Why Meditation Isn't Only for Monks
The unexpected benefits from a 10-day silence retreat
I first heard of the Vipassana course from a friend shortly after I moved to India. "You know, you meditate all day long and must maintain complete silence for 10 days," she briefly explained. I was thinking, why on earth would people do that to themselves?
It turned out that one would willingly go through this even multiple times.
Last year I completed my second 10-day-long Vipassana course and I'm convinced that the course is not only for those seeking extreme experiences or spiritual awakening. For me, it's the best way to defrag my mental hardware and start from a blank slate.
In fact, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't benefit from practising modesty, learning to focus, and gaining better comprehension of one's true nature and the world around us.
What is Vipassana?
Vipassana is a meditation technique developed by Gautama the Buddha that is aimed at mental purification through self-observation. Vipassana means "to see things as they really are".
Although there were many types of meditation developed before the Buddha and after he passed away, Vipassana is said to be the pure form of his teachings from more than 2500 years ago. The technique is based on observation of one's bodily sensations and training of the mind to remain equanimous regardless of the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the sensations. Because as one witness, all sensations are ephemeral.
A simple example of the practice: Imagine you are scanning your right arm looking for some sensations (itching, throbbing, pulsating, etc.) suddenly you feel extreme pain in your left knee. You don't move your leg to relieve the pain. Instead, you remind yourself that the pain is only temporary, just like everything else in life, and refocus your attention on your right arm.
The technique is taught only in a 10-day course under the guidance of a qualified teacher. For the entire ten days, you are asked to oblige to a specific code of discipline and live within the course site. Each day begins at 4:00 a.m. and continues until 9:30 p.m., in total, you meditate for about ten hours a day.
What happens during the course?
Disclaimer: Please note that the Vipassana course is a very personal experience. If you ever decide to take the training, don't come with specific expectations. It depends on what you bring to the place and what mental state you are currently in. Each course experience is different even for the same person. Here I describe my observations from the second course.
The moments of desperation
The course is designed in such a way that you are bound to encounter a certain level of discomfort through the process of your 'mind purification'. You are living in a meditation center, in a simple room with a stranger, without any contact with your family or friends as you hand over your phone before the course starts. Each day you wake up at 4 am sharp and jump directly to a 2-hour-long meditation. You have two meals a day at a designed time, not of your choice. The activities you can do during the meditation breaks are walking or lying on your bed. That's it.
If you meditate for 10 hours a day your body naturally starts to experience severe pain in some part or the other. If not earlier, on day 5 or 6 you start doubting whether this is even possible to endure. I had such tremendous shoulder pain that I was thinking I would never be able to sit straight again.
Besides the aching of your body, your mind also starts to suffer. Bad dreams, crying, strong emotions of anger, aversion, and fear are common external symptoms when the mind is in pain. As you can't talk to anyone, your misery is even greater. You feel you are the only one going through hell.
The moments of insights
In the regular world, as soon as you encounter an unpleasant feeling you try to escape from it by diverting your attention - you go running, partying, watching movies, you eat a cake, smoke, or whatever helps you to get rid of your unpleasant emotions. Consciously, or unconsciously.
Here, you don't have a choice. Nowhere to go and no one to help you to heal. You have to deal with all your accumulated emotions yourself. You are soaked in your anguish and there is nowhere to escape, both physically and mentally. Suddenly, little insights about the true nature of your misery start emerging on the surface.
As you proceed with the course, you start realizing that you are enlarging your physical pain with your way of thinking.
Example: You are 45 mins into your 1-hour-long meditation. You are hurting, but you don't know when your torture will end. You are not allowed to release your posture or open your eyes. Now the real agony starts, you start gaining aversion towards the severe pain in your back, and you feel like you can't handle one more second. You try to direct your attention to the pleasant feeling of taking a hot bath, but as a result, you instead find yourself craving for the end of the torture even more.
Now, how to manage?
By training your mind.
Throughout the course, you are taught to basically do 2 things - observe your bodily sensations and stay equanimous regardless of the sensation being pleasant or unpleasant with the understanding of both having the same quality - they are temporary. As you practice, sooner or later you start witnessing little aha moments that this really works. By observing your pain and acknowledging that it will resolve soon or later, you provide relief to the pain in your brain. These little moments of insight turn into a couple of minutes and get prolonged with each meditation.
The moments of bliss
There is one wonderful arrangement in the course. Evening discourses. After the whole day of meditation, you get to listen to the video recordings of talks by S.N.Goenka, the founder of the Vipassana meditation centers around the world. He not only gives you a theoretical background of the technique, and shares the teachings of Buddha, but almost magically replies to the doubts that are going on in your head on a particular day: "This is ridiculous, I'm willingly inflicting pain on my body...Why did I even come here...Am I the only one in this meditation hall that is struggling?...Why controlling my mind is so difficult...This life is only for monks, I don't belong here...
