35 ~ Vipassana Experience Part 4: Impermanence.

During the 5-minute break, we all went to fill our water bottles out of sheer habit. I don’t know if we were actually thirsty or not, but it was something automatic, and besides, it was almost the only thing we could do in that brief breath of fresh air.We were starting to know all our movements, like ants leaving the anthill.

Everyone had the same faces of calm, surrender, and /or desolation. At least that's how it seemed. Do they also feel the frustration that I feel? It’s hard to read emotions when you can’t speak. We all seemed terribly serious, but it was only because of the lack of sounds.

The dry leaves covered the courtyard. I saw an ant carrying a feather that was 100 times bigger than its size. I also saw a woman braiding a tree with the endless vines hanging from it...We were suspended in time, in the magic of a parallel world, and that was starting to feel real. The meditations were becoming more focused, and little by little, certain “information” was starting to "download." Memories, sensations, truths, insights from my life. Even though the instruction was to simply accept reality as it is, my ego was seeing small progress, and my overachieving mind was smiling.

By the fourth day, I realized that we were actually sharing the main Gompa with men too, who occupied the other half of the hall. It seems that being so focused on myself had actually worked. Little by little, I was starting to feel better and more awake.

Next to the monastery, there was a humble little house. On the weekends, they played loud music, and inexplicably, sometimes Latin songs would echo through the air. I found myself walking among the trees while Despacito by Luis Fonsi played in the remote Indian village where we were staying. Yes, even here, the song had reached.

The music brought back memories, reignited sensations. It reminded me of myself, dancing until the floor with endless glasses of beer, moving non-stop, wishing those moments would never end. Now, I was far from that – both mentally and physically. A part of me wanted to return to those moments of pure ignorance, of “fun” and anesthesia. Awakening consciousness brings responsibility and effort. Everything seemed so easy back then...Was it really?

“I cannot carry you on my shoulders,” Buddha said. “You have to walk the path by yourself. Step by step, experiencing each of the truths in the process, through your own experience. Each step requires personal time and effort.”

Hour by hour, things were taking on new colors and forms. Being disconnected and present all the time makes the mind open up spaces that we almost never explore. Despite everything, in my imaginary list of goals, I was still asking myself what made me happy. Yes, I was still at that stage. Processes and answers take time, and they’re usually not what we want them to be.

Suddenly, phrases would appear. I was slowly beginning to understand what people meant when they talked about those “downloads” of information. I didn’t think them, I didn’t seek them out – they just appeared in my mind randomly, on some turn in that slow, mindful walk.

“If you died tomorrow, what would you like to do today?”

Easy exercise: Fall in love, have someone fall in love with me, live in a simple house with a view of a mountain, a lake, a beach, or any piece of nature, and have time to enjoy it. That was the mental image I had carried as happiness for a long, long time. That’s where my soul had placed the “solution” to all the “problems.” I didn’t show it, and paradoxically, I didn’t act in accordance with it either, but if I had to answer seriously – and that’s precisely what I was trying to do now – that was what I most deeply wanted.

“Before you fall in love with someone else, you have to fall in love with yourself again…” said another voice, which also came from within me.

“Yes, I know, I know...I already know...”

How could I take so long to realize that my fellow meditators were using tons of cushions to support their bodies? Am I always living in my own bubble?

The body ached. Holding the posture was hard.

“It’s only 10 days. When you feel like you can’t go on, just remember that – it’s only 10 days of your life. And what are 10 days, really, in a lifetime? In the worst-case scenario, it passes quickly…”

Ilo, my friend who had already done Vipassana, had left me with those words of encouragement before leaving. I, who had been more than excited about the idea of the retreat, was now just counting the days like a prisoner. I forced myself to participate in every meditation, even if I was sleepy, even if I was distracted, even if my thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. I pushed myself, at the very least, to try.

