For as long as I can remember the topics of sex, shit and religion have permeated my humor, and so naturally my jokes would often go down against a backdrop of controversy. This incident nearly got me kicked off the premises of a Vipassana meditation centre. Were it not for the tears, snot & gob rivering down the front of my chest for a good hour or so, I would have been asked, surely, to pack my bag and go down to the main road to wait for the next bus back to the city of Tai-Chung…but nobody (including myself) was really sure about my condition – it could just as easily have been a serious breakdown of sorts…and, at any rate, I could not walk while being in this state of hysterics. But let me start the story at the beginning.
It was Chinese New Year of 2004 and I was in the mountains attending a 10 day retreat that would teach me how to meditate (supposedly exactly) as the Buddha taught 2500 years ago…a method of meditation called Vipassana. We were 80+ meditators spending at least 9 hours each day in a huge meditation hall…for all I knew it could have been 27 hours per day. We observed all sorts of restrictions and rules, the most important being a thing called noble silence. This meant no communication whatsoever, even to the extent of not making eye contact of any kind.
Very soon it became apparent that burps & farts were allowed during noble silence…and I was not surprised ‘coz I have come to expect as much from the regular Jan AllaChan in Taiwan…one sometimes got the impression that these utterances were status symbols in their community…and at times it happened that one had to swerve in order to avoid some newly released fart…sometimes in a very public place, I’ll have you know, like the Taipei train station for instance!...
Back to the mountains & noble silence…We all watched a video each evening, of a discussion or discourse, wherein the teacher attempted to explain some of the most frequently asked questions the meditators would normally have at a particular stage of the training…and so he also spoke about a stage called “bhanga”. This was where, as he put it, one would start experiencing “the dissolution of the apparent solidity of the body into subtle vibrations that are continually arising and passing away”…this was also referred to as “old impurities (sankharas) lying dormant in the unconscious” that were starting to rise to the surface level of the mind. My dopper-enkelgereformeerde mind took it that my sins parked in my cells, and that this meditation would fiddle until they came loose and floated away. Thus, at long last, I had some hope of ridding myself of all my sins and approaching salvation…
These “impurities” coming loose had the effect of causing one to be irritable after some time of practice…and so by about day 3 I started to feel increasingly intolerant what with all the blatant farting and burping going on around me all the time…especially ‘coz I seemed to manage my own gasses and flows quite privately, so to speak…I couln’t stand all the goings on in the meditation hall, and of course, by this time I was taking great care to become aware of every single incident, however slight it might be…I suppose this is what we would call “samadhi” - concentration or control of one’s mind…I had no doubt though that I was surely not supposed to be concentrating on that aspect of things…For a solid 2 days I endured these annoying farts…by now, the whole thing had nothing to do with the Buddha or sankaras or salvation…or bangha even…it was just these completely disgusting people testing me to the limits!
On day 5 I got an opportunity for my revenge! I found myself alone at a long row of washbasins, brushing teeth, while the 10 or so shower cubicles behind me were occupied…and, I had a sizable fart asking permission to exit. I contemplated for a split-sec what I should do – there are ways, after all, to minimize or neutralize this sort of thing…The rebel in me decided that this was pay-back time! Besides, I’d had a case of the s.o.c.k.s. coming on for just too long now! (Severe Overload of Chinese Kak Syndrome). Bugger the silencing option!
So, instead of attempting to put the brakes on this dubious pocket of air slowly moving towards daylight, I gave it an allmighty push as if I’m going to kickstart my Honda off-road scrambler. The resultant noise was very much in the scrambler’s league…
Of course the plan was to get the hell out of there before anybody could open a cubicle and see that it’s the Farang (foreigner) that has committed this thunderous fart. Alas, I underestimated my own desperate desire to have some relief from ancient sankaras and the resultant irritabilities…and I was surely due for an “up” after having groveled way-down-under for many a day…Not that I had any say in the matter. This phase of elation kicked in with such a god-all-mighty noise that my laughing muscles went into code-red…action instantaneously! I went down like a sack of potatoes, toothbrush waving – the mad conductor…and there the juices started flowing from every conceivable orifice…That I did not pee in my pants remains a mystery to this day…All this in the middle of noble silence!
Soon enough I had a crowd of Chinese ladies moving closer to see what the crises was. Nobody seemed concerned about the fart. Even the breaking of noble silence was secondary. The main thing was to attend to this poor foreigner that was obviously having an attack of sorts…
After a short while the bhikkhuni (nun) and an assistant came to remove the disturbance. By this time my face was swollen red as if I’d been crying for days. My elation was acquiring a very unpleasant aspect around my ribcage…If I knew who to pray to in that moment, I would have begged for the laughter to stop right there and then…Each new bout of laughter would set a noise free that reminded me of “maarvark” (as kids we’d deliberately utter this high pitched shout to convince my dad of the efficacy of his corporal punishment, and thus we’d get a discount on his ses-van-die-bestes)…and each new “maarvark” would throw me back into the contracting aching ribcage and the accompanying flow of juices…
How the nun and her worried assistant managed to get me out of that stupor I can honestly not say…I have vague recollections of being left alone in a room and being told very sternly to calm down. I missed a full 2 hour meditation session before I could pull myself together sufficiently to resume meditating. By midnight that evening I still felt as if a truck had driven over my vengeful ribcage…
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