The Edge

Friday, November 26th

Today in dynamic meditation I managed to move past the sensation of pain and keep my arms above my head for the full ten minutes.  I dived into the ocean and broke through the surface waters to discover a new freedom in my movements. I am poetry in motion and I know no boundaries. I am screaming and shaking and dancing my way to living life with the intensity of passion.  In entering into this program of meditation, I have entered a kind of madness that extricates me from the prison of my mind. It is the the shaking of the Bushmen in Africa, the dream time of the Aborigines, the stillness of the Zen Buddhists, and the laser beam of awareness, of the guru.  I am gripping the floor with my fingers (Hari calls toes fingers) and walking on my head.

I arrived early for Vipassana meditation and so had time to watch the facilitator as she walked across the floor carrying the meter long cane with which she would strike us. During the meditation she tapped me on the head and as the stick bounced off my wannabe Angela Davis Afro, I recalled a conversation I had with a man in Rishikesh about my hair.  The man, who was resident at the ashram, had approached me on the road and immediately turned the conversation to the issue of my hair. he asked me if my hair was dyed red and now fading at the roots.  When I confirmed this he launched into a long diatribe on why he thought it most un-natural for a black woman to have red hair. I challenged him. I had met his type before.  People of his ilk wanted to anthropomorphize me. Place me behind a glass case with all of my "Primitiveness" on display.  He couldn't see that I was the Hottentot Venus, blazing the trail of liberation!  All I could think as I walked away from him, was I must color those roots!

Later in the afternoon, sitting in Chaung Tzu for silent meditation I was more successful in stilling the mind.  No thoughts intruded on the silence and I left the meditation with a deep sense of peace.  From this stillness an internal voice arose and I dictated the following:

Allow life to be a synthesis of stillness and motion
Such that stillness is the container that contains action
And awareness the laser beam of clarity
That directs you as you enter into the dance

It is late afternoon when I emerge from the forth meditation for the day and my body is screaming with exhaustion.  I head back to the apartment to rest before dinner. I have made  number of acquaintances over the past few days, but I am not ready to give up my solitude.  I have spent so much time in India in the company of others that I am now appreciating time spent on my own.