By the fourth day of meditating 10 hours a day on a cushion on the floor, we no longer knew how to sit. Our backs were no longer backs; they were rigid blocks, segmented zones of pain that felt like they were being stabbed.The morning had been terrible – in the first two sessions, I hadn’t been able to meditate at all. I had to make a superhuman effort not to fall asleep. What a horrible feeling!

Meditation was becoming monotonous for me, boring, and I couldn’t quite grasp its real meaning. My expectations were set on something more than this: more complexity than just breathing, focusing on the breath, and then breathing again.

Expectations. Big topic.

Expectation – Reality – Illusion. The gap between what we want, what we get, and that lingering residue of constant suffering. Frustration, anger, meaninglessness, anguish, despair, and the hamster wheel all over again.

“You gave up everything for this?” one of the voices said.

Do we always associate wisdom with complexity and grand achievements? That was part of the lesson. In the end, what’s truly difficult in today’s world is sustaining the simplest things, being able to stop the mind’s frantic movements: just breathe and be aware of it. Nothing more, nothing less. How simple! How inconsistent! How obvious! Where are the tricks and the magic hiding? (...)

How many times can we just be present with our breath, without doing anything else? No, not that... Present I mean! Not doing anything else, fully aware of the moment... How many times a day?

We always fill the “empty” moments with something. There’s always something to do, something to learn, something to improve, something to “make the most of the time,” something for the “in the meantime” – and so our minds drift from one thing to another in an imaginary storm of ideas that rob us of the now.

“When I eat, I only eat. I savor every bite, enjoy every flavor, have a relationship and an experience with it. When I listen, I only listen. When I sleep, I only sleep...”

How often do we really do that with full awareness? Without thinking or planning the next steps, the next meal, or what to say, or looking at our phones like zombies, only to realize the food is gone, and we barely even tasted it? Damn!

We are almost never truly present in what we’re doing. Our minds are always somewhere else, on the next move, chasing the next carrot, whether it’s in the future or the past. But really in the present? That’s hard.

How many of you can actually do it? To enjoy, to experience with all your senses, to truly grasp it, to be grateful. We were trying to return to the zero point.

The evening discourse seemed to have heard my complaints. This time, Goenka started by talking about Impermanence, one of the central concepts.

“Everything is fleeting, the only constant in life is change, and we can see this in everything, absolutely everything around us. In all of nature, but also within ourselves, in the body, in changing emotions, in evolution, in death, in the decay of matter, and in all perishable objects.

We look in the mirror and feel that there is a stable and complete ‘self,’ that we are the exception to the rule. And even though we know about the existence of death, we live as if we ignore it.

We firmly believe that there is an ‘I’ that is finished, tangible, and permanent. The senses prove it! A substantial being, one that has an essence, or at the very least, should have one... And here lies existential problem number one: -If my ‘I’ has an essence, I need to find it!And here’s the question that will accompany us throughout our lives: Who am I?”

If we look at a river from above, we believe there is a permanent body of water, a unity, a totality that flows. But if we focus on the micro level, we realize it is actually a collection of thousands and thousands of small currents, all in motion, all constantly changing. If you decide to follow a single drop or current of water, you will quickly notice that it moves rapidly and never passes through the same place twice. And even more so, if you observe a single stretch of the river, you’ll see that the water passing through it will never be the same as what flowed through two seconds ago.

So, this river that we “perceive” as complete and substantial is nothing more than thousands of different, ever-changing streams, replacing one another, arriving and departing from the scene. In the very next instant, we will never find the exact same composition of water, because it’s already passed, it’s already the past, it’s already changed form.

And yet, the illusion of the “river” as a whole is a convention – no one questions the ever-changing nature of the Nile River or the Pacific Ocean from one second to the next. It has a name, it seems to be the same thing all the time. But could you find exactly the same river today as yesterday?

Buddhists often use this comparison to explain impermanence. Just like the flame of a candle or the electric current in a light bulb, it seems to be the same thing, but if you look closely, it’s actually thousands of different flames appearing, succeeding one another, and disappearing. The same is true of the stable light we see in the bulb – it’s really just thousands of moving photons, appearing and vanishing, but invisible to the human eye. And this is true for everything, for every material object that constitutes our reality. So what we “see” is merely the illusion of our own senses.

