Update

Plans:

Finish my ISP...It's academic, fact based, and boring so I'm not going to bother posting it. If you want to read it send me a facebook message or an e-mail and I'll send it to you.

On December 12th my program ends.

On December 15th I'm planning on doing a Vipassana Meditation course. Vipassana mediation is the practice discovered by the Buddha which led to his enlightenment. Vipassana meditation is an incredibly simple (but difficult) practice that is entirely experientially based, meaning its not all about philosophy and theory like Tibetan practices for instance. Its simple, straight forward and it works according to everyone I've met.

Vipassana centers exist in nearly every country across the globe and they all run under the same format: they're free (optional donation if you want), ten day course, no music, no reading, no writing, no phone, no talking (except to instructors), no anything other than meditation with food breaks. The schedule runs from 4:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night.

People have told me a lot of people lose their shit and drop out during the course due to the intensity of the schedule and regulations. However, its not like boot camp or something. My roommate at the Roots Institute in bodh gaya told me he did it after just getting into meditation a month or so ago. He did say a lot of people dropped out though and one guy broke down crying during a session. He also said like mid-way through your like what the fuck am i doing...

But its supposed to have amazing benefits if you work with it. It generally takes two courses at least to "get it" but according to a Canadian woman I met who owns a cafe in Bodh Gaya, it was the most important thing she ever learned. The path to awakening is vipassana so it would seem. And like I said, you can do it all over the world.

My roommate was telling me how his friend was like a depressed alcoholic and she took a course and since that she's been one the happiest person he knows. vipassana works in that it uproots your internal strife from source and teaches a new way of life. so that sounds positive. Eradication of conditioning.

you can only do a course every couple months due to the intensity but courses run all year long. log onto dhamma.org to read more! super.

sidenote: a friend brought to my attention that cause and effect can be switched when we break from linear time. Carl Jung liked a quote by Lewis Carroll that he thought described synchronicity, "its like a weird sort of memory that works backwords..."

so the question isn't is this happening or even how its happening...but rather, why is this happening? I haven't figured it out yet....Still looking....rumors have been circulating throughout the collective mind and the underground networks about a coming singularity, something about a breakdown of the conscious barrier and either peace or war....but at this point I trust nothing but my raw experience and its still same shit, different day...but, keep in mind same shit, different day in India is a total meltdown in the system...In fact, when I was in Bodh Gaya I created a routine while working on my paper and that was actually the weird part...Routine becomes the shock. polarities reverse and then reverse once more to reflect that first point back and we realize this has been one hell of a trip.

Routine, in short, can be seen as the nervous system closing up to a trained, conditioned set of neurological responses to predictable set of external stimuli. So when you're in a foreign country--especially a place like India--your nervous system and entire conscious experience becomes flooded with sensory overload, you're like a little kid again. You don't have any conscious models on how to deal with this stuff and so you learn to learn...William James said its something like a loud blooming cluster fuck of sensory input...he didn't use those words but you get the idea..

So all of the sudden you need to re-interpert everything from who this is person, what are their intentions, what is that cow doing, is this dangerous, is that legless beggar going to grab me, and in short, what the fuck is going on. You spin out...Feelsweirdman...I like being overwhelmed, its the only way to shift your conscious experience and a good way to enter into the now...Shocks into the internal state...

So I've been living with that for 3 months. But...when I was in bodh Gaya I created a routine which lasted 2 weeks...It was weird. Life was stable. I ate at the same places. Talked to the same people. Sat in the same place and looked at the same view out of my window....I was in a monastic community so it was quiet and dare I say..boring? no, not boring...but it was stable. ....Stability became the new instability....

But then I went to the train station to head back to Delhi (where I sat from 12pm to 4 am) and watched a cow lick a sleeping man and a homeless woman urinate in front of everyone on the track platform while hundreds of rats (foreshadowing? read on...) scurried beneath the tracks. I pissed off the tracks too...When in rome....

but it was weird, i could feel my head and nervous system opening up when i was sitting there on the tracks. I realized that every connection, person, place I had experienced in Bodh Gaya was over. Gone. I may never come back. Whatever person was living in Bodh Gaya was now dead. I had shed that skin and something else was coming to the surface....feltgoodman...crash course in deconstruction...

After the program ends in delhi and i finish my vipassana meditation I'm planning on going to Bikaner which is near Jaipur in Rajasthan. In Bikaner, I will be visiting Karni Mata, otherwise known as the Rat Temple...

Thousands of rats live in this place and are worshipped as the reincarnations of some important Indian people or some other crazy shit like that--when I go I'll read up on it and post back.

I heard people eat some of the food the rats nibble on as good luck...will find out if this is true...

So you walk through this temple--barefoot--while thousands of rats crawl on and around you. People bring them food as offerings and it said to be auspicious if they scatter across your feet. If you kill one, however, it has to be replaced by a solid gold rat you must pay for so i will do my best to control my murderous impulses and reserve them for the true scum of the earth--humanity....I'm not as misanthropic as I sound...In fact, some people have told me I'm compassionate...I think the closer you get to the state of neither/nor the closer you get to both good n evil...but what the hell do I know?

A temple dedicated to rats? Only India, man....

So after I worship thousands of rats I will be heading down to Bombay/Mumbai and screw around there. I'm planning on visiting the slums and just wandering through the city of 17+ million...

Then probably from their I'll be heading to elora and ajanta which are architectural masterpieces, buddhist sculptures and paintings from B.C carved into caves in the mountains...

Then I think Goa for new years...Psy-trance parties on the beach under the full moon...Kerala after that....with adventure and insanity torched in between...

Everyone else on the program goes home. I keep going. I just completed a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. Micro..macro...words do no justice so forget about it....

3 months down, 8.5 more to go. Lets do this.

peace.