Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Blind Melon, Dhamma, Happiness, Liberation, Meditation, Misery, Pain, Peace, Silence, Vipassana, Wisdom
I don’t feel the suns comin’ out today
its staying in, its gonna find another way.
As I sit here in this misery, I don’t
think I’ll ever see the sun from here.
And oh as I fade away,
they’ll all look at me and say, and they’ll say,
Hey look at him! I’ll never live that way.
But that’s okay
they’re just afraid to change.
oooooook … this is another one of those impossible to create posts, as to encapsulate the experience that was in a reasonable number of words is impossible …
yesterday, for example, i wrote 37 pages in my journal, and that was just a gloss over …
it turns out silence isn’t challenging … that’s “noble” silence, which is to say that you do not communicate with anyone in anyway whatsoever … when everyone around you is doing it, and you are segregated from the women … easy …
the diet was not challenging either … oatmeal and bread for breakfast, and only 2 pieces of fruit for supper is actually a nice balance to the day …
even the lack of ANY stimulation was not hard … i did not miss tv, music, books … though i did miss my journal …
what was hard ??? … what made it THE, NUMBER ONE … most difficult experience of my life … (not in the same sense as sudan was difficult, but in the way running a marathon would be difficult) …
11 hours a day of meditation …
11 hours a day of sitting on the floor … from 4:30am to 6:30 am … from 8:00am to 11:00am … from 1:00pm to 5:00pm (4 hours straight) … from 6:00pm to 9:00pm with a 1 hour discourse in the middle …
the pain … THE PAIN … the knees, the back, the legs, the shoulders … the pain, the pain, the pain …
the boredom … again and again and again … 33 hours of JUST being aware of the natural breath … 6 days of scanning every single spot on the body (yes, every single spot you pervs 
) … again and again and again …
was it worth it ???
a million, million times over … in fact … i would recommend to anyone and everyone who wishes for REAL personal development that you MUST do it …
beyond personal knowledge … the development of the skills of the mind is astounding … when i started, my mind would wander constantly … this is just the nature of the mind … every 30 seconds it would jump off into the past or the future … but day after day of focus … i can now focus on a single train of thought for more than half an hour … the level of depth and clarity and focus i am now capable of is actually somewhat frightening …
anyway … Buddha teaches that there are 3 kinds of knowledge … that which you are told, that which you understand intellectually, and that which you have direct personal experience with … in order for real impact, you must experience it for yourself … and it is SO true …
those who know me know that i am a pretty easy-going, peaceful person … this is now on an entirely different level … every trace of negativity has left me … i feel nothing but harmony and love for the world and everything in it …
i will try to explain this in broad strokes, though i will do it a great disservice by over-simplifying … first of all … i am not a buddhist … this course makes no effort to convert … it is outside the realm of religion and deals with universal issues … namely … the cure for suffering and misery … and the path to enlightenment … which is found entirely within the body and needs to external religion at all …
buddha figured out 2500 years ago that suffering is universal … we all have negativity in us … he found that all suffering can trace back to craving … we crave something … that craving is realized, and then we either crave more or we crave something greater, and there is misery … or the craving is not realized and we suffer for what we did not receive … i didn’t buy this at first, but after hundreds of hours of self-observation, i believe it to be true …
buddha found by sitting and watching his body, that every sensation he had … something he saw or heard, or something he thought, created a sensation on the body … when you feel a strong emotion, you feel it physically right? anger and love? this is true for even small reactions, you just have to REALLY be paying attention to feel it …
so the first key is to observe body sensations … the second key is to remain neutral … to observe them objectively … when you react to a positive sensation with positivity, you crave it … when you react to a negative sensation with negativity, you feel aversion to it (crave to have it removed) …
the principle that brings the two together is the universal law of nature, that change is constant and universal … everything in existence shares the feature of arising and passing away …
sooo you sit and hour after hour you observe body reactions … head to toe, toe to head, head to toe, toe to head … all day every day … you are forced to sit in one position for hours on end and not allowed to move … and the pain is excruciating … impossible to bear … but you do not react to it … you examine each square inch of your throbbing knee and say “oh, that’s interesting, there is pain … i will watch it and see what happens” …
