Master Goenka was born in Burma, of Indian origin, into a family of considerable wealth and business interests. After many years managing and growing his fortune, he began suffering from migraines, and having the means to do something about it, he traveled the world in search of relief. He became addicted to morphine just to keep the pain at bay and go on living the same relentless business life he had always led. Then a friend (himself a great Vipassana teacher) asked him to try this method, and talked him into doing a 10-day course.

By the end of it, his migraines had vanished, and he continued practicing as a form of therapy. He decided to go to India, where he spent something like 14 years refining the technique further and further.

He returned to Burma, and a while later his mother, who lived in India, fell ill. He decided to go back to India to teach her how to meditate. Some family members and friends joined in to try it as well, and given the benefits most of them experienced, demand for more courses never let up. Before he knew it, he was spending his life teaching them.

So he moves back and forth between Burma and India, and an idea comes to him: to create a vipassana meditation center in Burma where the stay and the course would be completely free of charge (as they are everywhere in the world today).

His friends told him: "In a country with so many needs as this one, everyone will come and you'll go bankrupt." But when you do 10 days and actually try this, if you arrive without any real intention to learn, you might as well go beg in the street. This place is not exactly a shelter.

The outcome of that project is that today this teacher is recognized worldwide, has lectured at the United Nations and similar bodies, and receives constant invitations. If any of you want to hear him, look him up on Google: vipassana meditation, master Goenka.

Dhamma centers (that's the name to look for) exist all over the world, and you have to put your name on a waiting list, fill out an application, and wait to be accepted.

One of the most sought-after centers, with long queues especially in summer, is in France.

By the time the course ended, I don't think any of us left without making some kind of donation, and many people were pulling out credit cards to contribute extra, to help these centers keep being built around the world.

In Mexico the only center is in Valle de Bravo, and because it's so far from Asia, it wasn't among the ones they showed us in photos. Around here the conversation tends to focus on the centers in India, Australia, Germany, France, Nepal, Thailand, Burma, and so on, mainly Europe and Asia. There are also centers in Canada and the U.S., several across different states, though I'm not sure how many exist in Latin America.

On the last day, when we were finally allowed to speak again, once I shook off my daze and made a couple of phone calls, I started talking with my fellow students, men and women alike. I'll tell you: the place fills with such a positive energy that you start feeling intensely happy without knowing quite why (at least I did), and I was still asking myself: how did I manage it? It was brutal! Thank God it's over!

Then on the bus ride back, where this time I preferred the company of the Asian students (after all, there were only twelve of us Westerners: five men and three women), I had fewer but far richer conversations, with a yoga teacher, with a woman from Burma, and with the first person I had spoken to on arrival, the woman from Singapore.

In the course there were four or five very young women between 17 and 22 years old (who, being Asian, looked even younger). One of them had an expression I can't quite describe, a look of peace, serenity, and happiness. At her age, she had already done this course ten times.

Every day more people become interested in learning this technique, and I believe that if it keeps spreading this way, maybe we can aspire to a better life in this world. Because with this technique, the most beautiful thing that gradually happens to you is a feeling of harmony, an absence of any kind of violence, and compassion toward every living being on this already so battered planet of ours.

It all sounds very utopian, of course, but I ask myself: "Isn't something that can only bring you positive things worth trying?" What are 10 days out of an entire lifetime full of noise, a life in which we waste so much time like ants, just accumulating, running, trampling everything in our way, because we're always in a hurry, hurry, hurry, to what end? So that time rushes by and we finally arrive at death?

Today I see with a little more clarity how absurd reality in this world can be, and more than ever I admire those people who manage to live outside the system.

I want to close this account, which I hope hasn't tired you too much, with a fragment of a poem by a poet I have always admired, one whose way of seeing and living can only be described as Dhamma, Vipassana. Some of you will surely know it already.

Ser en la vida romero.

Romero solo que pasa siempre por caminos nuevos.

Ser en la vida romero, sin otro oficio, sin otro nombre y sin pueblo.

Ser en la vida romero, romero solo romero.

Que no hagan callo las cosas, ni en el alma ni en el cuerpo.

Pasar por todo una vez, una vez solo y ligero.

Que no se acostumbre el pie, a pisar el mismo suelo.

Ni en el tablao de la farsa, ni en la losa de los Templos.

Para que nunca recemos como el sacristán los rezos.

Ni como el cómico viejo digamos los versos.

Que no hagan callo las cosas, ni en el alma, ni en el cuerpo.

Pasar por todo una vez, una vez solo y ligero.

LEON FELIPE.

(Literally: To be in life a pilgrim. A pilgrim alone who always travels new roads. To be in life a pilgrim, with no other trade, no other name, and no hometown. To be in life a pilgrim, a pilgrim and only a pilgrim. Let things form no calluses, neither on the soul nor on the body. To pass through everything once, just once and lightly. Let the foot never grow accustomed to treading the same ground. Not on the stage of the farce, nor on the flagstone of the Temples. So that we never recite prayers the way the sacristan recites them. Nor speak verses the way the old comedian speaks them. Let things form no calluses, neither on the soul nor on the body. To pass through everything once, just once and lightly.)

Be happy.