A crash course in Vipassana

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 8^th 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!