My First Course

Sarah Bridgland

This talk was given at the International Seminar on the Importance of Vedan± and Sampajañña held at Dhamma Giri in March 1990.

My name is Sarah and I'm ten years old. This is my first time doing a ten-day course and I'm here to tell you my experience doing this ten-day course.

I loved the idea of being able to come to India, but having to do the course was a different story. I do want to, I don't want to, I do, I don't. It was like that for a few weeks, but one day my mother told me to meet Ram Singh and his wife Jagdish. So that morning I walked over with some flowers. Me and my mother sat down on the floor, but Ram Singh said we could not sit on a lower level than him and so we sat on chairs.

I gave him the flowers and said hello, and my mother introduced me and then herself and then told Ram Singh about how my elder brother, David, went to India last year. You could say that my brief visit to Ram Singh was sukha (pleasant) -- sukha, sukha, not an iota of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness). "I'm going to India!" I said, and that was definite.

A few weeks later we arrived in India at about two o'clock in the morning Indian time. The next day we set off to Igatpuri (Dhamma Giri). Once we had settled in we went and got ready for an hour's group sit and introduction to meditation and Goenkaji.

Next day after breakfast I got ready for eight o'clock group sit and then went to the hall. A very big amount of females went in and I went along with them. I went to my place near the front, sat down and got comfortable then closed my eyes, but after about ten seconds opened them again and looked around, and after five minutes everyone was in and a strange talking started. All the time I had my eyes open, but the strange talking said "close your eyes," so I did.

I started concentrating on the area under the nostrils and above the upper lip. Hot, cold, fast, slow, left, right, prickly, smooth, hard, soft -- these were all my sensations. But suddenly they all went, they all left me. Where had they all gone? Then soon I realized my mind had wandered, wandered to school, so off I went to find my mind, to find it and bring it back to the area of the lower nostril and upper lip. But when I found it I got pulled into the thoughts of school and my fellow classmates, and this is what happened in all my other hours, half hours, minutes and seconds of all my meditation hours.

Until along came the wonderful technique of Vipassana. Along came day four and we were to learn Vipassana after morning group sit. Vipassana was to be taught and I closed my eyes and got comfortable. This morning, I thought, I couldn't possibly sit through two hours even if it was Vipassana, and I even expressed my feelings to my mother and two friends by the name of Debbie and Uwana who helped me get through the ten days.

But now in the hall I was eager to learn Vipassana and I totally neglected my first thoughts. At last Goenkaji, Mataji and Vimala, the assistant teacher for females, and the male assistant teacher came in and at last I was to learn Vipassana. I paid little attention to Goenka's first minor speech but finally I was taught Vipassana. "Feeling sensations all over the body" and I did. Again I got prickly, smooth, soft, hard, fast, slow and all other sensations over my body. But again my mind wandered, but this time I brought it back and started again.

I was also taught the minor technique of mett±-bh±van±.

To finish of my rather long speech I would like to tell you about a rather important day that probably happens to most people on their courses. This day was around day five and this was probably the best day of the course. That day I was full of anger, meanness, unkindness and wouldn't do anything I didn't want to do, and showed it all immensely. But late that same night I realized that that day was the day that all my saªkh±ras didn't like me anymore and decided to go to someone else, and then I suddenly felt happy.

When the course was over I couldn't believe how somebody could ever be so happy as I was that day and practically vowed to myself to come back next year, maybe with my younger brother.

I'm sukha, sukha, sukha, not an iota of dukkha, a thousand times over.

Thank you.