then … one day i am scanning my body, trying to cope with the pain and i notice that if i examine my knees, the greatest pain is in one specific spot on my right knee … 5 minutes later i come back and almost fall over when i realize the pain is gone from that spot … the pain is now on the other knee in a different spot … it has changed … everything changes … if i had reacted with negativity to the pain the first time, it would have been for nothing, as the pain was temporary … and i would feel worse for having done so …
all you need to do … with any sensation … is watch it … observe it … and NOT react …
now there is no pain … i can sit for 2 hours without moving and not feel pain … now there is no boredom … i can feel bored, say to myself “this too will change” … and sure enough, half an hour later i realize the boredom left …
and since every craving is a sensation, it works with EVERY craving … i feel aversion towards a person, i say to myself “this is a sensation, it is temporary, and it will pass” … and almost instantly, what would have left ME feeling negative (me … NOT the other person) … now has me utterly content … i can walk into stores, feel the urge to buy things … say to myself ‘this is a craving, it will pass’ … and … it passes … and i walk away content …
i have never felt so liberated … i have never felt so free … i have never felt so happy …
the worst part is … this whole concept is something i UNDERSTOOD intellectually before … i knew it … just as you may be saying to yourself now “oh yeah, that makes sense, i get it” …
but you MUST experience it … it must be made real to have a real impact on your well-being …
and this is really just the main message of wisdom … of which there are dozens …
like the importance of the present … what is is, and what is not is not … this is simple basic reality … so there is no sense in bothering about that which is not, whether past or future … this is a waste of energy and leads to craving and negativity … instead, one can only make the best of that which is, and in doing so, create positivity in what will be, because change is universal …
or the truth that all negativity felt towards others is really all about ourselves … all negative emotions are our own … when i dislike somebody, there is nothing wrong with that person … the problem is entirely within me … and must be approached as such …
and on a more hard to understand level … when you stop having new reactions to sensations, all the old complexes from the past start to creep to the surface, and are washed away one by one … i had memories of times in my childhood and youth … low times in my life … times that were still exerting a negative influence on everything in my life … i am now at peace with all these times, and all the people in them to whom, 15 days ago, i still felt negativity … (and again … this negativity was all about ME … and was only hurting ME) …
and on a cooler level … i can now feel every single sensation on my body and feel a wonderful flow of energy flow over the entire surface of me … which is the baseline sensation/vibration and is the manifestation of change …
sooo … it was amazing … ups and downs and finally peaceful serenity … i am more clear and determined on my path than i have ever been before, and i can’t wait to get back to canada to launch the next phase of my life …
“Strive ardently, and burn, oh man. Purity comes from burning away the dross. Gold must pass through a crucible to be refined”
on the day when silence was broken and suddenly we could all communicate again, there were 2 shared expeirences … 1. EVERYONE first talked about how hard it was, how bad the pain and boredom were .. but EVERYONE said it was incredible … 2. everyone had their own experience … what you have read above is mine … but this is a deep examination of self … and the beauty of the silence is that there is NO shared experience … what you go through is your own and only your own … so what you need … you will find …
again … these courses happen all over the world … i can not recommend strongly enough … i have never felt so happy, i have never felt so alive, and i know that there is no craving or pain which can overcome me … http://www.dhamma.org/
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Safari, Vipassana Meditation, Elephants, Maasi Mara, Hell's Gate, Water Development
alll right … this has got to be fast (again … sorry …)
i went on safari … it cost a lot … it was worth it in some ways … not so much in others …
the first evening we arrived we went on a evening game drive as the sun was going down over Maasi Mara (connected to the Serengeti) … there are animals EVERYWHERE … and there is something overwhelmingly tranquil and beautiful about driving into the middle of a herd of 50-100 ‘deer’ (impala, gazelle, heartebeast, etc, etc, etc … there are prolly 10 types of deer like animals out there), shutting off the engine, and just being with them while they eat and graze and wag their little tails …
the hi-light of the evening … which turned out to be the hi-light of my whole trip, was when we found a herd of about 30 elephants … again … just sitting and being with them as they go about their day to day … was … magical … somehow they seem wiser than other animals … you look in their eyes from 10 feet away and you really get they feeling they are looking back at you, and that they understand … wow …
