Vipassana meditation - Let me ponder awhile!

Hello

A friend back in England, Lucy, introduced me to Vipassana meditation which she practiced, and me being my usual mature self made numerous, humerous comments about sitting cross legged and going Ommm!! Which I'm sure went down like a lead balloon. Anyway she lent me a book called the Art of Living which explained what Vipassana meditation is and I though well ok, this isn't about religion, it isn't about having beliefs in an entity or following scriptures. It's basicaslly about sitting quietly and discovering what is going on in this little brain of mine, which turns out to be rather more than I suspected.

So as I have always felt so restless with life and have been constantly feelining that what I want is just around the next corner, I thought that this may be woth an experiment with. However this form of meditation is taught at 10 day long courses, rather than through books or short quick fix courses, as it depends on the pupil learning how to miditate in several small steps only when experience of the previous step has been gained.

So I felt that during my time out here in NZ with few demands on my time i should invest 10 days at the Vipassana meditation Centre just to the north of Auckland. If you are interested there are similar retreats around the world, including one in Herefordshire in England. The fact that the course, accomodation and food are all free, helped me to realise that this wasn't some gimmick out to make money. The centres are financed through donations of old student that have finished a course and realise their value. Such donations are not always monetary, but can be through volunteering to work at the centre for a short period of time. In this way the meditation is not limited to those that can afford it.

The technique is the same technique as Bhudda taught 2500 years ago and it has been kept in it's original state in Bhurma all this time. Where as every where else Bhuddist teachings have been altered over the years to fit in with beliefs and lifestyles of the time.

For 10 days of sitting, I think I can honestly say that it was incredibly hard work both emotionally and physically. But I was able to realise that alot of firmly held beliefs and convictions that I have had been causing alot of difficulties, insecurities and misery. Discovering aversions and cravings and letting go of them is basically what this form of meditation teaches. It teaches this through showing how everything is made up of a serious of continuous actions right down to the sub atomic level of all matter, including the human being. When sitting and meditating one observes the sensations that occur on the body both large and extreamely subtle.

A very important part of the course is remaining silent for 9 of the 10 days, apart from talking to the teacher or to the course manager. On several occassions I was so fed up with the course and though it was a waste of my time that I would have ranted at anyone that would have listened to me, which would have magnified my displeasure and the other persons. However I had to sit it out and just think things through by myself. And when I did i discovered the real cause of my displeasure was the fact that I didn't want to accept that I was craving unachievable things or had aversions to things which were clouding my judgement. I now realise the value of keeping my gob shut occassionally.

It would seem that this would lead to a feeling of oh well it doesn't matter what I do then or I wont do anything, but I found that it enhanced my feeling of getting on and doing things, and has started to release me from feeling bound by my past or restricted by what I think is expected of me in the future. Obviously I still have an extreamly long way to go, but I have at least started to see a glimmer a way that makes life a little more understandable and more enjoyable.

The difficult bit now is to continue to meditate every day.

I must fly now as I'm of to the cinema. But if your even slightly interested in Vipassana meditation. I pretty sure that I highly reccommend it. Even though the sceptic in me is still there and is watching closely.

Cheers
Nick

Heading up north...continued

As I continued to head up North I came to Whangarie where I went Scuba diving at Poor Knights Island, an hours boat trip out to sea. The wheather was still rough with a mighty high swell and raining, and for the first time in my life I felt sea sick, Four of the people on the boat where being sick, into little paper bags, no throwing up over the side allowed as it is a marine reserve, so you can't leave anything behind.

We found a sheltered bay and the diving was absolutely fantastic with an incredible amount of fish in every direction, seaweeds cling to all the rocks and in amongst these tiny tripple fin fish, sea anemones and nudibrancs (beautifully coloured sea slug type things), unfortunately I don't have any photos of these. I did two dives during the day and during the first dive the weather changed and when we surfaced it was in to glorious sunshine. The journey back to the mainland was lovely and calm, like a Mediteranean cruise (I imagine, on a nice day that is).

Well my journey North zig zagged across the country and my next stopping off point of interest was Oponini , on the west coast where I partook in a little sand boarding, which is a little like snow boarding but on huge sand dunes, several stories high and ending up in the sea at the bottom. This was absolutly fantastic fun, but resulted in some interesting friction burns!

From here I travelled back to the East of the country to the Bay of Islands, where I had 2 more scuba dives, this time going down to the wreck of the sunken Rainbow Warrior. The Greenpeace ship that was sunk by French Government agents because Greenpeace was objecting to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The wrecK was towed to it's current resting place and scuttled to create an artificial reef. It is a lovely dive and it has been colonised by all manner of animals. We also swam inside and it was quite spooky looking deep into the body of the ship and to have hundreds of pairs of fishes eye staring back.

From here I travelled to the tip of Northland to Cape Rienga the nearly Northernmost point of the mainland, in the same way as John O'Groats is nearly the northern most point of the UK mainland, when in fact we all know it is actually Dunnet Head! Hooray! I camped a couple of kilometres from Cape Reinga, where nearlly all the mosquitoes in New Zealand seem to go for their summer holidays. I camped with the rest of them (20km to the south) over the following week at Weitiki Landing where we where based for more bar tailed godwit surveying.