Occasionally, you also get to laugh at yourself during these discourses. For me, they were like a warm parental hug that assured me that everything will be alright.
Slowly and steadily, with each meditation, you start to understand. By creating a habit of objective observation you gain a third-person perspective on your life, your emotions, and your decisions. If everything is temporary, why fuss about little discomfort here and there? It will pass anyway. I should rather enjoy that I'm alive with all that it brings.
As days pass, the moments of misery reduce, and occasionally you start to notice moments of lightness and joy. These come not by mere intellectual understanding of the nature of life, but from your own lived experience. In a short period of 10 days, you went through great ups and downs, moments of misery and bliss and this translates to your daily life. You learned how to train your mind to control unhelpful thinking habits.
Real wisdom is recognizing and accepting that every experience is impermanent.
Biggest learnings from the course
Keep on trying without a sense of failure or desperation. Perseverance is easier to maintain if you enjoy the journey, not only rush to reach the goal.
The first meditation hours were depressing. I couldn't concentrate my mind on breathing for even 10 seconds. Although I was trying hard, no results. But as I kept on trying (I didn't have any other choice or thing to do!), accepted that I'm just on a journey, and stopped mentally beating myself for failure, my concentration times gradually increased. Even when my mind wandered again, I just returned it back on track calmly, without anger.
Live in the present. Literally.
It's not only during meditation that our mind keeps on wandering to the past or to the future. I've noticed that I'm constantly in the past or in the future whatever I do. Why I'm able to eat 100g of chocolate in 2 minutes? Because I'm not focusing on what I'm doing! Of course, our autopilot has its sense in many aspects of our life. But, by automating everything we are missing so much. Only by starting to pay attention to the food I'm putting in my mouth, I have noticed that with every bite my body reacts with pleasant sensations spread all over my chest. Moments of bliss.
Pause and observe yourself. It will help you act in ways that create happiness for you and others around you.
Although I was not communicating with anyone in the course, I still observed. Unconsciously, I judged and created stories about people around me and acted upon those fabulated stories: Oh, this girl will definitely try to get ahead of me in the queue for breakfast, I have to run!
Often, our emotions are just reflecting the reality we have created in our own mind, not the objective truth. Then we reflect these emotions upon the people around us. Once I started to feel calmer, that "greedy" girl turned into just another fellow companion worth of compassion. As we both were reaching the dining hall at the same time, I stopped rushing and she slowed down too. She paused before the door and let me go first.
You really know something only when you experience it.
The fact that everything is temporary is quite easy to understand on the intellectual level. Weather is always changing, success or failure is not permanent, we are aging every moment, and everyone will die one day. Still, it's very hard to also live according to this understanding. When we are depressed it feels like we will always stay depressed, and when we are elated we feel sad once it passes away.
The moment I managed to get through the extreme pain in my back and felt pleasant sensations on the same part of my body by the end of the meditation, I got it. Mere intellectual understanding takes you just that far. If your body goes through a remarkable episode, it will take the record and learns to act on it automatically.
Enjoy good times and bad times in the same way, because they are both temporary.
Once you are able to disengage from your pain it doesn't mean that it will never emerge again. Each meditation is different.
Even after a very joyful practice, I was back to severe pains in the next sitting. You are told that you should take these gross sensations as another opportunity to learn how to deal with them and practice your equanimity. And indeed, after 100 hours of meditation, you understand that the fact that the practice is always different makes it meaningful. The more awareness and curiosity you bring to each sitting the more you are able to focus and get the most out of it.
And, in the end, isn't the same true about life?
The mind is everything.
Lastly, it is important to mention that you are not charged for this course. The organization that runs these courses relies purely on donations from the old students and volunteering work. You received the teaching as a gift from a previous student. At the end of the course, you think about whether you are convinced about the benefits of the technique and decide whether you would like to support the organization to be able to provide teaching to more students. No pressure or emotional manipulation.
I went to my first Vipassana in 2018 in India out of desperation. My mind just stopped working properly, I didn't know what to do with myself. Fortunately, I came back rebooted and our startup kicked off afterward.
This time I felt that for the last 4 years my brain has accumulated so much that defragmentation was again necessary for better functioning. I went in with a different mindset than the first time and I came out with just what I needed: clarity, focus, peace, and confidence that I'm equipped with a tool that will help me to make it through the vicissitudes of life with grace and calmness. Of course, daily practice is necessary to keep it going.
I'm not urging you to take the course. You will know when you will need it and when the time is right. I'm merely planting a seed of knowledge about this technique so it reaches the right people at the right time.
Wishing you a wonderful life journey and as S.N.Goenka always reminds us:
Be happy, be happy, be happy....
___
Adela <3
This article originally appeared on adelastrakova.com
Pictures:
Photo by Igor Frimmel
Vipassana Meditation Centre. Dhamma Nagajjuna,
https://nijjhana.dhamma.org/
Pangong Lake, Ladakh, personal album