b/c my tour company were a bunch of lying bastards … i ended up doing the full drive around Maasi Mara (i don’t even know how to spell that, how embarassing) … twice … which had its highs and its lows … i saw about 10,000 zebras … which was pretty cool … saw a pack of lions feeding on a buffalo … which was pretty cool (though not as impressive as the elephants) … was made fun of by a baboon and sat about 3 feet from a baby monkey … which was probably the 2nd hi-light of my trip … people who deny that humans are evolved from a similar ancestor as primates need to seriously consider opening their eyes a little bit … in my opinion …
so it was good … but worth $450 ??? … not so much … you reach a point where you are like “oh look, ANOTHER giraffe … just like the last 50″ …
i was supposed to visit a water development project on the weekend, but it got bumped to monday, so i stopped in Naivasha and Hells Gate National Park for about 24 hours instead … it cost only $20 and was freaking incredible … you can just walk around … by yourself … in a park filled with wild animals … zebras and warthogs and leopards and cheetahs … there is nothing in the world quite like walking over a rise at 7am, and finding a family of 5 warthogs 10 feet away … my mind flashes back to ‘lord of the flies’ and i am not sure if i should be afraid or in awe …
they decide for me, and take off running … so i round the next bend, and the tree i walk past turns out to be a tree … like the tree next to it … but the tree next to IT … is a giraffe … and he takes off running too … sending about 5 others all around me who i didn’t even notice into a sprint … so cool …
i was a moron though … and decided that, since i was out there at 6:00 am … i would walk the longest circuit … i was about half way through it when i did a little mental math and realized that in 4 hours i was going to be late getting back to my lodge, so late getting to naivahsa, so late getting to nairobi … and late in nairobi means a $10 cab ride instead of a $0.33 bus ride … so i walked as fast as i possibly could for about 4 hours straight … all in all, in 8 hours in the park i walked 39km … plus 4km there and 4km back from my lodge … i have never been so tired in my life …
like clockwork though, i arrived back at my hostel in nairobi JUST as supper was being served … it’s nice when things work out …
monday i went to a place called kisasi … where 24,000 people have no reliable access to water, so for 6 months of the year are forced to walk for hours to dig holes in the sand, which are subsequently shat in by all manner of animals, to collect water and then walk hours back … they need $500,000 … that seems like a big number … great people though …
now i am about to disappear for 10 days … everyone i tell about this thinks i’m crazy, so that fact that i think it sounds amazing makes me almost certain i am crazy … i think spending 10 days meditating, not communicating with anyone in any way, with no distractions what so ever seems like a bloody amazing way to learn about myself …
to each their own i guess … so i will be back again on the 29th … and hopefully i won’t be schizophrenic by then … then i am back for a couple days to take care of odds and ends, then i am going to visit an orphanage south of nairobi and a youth centre east of nairboi (maybe) … and then am off to uganda … can’t wait …
Filed under: Kenya
a public service announcement …
if you ever need a water purifier … get STERIpen … its a little light you shine in the water and it treats it instantly and easily …
i was putting mine to great use until it broke in Sudan … the wonderful people at STERIpen and Ram Mountaineering in Cape Town, South Africa have gone a MILE out of their way to help me out …
they will save me literally hundreds of dollars that i otherwise would have spent on bottled water … and bottled water is f**king evil and we should all be ashamed of ourselves …
anyway …
this place is barack-crazy …
yesterday i heard a song on the bus … called “Barack, Barack, Barack” … that had kind of a poppy beat, with lyrics sung reggae … but all the worlds were about his policies …
“barack, barack, he won’t cut and run … barack, barack, he supports a reasonable timetable for troop withdrawl … barack, barack, on immigration he feels ………….”
weird …
and also … kenyan men LOVE business casual … ever single man i see, rich or poor, is wearing dress pants and a dress shirt … i am the most underdressed person at the party …
i am just chilling out, waiting to go on a bloody expensive safari … for this price … i better see some animals killing each other … or at least lions feeding with the blood all over their faces or something … i also want to get charged by a rhino … have you ever SEEN a rhino … they are like a bulldog, with a bigass horn that weighs (i just wrote “ways” … wtf?) a couple tonnes … i feel like if that doesn’t scare me, nothing will …
i am starting to figure out all the different ways they try to skim money from my pockets, and am getting better everyday at beating them to the punch …
gotta run … i just got called …
see ya’ll in a few days …
Filed under: Kenya | Tags: Bus rides, Child Soldiers, Kakuma, Kenya, Lost Boys, Nairobi, Safari, Sudan, Urban Life, Vipassana Meditation
omething a little more light perhaps ???
