August Vipassana retreat

The reatreat happened from the 22nd of August to the 2nd of September.

Coming there I am asked to serve the course. I really want to participate, to sit in silence the 10 days, because the technic opened up so many processes on different areas in my body, that I want to take the chance of continuation. .. and I also want to work on inproving the sitting times, I want to go through some more inner borders…..
So I have A little to drop that personal plan…. getting ready to serve
A retreat, in this case only for men, needs beside the teacher and manager 3 servers. Somehow, for this retreat there is no server yet. So the manager has to surge and ask the experienced arriving students to volunteer. Anyway, I am so greatful for the existence of these Vipassana Centers, to teach and taught me this wonderful technic, and anytime for free – also meals and accommodation are free – that I am also happy, in this case or later on, to offer my service here and now, if needed…..

A server has to serve the whole time of the retreat. The students, in this case around 30, need to be served in such a way, that they can follow all the teachings and stay in total silence for the whole time. The teachings are done by S.N.Goenka by video. He himself died around 10 years ago in the age of 96. For any questions there is a teacher present, twice a day. Also the teacher is there to guide the whole course and to solve (together with the manager and the servers) any kind of problem arising. As far as I know, the teacher and manager are also serving for free…. but I am not sure, if that is the case in any center, especially reguarding the manager ….
The cooking is aranged by 3 cooks in the kitchen. Not sure if they are partly also volunteers.

For me as a server I have to be present to serve the food and communicate with the kitchen about any issue…., to take care of the accommodation area to keep it clean and need, to ring the bell and make sure, that any students are coming to the sittings, to recieve questions of the students and inform or guide them to the manager or teacher, to take care of discipline in the meditation hall and keep the hall need and clean…. and little other things….
In the evening there is always a extra Metta  (love, compassion and forgiving) meditation for the serving team incl. teacher, manager and the kitchen stuff followed by another organizing meeting afterwards….
The day is busy from 4am to well, so it’s very nessassary to take of some rest time in between, too.

The first the fourth day I am pretty busy with all kind of things, especially because the new students need to get used to the rules and also because the first three days are very hard, if you never had a silence period. On some days I meditate somehow often only 10 min until I have something to do, but after the fouth day things calm down and I benefit a lot also from meditation and teachings.

This reatreat I became busy with a part of my heart again, this time the more of less left part of my physical heart. I had worked so much on my heart the last years, there are clearly some areas worked through – as far as I can see now – but the left part of my heart…. a area, where I did not focus earlier on….. surprise, what all is to find there. ….

(Until today I am still busy with it, every day in my daily meditations)

After the retreat, at the last morning, after the official end of course) I have to escape suddenly (my plan was to stay until lunch), because I feel, if I do a little more, than my energy capacities are overstreched and I can’t start walking the next day as planed.

All in all a beautiful experience. We had a very young group, a lot of men just between 18 and 25. And for me it is and has always been a joy to see, when someone comes in process, maybe suffering for a while, but knowing where it’s leads to…. to free something and to more happiness and light…..