As some of
you might know, I’ve just come back from a 10-day course of Vipassana. And the
question on everyone’s mind is – how was it?
It’s a
difficult question to answer, because I don’t think I have a single answer for
it. Or, for that matter, I’m not even sure I’ve fully processed as yet how it
was. This blog post is my attempt to try and articulate that answer.
The Background
I had first
heard about Vipassana about 7 or 8 years ago, when a friend of mine in Canada
told me he had gone for this course. At that time, all I really understood about
the course was that it was a space where people were not allowed to talk for 10
days, which sounded a bit bizarre to me.
About three
years ago, mom decided to go for Vipassana in Bangalore. I was both impressed
and surprised, and waited eagerly for her to come back and tell me all about
it. She really liked the experience, which surprised me, because the timetable
she described sounded brutal. As I listened to the description, I found myself thinking
that it must require some determination to get through such a course. Even
then, I felt no inclination to go for it.
And then mom
decided to go for the course a second time. By this time, I found that I had
reached a headspace where the idea of being cut off from the world and people
sounded almost appealing: a space to just be with myself and my thoughts, and
hopefully pen down some story ideas in the process. That’s when I found out
that the whole point of Vipassana is to not focus on your thoughts; and no
material for reading and writing is allowed. So, in my head, I went: ‘Lai. Phir kya faayda,’ [what’s the point
then] and pretty much dropped the idea again.
But a few
months ago, something new started in my life. My Tauji, dad’s eldest brother,
started talking to me about spirituality – a topic which I’d clubbed with
religion and stayed far far away from my entire life. The conversations were
something Tauji had been trying to have with me for a long time, but I kept finding
excuses to skip them. I’m not sure what changed, but eventually, I agreed to one
talk. And then another. And another. And the whole time, I felt like something
was changing inside – like someone had planted a seed of thought in my head
that was just not leaving me. My mind, which had always rejected anything and
everything associated with the idea of there being something in the world
beyond what was apparent to our senses, suddenly had a new thought that refused
to leave: What if there really is
something out there? What if there really is something within us that can be
unlocked? And now that the seed of possibility was planted in me, I felt the
curiosity taking over – the curiosity to know more, to learn more, to explore
more. So, by the time he suggested I try a Vipassana course, I found myself fairly
open to the idea of it.
And that’s
how I ended up at the course.
The Actual Experience
I’m going to
highlight some of the parts that of the experience that kind of stood out, not
in any particular order.
Sitting
Yes, this is
an actual point of worth noting. It sounds strange, given that I spend most days
sitting on a chair doing office work, that sitting should be something that’s
even worth consideration. But this was something I was apprehensive about even
from before I got to the course: the idea of sitting on the ground for ten
hours every day, for 10 full days. This concern was enhanced when a friend who
had just returned from the course told me that the pain of sitting down had
remained intensive for her throughout the period, and pretty much overshadowed
the entire experience. Mom had taken a chowki (type of chair) for sitting after
a few days of her course due to her knee pain, and highly recommended I do the
same, especially owing to the multiple surgeries I’ve had on my backside over
the last few years. On one hand, it sounded tempting, but on the other, it almost
felt like cheating – like I was finding a way to take an easier route in the
course, and not experience the difficulties that everyone ideally does go through.
I wasn’t sure if the surgeries would still be a valid point of concern after
all these years, but I also did know that I’m someone who’s unable to sit
cross-legged for more than a few minutes. Before leaving, mom gave a tip that
kind of stayed with me: You’re going
there to meditate. Keep that as the focus. Don’t try and make it harder if you
don’t have to.
At the
course, I broached the topic of the chair when I arrived, but was asked to speak
to the teacher on the first afternoon. That made sense to me. It gave me a
chance to at least experience what it would be like to sit on the ground, and
who knew, maybe I’d actually find it doable.
