Vipassana

I want to write more about Vipasana.  This is the type of meditation that I have often called "analytic meditation."  This week I happened to watch a documentary on using this type of meditation with prisoners in a Alabama State Penitentiary.  These were hard core prisoners.  Many were murderers with life sentences.  The prison had so much violence that warden invited people in to teach this technique after reading a study that was done in India with a prison there.  The process takes ten days.  At the beginning they take a vow to follow the first 5 precepts of not killing, not stealing, not lying, not taking any intoxicants, and refraining from sexual immorality.  What I learned is that for much of this time they also take a vow of silence.  There is a way to communicate to the leaders about things but basically you are quiet for the 10 days.  They first teach a little Samatha.  This is the calm abiding meditation I have written about and also called "single point concentration."  This is necessary just to learn how to keep focused. I did not see them doing any chanting but in the documentary it showed them listening to it.  They did show them learning and practicing breathing meditation.  This is called Anapana meditation but it is simply a type of Samatha, as is chanting.  This will eliminate gross emotions.  By that I mean rage or anger or any emotion that is so intense it makes observing the feeling impossible.  After they are grounded in that they add to it the Vipassana.  The results were very positive.  Violence in the prison decreased.  More remarkable were the interviews with these hardened criminals.  After confronting their feelings they became like different people.  They had a little love in their heart.  They were more forgiving and more responsible and more willing to accept what they had done.  I have described this process as observing your troublesome emotions and gaining insight by analyzing them.  I once drew a parallel with the four question of Byron Katie.  What I saw was not verbal in any way though.  They stressed that you simply observe the sensations of your emotions.  Our emotions are really physical sensations. We add to that our negative thoughts and they spiral to greater intensity until we act.  If we concentrate on just our sensations the wisdom or special insight will automatically present itself.  After practicing this for a little while now what I have noticed is it was very painful in the beginning.  We have all met negative people and they can be very tiresome.  Well, for awhile you feel very negative.  It was and is surprising just how much pain and hurt we have locked up in there.  As you start to let it out, taking care to not act on it but instead only observing it, you realize that this really is the precursor of much of our behavior.  I notice that I am just constantly trying to divert my attention.  I think I can best describe it as like it was boredom.  If you are bored you might go read a book and then turn on the TV and then have something to eat even if you are not hungry.  You constantly moving to avoid the unpleasantness of the feeling of boredom.  Instead of boredom though it is far worse.  It hurts.  After awhile though it begins to subside.  I am not sure if it really subsides or you simply don't care about your feelings as much.  It is like you are a little tougher a little more grown up.  The feelings are constantly changing.  You are up and then you are down and then you are up about something else and then you are down about something else.  It just goes on and on and on.  Constantly changing.  Why should I care about something so impermanent anyway?  As far as compassion that has not really happened to me yet as far as I can tell.  Perhaps I notice more compassion for myself.  As I notice twinges of discomfort or pain sometime I catch myself as to not cause myself those sensations.  That is instead of doing something and feeling bad about it I stop and almost hear myself apologizing to myself for almost causing myself pain.  The main thing  I am realizing is that our behavioral system is all about emotions.  I used to think we were part rational and part emotional but I see very little rationality as far as a real driver to our behavior.