I practiced different forms of meditation for some years in the ‘80s in France, as member of a traditional spiritual school. In the past 15 years, I only practiced occasionally, to rediscover meditation in 2003 while going through a major life crisis. Since then I felt the need to resume a regular, intentional practice.
I first heard of Vipassana a couple of years ago from Kamala. She had done a 10 day retreat near Yosemite, in California, and was deeply affected by the experience and its impact on her state of mind and on her meditation practice. My son Kevin was also a role model for me, as he recently did two retreats a few months apart and felt a deep and positive impact both times. I was now resolute to experience it for myself during our quest in India.
Vipassana meditation (www.dhamma.org) is the technique that brought Prince Siddhartha Gautama to his enlightment and the state of Buddha, 2500 years ago. He disseminated it until the end of his life to help people liberate themselves from suffering. Vipassana means introspection and insight into the impermanent nature of mind and body.
In a nutshell, the core of Buddha’s Vipassana teaching is that one can only be liberated by one’s own discipline, by learning to experience one’s own physical sensations with awareness and equanimity, by not reacting to these sensations. His teaching is very pragmatic and advocates direct, individual experience.
I’m attempting to make a profound topic as succinct as I can and to do it justice at the same time. Please bear with me and don’t discard the topic altogether if it seems a bit long (6 pages)! It’s a dense topic; you may need to have a second look at a sentence or a paragraph here or there. And if you have little interest in self development, meditation and Buddhism, this account may be irrelevant to you. I’ll introduce the theoretical basis of this Buddhist practice in my own words and understanding and then relate my recent experience.
Key words/concepts:
- perceptions: what our senses perceive from the outer world, including thoughts
- sensations: how we interpret perceptions into pleasant or unpleasant feelings; the basic sensations are pleasure or pain
- reactions: how our mind reacts to sensations. We crave pleasure and have aversion to pain
- impermanence: ever-changing arising and passing away of molecules, instants, sensations, thoughts, emotions, etc…
- awareness: heightened focus on our physical sensations and our mind’s reactions to them
- sankharas: sources of our reactions, memorized past cravings and aversions
- equanimity: equal, level attitude towards all sensations and events, whether “pleasant” or “unpleasant”.
Perceptions, Sensation and Reactions
Buddha’s experience revealed to him that suffering is an inherent part of human existence. The cause of suffering is that every sensorial perception we have from the outside world creates a sensation, to which in turn we have a reaction. Our basic reactions could be summarized as Like / Dislike, Want / Don’t want.
He observed that the source of our suffering is the constant antagonism of our mind’s Craving or Aversion reactions to our sensations. When we crave, we want a physical sensation produced by an object, an emotion, a thought, and suffer when we can’t get it, or enough of it, or at the time we want it, or the way we want it. Conversely, when we have an aversion to a physical sensation produced by an object, an emotion, a thought, we avoid it, are anxious about it, don’t want it.
Pleasure vs. Pain, Like vs. Dislike, Craving vs. Aversion, Wanting vs. Non-wanting.
Impermanence of reality, matter and existence
Through his years of analytical, inner discovery by means of meditation, Buddha directly experienced the impermanence of all matter and of existence as a succession of split-second moments and a constant flow of sub-atomic particles (that he named “kalapa”), incessantly coming to life and passing away, which make up physical reality. Through his direct experience he identified that everything is energy and vibration, since then demonstrated by quantum physics during the 20th century.
He understood that our mind weaves this ephemeral flow into a stable representation of time and of self to provide us with a durable, securing image of ourselves (ego) and of the world. He also observed that we develop deep and firm attachments to the representations we construct.
Who we are or are not, what the world is and isn’t, what feels good, what feels bad; what we like, what we dislike. Again, his quest was to understand and overcome the origin of human suffering.
Awareness of our sensations and the practice of Non-reacting
He experienced that within this transient, ever changing state of reality, any given sensation in our physical body has a very limited span of life. Be it a pleasurable sensation or a painful one, just like everything else, it arises and passes away. Inevitably, incessantly.
