Pariyatti

Ch. 5 - Right Effort from Journey of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner TOWARD THE END OF the first week of the course, Hover introduced a new schedule for vipassana meditation which he had been shown on his recent trip to Burma. It consisted of six hour-long sittings each day in which the resolve was made not to move at all: two in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at night after his discourse, plus some hours in the early morning and after tea. It didn’t take long for this regimen to produce some very deep pain. Shortly after we began it, a rock-hard knot about the size of a grapefruit surfaced in my neck. It grew in intensity during each hour-long sitting until I could no longer hold my attention on any other part of my body. When I focused right on the pain, my body would be gripped by enormous tension and the knot would suddenly disappear. This thrilled me the first time, but it soon became clear that it only meant that the knot would be back the next hour, stiffer, larger, and more difficult