i am back in nairobi … for years i used to talk with pride about being a ‘rural boy’ … but i am increasingly thinking that is b.s. … i LOOOVE cities …
nairobi prolly has all the worst traits of cities … crime (nai-robbery), pollution, noise, traffic, poverty, overcrowding, emotional distance, etc … but i still LOVE it … it’s so exciting, there is so much energy and action and new surprises around every corner … i still love small town life, and hope to find it again when i am older … but i can’t wait to be living in toronto or vancouver in 9 months …
the trip was fun … the schedules coming south from Loki are not nearly as nice as those going north (leave in the A.M, arrive in the P.M.) … after spending a day in kakuma (one of those places where you say … “why does ANYBODY live here?” … it’s literally like the surface of mars … and HOT … so hot that after spending 2 months in the sun in sudan, including walking for an hour everyday within a days drive of the sahara desert … i got a SUNBURN … in kakuma … wierd) … i was forced to take a 4:00pm bus to arrive in Kitale at 2:00am and Nairobi at 9:00am …
it left on time (a huge surprise), but thanks to frequent delays along the way, the trip took until noon … it’s fun spending 20 hours riding on a bus over 3rd world “roads”, crammed into one tiny little spot because the bus has at least 1/5 more people than it is designed to carry … trying to sleep in spite of the bumps that toss everyone 6 inches into the air …
the trip did have 2 hi-lights though … 1. when just after midnight we came upon a river which had gone over the road … they made us all get out and walk through ankle deep water while the bus took a long run at the crossing … then we had to scramble up a hill for nearly a km in the dark to get to where the bus finally stopped … so wish i had a picture of that bus going through the river … i have a feeling that is a once in a lifetime, though i am in africa for another 8 months, so maybe not … 2. the lovely girl beside me … named leah, who (in typical african fashion) went MILES out of her way to insure that i was taken care of , including buying me mangoes, and even spending half an hour with me after we arrived in nairobi helping me to find the best taxi … and she didn’t even ask for money (though i offered) … an african first …
i also THINK i got robbed a long the way … sort of … we made a stop around 5 am in a small city and i had to pee … so i quickly got off the bus and went to find a toilet … i asked somebody and they pointed in a direction, and, walking fast that way, a man started talking to me (as they often do) … he followed me and kept talking to me … something about money and my bag … though i wasn’t really listening to him, as i was trying to find a toilet and get back to the bus before it felt compelled to depart … i was in and out and he was still there, and taking notice of him for the first time, i saw his hands were concealed in his shirt and he looked at me and said “i’m dangerous you know” … i smile at him and said “so am i” and walked back to the bus … when i was back on the bus it set in that he MAY have been trying to rob me … though i can’t be sure and am quite certain that he did not have a weapon … good times …
oh, one random fact from the sudan for you … my greatest helper there was a man named William … he is going to university in Uganda on the generosity of canadians, and he is really a great guy … as i was going to sudan, i was reading this book called “what is the what” … written by/about a guy called “Achak Deng” … who came from a place called Marial Bai, which is only about 90 minutes drive from where i was staying near Wanjok …
it is the story of when the war first broke out in the early 80’s … the thousands of young boys who, with nowhere to go, just started walking towards ethiopia … after settling into ethiopia, the government kicked them out, and 80,000 of them settled in Kakuma, Kenya, in what was the largest refugee camp in the world …
it follows achak from his childhood pre-war through his first year in Atlanta, where he was settled by the U.N. after more than a decade in Kakuma … it is a tragic story, as the walk of the ‘lost boys’ cost thousands of young boys lives by war, disease, starvation, thirst, falling in wells at night, and most dramatically, lions and crocodiles …
one day i asked william about the war in the region, and he mentioned that they had been hard hit and many had gone to ethiopia … i said ‘wow, do you know achak deng?’ … he said “of COURSE i do, he is from marial bai, we lived very close in Kakuma, how do you know achak” … i said “he wrote a book that was Time Magazine’s book of the year, and i read it between Nairobi and Loki, it’s an incredible story, did you walk to ethiopia?” … “yes, achak and I were in the same group” …
it’s rare to read a book that tears your heart out by the story it tells, that makes you question humanity in 100 ways … it’s SHOCKING to realized that someone you know well LITERALLY lived the story that was told in the book, to the letter …
their paths did diverge after Kakuma though … Achak stayed … William returned to Sudan as a young boy of 12 and joined the army … when i was 12, i was in grade 6 and my biggest concerns were playing baseball, making the teacher happy and working up the courage to tell a girl i liked her … when he was 12, William had his own AK-47, was fully trained to use it in battle, and was taking the lives of enemy soldiers …
how could i relate to that ???
