what I learned at Vipanssana

oh just found this draft.. publishing it without reading it again, so it maybe full of typos etc.   :) 

Not long ago I went on a Vipanssana meditation retreat.  This is a 11 day retreat in which one is silent for 10 days and sits in meditation for most of the day.  There are Vipanssana centers all over the world. The retreat center I went to is in Northern Illinios on a beautiful piece of land with wild grasses and trees and water with tracks of all sorts of other little critters surrounded by farms and fields.  There were volunteers cooking and serving wonderful food, ready to help meet all my meet basic needs.
 and includes a simple walk through  so you have nothing to do but focus on meditation

It was amazing sitting in stillness and silence for so long.  One of the hardest and riches part of the process was the pain.  After a number of days they suggest that you not only practice meditating for an hour strait but that you are completely still for that hour.  This leads to... yes pain and discomfort.  
and so valuable to experience it and to know it will pass, to just experience the pan and not fear or judge it.  It leads to maybe the single most valuable lesson i think I have been learning over the years... Trust.  Trust in knowing I really am part of the circle of life and I don't need to worry about being caught if I fall, I know in my bones and blood that I will return to my circle, always. This connects a lot to pain and "violence," losing fear in it, change hurts and yet is so part of life. I saw/felt the life-birth cycle as never before, so beautiful, so painful so amazing and perfect. And then taking all this and being able to apply it to any discomfort in any moment, any situation.   I have found deep lessons in facing the pain and discomfort in my mind and body and learning to trust that pain is not only ok, it is necessary, it is part of life, part of birth.  I felt while meditate my body starting my monthly period and the cells in in my uterus rejecting each other, this lead to pain.  Pain and sadness are relationship changing.   Just as it is painful for me to change a relationship with someone I am close to so is it for the cells in my body.  Through mediation I have come to greater peace with the cycles of life and death and my fear of it.  I have come to be more comfortable with my own pain and that of others.

I have been writing more poems this spring...

It is all a matter of life and death

The light bulb

The water in the faucet

The cells sloughing off the inside of my uterus

The tiniest scratch

Buying a t-shirt

Picking up a bottle of whiskey

The drugs, the asphalt, the road, the potholes

The cars rolling

The sheets of metal

The mountains

that have left this world

to give us coal.

And the rabbit,

the squirrel and snail who were not born because there is no home for them.

It is all a matter of life and death.

Every weapon made or skirt sown

Every word you utter

Dish you wash

Every prayer or curse

Lick of ice cream

Red dye number one

Or 5 or 7

Photos in frame or memory

or story of poison mushrooms

beware, watch out

it all matters

It is all real

It is all as important as the president elect

as the baby being born

and the body shattered by the force of impact.

It all matters.

It all melts away,

and into

it all ripples on.