He found that practicing a fully aware, individual experience of these physical sensations and developing the mastery of the mind to not react to them through meditation is a doorway leading to personally and directly accessing the impermanent nature of existence. This is goal of the practice of Vipassana.
An Equanimous attitude in life
When we overcome the craving and aversion reactions to our physical sensations, and observe them for what they are –mere sensations, constantly arising and passing away–, we learn to develop an inner state of equanimity. This attitude can then prevail over all the sensations we experience: external events, thoughts, physical well/illness, human interactions …
The origin of suffering being our constant craving and aversion reactions to the sensations we experience, by developing equanimity and experiencing impermanence, we can eradicate our suffering.
How Vipassana developed in the past 40 years
The technique had been lost over centuries in India and other Asian countries, but was passed down in its original form through oral tradition, in Pali, the language spoken at the time of Buddha, within secluded Buddhist monasteries in Myanmar (formerly Burma).
S.N. Goenka, an Indian business man born and raised in Myanmar, came across it as a last recourse to treat chronic migraine, after seeking help in vain from the most eminent European and American doctors. After his parents retired back to India, he went there to teach it to them for their aging ailments. His courses generated a following and since 1969 it has broadly developed worldwide with some 75 full-time retreat centers. Dozens of thousands of students from all religions and venues of life come to learn Vipassana every year. The instruction has neither dogma nor ritual and the training centers are only funded through donations of former students.
My experience
We started our retreat on July 14th after packing our bags for our next leg of travel and leaving them at the yoga center. We would then leave Dharamkot -where we had spent the past 4 months- the day we finished the retreat and head directly to bus and train that would take us to our next yoga venue, 24 hours of travel away, in Rajpur near Rishikesh.
Number of fellow yoga students were finishing or undertaking Vipassana; the week preceding our retreat there was a lot of buzz around us, people sharing stories, opinions and emotions on the topic. I was enthusiastic, though apprehensive. I was above all trusting it would be a deep, transformational experience. It ended-out being beyond anything I would have imagined…
I was concerned by having to sit for extended periods of time, wondering if I would be able to quiet my hyperactive mind as well as my fidgety body. Vipassana is a silent retreat so there is no talking, eye contact or any sort of communication with fellow meditators. I was intimidated by the idea of 10 days of full silence, thinking my inner voices would become unbearably loud!
Then I read the schedule…
4:00 - 4:30 am wake up and wash
4:30 – 6:30 group meditation
6:30 – 8:00 breakfast and rest
8:00 – 11:00 group meditation (with a 5-10 minute break)
11:00 – 1:00 lunch and rest
1:00-5:00 group meditation (with a couple of 5-10 minute breaks)
5:00-6:00 dinner snack
6:00-7:00 group meditation
7:00-8:30 discourse (SN Goenka video)
8:30-9:00 group meditation
9:30 lights out
“About 100 hours… this is a LOT of silent, closed-eye meditation!” I remember saying to myself.
The Dharamkot Vipassana center is simple and modest, a few buildings on a small hill top covered with pine trees, overlooking the valley and surrounding mountains, and generously watered by the Himalaya Monsoon rains that make the grounds soggy and the living quarters moldy and for some even wet. The grounds, meditation hall and dining room are divided for men and women, and the one hundred students sleep in either dormitories or cells. I was lucky to get a cell, maybe was it due to the “50” in the age box on my registration form?
My cell was made of cement blocks, 7 feet by 5, so there was just room for a bed and a little bed table.
Any contact with the outer world is prohibited as well as any distracting activities such as reading, listening to music; writing/journaling, drawing etc…. it felt like I was going into monkhood. Goenka explained later that this is by design. Vipassana being a Buddhist inspired practice, trust is granted to students to respect the precepts without enforcement or policing.