ANYWAY … i’m planning to stay in Nairobi for a few weeks … i spoiled myself with an expensive little 4 day safari starting tomorrow … then i am heading north east to check out a small water project in a little community … then i will be back for a few days before i HOPE (pending approval) to be doing 10-day Vipassana Meditation … you spend 10 days in complete silence and interact only with yourself … self-transformation through self-observation … for someone who loves personal growth as much as i do, it promises to be one of the experiences of my life … and since i spent a LOT of time in Sudan pondering the relation between body and soul, it has arrived at the perfect time …
i may be back on again soon, but it may not be until after safari …
peace and love
Filed under: Sudan | Tags: Despair, Growth, Hatred, Life, Poverty, Self-image, South Sudan, Struggle, War
this post is a challenge …
i am now out of south sudan, back in lokichoggio, kenya (barely) …
the previous 7 weeks have been … profound … in my life … and i feel like to help you understand what i have … lived, i need to show you pieces of my journey, for to speak to you now, from the destination, would undermine the journey … just as a photo-finish can never accurately encapsulate a race …
with that in mind, i set out to type up my personal journal … i planned to pull excerpts from it that could offer something of a window into my mind and my heart as i struggled to come to terms with the sudan … and myself …
but the time just was not there, and now it is 1:15am in Loki, and with a mountain left to climb (proverbial this time), a borrowed laptop with a screwy space-bar and a non-functional USB port (to access the first 20 pages, already typed on my USB key) … i am forced to settle for a view from the finish line …
i am not the same person i was 50 days ago when i fearfully boarded successively smaller UN World Food Programme flights on successively more desolate airstrips in the middle a country which has known only 12 years of peace since 1955 …
what changed me ??? … how am i different ???
it was not the things i saw … or heard … or experienced …
it was …
the dissonance between my reaction to the experience … and my image of myself as ‘good’ … that came crashing down on top of me like a sudden tropical downpour … and left me broken in the mud …
through the sickness and the heat and the insects and the frustration and the boredom and the severe culture shock that comes with being in a place that is UTTERLY UNIMAGINABLE for someone who has never been there … i was stretched and i was beaten … physically, emotionally, spiritually …
enter … the dinka …
one day i saw a little boy with TB … his arms and legs were as big around as my middle fingers … his belly swollen and tears in his eyes … i cried for him … and for the dozens of other little boys and girls just like him who i saw every day collecting water from the same muddy puddles they bathed in … i saw him, and i cried … but i did not break …
one day i sat and listened to stories of the innocent in a land of war … one after another, after another speak with blank faces of standing strong and brave in the face of attacks, but being beaten into submission by famine and starvation … they flee with nothing … their families die … they are treated as animals and slaves by their arab masters … but they live … and start over … in a land called Darfur … stability again becomes war and genocide … they flee with nothing … their families die … but now … without blankets, or pots to cook with, or cans to carry water, or even a roof to keep out the rain … they gather food from the trees … and areHAPPY because they are free … they have peace … i heard them … and i hurt in my soul … but i did not break …
i could say that the i believe that the Dinka are a beautiful and wonderful culture … but that would be a lie …
“lazy, greedy and corrupt”
these are not my words … though i would not for a moment disagree with them …
these are the words of an American who I got to know during my first 24 hours in sudan … i wrote in my journal how “i hate to stereotype, but he seems to fit the quintessential American, ignorant, supremacist mold to a tee” because he just “didn’t understand how beautiful cultural diversity can be when you get to know it” … i read those words of mine last night and i laughed at the irony …
how ignorant of ME … to judge HIM … when i … knew … nothing …
over the following 7 weeks, i came to know the culture for myself … i spent much of my time with various Kenyan and Ugandan ex-pats working for international NGO’s, the UN and local organizations operated by westerners … the favorite past-time of ex-pats in south sudan is complaining about south sudan … every complaint breaks down to the Dinka …
unanimously …
lazy … greedy … corrupt …
seeing starving children suffer and die made me weep, but it did not break me … hearing stories of unimaginable pain made me mourn, but it did not break me …
i was told (NOT asked) every day, 100 times a day, by the same people every day … “KA-WA-JA! YOU GIVE ME 1 POUND!”
