for the upcoming sunrises
meditation, adventure, books, heaven-hell, morning song, and memories from Myanmar.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for joining me. I hope you are having a beautiful Saturday :)
a photograph from Burma, of a father and his son watching the sunset along with us
I want to do two things this year,
Get back to meditation: a practice that during the demanding project this year got away from me.
Why am I so hell-bent on meditating?
As I even said on the Facebook page of On My Canvas:
The one habit that has been the hardest to pick up is meditation. And the one habit that brings the most change to life is meditation: the ability to close your eyes for a few minutes, or, even, a few seconds and not think. To be able to still your mind. The mind may wander, but you bring it back to rest.
I have experienced the calm and stillness the practice of meditation brings—not just in day-to-day but in one of the lengthiest meditation courses offered in the world. I had gone for a ten-day Vipassana course: a meditation practice in which you cannot speak, smile, and make contact even with other meditators around you. You put your phone, diaries, pens, books, and Kindle away. You cannot exercise or run or drink alcohol or eat non-vegetarian food.
Not that all of this is bad for you. But the idea is to leave aside everything else, to isolate yourself, and focus on your ever-wandering thoughts, see them, realise where they take you, even though your reality is so far from your thoughts. After all, you are just sitting there on a cushion on the floor, your back is straight-up, tens of others like you are around you, you can even hear their breath, the cold of the Himalayas is slowly seeping in through the cracks of the closed windows, the monkeys are shrieking outside, and the clouds are thundering, yet, again. As your arms, legs, back, thighs, shoulders, neck, everything hurts from sitting on the floor in a cross-legged position from five am until nine in the evening, you learn to ignore that pain.
You try to ignore that physical pain because you are being taught that everything passes, everything is temporary, even excruciating pain. You can’t take pain killers during those ten days.
The practice—that is known to be as a passed-on method of the Buddha—may sound heartless, but it is not. That way to live—sitting on the floor, continuing with one act or job, without much rest or entertainment—is, in fact, the normal of so many of the daily wagers, at least, here in India. In fact, Vipassana brings us back to the many basics of life, to the ways things were done by our ancestors. Sitting on the ground, eating simple meals and not eating after dark, being present in the moment without having any phone or radio to distract us, doing physical labour because you need to survive. You do all that.
The one extra condition is that you do not communicate with other humans or anyone else. That is because the course aims at providing you an isolated atmosphere in which you process your existing thoughts, slowly see them go as you learn to stop thinking— all the while protecting you from external inflictions: especially human.
And it works. Vipassana works. Even though I came out of the meditation ground after ten days and not having communicated with anyone except on the tenth day, I was refreshed. When on the last day they said, “Now you can speak and talk,” I didn’t want to. I was happy. My mother was saying something which I always react a lot on but then I was laughing. I knew I didn’t have to do what she was saying and that it was okay, that I could let it go. Even now, whenever I meditate regularly or can still my mind and focus on my breath, the upcoming hour or day feels easy and I stay in the present, aware that whatever comes passes too, like each breath.
I am inspired to share this practice of Vipassana, or any meditation, because not only me, my friends around me, family, and everyone else seems to be working on a reactive model. This happened, so I say this, and then this. The words haven’t left the mouth of my partner when my reaction is at the top of not only my nose but my tongue too. Or I walk on the beach at sunset and eat a big lunch with my friends in Goa but I feel I am not really as inside these extremely beautiful experiences as I could be or used to be.
And I want to live deeply.
Another reason why I want to say the obvious—that is meditation is essential—is because I have experienced a negative connotation of meditation around me. I think the fault is of people like me: bloggers, writers, and media people, who constantly talks about the benefits of this practice and say, “I meditate, Do you?” And that arrogance I have seen and propagated. There was a hint of a pride that glutted my throat whenever I used to say I meditate. So what? This is something I do for my betterment. Now I know better than to show off.
Meditation is so immensely popular because of its limitless benefits. But to get someone to the point where they give it a chance is a bit difficult. A friend tells me that when she tell other friends she meditates, they say, “Why? Nothing seems to be wrong with you.” She wants to tell them that one doesn’t have to have a problem to calm their minds.
One doesn’t have to have a problem to want to meditate. A person sitting cross-legged on the floor or a mat, telling herself, “I want to stop thinking,” isn’t a troubled person. She just wants to have some rest in her waking hours. The one who is not meditating isn’t thinking any less or isn’t any more calmer.
I believe that, if not all, meditation can solve most of our problems. This isn’t any other practice. This is the practice of how we should be living the entire time. Meditation—breathing and not letting the thoughts go away from the present—is how our every moment should be. Amongst the things to do and see and learn, we have somehow forgotten to pause and we are just learning to live in the present again.
So this year, I want to suggest everyone here, to try at least one meditation practice. Why I love Vipassana is because this meditation technique doesn’t need anything external: no mantra, no chant, no image, nothing external to focus on is the belief of Vipassana. I can do it wherever I am with just myself. You just feel your breath and then it takes you from there.
Here is the official Vipassana website. Dhamma organisation runs this entire course, and you would be surprised to find how many centres they have.
Let me know if you have any further questions about Vipassana by replying to this email.
“There is no path to happiness, happiness is the path to everything,” Buddha.
As everything else would be taken care of if I meditate: so things like calming down, being a better human being to others, pausing before reacting, sleeping well, focusing on the thing at hand, being healthy, improving relationships—literally almost everything, the only other aspiration for this year is to do more adventure travel.
So biking, hiking, running, walking, and so on. I want to take my body through the experience that a new geography and landscape offers. For me, nothing is as good as reaching the summit and then returning back before sunset. Or camping wherever I am. Fingers crossed, but more than fingers crossed, I am going to make it happen.
watching over the Indian ocean
What is the one thing you really want to do in the coming year?
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Article from the Week,
Best Books I Read in 2023
These are not the latest releases of the year. They are the books I happened to pick up and read and enjoyed and learned from. Hope you do, too.
See the books now. Or Pocket them for later.
Lessons Life Taught Me in 2022
When the dawn scares away the night, and when the sun sets and leaves with the light, neither is it dark nor is it bright. And that is most of our lives.
- one of the many lessons I learned in 2022
I was going through the learnings from 2022 and thought it would be a good idea to share them at the end of this year. After all, they might have defined my 2023.
Preparing the 2023 impressions for January :)
Go through the learnings now. Or Pocket the read for after the holidays.
Quotes I Love
"The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
John Milton
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
Victor Frankl
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
Thomas A. Edison
“Truck drivers are the best solo travellers.”
My Partner
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
William Blake
“Today is neither yesterday nor tomorrow.”
Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I am not sharing anything here because I have listed the books in the article above. Hope there’s at least one book you want to read from it. Let me know which one you get and how do you like it.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
that’s worth mentioning
I have gotten back to listening my morning song again
And for all adventure lovers!
Sharing Images from my travels in Burma around December 2019. That is a country I think about every day. Hope peace comes to it soon.
This is not Burma, this is Bombay. This is not Myanmar, this is Mumbai.
Sharing this writing desk in a hotel for I have been wanting to put this picture here for a long time. Currently this seems less like a writing desk and more like a hang out place.
A golden sunset in Burma on Inle Lake, one of the most amazing (even though touristy) place of the country.
The women with umbrellas.
traveling on a country train, watching people pass by.
the children in a local neighborhood, excited to see a brown and a white traveler come unannounced
the paddy workers at break
a lone man in his field. This photograph makes me think of Van Gogh’s potato fields.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you have a great end of the year. I will see you on the other side now :)
Let me know what you think about this letter. Press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
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