So I survived Buddha’s Bootcamp! The twelve days felt like over a month and, although I didn’t leopard crawl under fences or scale the walls, I did find myself resolutely marching beyond the course boundary to my car a couple of times – day 2 and day 7 I think … although I’m not quite sure what I was planning on doing once I reached it. My key was locked away in an undisclosed location – together with my wallet, my pen, my iPod and my phone – and I’ve never hot-wired a car before.

Noble Silence began at 7pm on the day of arrival and lasted a full ten days. Apart from the obvious No Talking, Noble Silence also means No Gesturing and No Eye Contact, as well as nothing that distracts fellow meditators, like Yoga and Jogging … protesting that I was in fact a Runner and not a Jogger left them unmoved and I was forced to be late for sittings just so I could gently disguise my brief cardio as a slightly flustered rushing. And all the banned activities (and then some …) mentioned in my previous post were clearly pointed out during orientation and written on boards that indicated the days schedule; the glaring 4am start the most obvious sign that we had clearly all lost the plot.

The things I missed most out of all the banned activities? you wonder. Probably reading … followed closely by the sexual misconduct – ten days without words is Easy compared to ten days without touch. There is perhaps good reason, therefore, that there are separate male and female dining halls, separate male and female entrances to the meditation hall and the walking paths used were separated into male and female areas by a ‘no-man’s-land’, making the long country grasses completely redundant.

Pain is now my friend! After over 120 hours of sitting in postures for up to two hours at a time, determinedly not moving while observing and working through the agony, it’s no surprise that for the first two days during sittings and instruction, I heard “With a clear and calm mind, focus on your desperation” rather than “your respiration“. And as soon as one session ended, we were told to “Take break 5 minutes then come back to dhamma hall for further instruction”, 5 minutes, approximately the amount of time it took to get just one foot working again before the next sitting … they may as well have hacked through my joints with a blunt saw. That’s when the one-legged man said, “Who’s sorry now?”

So … would I do it again? you just have to know. Hell yeah! I’ve learned Buddha’s technique of Vipassana meditation, learned to smile through torturous pain and learned not to speak … the latter, the most commendable by far. My nickname changed rapidly from Lady Penelope to Lady No Words since, according to the volunteers doing seva, I was the single soul who did not ask for anything or in fact utter a word the entire course. I kid you not! Perhaps I take things too seriously or perhaps I really did need word rehab.

So I’ve done the love. I’ve SO done the prayer. And now all I can think about is pizza. Overflowing with knowledge and understanding and a torrent of unspoken words, however, I can’t help but wonder if that makes me a good dinner date or not. I have come out of these long and mostly agonising days with real hunger – not just for pizza but for wisdom – and the thing with walking this path is that there is such a vast pool of it – wisdom, not pizza – and no end to the number of wise and intelligent gurus; from freak to straight; imparting their very own interpretation of the essence of it. Even the longest journey starts with only one step and each one doesn’t represent a different path but rather a different pair of shoes to walk it in.

With the year I’ve had so far, when I grow up I think I’m gonna be a Buddhist nun. But only if I get to keep the shhhoes …