Exactly one year ago today on my birthday I started my Vipassana journey, but before I start talking about my experience and why/how, let’s talk about THE VIPASSANA.
What is Vipassana Meditation? Vipassana is a form of meditation that means "to see through things like they truly are." It is a process of self-purification through self-observation that is believed to have been mainly taught by Buddha, and later spread to Burma by King Ashoka. Although the technique was lost in India, Mr. SN Goenka brought it back to India in 1976.
The intensive 100-hour continuous meditation practice is what makes Vipassana special. During these ten days, participants are disconnected from the world, do not speak to anyone, live on minimum food, and just meditate. While it may not be easy, it is worth the effort.
Vipassana is considered the most suitable technique for mindfulness and transcendental meditation. Unlike other forms of meditation, it focuses on non-reaction. Participants are instructed to refocus their attention on objective sensations in their body, even when experiencing pain or discomfort.
Practicing Vipassana seriously requires a proper guide and a disturbance-free environment. Vipassana centers provide such an environment, and participants commit to staying for the full ten days and abiding by the five precepts of no killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and no intoxicants. You and the prison of your mind !!!
In conclusion, Vipassana is THE powerful tool for self-purification through self-observation. It takes dedication, commitment, and effort, but the benefits are life-changing. Participants learn to stop reacting to the vicissitudes of life, uncover several layers of their mind, and come out with a clearer and calmer mind.
My Experience
Now that I have talked enough about all that can be theory, let’s listen to ‘my story’ of Vipassana!
Ready?? Fasten your seat belts!
No phones, no books, no music, no Internet & my favorite no Socializing - just you and your thoughts. It may sound daunting, but for me, it was a life-changing experience. Let me tell you about the moment I decided to enroll in a Vipassana course - As I neared a year of insomnia last year, I felt exhausted from the anxiety of not being able to sleep and unable to find rest. Panic attacks became a nightly occurrence, triggered by the realization that once again, sleep would elude me. Seeking a solution, I summoned the courage to enroll in a Vipassana meditation course, despite the fear of being without books or any form of entertainment. On a whim, I booked a ten-day silent retreat at the Dhamma Pattana Vipassana Center in Mumbai for my birthday (i.e. 6th April 2022). This center is known for its cleanliness (hence I chose this), which proved true during my stay.
My daily schedule consisted of waking up at 4:00 AM and attending a talk at 9:30 PM, with around eleven hours of meditation in between. Despite not knowing what to expect, I embraced the idea of complete isolation from other meditators, with no communication, eye contact, or gestures. At the time of registration, I had underestimated the intensity of the course and the impact it would have on my life.
Each of us was given a single room and cleaning supplies to maintain our own rooms for the ten-day retreat. Living hour to hour, I felt like a student in a new world. The day started with the sound of a bell outside our doors at 4 am. Despite not being a morning person, I I stumbled out of bed, showered, and prepared for the 4:30 am meditation session. The first three days focused on Anapana, a breathing meditation where we focused on the sensation of air entering and leaving our nostrils. My mind was restless and wandering, making it difficult to sit still for an hour. My brain, usually active and self-governing with random thoughts, accelerated. For two days, my "monkey mind" ran rampant while I struggled to sit still, trying not to peek at my watch to see how much time had passed. The constant flow of thoughts in my head made it hard to focus on my breath.
My mind wandered in all directions. I visited earth, mars, space, met all the aliens, danced to Bollywood numbers in those little two hours!
The first few days were tough, physically and mentally. My back and knees were aching from sitting cross-legged for 11 hours every day. I wasn’t getting enough sleep at night or during the breaks. But I persisted, determined to improve my willpower, focus, and emotional control.
The message was clear: I was competing against my best self, not anyone else’s.
The Vipassana technique is a straightforward yet arguably the purest form of meditation. It involves scanning the body from head to toe and back again, paying close attention to the sensations without any emotional or physical reaction, regardless of their nature. The technique emphasizes being mindful of the sensations or pain we experience. By training our minds not to react to our body's sensations, we develop a barrier against automatic responses. We observe the sensations, acknowledge their impermanence, accept them as they are, and then move on.
The objective of this type of meditation, and the entire course, is to condition the mind to develop new habits and patterns that enable us to better cope with daily challenges. While Anapana focuses on awareness and concentration, Vipassana also strengthens equanimity. The technique aims to purify the mind, and I found the concept intriguing, though it was challenging. During some of the daily sittings (from the 4th day onwards), we were instructed not to change our posture or open our eyes for an entire hour, known as "Adhisthana." As a result, there was a lot of pain and an intense urge to feel equanimous.
This technique can be illustrated with a simple example. Suppose you are scanning your neck for sensations, and your leg falls asleep. Your mind may start wondering whether you'll ever be able to stand up again, but you don't move your leg to compensate. Instead, you refocus your attention on the neck and ignore the part of your brain that is urging you to give attention to the leg pain. You remind yourself that the pain is temporary, just like everything else. This practice of observing the sensations without reacting to them helps build equanimity and mental resilience.
Key to the teaching is understanding that sensations and experiences, like the rest of life, are all impermanent. They too, shall pass.