“YOU GIVE ME SWEET!”
“YOU GIVE ME MONEY”
“YOU GIVE ME FOOTBALL”
“YOU GIVE ME 1POUND”
“YOU GIVE ME ONE POUND”
“YOU GIVE ME ONE POUND”
… day after day after day … people who sit around and do nothing all day … who individually have cattle wealth worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they are unwilling to use to feed their families or send their children to school … because cattle are used to buy wives … demand that i give them money … give their children money … day after day after day …
“i’m sorry i can’t” becomes “i can’t” becomes “no” becomes “NO” becomes “NO!!!” …
and one day … before me stands a starving child … the fact that his father does not feed him is not his fault … he is hungry … he is dirty … his clothes are old and torn and his only possession is a toy top made from a coke bottle cap with a bic pen lid stuck through it …
and i hate him …
“please, hungry” …
“NO!!! … how many times do i have to tell you??? … WHAT is the MATTER with YOU???|
am i kind ???
am i caring ???
am i good ???
tell me why, then, do i despise the oppressed for being broken ??? … hate the impoverished for being poor ??? …
stretched and beaten by homesickness and by malaria and by 50 degrees celsius and no comfort and no recreation and no luxury … i was weakened …
and weakened… i was broken …by myself …
through the darkest days of my life i wrote and i thought and i fought to come to terms with me … with who i am … with who i am not… how does a ‘good’ person become upset with a starving child who is begging for food ??? … CAN a person who treats those who suffer with contempt be considered good? kind? caring? …
what…does that make me ???
and it’s funny … one morning i came out my door and some kids were running by … the same kids who, with no conception of privacy, everyday peer in my windows whenever i am inside and demand sweets and money … they ran by … and i smiled …
because … they are children …
and in spite of everything in their world … war and poverty and disease that you can not even fathom … they laugh … and they run … and they play …
they are children … and when i stopped ACTING like a ka-wa-ja (white man) in that moment … and started acting like their friend … like their brother … i realized in way i never had before … that while cultures may be oppressed or may oppress … may thrive or struggle to survive … children are children … people are people … and we really are all the same …
i didnt hate them … though i may have been weak and took it out on them …
i hated their culture … for the kind of people it created … people who have been forced to rely on aid to survive for so long that they are unwilling and unable to help themselves … people who think that a woman is a possession to be owned and who should only stop working to give birth … people who think that teaching kids to raise cattle is more important than teaching them how to read … people who think dogs deserve to be kicked and stoned to death whenever possible … who believe that foreigners who come to help should be grateful to be allowed the opportuniy to help such high and noble men …
but cultures change … peace brings outside influence … and slowly the old ways are broken while new norms emerge in their place … and the people change with them …
like me …
sudan taught me that growth and rebirth are always possible, but only when the walls are torn down and you are willing and rebuild anew from the rubble …
my sense of self was bloody and broken … the deepest darkness of my life followed … and rebuilding my image of myself as worthy as a human being was the greatest struggle of my life …
but the easy path is never the most rewarding … and i have never felt more in love with humanity, stronger, happier or more confident than i do right now …
when i told Father Bernhard of how important my time in Sudan was, and how i never could have uncovered and defeated my own demons if i had listened to everyone and not gone there … he said … in his typical fashion “you know, of course, if you don’t cross the river, you will never know what is on the other side.” Could you say it better?
this was just one of my sudan experiences … i could go on …but it is 3:32am, and tomorrow is a pretty big day … i have to gorge on food and sit by a pool and go hang out with some friends at local NGOs before I start the long journey back to Nairobi …