Exactly the same thing happens with us in the mirror. We look at ourselves and believe we have that same essence. We believe that, like everything else, we must be made up of a static, secure, and consistent identity that exists somewhere or that must be constructed at some point. That is what we have been taught, that is what our mirror reaffirms every morning, and even more, that is what we are almost constantly seeking. When, in reality, we are like the river, the candle, and the light bulb.

Our skin changes every 30 days, our tissues degrade second by second, they age, thousands of cells are born and die, new neural connections are created and modified – but of course, we don't perceive it that way. In the mirror, the “me of today” looks quite similar to the “me of yesterday”, and that is what we try to prolong and perpetuate, making the changes invisible.

We want to find the ultimate truths of who we are as if they were always the same, as if there were some formula, as if they weren't also subject to constant change, the universal law that governs everything. As if they were exactly the same truths of the same person we were yesterday… but we are not the same as yesterday, so it makes sense that our truths aren't the same either. It’s impossible, like the river. Yet this is what we seek, sometimes eternally and almost always in an anguished way: to find ourselves, to find “that” which we are. That static, secure “something”, in line with positive sciences and the mandates of being. As if there were something more to hold onto beyond a bunch of constantly disintegrating atoms and a reality that changes every second.

And what if that security we seek doesn't exist? Or at least, not in that way? They have put us in a trap with no way out.

“To find myself…” What a great phrase. I’ve said it to myself so many times I couldn't count them... My psychologist used to ask me what that meant. I also asked myself the same question.

And what if, instead, we first have to start by relocating all those parts that we aren't, but recognize as our own, and then begin to empty ourselves? To empty ourselves of illusory content, of those stories we've told ourselves so many times that they've become real, of those “ego-masks”, and then, after all that deconstruction, to gradually see what remains. Like peeling an onion, like a daily exercise, like brushing our teeth in the morning.

Of course, there is something to hold onto – not everything is so fatalistic, even if the deeper intention is a form of liberation. Each tradition will frame it in its own way, but what I am gradually realizing is that “what remains in the end” increasingly resembles a space of infinite possibilities. A dimension of openness as vast as the universe, rather than a fixed and static form. Pure consciousness. The true nature of who we are – the infinite, the mutable, the divine, the space in which everything can be created. Transparency without distortions, forms, or labels. What a miracle of movement!

Mahayana Buddhism calls it emptiness, which, of course, is much more complex than the colloquial meaning and refers to the interconnectedness and dependence on everything around us.

“The consistency of the self and reality are an illusion. All that daily stage we insist on sustaining minute by minute is an illusion, and the most dangerous thing is that we aren't sufficiently aware of it.” Goenka had turned spicy, and I liked it.

What he was saying was closely related to quantum physics, and it felt strange, but he had stopped telling Buddha parables and ancient peasant tales to suddenly make me feel like we were sitting in a university lecture, not a monastery.

“What is this?” I thought.

Suddenly, he left me speechless. I began to marvel at the connections he was making. It made sense, so much sense it was frightening. We are vibrations. We look in the mirror, buy into the illusion, and recognize ourselves as a whole, but in reality, like the rest of matter, we are made up of thousands of electrons, protons, and neutrons in constant change and constant movement. If we could see it as it really is, it would look more like a diffuse mass of energy moving together, like a hologram. The human eye cannot perceive this, but that doesn't make it any less real or change its form. Of course, for conventional and practical paradigms and measurement systems, this idea becomes a bit complex and would probably collapse an entire system built around ideas of solidity, security, and structure – precisely what is happening in the current era at this very moment.

Illusion, Maya, Matrix. Avidya – Ignorance.

We've probably all heard of the “illusion-trap” at some point, but out of ignorance, facts, and the pressing need for structure that has been installed in our minds, this screen-like reality becomes more believable and more sustainable than the other one, even though, in the long run, it disarms and eats away at us from the inside. Is it perhaps more bearable? Do we fear true reality that much? Does the “real” world seem that boring to us?

