This photo was taken on top of a hill (3,800 meters up) outside a small Tibetan town called Ganzi. I often look at it and wonder about how simple it would be to live there and just mediate each day.

Most people say my life is already a dream. That I live in some kind of god realm and if life got much simpler (quieter) than it already is, then I might as well be dead. I suppose, in comparison to most people I don’t do a lot. I work and I travel and I read and I blog, occasionally. But I still find life to be tad hectic (grin) and so I also meditate. I’m not a fanatic and I’m not sure that I’m even that spiritual, but I like to go to a Vipassana meditation centre 2-3 times a year and I try to put my bum on a cushion most mornings for at least 20 minutes.

Do I recommend meditation? The answer is unequivocally yes. For me, there is nothing that helps me live easier, better, happier, than meditation. I like the simplicity of mindfulness (insight) meditation. I like the teachings of S.N. Goenka and also people like Jon Kabat-Zinn. I also like the teachings of Suzuki Roshi and Shinzen Young.

by Sylvia Boorstein

When you travel you meet people. That’s part of the deal, part of the excitement. On this trip, mainly because I stayed-put for three weeks in Sarnath, a place full of academics, I met, well, lots of academics. Strangely enough a number of them were Vipassana mediators who follow the teachings of SN Goenka.

One of these, a nice guy who I met over breakfast, was Forrest Fleischman a Fulbright scholar and the son of Dr Paul Fleischman. Paul Fleischman is a psychiatrist and a teacher of vipassana meditation in the tradition of SN Goenka. He is the author of many publications but the one I want to refer you to is called ‘Why I Sit’. The article is well written and provides an interesting insight into his thoughts about vipassana.

Here is a link to Dhamma Chakka the Sarnath Vipassana Centre. A nice place to do a 10-day retreat.

I leave in a few days and thought I would write a note on some of the places I’ll be visiting over the next month. My destinations are — Delhi, Varanasi, Sarnath and Bodh Gaya in India and then Kathmandu Valley (Kathmandu, Patan, Bhaktapur) in Nepal.

Known as Uruvela in the Buddha’s time, the city of Bodh Gaya (or Bodhgaya) is now a village of about 30,000 permanent residents. Bodh Gaya is situated in NE India, in the state of Bihar and is famous for being the place where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha attained enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi tree.

The state of Bihar has the reputation of being India’s most notorious and lawless state. It is one of India’s poorest areas and is racked by violent clashes between different caste and political groups. Link

For Buddhists, Bodh Gaya is probably the most important pilgrimage location in the world and in 2002 its 2,500 year old Mahabodhi Temple took on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site status. Next to the Mahabodhi Temple stands the Bodhi tree. This tree is a sapling of the Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka, itself a sapling of the original Bodhi tree.

I will be staying in Bodh Gaya for about a week and intend visiting most of the monasteries and temples in the area. I’ll also be visiting the Vipassana Meditation Centre and am hoping they’ll allow an old student to join their ten day course and to sit for a while.

A Tibetan Prayer Festival called a Monlam will also be happening while I’m there and while looking-up Monlam on the Net I found that His Holiness the Karmapa will be teaching in Bodh Gaya at the same time — which is probably why I’m having trouble finding a room.

Next to Tibetan New Year, these Monlam Prayer Festivals are probably the most important festivals on the Tibetan calender. Each silo (school) of Tibetan Buddhism gathers at different times in Bodh Gaya and I have coincided my trip with the Kagyu Monlam.

The three other main schools on Tibetan Buddhism are Nyingma, Sakya and Geluk, the Dalai Lama’s school.

From Bodh Gaya I’ll return to Varanasi for one night and then fly to Kathmandu, Nepal.

For most of my life, whenever I thought about dying, I hoped I’d die in my sleep. I didn’t want pain and I certainly didn’t want any lead-up to that final moment. The thought of waiting to die, being told I had a few months or years to live was not something that sat well with me. I couldn’t begin to imagine how hard it must be to live each day with such knowledge. For me, death was something to fear and depressing to consider.

A few years ago while attending a Vipassana meditation course it came to me that death would be the last experience I’d have — that it was something that would definitely happen and there was nothing I could do to change it.

There is nothing terribly profound in those thoughts — except for me it was the first time I had thought them. After I’d calmed down and was able to think about it without my pulse racing, I realised I could go back and try to ignore death again or I could start thinking about it more, which is what I chose to do.

Thinking about death was not just scary, it was downright terrifying for me. I don’t believe in reincarnation, nor do I believe in heaven and hell. I do believe something carries on, but I have no idea what, and anyway, I don’t think we are conscious of whatever it might be.

I see the whole life death thing like this: It’s as if we’re a glass of water plucked from the ocean and given life and form and then one day the glass is upturned and we are returned to the ocean — death and whatever. The form in the glass, I, no longer exists — it has gone back and been mixed, diluted, joined with the ocean.

Over time, I have begun to feel differently about death and the experience of dying. Today, I would prefer to be present, I would like to experience my death in the same way I experience a sunny day. To be in it and a part of it. I can still get scared when I think about it all, but most of the time the thought of death as my last great adventure has a somewhat calming effect.

When life gets you down wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to jump off a cliff or a tall building and just fly. I’ve dreamed about escaping like that since I was a kid — of taking-off and flying without a care. It has always been such an inviting and heart warningly simple image for me.

When I did my last 10-day Vipassana meditation course, I realised just how compelling simplicity is. How not having to talk to anyone, look at them or concern myself with their needs and wants created this wonderful sense of tranquility inside of me — it was almost like flying, well floating really. Days went by and I learnt to sit and be still — when I heard the bell I would either head off to the kitchen for a feed, take a nap or walk to the hall and place my bum on my cushion. Those were my only daily concerns — sitting, eating and sleeping.

Funnily enough, I used to experience the same sensation when I toured on my motorbike. On the bike I was really able to fly, slowly of course, but I was flying nevertheless. Riding a motorbike or sitting on a meditation cushion for days on end is simple — you just do it, your mind stills and after a while, nothing else seems to matter much.

Life is complicated, so full of stimuli that assault the senses on every level. It’s emotionally and physically draining and that is why I like Super Heroes. They can switch on their powers and rise above the complexity of everyday life. Just like Superman taking to the air, they can fly and run fast and do all sorts of neat stuff in what seems like a simple, uncomplicated and relaxed manner.

I bet if Superman were real he’d not only teach me how to fly, he’d also sort out my worries with Global Warming and Iraq in just a couple of hours.

Vipassana, meditation was taught in India more than 2500 years ago as a universal rememdy for universal ills, an Art of Living.

In the Blue Mountains outside Sydney there is a Vipassana Meditation Centre called Dhamma Bhumi. That’s where I’m heading today — ten days of meditation, no talk and simple food.