Introduction

Under the inspiring guidance of venerable S. N. Goenka and his supportive assistant Tim Lanning, we now all graduated from an extremely intense but profoundly inspiring Vipassana meditation retreat at the lovely Dhamma Pakasa Illinois Vipassana Meditation Center. Having worked very hard for ten days, keeping nobel silence throughout and meditating almost eleven hours each day with only short breaks in between, each of us arrived at an unusually blissful state of mind. But how to carry this precious jewel back into our daily lives and nurture it to guarantee it's survival? As S. N. Goenka would put it it; we now all have to shield this frail, young sprout, which has started its growth in this wonderfully nurturing environment, from being eaten by ignorant grazing cattle.