Yea, that
didn’t quite happen. I tried hard to stay in the position for as long as possible,
but within twenty minutes, when I finally shifted my position on the ground, I
felt spasms of pain shooting up and down my right thigh. That didn’t seem like
a good sign. Still, I wanted to try and persevere through it. So in the
afternoon, I went to speak to the teacher to broach the idea of a chair, in
case I felt the need to use it. But the moment she heard ‘3-4 surgeries’, she
instantly gave me a chair, and my seat from the ground was removed, leaving me
with just that one option.
That first day,
I felt really guilty, because I knew I was taking the chair to avoid the difficulty
of sitting down. The surgeries were a point of concern, but there was no solid
statement given by the surgeons that I couldn’t sit on the ground, or shouldn’t.
I fretted over this the first day, wondering if this was the right decision or
not – that is, until it was time for the discourse at the end of the day. Opting
for the English version of the discourse, I went with a smaller group of
students into another room, which had some seats on the ground. No chair. Excitedly,
I plopped down, grabbing on to this chance to re-deem myself, at least for an
hour. And that was when I realized that I couldn’t hold a single posture for
more than five minutes. My right thigh would just not allow it. And so I spent that
hour, and the subsequent one hour every day, scuffling and shifting every few
minutes.
The good
that came out of this was that it confirmed the decision to take a chair, because
there was no way I would have been able to focus on any meditation otherwise.
Not that sitting on the chair was pain-free: my butt started feeling sore on
the second day, and I was limping around after sessions by the third day. And
my shoulders pretty much erupted in pain (more on that later) after every
session. But still, I was grateful for this extra leg-up.
(For people
who have not done this course: the above is not a generic statement. The experience
is different for each person. Majority of the students didn’t take chairs, and
were able to sit for all the meditation hours – some without any difficulty,
and others with a little bit of difficulty. If you’re relatively comfortable
sitting cross-legged, I don’t think there’s any need for that additional
support).
Food
Again, this
may not be a point of concern to many. Everyone that I had spoken to before the
course told me this wasn’t such a big deal, but I was still apprehensive about
this one. To give some context, here’s the food timetable:
- 6:30 am: Breakfast
- 11:00 am: Lunch
- 5:00 pm: Snacks
That’s it.
No dinner (the only exception is if you need to take medication at night, in
which case you’re provided dinner). No in-between munching. One saving grace is
that there’s no restriction on the amount of food you can eat in a meal. You
can keep taking seconds and thirds, but the number of meals remains fixed.
But as
someone who’s gotten used to eating small amounts every few hours, this wasn’t
so helpful. Additionally, in the discourse, it was recommended that we eat
three-fourth of our normal amount (as opposed to double or triple) to ensure we
remain focused during the meditation and don’t feel too full, which also
mentally pushed me to not over load my plate.
The first morning
when I woke up, I felt my stomach rumbling in hunger. It’s alright, I told myself. It’s
only the first day. I’ll get used to this. I’ll get breakfast in a few hours.
And with that hope, I hopped into my first meditation session, reminding
myself, as everyone else had done, that this is something you get used to.
Yea, that
didn’t quite happen. Hunger became my constant companion. At night and early morning,
it was expected, given that there was no dinner. But I found myself feeling hungry
during the day as well. Literally, I’d eat a meal, and within two hours, my
stomach would start rumbling. There were points where I’d just look at my
stomach in disbelief and betrayal, thinking, ‘Really?! Already?! Abhi toh khaana khilaaya tha tujhe. Chaahte kya ho tum?!’
[I just gave you food; what do you want from me?!] In return, it would just
growl at me a bit more loudly. While others contributed sounds of burps and snores
in the meditation hall, I think these growls and rumbles were my biggest
contributions.
Weather
In hindsight,
this is an important factor. My dates for when I could do the course were fixed,
and as a result, I was only able to find one location that matched those dates:
Pune. I knew April end – May beginning was not the most pleasant time to be
doing this course, but I comforted myself by recalling that people always said
Pune weather was like Bangalore weather.
Not true.
