In the Samadhi stage, which I've already described at some length, we continued doing exercises, and by now you can sweep through your body in pairs.

This means moving mentally from top to bottom once again, starting with the face, head, shoulders, and arms, all the way down to the tips of your toes. Then you travel back up and finish at the face.

If you're doing this correctly, you may begin to experience fewer sankaras, and you can move on to tracing the spinal cord, concentrating on whether there are blockages or not, feeling whether the energy flows freely through it.

The sensation, and it's different for everyone, is that energy can move through it without obstruction. If that doesn't happen, you go back to the earlier exercises.

But if, working through this, you do manage to feel the energy running freely, you'll move on to imagining that you're pouring a glass of cold water over your head. With this comes a sensation of release.

Concentrate on feeling how that water slides down your body from your crown.

This is the final part of the method at this primary stage, which is the one I experienced. It shouldn't be treated as a fixed goal you pressure yourself to reach with every sitting.

Why not? Because something as profound as Nibbana (Nirvana) isn't reached simply by willing it into being. It's an entire process of sustained work, carried out under the guidance of people who are genuinely qualified to lead you there.

This part (which I haven't experienced yet) comes with physical sensations that arise and pass away. It refers to the apparent solidification of body and mind, which then dissolves, and through which one experiences the ultimate reality of matter, mind, and mental formations. Everything becomes vibrations, oscillations, coming and going with tremendous speed. Upon experiencing this, we would say, in the words of the Buddha: "the whole world is on fire, the whole world rises up in smoke, the whole world burns, the whole world vibrates."

To reach this stage of dissolution (bhanga), the meditator needs only to develop attention and equanimity, much the way a scientist watches an image grow sharper under a microscope. Because by developing attention and equanimity, you build the habit of observing these very subtle realities.

It will be genuinely pleasurable, because all manner of pain will begin to dissolve, and all those areas that had no sensation will have disappeared.

The Buddha described it this way:

Siempre que ocurra una de estas experiencias del proceso mental de surgir y desaparecer el experimentará felicidad absoluta, gozo, placer.

El alcanza una sabiduría inmortal eterna.

(Literally: Whenever one of these experiences of the mental process of arising and passing away occurs, he will experience absolute happiness, joy, pleasure. He attains an eternal, immortal wisdom.)

Reaching this does not mean we'll now walk through life indifferent, numb, or cold, as though having achieved our own liberation we simply stop caring about everyone else. On the contrary, because in possessing a real equanimity we could call it "blessed, or sacred, indifference." It is a dynamic quality, an expression of a pure mind.

When you free your mind from blind reactions, it begins, for the first time, to act in a more positive, creative, and productive way, for your own benefit and for the benefit of others.

With this equanimity, what arises instead are things like a pure mind, goodwill, a genuine desire to be of use to others without expecting anything in return.

Panna. In Panna, one begins to experience wisdom.

This will be the hardest part for me to explain, perhaps because wisdom isn't something that can be transmitted from one person to another, and perhaps because each person's wisdom is their own.

For me, it meant understanding things I had spent those ten days turning over, analyzing, revisiting from my personal life.

Things that, before I entered the course, had been sources of anxiety, and that I felt lifting from me in those moments, leaving me with peace and something like happiness.

I felt I understood the why behind many of the things that have happened to me, that are happening to me, and perhaps how to navigate others going forward. I understood with startling clarity just how much we fantasize about our lives and the expectations we build around them.

None of this means I came home and my life changed a hundred percent, because I think that would have left me feeling worse than when I'd started, and it isn't what I was hoping for anyway.

I arrived home feeling a little like I was inside a film (as has happened to me at other moments in life, and perhaps to you as well), as though what you're doing isn't quite real and they're about to call the last take.

I felt slow, calm, and eager to talk about all of this with my family and friends. There was a feeling something like the one I used to get years ago playing competitive games, when you manage to beat your opponent in a match that was clean and good for both of you.

And so days began to pass, then weeks, and now more than a month.

I'm still meditating, though I only manage half an hour, or an hour at most, because there are things to do and I haven't exactly turned into a deep meditator.

I don't intend to force anything. I like things to happen naturally, and I loved Vipassana meditation, but I'm not sure I'll take another course that long.

For now I don't want to think about it, but I feel well, and even though I know other things have contributed to that, this course helped me enormously.

I might like to try another kind of meditation at some point, just to have something to compare against. Because being in Asia, where we'll likely stay for a few years, there are opportunities everywhere you look.

Though some schools in India are said to have lost their standing, I'd like to go to one there. There are month-long courses with fewer restrictions, and since a friend of mine just went, when she gets back, probably not until December, I plan to ask her a lot of questions.

If what she tells me seems worth it, I'll write something about it here.

Sanuk.