Did you know that there are mosquitoes that suck the blood of other insects, that's why they can do so well even when there aren't mammals around. And here's another funny thing, there are midges that suck the freshly sucked blood out of the mosquito. Not in NZ but somewhere, I know because I read it in a book.

Anyway getting back to the bird surveying with the New Zealand Ornithological Society. We spent 5 days tracking the large flocks of Godwit, the area is one of the main feeding spots in NZ before they start their journey to reach their breeding grounds in Alaska. The plan had been to do mist netting on a peninsular to catch and ring the birds, but unfortunately due to unforseen circumstances a sufficient number (ie more than one) of experienced bird ringers could only be present on the last two days of the week. So for the start of the week we tracked down the flocks of wading birds, mainly bar tailed godwits, red knots, banded and NZ dotterels, wrybills, turnstones, verible and pied oyster catchers, and with the use of telescopes checked their legs for indentification rings, in order to plot their movements around the country and the world. The scenery was absolutely fantastic.

On the second to last night four of us took a small boat (which had been ferrying us about all week) out to a small shell bank, in the middle of the estuary, and set up a number of mist nets. Basically very fine nets strung between poles up in the air. As the tide rises, during the night the birds are forced of their feeding grounds and fly over the shell bank and into the net. Where they are disentangled from the net and put in holding boxes then fitted with identification rings (called bands over here), measured and weighed and the such, then released. We had an incredibly successful night and where working from 4pm when we boarded the boat for the 15 minute boat trip until 7am the following morning when we arrived back at the jetty, with next to no time doing nothing. We caught and processed about 100 birds through out the night, of various species. Pretty hard work. This was far in excess of the numbers we expected so we decided that as we were all shattered, having expected to be in our beds by 2am, we didn't need to go out again the following night. So I headed south towards Auckland to be ready and rested for my meditaition course which started in the evening of the following day.

And that tale will wait until my next entry.

Evening All

Nick

This is not all of the next installment

Hi Guys

Sorry for the delay in updating this thing, and this isn't really an update. It's just to let you know I'm still in the land of the living.

Since the beginning of Jan I have been travelling around the North Island of NZ. My first 3 days were spent in Wellington staying at the house of a hitch hiker I picked up on the way to the ferry terminal. Wellington is a great city, though I did have the window of my campervan smashed, othing was taken though. I haven't been able to contact Pat (the lady I used to work with at Enlish Nature who has emigrated here), I guess she is using a different email addres to the one she gave me.

I spent the next few days travelling up the west coast calling in at varoius bays and beaches and generally being a tourist, and going for walks in the bush. I attempted to walk up Mount Taranaki (Mount Egmont) but the weather was so cloudy rainy and overcast I couldn't see a thing so turned it in to a lower level walk. When I returned to the car park at about 7pm the wind blew away the cloud and the mountain bathed in bright sunlight with snow on it's peak.. From here I travelled in land to do another mountain walk, the spelling of which I can't remember at the moment. But anyway by the time I got there the weather had turned rubbish again, so I decided to put the walk of until I passed back that way which will happen in a week or so from now. That journey inland though was along a 2 day long forgotton highway, which was mainly unsealed but passed through some fantastic scenery. I got to eat alot of dust along that route. I will add some pictures to this blog when I remember to bring my camera in to the internet cafe.

I trundled on back to the west coast to Ragland a bit of a surfing town, where I thought I may have a go at Kite surfing or normal surfing, but once again the wind and rain and a rather delighful cold (not) put a stop to this. Apparenty NZ is having one of it's worst summers for years, though it does mean it's nice and cool when I'm tramping up hills, and I am becoming pretty expert at the formation of the inside of clouds.

I spent 3 days at Ragland feeling sorry for myself and cheering myself up with nice food and music from the various bars and cafe's before heding north once more. I had a long old day of driving and bypassed Auckland and headed up the west coast to the North of Auckland and spent threedays exploring Tarhanui Regional Reserve run by Auckland City Council which is a peninsular that has been fenced of with a several kilometer preditor proof fence, so that possums, stoats, weasals, cats, hedgehogs and the such (all non native) can't get into the reserve and eat the native birds or the young shoots of the regenerating bush. The reserve is now more or less predator free. The northern coast of the peninsular has bee designated as a marine reserve, with good snorking and diving, unfortunately I was unable to go snorkling due to the high winds and rough seas, though the surfers seemed to love it. I spent my time walking in the rain, in cluding the most fantastic walk which took me of the designated paths by the directions printed in a leaflet which included things like; turn left at the third fence post walk up the hill and enter the bush by the old collapsed gate, then follow the stream bank until you reach the big rimu tree. It was a great way of exploring as the path was little used and I had to push through overgrown vegetation. It was the best self guided walk I have ever done, in a country park type setting. The Regional Park has really made me eager to get back to work with conservation, countryside recreation and the public. Just the inspiration I needed.

Any way it is time for me to leave the computer behind and get back on the road, so I will get bach to the computer in the next couple of days with tails of diving, meditation and more wading bird ringing.

But before I go, my eyesight has been improving over the last month and a half and I now only use my glasses for driving at night or at the cinema. I downloaded an ebook from the internet, which gives exercises (15 minutes a day) to do with your eyes to strengthen them. I am very impressed with the results and highly recommend it. The website is www.perfect-eyes.com and costs about the equivilent of 15 pounds.

Have fun, the suns out at the moment so I'm going to make the most of it.

Cheers
Nick