The day I landed,
it was 42 degrees. The newspaper headline read: hottest day in Pune. And so,
with that happy news, I started the course. The first two days were brutal. It
was sweltering. The rooms were suffocating. You’d enter the bathroom to pee,
and exit looking like you just bathed. You could feel the sweat trickling down
every inch of your body as you tried to meditate. The only time the weather was
good was at 4am, which was when we woke up. It was the first time I was glad to
be up at such an hour.
Thankfully,
on the third day, the temperature dropped. A breeze began to pick up. The days
became more bearable, and mornings and evenings cool. And bit by bit, I felt the
smile returning to my face.
The Silence
This was one
part that I actually wasn’t too concerned about. In fact, it sounded appealing:
the idea of not having to talk to anyone. In any case, they were all strangers,
and I’m not particularly known for my skill or interest of striking up
conversations with random people.
But that
first day, when we reached, I ended up chatting with one or two people, and
became quite comfortable with them. And I think that tiny interaction became a
bit of a challenge. Over the next 10 days, every time we’d cross paths, a part
of me would really want to reach out and let out all the emotions and
complaints: of hunger, of sleep, of pain, of everything. And since that was not
an option, I turned to talking to myself, the contents of which are now in the
form of this post. If nothing else, at least the silence helped me get one blog
post out.
But quite
honestly, I quite enjoyed the silence. It was a refreshing change.
Mastery over the Mind
This had
sounded like a strange concept to me before: the idea that one needs to master
their mind. It’s my mind, haven’t I already
mastered it? This course turned out to be a brutal wake-up call for me in
this regard.
During
Vipassana meditation, one spends the initial days observing their breath, and
the remaining days, observing different sensations on the body. One of the key
aspects to be able to do this successfully, is to give your undivided attention
to the task at hand.
The first
day we sat down to meditate, my mind went crazy. Turns out, it’s not a big fan
of being asked to do such a task. Imagine that point where you’re about to give
your dog a bath (assuming it doesn’t like baths), and the dog decides to run
around in every direction and do anything possible to avoid the bath. That’s
kind of how my mind reacted. It decided to bring out memory after memory and
play it across on a big screen in my head in an attempt to distract me. The
thoughts were so random and all over the place, that I was a little disturbed by
my own head. That night, in the discourse, Goenka ji (the person who established
Vipassana in India and whose discourses we’d watch every night) shared that
this is something everyone goes through as they attempt to get their mind to focus
on one thing. At that point, I realized that the only silver lining about realizing
you’re going crazy is knowing that everyone around you is going crazy as well.
The next
day, the thoughts became less random. I thought I was getting better at
mastering my mind, but turns out that it was just getting ready with its second
attack: more structured, less chaotic. It was a two-pronged attack: first, it
unearthed some of the deepest, most disturbing or embarrassing memories – things
I’d buried inside and not thought about in years – and flashed them across the
big screen. Although unsettling, I think this bit died down in some time. But
then it unfolded the second part of its attack, choosing to go with cravings
instead of aversion: it started sifting through every single movie, tv show, or
book I’ve watched and re-watched and read and re-read, and promptly played out
different scenes from each. Every thing that had been a source of my guilty and
not-so-guilty pleasures, from Game of Thrones to Harry Potter to One Tree Hill
to Lage Raho Munna Bhai to the Percy Jackson book series to Dil Dhadakne Do to
Friends to Star Wars to an endless list, it threw it all to me. And more often
than not, I’d find myself giving in and sitting back and re-watching the scenes
with some imaginary pop-corn to go alongside. Then suddenly I’d remember where
I am, and shake my head, and try to get back to the meditation. Every now and
then, I’d mentally switch off the TV playing in front of me, willing my mind to
shut it all down. Until the next scene popped up. On the 8th day, my
head went as low as to throw ‘High School Musical’ at me. Turns out cheapness ki koi hadh nahi hoti [cheapness
has no limit] in the battle over the mind. And in this battle, I think it would
be fair to admit that my mind emerged far more victorious than me.
The Meditation
This is, after
all, what I had gone to do. I don’t think I’m the best person to explain the
theory and the practical side of everything we learnt, because I feel like it
needs to be done the right way for it to make sense. And one point that Goenka ji
mentioned in his discourses are that the theory should go along with the practice
and the actual experience, otherwise it has no meaning.
