Have you ever found yourself pleasantly entertained by the sensations of a fly on your face? That could mean only two things; you are either going nuts, or you’re on a meditation retreat –or another intensive experience that is utterly unentertaining. For the new few weeks I will be writing on why on earth do we have to put ourselves through periods of serious self-examination, as in my case: meditation.

Did you ever notice that there is always the same cast of characters on retreats or trainings? There’s the fundamentalist that is always first in, last out, asking questions that demonstrate his superiority in contrast to us normal folks (“is it okay to sleep only two hours and start sitting again?”) Then we have the old fellow who keeps bouncing up and down to sleep (I am ashamed to admit thinking “Oh, just die already, pops!”  once during a retreat) and the skinny health freak that keeps burping up his vegan food. Don’t forget the guy that sniffs loud and short (“learn to BREATHE, dude!”) and the girl that starts sobbing each time the words ‘self’ and ‘love’ are mentioned in the same sentence (this actually doesn’t irritate me but makes me feel sad for her). I by the way have no illusion that I’m any less part of this colorful cast. My guess is as the “snobby yoga type”…

And the best thing is; sniffy, nazi, burpy, sleepy and sobby are always, I repeat, always sitting next to you. It’s like a natural law –the same that puts the one crying baby at the airport in the apartment next to yours halfway across the world.

However petty it can make you feel, irritation is usually a big aspect of doing retreats or trainings (and, okay, of life in general but let’s try and be specific here). What I have found the best irritation diminishing tactic is actually getting to know the people that irritate us. They become human, layered, kind and there’s a chance that you will get endeared by their specific brand of annoyance, rather than irritated. However, on silent retreats this tactic can prove difficult. Plus, getting rid of the irritation is not really the point even. For a red-blooded Buddhist, irritation and inconvenience are actually beneficial to your practice. To use Chögyam Trungpa’s words in this case; the bad news is the good news. As a meditation practitioner, you must sustain quite an affair with irritation, boredom, imperfection and all the other edgy stuff that we usually avoid.

This is one reason why going on retreats is so good. They’re packed with all of the above. It’s a bit like spiritual S.M. but the reward is satisfying. Still, if you’re anything like me, you spend a considerable amount of time on retreat wondering what the hell you are doing there. On a Saturday night when you would usually be at least halfway drunk and on your way to a club, you find yourself locked between the irritation dwarfs. Lovely. Not to mention the physical and emotional pains that plague you when you sit seven, eight, nine hours a day.

In order to survive intensive periods of practice -and maybe more amazingly, to keep coming back to them- it is essential that we know what the hell we are doing. When there seem to be many reasons not to practice -the inconvenience, time, sore ass, money, the “the guy living next to me seems pretty happy without ever sitting one minute in meditation, why can’t I just be like that”-argument. So I personally need One Big Fat Reason that counters the zillion reasons not to.

I have one.

I’ll reveal it in next week’s blog. (Yes people, I'm playing the cliffhanger card here!)

Wishing you a lovely weekend.