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Vipassana – Commentary Lesson

Hello and welcome to the new commentary section of the effortless English.

I can’t always get a conversation with my friends about the different topics. In fact, it’s sometimes hard to get good quality sound when I do that. Sound usually is quite bad when I talked to them in a bar or even in the apartment.

So, I’m going to try something new. Just do a commentary kind of like an unplanned talk show. I will just chat about the lesson topic, the article topic. But with no plan, no scrip.

So, this one is for the Vipassana article and about three years ago, I did a Vipassana mediation course. It was a 10-day mediation course. I actually did it in Florida, in the United States.

Vipassana is a… it means insight meditation, it’s kind of meditation. I guess it’s a Buddhist meditation although there’s not really a lot of religious teaching around it. You can be any religion and do Vipassana meditation.

And it’s basically, a system, a way of examining, looking at, your brain, your mind and your body. So it’s just paying attention basically to your mind and your body.

In the article, I started off very dramatically, describing this intense pain that I felt at one point in the meditation course I did.

So, a very intensive course I did, 10 days, meditating all day, very positive. But because of the way I am, my personality, I tend to do things very strongly sometimes, sometimes too strongly.

In fact, Peen, one of our members, sent me an email saying “Oh, my God! What were you doing? That’s not real Vipassana. You shouldn’t be torturing yourself with pain”. And of course he’s right.

In fact, the Vipassana teacher at my course, I told him, “Oh, I’m in so much pain, but I’m trying not to move”. Because I’m not supposed to move. I’m supposed to observe the pain. Oh, at one point, my body’s shaking because I’m… my back and my knees hurt so much and he told me, “Oh, you need to relax”.

He’s like, y’know, “it’s not a… this is not a torture exercise. So, please relax and if you’re in a lot of pain, y’know, move your body, if you need to”.

So, anyway so that, that kind of intense pain is not the normal thing you need to experience in a Vipassana retreat. So, I hope I don’t, didn’t scare all of you away from Vipassana. It’s actually very positive.

And in fact, overall, my experience with the Vipassana course was very, very positive; especially after I talked to the instructor and realized that I could relax not be so intense with it.

And at the end of the course, I felt that I had a greater awareness of myself, my own mind and my own body. And I continued to meditate for quite a while after that, every day.

But unfortunately, life intruded and I got busier and busier and I just started meditating less and less each day. Until finally I just stop doing it altogether and it’s now been, I suppose it’s been a couple years since I regularly meditated every day.

And it’s really something you should do every day. It’s like running I consider it. It kind of mental exercise. You can think of it that way.

You need to exercise your mind every day just like you need to exercise your body. And with meditation, it’s the same thing, you really need to do it daily. So, that you can experience, y’know, a deeper and deeper awareness.

And it has various benefits, but anyway and there are lots of different schools of meditation, Vipassana’s only one. There are Tibetan styles meditation. There are, there is endless number of kinds of meditation.

Each one attends to appeal to different kinds of personalities, different kinds of people. But they all have similar benefits, I think, if done well.

So, anyway I started thinking about Vipassana lately because my life is been quite unbalanced. I’ve been so busy with my students here in San Francisco and the website and still doing a little bit with The Linguist.

Just started, of course just my general social life, y’know. I’ve got to take care of my friends and Tomoe and lots of things to juggle, lots of things to balance. Not so easy sometimes.

So, I started thinking of Vipassana. I should really be doing Vipassana. It’s very healthy for me. It’s a very good practice, both at a very surface level… At a surface level, it helps you kind of stay calm and kind of keep your emotions from getting too crazy. And in a much deeper level, it is kind of, I don’t know, I want to say religious but spiritual practice.

So, anyway for all those reasons I’ve been thinking about it again lately. I’ve also been thinking about running again. I used to run quite a bit. I used to train for marathons. I did a couple marathons and I felt great when did that.

My body was very healthy. Again, I got really busy I also moved to Bangkok, Thailand which has a lot of air pollution and I didn’t enjoy running there.

So, for that reason also for a couple years I have not run. So, I’ve been neglecting my mind and my body lately. That’s why I decided to write this article about Vipassana. Because I’ve been thinking about it.

So, anyway in the article, at the end, I get you a website you can check out. If you’re interested in meditation and particularly Vipassana meditation, you go to www.dhamma.org and you can find more information about courses. They have Vipassana courses and Vipassana centers all over the world. Every inhabited continent has I think, at least one, probably many.

