In the foothills just outside of Jaipur at Dhamma Thali.
“The enlightened man seeks universal truths.”
Experiential truths become part of you forever. Why do I keep coming to Vipassana? I believe in the concepts; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is so weak. I think the scales will tip when the experiential truths are felt.
Plus, it was programmed into my Tripit app.
In the Rajasthani desert in the hot season,
while I have no way of knowing, it must have been 115 degrees at the hottest part of the day. In the evening, my little single block cell room was a hot box 
retaining the hottest heat of the day. I laid all my clothes flat out onto the floor and poured buckets of water on them, creating an evaporating cooling fabric swamp. Then I would take my gauze cotton scarf and soak it in water, turn the ceiling fan on high and drape the soaking wet scarf over me like the shroud of Turin. It was amazingly cold! I fell asleep like this only to wake up throughout the night, bone dry and oven hot to repeat the process again and again, arising, passing away, until the 4 am gong sounded the call to group meditation.
I get up, and a cockroach runs across my feet with impunity programmed into his collective consciousness of countless cockroaches before, knowing full well the vow of ahimsa extends to him.
Note to Self – Always bring two sheets and a pillow case to Vipassana. Once again, I was laying on a bare mattress covered with my wet shroud, wondering how many other women had sweated into this thin, lumpy, wet mattress?
I was the only foreign women, in a group of about 10 Indian women. And there must have been 30 men, all Indian except for two foreigners who sat with me in the evening, in silence, and listened to the video lecture in English.
Because I was an old student,
there was no food after our 11 am lunch. Which turned out to be just fine with me. I know some people really worry about this aspect, the horror of missing a meal. I wasn’t hungry at all, I wasn’t hungry at night and I wasn’t hungry in the morning – I was too stuffed with water. Every chance I got I drank from the many RO water faucets around the campus. Indian style, with the communal metal cup hovering just centimeters above my upturned lips. I got pretty good at getting it all into my mouth. By the end of three days, could even swallow the whole cup of water with my head upturned and mouth open, gulping without spilling.
Dhamma Thali is an oasis of flora and fauna.
Langur monkeys show up diving from the tree branches into soft piles of hot sand – just for fun! Little do they know that their innocent antics are an allegory for the uncontrolled human mind.
Every dusk and dawn the peacocks, silhouetted in the Kadam treetops, would spend 20 minutes going through their trumpeting roll call to make sure the whole flock was present and accounted for. Like ungraceful turkeys, they lumbered through the sky, only upon falling to earth, does their true beauty shine. This place is a sanctuary for little birds, too, that flit and twitter rambunctiously through colorful, well-kept desert gardens.
The peacocks stay surprisingly clear of humans. Occasionally, a male peacock with his splendid tail would cross your path. Scurry as he might, you could run your fingers lightly along the train of his spectacular tail as he hustled away out of reach once again. During the heat of the noonday, they hid beneath the low bushes, panting with iridescent blue throat pumping and beaks wide open, panting. While I sat in silent meditation inside the bare pagoda cell, the sweat dripping like little rivulets from every pore. I remember Goenka’s words to observe every sensation, a sweat sensation; he must have known.
Anicca, anicca.
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