Vow of Silence, Day 5

Though not as exciting as the other days, this day was just overall interesting for me. I woke up this morning and went to the grocery store to pick up some food, since I have been eating a bit more than usual lately, so I felt that it would be nice to sort of "reimburse" my parents for the food I have been eating. I can home and spent some time with my parents. They went off to nap since they had both been up since early in the morning, so I went a took a nice, relaxing shower. Once I got out of the shower, my sister came home and we went to Wal-Mart because I needed a trash can and a recycle bin. The trip to Wal-Mart was particularly interesting since Amanda (my sister) had no idea why we were there. I had to signal to her that I was looking for trash cans, so we aimlessly wandered around the store until we finally found them. She followed me around the store, which was funny because she has never been to Wal-Mart with me when I was looking for particular things. I swear, she must've gotten lost at least 5 different times trying to figure out where I was going. Haha, poor girl. Anyway, we get the cans and head out of the store. We spend some more time with our parents and then I go downstairs to meditate. Meditation was quite interesting.

I began meditation by doing my breath-counting exercise, which I am developing into more of a concentration exercise and it is INCREDIBLE how well it works! I wouldn't let my mind do ANYTHING else until I counted one-hundred breaths. By the time I got to one-hundred, I was in a state of mind where I could feel my conscious and my subconscious working at the same time, each of them going at it 50-50. It was the strangest feeling ever. Imagine doing nothing, because you're under a trance-like meditation, but you can watch and FEEL yourself IN that trance! I was able to think my own thoughts, but they were much deeper. I think I have found the state of mind to be in to have my realizations. While in this state, I decide to start trying to hack away at what is known as the "false-self" or the "I-concept". This is a very difficult thing to do and I was not able to break the false-self, though with time, I'm sure I can, and it will be essential to discovering enlightenment. I ran through every realizable concept I could until I started coming up on ones that I could not yet break through, which is mentally frustrating, because I was on such a roll with breaking through these concepts, I thought it was never going to end, but when I hit that wall, I hit it HARD. It broke my concentration, so then I had to go back to counting breaths and I just counted until the Holosync ended and took the meditation with it. Hopefully if I continue to meditate on the false-self, I will be able to smash it to bits and be that much closer to liberation. Also during meditation, I wrote down a few things right as I got back into my normal conscious. Here's what I wrote, word for word:

"Selflessness breaks the self.

Impermanence is impermanent because it is ever-changing. We can escape impermanence because it is insolid and unstable. Spiritual STABILITY IS KEY."

Now, I am not quite sure if "insolid" is a word, but I understand what it means, and I'm sure you do too. It was strange writing this, because once I left the meditation, I couldn't remember what I wrote down and didn't re-read it until just now. I guess I will keep that logbook next to my meditation table every time I meditate so I can write more things down.

So, as some of you may know, for the longest time, I have had a very strong fear of death and dying. It is a very common thing, which I knew, and death is inevitable, however it STILL would give me chronic anxiety attacks. There was only one thing that would stop these attacks, but that thing is no longer here. I was reading in my book and came up to the chapter that discusses death in particular and the views that the various schools of Buddhist thought had on death. Well, being a Zen Buddhist, I paid close attention to the Zen description on death and it actually made me feel much better about the subject. It says that when a Buddhist reaches that final point where his/her life is ending, it is merely the physical body that dies. Your true form does not die, for it is your spirit that technically HAS no life, so it can not live OR die, it just IS. When I die, I will either be reincarnated so that I may continue my spiritual journey toward liberation and breaking the cycle of samsara, or I will break the cycle in this life and move on to bigger and better things at the time of my departure. The more I think about these two endings, the more comfortable I feel about death. Also, this story helped me out quite a bit:

"A notoriously cruel and ferocious samurai is looting and pillaging a particular village with his band of henchmen when he sees the local Zen master sitting quietly in meditation. The samurai walks up behind the Zen master, applies the sharp blade to the master's neck, and arrogantly anounces, 'You know, I am someone who could cut off your head without batting and eye.' To this, the master replies calmly, 'And I am someone who could have his head cut off without batting an eye.' Stunned to the core by the master's response and realizing that he has met his superior, the samurai immediately bows before the master and becomes his disciple."

To those of you not involved in Buddhism, that story may not mean that much to you, but I particularly love that story. It is a short one, but I feel that it is a story of spiritual strength, focus, and fearlessness. I hope one day to be able to stare at death way and cause it to back down. No, I don't want an encounter with death, but I would like to be that unafraid of death.

Back to my day. (I got a little off track there.) At about 8 pm, I went over to Diana's house to chill out and play some Super Nintendo. It's really difficult to help the other person out on a level when you can't speak. Haha. I got hungry, so I "suggested" Taco Bell. She offered to drive me there and order since I can not speak, so I wrote down that I wanted 2 5-Layer Burritos and a medium tea. The lady had to think we were crazy when she asked if we wanted sauces. "Do you guys need sauces?" Diana looks at me. I nod. "What kind do you want? Hot?" Head shake. "Fire? Mild?" Hold up a number 2 and nod. "He wants mild." That is the first time I had that long of contact with someone who did not know about my vow. We proceeded to head back to her house, eat my burritos, play a little more Mario, then I left so she could go to bed. So it was a pretty good day.

I have also considered a new vow that I would like to put into effect sometime after I do a little more research. I would like to live like I was in a monastery for one week. (I say one week because I am not conditioned to live like that for longer than that period of time.) Obviously, like with my current vow, I will have to make some exceptions, but it will be the closest thing I can get to living in a monastery at this present point in my life. Another big thing coming up, the day of Gandhi's death. January 3oth. On this day, along with my vow of silence, I will be fasting. No food after noon. I plan on waking up at around 9:30 am to have a meal, then eat another meal at about 11:30 am, then drink nothing but water and possibly tea for the rest of that day. It's going to be challenging, but it will be worth it to pay respects to one of my favorite historical figures.

Well, I think I am done going on and on for the night, so I will post another one of these tomorrow night (Day 6, here I come!). Thank you for reading.

Namaste.