So, anyway check it out. It is quite positive and it’s not quite as torturous and painful as my article might imply.

In general, one last issue here before I go. I’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of life balance. Balancing the different things in our life. Everyone listening to this is trying to learn language. You’re trying to improve your English. For me, I’m trying to learn Spanish.

Most of us, also work, a lot of us have girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands or wives. Some of you may have children. Of course, we have our bodies to take care of, physical exercise, eating well. We have a community of friends and extended family, such as our grandparents, uncles, aunts.

So, y’know, how do we balance all those things? How do we find the time to take care of all of those things?

And y’know, some of you also, like me, maybe starting your own programs or little businesses, you might be entrepreneurs. That adds yet another thing to balance and work on.

So, we have all these things we want to improve in our lives and keep going, and it’s quite tough, y’know. You start focusing on your body and exercising and you spend a lot of time doing that. And it’s easy to maybe forget your relationships, or maybe your job suffers a little bit, or maybe your English learning suffers a little bit.

So, it’s quite tricky, I think, to find the balance and find the time to do all of these things, and to keep them all going and to be successful in all the different areas in our lives and all the aspects of our lives.

I think we need to think about that a lot. And we need to constantly look at our lives and make sure we’ve got that balance. We’re not doing too much in one area and forgetting another area.

Y’know, we don’t want to lose our girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife just to learn English. On the other hand, we do want to continue to keep learning and developing our mind. So, we don’t want that suffering either.

One way, I think that can help with this, is multitasking, doing more than one thing it at the time. And I think exercise is an easy place to do this.

So, if you walk or you run or you work out at the gym, you can bring your iPod with you and you can listen to English at the same time. Especially, walking or running are great exercises for doing this.

I don’t always do this. I should do this more with Spanish. But sometimes I do do it. I walk around San Francisco and I’ve got my iPod in and I’m listening to Spanish at the same time. So, I’m getting exercise, I’m enjoying the city and I’m also improving my Spanish.

So, I think that’s a good idea, particularly with language learning. As you look at your own English learning plan, find ways you can learn English while doing other things, while you are on your way to work. That’s a good time to listen to English.

If you take a train or bus, well, bring your iPod and listen to effortless English while you’re on train or bus. If you drive then you can connect your iPod to your car stereo or you can burn CDs and play the CDs in your car. Either way, listen to English while you’re driving to work or coming back from work.

That’s a great time when, y’know, when you’re kind of stuck, you have no choice, you have to go to work and come back. It’s a great time to use it for learning English.

Exercise time as I just mention is also a good time. When you’re walking or running or doing Yoga, whatever, you can be listening to English at the same time.

So, finding little pieces of time like that, when you’re shopping when, you’re going grocery shopping, getting food for your apartment. That’s also a good time. You have your little iPod. You can be listening to English at all these little times during the day.

You can do it, y’know, 20 minutes in the morning and then 20-30 minutes in the afternoon, another 20-30-40 minutes in the evening. And if you use these different times, you can actually do a lot of English study. You can have a lot of English time. And you don’t need to sit down and do only English for two hours at one time.

You can spread it over the day and you can be doing some other things at the same time. Y’know, maybe your concentration isn’t 100% but it’s still useful. It’s still valuable. It can help you find that balance that you need in your life.

Because you don’t want to neglect the other parts of your life just to learn English, I know. I certainly don’t want to neglect the other parts of my life, just to learn Spanish.

So, anyway, that’s our challenge. I hope we can all do that. And I hope we can all find a balance and continue learning and continue growing and continue improving in all aspects of our lives.

Okay, I will see you next time. Give me some comments. Go to my blog. It’s www.effortlessEnglish.vox that’s V O X, V as in very, O X, so effortlessEnglish.vox.com. That’s my blog. You can leave comments.

Let me know do you like this commentary? Do you like this talk show idea? Is that… is this helpful? Or Is it not helpful? Tell me either way. Be honest, be direct.

I’m trying to improve the site. I want to make the materials easier to use, more interesting for you. But I need feedback. I need your opinions. Without your opinions, I have no idea.

I already, speak English. So, it is hard for me to judge when something is useful or when it’s not useful, when it’s too difficult or when it’s too easy, I don’t know.

So, you have to help me with that, and you help me by going to my blog and giving me a comment or emailing me at ajhoje@gmail.com, ajhoje@gmail.com.

Okay, I’ll see you next time. Good luck. Have a good time. Balance all these things in your life and keep learning English. Bye-bye.