As the days passed, I began to experience physical pain and mental chaos. While some people reported feeling better with each passing day, my own journey was filled with both ups and downs. On certain days, particularly from the 4th to the 6th day, I felt overwhelmed with anxiety and breathlessness, to the point where I wanted to scream and cry. One particularly vivid memory was from the 5th night when I couldn't catch my breath, and I had a panic attack that led me to bang my head against the wall. Despite these intense emotions, I managed to endure them and persevere through the challenges. Phew!
However, on the 6th day, my anxiety attack worsened, and I nearly fainted. A fellow student noticed my distress and approached me to offer help, and in that moment, I broke my vow of NOBLE SILENCE. This experience made me realize the importance of following the rules strictly, and I promised to do better next time. Although I needed that venting session, support and it helped me significantly, I will forever be grateful to the girl who approached me at the right time and broke her own silence too for me.
After the Noble Silence was lifted on the tenth day, I discovered that everyone else had a completely different experience than me, which was shocking. Some individuals fully embraced the teachings, including one person whom I had a good rapport with, who had met a monk that he believed could sense vibrations at the subatomic level. Others accepted the particle theories but not the concept of rebirth. Some were uncertain about everything, except for the effectiveness of the meditation technique. On the other hand, I found a few people who shared my views, which were repulsed by the pseudoscientific and religious aspects of the practice. Although we acknowledged the benefits, we were unsure whether they were due to the specific technique or simply because we were abstaining from distractions and meditating.
Our experiences in life are all on us. It starts with sensations in our body that respond to life’s events, and we are constantly judging them as good or bad, craving more good experiences and becoming attached to them, dreading the less pleasant experiences and creating aversion.
The truth is closer than an eyelash. We know it’s there, but often we just can’t see it.
Vipassana – would I go again?
Of course, yes!
Don’t get demotivated by the painful experiences.
They will just pass, and the benefits you get out of those 10 days would outgrow your bad memories. Funnily enough, just after I returned, I started looking forward to booking another 10 days course.
While the experience might be addictive, it’s important to remember that one should continue practicing it at home. Those 10 days can only provide an essential introduction and foundation to the technique. To develop in the practice is a lifetime job. It is a lifestyle; we need to follow.
So, I may just be going back for another 10 days of 4am alarm calls !!
For me now the truth about Vipassana is that Vipassana is the truth. It is the simplest form of mediation there is: it’s just us and ourselves. There are no false eyelashes to hide behind anymore.
I found benefit in the course because it gave me a lot of perspective I needed in my life. On a weekly basis I find my mind reframing situations with the lessons and teachings that you listen to each night. Mr. Goenka teaches these lessons via video tutorials each night. These lessons offered me clarification, peace, all that happy spiritual-ness that I sought. It didn’t fix my issues, but it gave me a new perspective and got validated just after I came out of the Centre at the airport while coming back to Bangalore.
Vipassana is not a cure-all, nor a magical solution to life’s problems. It doesn’t solve anything when you come out on the other side of the ten days. Instead, Vipassana is a tool. It’s a training technique that gives you another way to shape your mind—and yourself—into a person better able to face the world. The ten days are only the introduction to the technique. From there, it’s up to you how much you get out of it. The program provides ideas and a framework for viewing suffering and pain. It was a way to see the world that I had never considered. It reframed entire swathes of how I view my life.
And one thing my teacher told me has stuck with me. He said, “Not everyone has heard of Vipassana, but it comes into your life when you need it. When you can most benefit from learning the teachings and technique.” I couldn’t agree more.
Lastly, if you’ve made it this far in this lengthy article, you might be curious how much a ten-day Vipassana course cost? It’s absolutely free. The program is entirely run by volunteers and financially supported by past students (I found myself keen to donate after the course to give another the remarkable experience I just had).
I really don't know whether I chose Vipassana to be a better version of me or it chose me as a new Dhamma Sevak !!!
Thanks for reading, and remember - stay equanimous!!!
Lessons learned
I emerged from the course a calmer, temporarily less anxious version of myself. I started to sleep again. The relief of rest was palpable.
I wrote down many takeaways once I was reunited with my pen and paper, few have to be shared:
Meditation Shouldn't Solely Be Driven by the Desire for Happiness. Logic and neuroscience might ground the modern rationale for meditation, but to meditate in order to be happy is counterintuitive. The practice is a counterweight to the jagged peaks and valleys of the human experience. To remain stable when life goes awry is a happier result than grasping for whatever society tells you will make you happy.
The Complications in Our Lives Stem from Our Assumptions and Reactions. In the quiet of those 10 days, you see how much your mind distorts the reality you perceive. You don’t know the background of the people taking the course with you, but you create lives for them in your mind. You project your fears onto their perception of you. Often, anger or fears are reactions to a reality we have created in our own minds. A reflection of the stories that we tell ourselves. We take sensory input as objective, but what we see, hear and feel is not objective. It is coloured by what we have known, and the grudges we hold without even realising them.
10 Days to Change Your Brain: The Importance of Disciplined Practice - Shortcuts exist in life, but to train your brain you need to put in a significant amount of effort. The first few days are devastating because the work is both mindless and extremely taxing. But you can see a change in a mere 10 days, with disciplined practice.
Learning how to refrain from reacting can assist in developing the ability to endure pain. As someone with chronic pain/suffering, this lesson was important. I would not have come to this conclusion without the course either. I can see with hindsight that by obsessing over the pain, I exacerbated it tremendously. Sometimes we hold on to what we fear and hate. While I still ache, that ache has less power over me. The distinction sounds slight, but it has been liberating.