’). He directed me to my room in Woman’s Building B, room 7a. I was early. So I snuck into the woods, found a stump, sat down and smoked while the other inmates arrived.
There was only one gender-confused person. Only two pairs of Crocs. No crazies. Every category came in lower than I was expecting. Of the 50 women a remarkable number had their long, assisted-red curls fashioned into braids no matter their age. Of the 50 men, one had the look of recent heartbreak on his handsome face. Oh how I wanted to know the story - but we were separated right away. Women were on one side of the grounds, men on the other. Each group had a trail they could walk. The men had soaring vistas, a gorge, the woods (where I was really starting to like to smoke). The ladies got a gravel path that stretched from our cellblock to the parking lot, around to the mess hall and back to our building.
My roommate was a woman in her mid-forties. Where I had a huge bag of toiletries, she had a toothbrush and a tube of Crest. Where I had a few pillows I stole from my couch, she had a special padded chair (that I would come to hate). My cable-knit sweater, her Northface vest. My borrowed blanket, her hand-made quilt. We were separated in our room by a sheet that cut the room in half. From behind that flimsy wall I heard her open the windows in our tiny cell. “You don’t mind do you?” she asked, “I need to feel the breeze when I sleep”. I did mind. So I lied and said, “No problem”. Broken vow #1. Before we left the room I turned the heat up to tropical and figured it was a good compromise.
Noble silence started at 8pm when we were asked to make our way to the meditation hall. The walls were lined with wood paneling, two flat screen Samsung TVs and speakers that would bring us the live-to-tape words of our Swami Guru in India.
Seated behind my cellmate, I found out her name was Janice Rosenbloom. I know because her name was scrawled in white marker on the back support of her special chair. She had circled her name. It stared at me. It glared at me. Almost directly in the eye since the extra-wide Janice Rosenbloom was teetering on at least 5 punished and gilded pillows.
He spoke. With an accent that was half-Indian, half-Dracula and all slow syllables our Swami Guru said this: “Connnn-centrate on the area of the NOOOO-strils,” he preached, “the air as it goes in the left NOOO-stril, the air as it goes in the right NOOOO-stril, sometimes (wait for it…) both NOOO-strils”. I had been to yoga class. I knew about this breathing bit. So I gave it a shot. Within a minute I was thinking about sex. A minute later I was thinking about the Toronto elections… when is that? A minute later I was telling myself that Janice Rosenbloom probably makes her own earrings.
The next morning I woke up at 6:45am (well after the 4am wake-up gong). My roommate walked into to our cell and peered at me through our linen wall. “Shit!” she said, breaking her noble silence, “someone turned UP the heat!” I was killing my roommate. Broken vow #2.
Once dressed it was back to the meditation hall, where I tried not to think about how this is probably the way the Branch Davidians started: little food, little sleep, wood paneling, big screens. I thought about the Davidians. I had nothing but time to think about everything. It wasn’t long before my thoughts turned to my past relationships. Oh how I fucked that one up, I remembered in full-colour detail. And remember the time when I did THAT thing? No time to pause. You. Me. We’re stupid. It wasn’t long before I was spiraling and my nostrils were long forgotten.
Hours passed: one and a half hours in the meditation hall, two hours on my own in my cell, a bit of porridge, a walk to the parking lot. And finally, masturbation in the room long abandoned by a program drop out (day one). Broken vow #3.
For the third time on the first day, I was in the meditation hall at the foot of Marsha, the Sherpa guide for the ladies. Marsha was a middle-aged woman with a cropped hairdo and an outfit entirely from Northern Reflections. A turtleneck with ducks on it says so much about a spiritual guide - at least it does for me and she didn’t have me believing despite being perched on top of a box at the head of our class and wearing a look of blissful calm.
My ass was starting to hurt. I had side-ass pain. When I was ‘meditating’ on my own, I was up and down like a flea. Stretching. Walking. Lights on. Lights off. Heat up. Door closed. But in the hall I had the pressure of 100 people willing me to stay put. And then he began again, “Pay attention to the breath. The breath as it comes in the left NOOO-stril… the right NOOO-stril and sometimes (painfully long pause) BOTH NOOO-strils.” I was thrilled when he stopped and panicked because it meant there would be another hour of silence ahead with no distraction.
My list of personal failures was following me around and growing ever larger. It was there to remind me that if I was starting to feel calm, all I had to do was think about my cell phone bill, then my cell phone… who was calling me? Was someone calling me? Antsy isn’t the word. The side-ass pain was getting worse. I was walking the grounds with a conviction that did not match the half-mile gravel path to nowhere. I was going crazy. That was happening.
The next morning in the hall I was less unraveled. With a freshly scrubbed face and four hours of sleep, I peered beyond Janice’s huge left arm at Marsha. Her head was cocked to the left. Her sensible and sexless gold-rimmed glasses were slightly askew and her eyes were closed. She was blissed out and wasn’t startled when the growling voice of our Guru hissed through the loud speakers.
“Connnn-centrate on the NOOO-strils” he began. Immediately I burst into tears.
Unable to sit any longer, I crawled up in front of Marsha’s boxy throne and said with all the whispered certainty I could convey, “Marsha. I have GOT (pause) to get out (pause) of HERE.” She smiled. She assured me I was just handling this badly - which was a sign that I usually handled all problems badly (to be fair, she is right) and that I needed to, “get through it!” she encouraged me sweetly and thrust her tiny fist into the air about an inch. “This is only day two,” she continued, “it’s going to get worse — but it WILL get better!”
It will get worse.
It will get worse.
It will get worse.
That was the only phrase I concentrated on. I ate my green tofu curry angry; my eyebrows furrowed, my lips thin and tight. I was a petulant child. But, I assured myself; I was a petulant child that was right. I started to formulate my escape plan.
Waiting until the others were safely and silently in the meditation hall, I made my way down the gravel path to the parking lot, passed the cars of sweet, sweet freedom and promptly broke into the office where there was one, beautiful, landline phone floating golden and enormous on a silver cloud in the plywood cabin. I had almost dialed my friend before I was caught by a Believer who explained in a sugary little-girl’s pitch, “Ummmm… You are not supposed to be in here… I don’t think so… no”. “I know that Joyce” I said sharply, “I am going home. Today.”
The mechanics of how I got to a GO bus stop in the middle of a farmer’s field aren’t worth repeating. What matters is that I found myself in the middle of a farmer’s field, waiting for a GO bus. That’s what it took for me to realize this great lesson: sometimes when you’re feeling down and you’re not sure what you need to do to change your life, all you need to do is maybe go on a couple of dates and stop smoking.
I kept the GO bus ticket, to remind me that sometimes things are precisely as complicated as I make them.