But still,
here’s an attempt at a basic explanation. The basic meditation technique is to
observe the sensations in the body, and maintain equanimity (balance) towards
them. Over time, using this technique, one eradicates some of the miseries that
have settled deep within us. The rationale for this is that the source of our
miseries is our cravings and aversions. If we really want something, and it doesn’t
happen, we become miserable. If we really don’t want something, and it happens,
we become miserable. And these miseries get settled deep within us, affecting
the kind of people we become. Using this technique, and by deliberately not
reacting to any sensation with either craving or aversion, one is supposed to
be able to get rid of all those deep-rooted miseries bit by bit.
In fairness,
it sounds a bit out there. The idea that I can get rid of my cravings and
aversions just by observing my sensations and maintaining a balanced mind is a little
hard to believe. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect by the end of the course. Even
this idea of sensations sounded a bit bizarre. Sure I can feel pain and heat and cold and other such sensations. What
about them? I don’t need to meditate to focus on them. But over the course,
I realized that I was starting to observe other sensations: more subtler ones.
Mini vibrations reverberating throughout the body. Now, this is hardly proof of
the technique working, but for me, this was a whole new experience. I remember
talking to mom long ago, and she had mentioned these sensations, and I’d found
it hard to believe that there are these vibrations or smaller sensations within
our body that can be felt. And here I was, experiencing the same thing.
And bit by
bit, I also realized how difficult it is to stay equanimous (balanced) towards
these sensations, without an inch of craving or aversion. The first time I felt
these vibrations, there was a sense of elation (the type where you almost feel
like – arrey wah, I’ve achieved nirvana!).
But the challenge is to maintain a neutral stance towards them. The same goes
for aversion. The first three days, I could feel an ache building up on my
shoulders. On the fourth day, when we started the actual Vipassana technique,
my shoulders erupted in pain. And continued to do so with every subsequent session.
And to silently observe your pain, while detaching yourself from it mentally, was
definitely a struggle.
I think one
expectation that develops in people’s mind is that at the end of this course, I’d
be a changed person. Maybe not Buddha ‘enlightenment’ level of change, but some
change nonetheless. But those changes can be big or small, and aren’t the
easiest to observe. Speaking to some of the old students on the last day, I realized
that many of them have seen the actual benefits of this technique in their
lives: becoming a lot more calmer, peaceful, and a lot less reactive. And then
there are also the countless stories shared in the discourses. Looking at
myself, I don’t really see any change as such. A part of me is wary: after all,
people is so many religious sects claim to go through so many changes and
benefits, and all sects do promote such stories. How do I know this is any
different?
But I guess
the part that appeals to me is Goenka ji’s constant assertion that this is
removed from any rites and rituals or praying or worship or any sectarianism.
That it’s about looking inward. That the key to having a more peaceful life
lies within us, and not outside. That he’s teaching us something; it’s up to us
whether we decide to accept it or reject it.
And that
sounds oddly refreshing.
My Recommendation
While I
haven’t seen any personal results (too soon to tell) to advocate that this
technique works, from everything that I’ve heard so far, I can at least say
that I have no reason to believe that it doesn’t work. And if it does actually
work, then I see this as something valuable for all people: after all, learning
how to live a more peaceful and happier life doesn’t seem like something that
only a few people should need.
However, I don’t
think that means everyone I know should pack their bags instantly and go for the
10-day course. I think a big part of it is being in the right headspace: a
space where you’re willing to suspend what you feel you know are the truths of
life, and one where you’re willing to learn about something new. Something very
different. Had I gone for this course a few years back, I don’t think I would
have been as accepting or as open to everything that came my way. People go for
this for multitude of reasons, and no reason is better or worse than the
others.
So my
suggestion would be to definitely give this a try at some point in your life,
preferably sooner rather than later, but to do so only when you’re in the right
headspace for it.
*****
Cheers!