We trust our senses and everything we've been told since even before we came into the world. Like when we believe we are looking at “ONE” river. We no longer question it; we just jump into the water.

Understanding the true nature of reality is one of the main Buddhist truths and probably the most important teaching of the Buddha.

Impermanence (Anicca) – Goenka repeated in the meditations, in every session, three times before starting, to the point of exhaustion: “Anicca, anicca, anicca.”I still remember his tone, his inflections, and the rhythm of his voice like a sound tattoo.

We misunderstand the true nature of reality. We believe that what is impermanent is permanent, and because of this same ignorance (confusion), we attribute to that illusory reality traits of unquestionable consistency: static, independent, and solid.

In the same way, we construct “ourselves” – independent from the rest, separate and consistent. In us, this illusion is called Ego. We don't know it, but that separation – and the fundamental lack that arises as a consequence – feels so painful that we will always end up seeking something to fill it, moving from object to object, person to person, sensation to sensation...

This Ego is never satisfied – because it has already been constituted as separate by structure – so it will need constant feeding but also protection, because like any illusion, it runs the risk of easily falling apart. It requires a lot of effort.

On one hand, it seeks refuge in attachment to pleasurable things: valuable objects that can fill the void we feel, pleasant sensations that give us happiness where it is lacking, people who complete us. Things we long for and want to perpetuate forever, because our happiness, our completeness, our stability depend on them. The food that fills us.

On the other hand, it protects itself by avoiding the unpleasant: objects, people, or sensations we want to escape from with the same pressing need to make them disappear as quickly as possible, because they threaten our integrity, our supposed completeness, our solid sense of well-being. No one taught us that unpleasantness is as much a part of life as pleasure and that it is just as important to know how to deal with unpleasantness as it is to enjoy. In the Ego's mental equation, unpleasantness is poison.

And in this unconscious, imperceptible, automatic movement, we become mere responses, responses to stimuli. We seek the pleasant, avoid the unpleasant, and repeat this cycle every minute of our lives. We stop choosing and fall into a cycle of automatic behaviors, thinking we are choosing, but in reality, we are not: we are acting pre-formatted. We enter a hamster wheel, an illusory and infinite cycle that repeats tirelessly, in this life – and if you believe in reincarnation – in the next life, and the next life, and the next life. The wheel of Samsara.

Unless you wake up...

BOOM!

Think about it for a minute. What were your last actions?

Automatic pleasure-displeasure. Freud talked about the same thing.

A hot cup of coffee (seeking pleasure), putting on a jacket (avoiding discomfort), seeing your partner (pleasure), eating (avoiding discomfort or seeking pleasure, depending), a cold beer (pleasure), and so on, to infinity and beyond, like Buzz Lightyear, multiplying the possibilities and complexities of the situations.

How many of those times did we actually choose with full awareness and not just respond to automatic stimuli that we don't even recognize as such?

Wouldn't being aware of these automatisms make us, at the very least, a bit freer? Wouldn't it give us more room to move?

Because no one is saying it's wrong to eat a piece of cake, have a partner, or buy a car – but does our true happiness depend on that?

And as if all this wasn't enough, and it hasn't blown your mind already, perhaps the most complex part – yes, even more! – is that we cling to those pleasurable objects and sensations as if there were no tomorrow, and as if OUR HAPPINESS TRULY DEPENDED ON THEM. We divide our reality and experiences into a precarious binary of GOOD and BAD and try to hold onto our “ideal situations”, as if it were possible, as if they could exist forever. As if those sensations could be maintained in a world where everything is change... How naive, right?

And then, when that deceptive expectation of the object we ourselves created as permanent and “necessary” – but illusory – shifts a few millimeters from what we expected... we suffer.

And of course, to top it all off, we forget everything previously said and only act from unconsciousness.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the origin of suffering, according to Buddha.