10 Day Vipassana Meditation

You wanna get deeper in Buddhist life, Learn meditation,Understand real freedom, Be away from consume, You wanna learn about yourself, Or just because you wanna see if you can make it 10 days without speaking. 

 :)

• What? Vipassana Meditation course  
• Where? All over the world, most of the time in a quiet mountain area 
• How Much? Free, on donation basis. 
• What do you need? 10 Days of your life, patience and strength 

A reflection: 
Before I start talking: Vipassana is sort of the most important or maybe THE most important thing I did in my life, because it helped me finding back to my inner voices.

I was 19 years old when I first heard about Vipassana. I just freshly graduated from highschool, my mom sent me studying Chinese in China (I am of Chinese origin) and I decided to meet one of my best friends who was just exploring Thailand. What a journey! Anyhow - so she told me all about Vipassana, how she had registered, how she had already took the journey to the temple somewhere in the middle of nowhere and while the course was about to start, she went through the rules again and decided "nope, aint for me!" and quit -

exactly those rules that had made her quit the course, were the characteristics which made it all so exciting for me - yes exciting - somewhere inside me a bell started ringing, an echo came, and its so cliche but true- I knew "I have to do this!/

So the daily schedule is waking up at 4am in the morning, meditating over 10 hours a day, having only veggy food (breakfast, lunch, 2fruits for dinner), while you are not supposed to talk/read/write/listen to music/ internet or whatever ("noble silence"). /

Thanks to my ambitious nature I learned to overcome the physical pain quickly. The question to quit never even entered my mind. It was absolute clear to me that I will complete that course. My pride would not have allowed me to leave. So within days I was able to sit 60 minutes without a single movement with a posture a ballet dancer would have been proud of. However, exactly that ambition was the next border to be broken as it is one of the characteristics meditation tries to overcome: the EGO.

it was the 5th day or so, when i finally was able to let go. not only of the physical pain, but also of all the thoughts in my head. i was able to observe. while not even realizing that i was doing so.
the first time that i saw the person i was. full of anger and hatred. full of desires and fears.
the cognition that only love is important. - i mean you might know this in your head, but it's a whole different story to understand this in your heart.
at some point also these thoughts passed.
and i only was. i was in that state maybe for seconds. maybe for hours. i don't remember. in retrospect i realized, in the first time in my life, i had actually found peace. and peace is, when you are in harmony with the universe, when there is no i.
Well I am still working on that EGO story,  but let me tell you how Vipassana has changed me so far:
One of the most important changes is that I used to be a person full of anger, my outbursts of fury were well known among my poor friends - I am not an angel now, but so much more peaceful -  before I did not even understand the feeling of peace --- being born in a business family, my only aim in life was getting rich, next to enjoying all the material joy one can find on earth - now money is just a tool not the target. I avoid eating meat, fish, drinking alcohol etc. - I finally managed to quit smoking after years///--- short: my whole life has changed.
because now i know there is something worth changing for.

ich kann nur (m)einen weg beschreiben. das lesen einer wegbeschreibung, ist jedoch nicht genug um am ziel anzukommen.

there is no way to describe a feeling, you can only go to experience yourself:  www.dhamma.org

Useful, too:

• www.vridhamma.org
• Goenkaji-U ba Khin : The clock of Vipassana has struck
• Ledi Sayadaw: Manual of Ultimate Truth
• Joseph Goldenstein: Insight Meditatoin – the practice of freedom 
  
  Try 10 Days Vipassana Meditation and you know.