I had given the travel clock to Kamala and surrendered my cell phone to the valuables check-in, so the first days I was without any notion of time other than the gong ringing when it was time to go meditate or eat. I was curious to see what it would feel like to live without any way of telling time. After all, how many times does that happen in the life of an adult? It was strange…When napping the first few days I would wake up not knowing if I had slept 15 minutes or an hour. Then a couple of –very- early mornings I got up, excited to start the day, thinking I was a bit ahead of the crowd for showering, to discover the first time that I was 1 hour ahead, at 3:00 am… and the second time that it was 1:30 am! I had slept 4 hours, was showered, with wet hair walking around the center at 1:30 am, feeling genuinely brainless! So I got a clock. From then on, I most often awoke around 3:30 to have time to shower, shave and be well-awake for the 4:30 morning meditation. Mid-way through the early morning session I would go out for a few minutes, stretch my back and legs, and gaze through the tall trees to admire the emerging dawn bring the small valley to life.
The meditation method evolved over the course of the retreat. The first 3 days, we focused on observing incoming and outgoing breath. Not controlling it, just observing; This is called “Anapana”. The idea is for the mind to be completely concentrated. Of course, at the first opportunity my mind starts to stray, so I bring it back to my breath… And it strays again. So I bring it back again. Then it decides to literally take off, on any topic of its choice; what happened yesterday, or last year, our family Christmas in LA, what will happen tomorrow; what about when we get out in 9 days from now? 9 days, wow, how long will that be? How will I start my long-due blog, let’s see,…? And by the way, what’s for breakfast, what time is it, what’s for lunch, what about Obama, how is Kamala doing?...
As Goenka would say, my mind was just like a monkey, jumping from one branch to another, then to the next, and the next… Like the dozens of monkeys we shared the grounds with, that trampled on the tin roofs above the sleeping quarters.
As the second day went by, my mind’s wandering drastically calmed down. The duration and frequency of mind-straying reduced and the simple focus on breath observation, as well as maintaining a straight posture, became all-absorbing. I started to feel unknown, subtle aspects of my breathing, such as differences between inhale and exhale air quality, moisture, temperature or facial micro-movements. The slight pull of my upper lip inwards and upwards when inhaling; a similar movement in my forehead and temporal skin, a tightening of my nostril rings and of the skin inside my nose... With the quieting I became aware of sensations I was otherwise completely oblivious to. A more subtle and refined experience of my body began.
The tight and well designed schedule left no room for distraction or restlessness. At breaks we would watch the ever-entertaining show of the monkey families in the trees and the roofs of the center, alternating with contemplation of the monsoon rain pouring through the trees. Little naps and short strolls were about all that would fit into the rest periods. I took time off from meditation sessions a couple of occasions when I felt I had crossed my learning threshold, so I was able to fit in some yoga practice, either stretching on my bed or doing postures in one of the small meditation halls. This was a treasure; my body was… craving for it!
In the mean time I was attempting to cope with the long hours of sitting, asking my body to stay cross legged or kneeling for hours at length. This body that was feeling hurts and aches, displaced vertebrae, pinched inter-coastal nerve pains wrapping around my chest, cutting my upper chest breathing. The one that was definitely feeling its age with its ankle and knee joint tensions.
Having just practiced 3 ½ months of Iyengar yoga which is all based on alignment, I was attentive to keep my spine naturally straight, ie. having my tailbone on a firm surface, at perfect height and my legs at a proper angle. We had access to a number of cushions to prop ourselves but most of them were too soft. On the second day I asked Krishna, our teacher, for a chair to sit in due to my infirmities, past accidents and high pain level. I was feeling really miserable and had all the best reasons to justify my request; after all, I have a handicap and even need to adapt yoga postures to my condition, so sitting for hours at length… He declined! He let me know that it was normal to feel a lot of discomfort on day 2 and that it would go away as time went on. Krishna was definitely not my best friend that afternoon. Now not only was I dealing with discomfort and pain, but with my request being declined… This was real work for my ego!
And 8 more days to go? With equanimity???
Every evening we would view a 75 minute video “discourse” by SN Goenka, covering the technique as well as a number of Buddhist precepts relative to achieving liberation and enlightment: Sila, Morality, the purity of wholesome vocal and physical actions; Samadhi, the Mastery/control of one’s Mind; and Panna, Wisdom - Bahavana-Maya Panna being the wisdom gained through direct, personal experience. These discourses provided food for reflection and were a silver thread throughout the retreat. The discourse hour was always relaxed, as Goenka is an outstanding teacher and story teller and has a great sense of humor. Our evening reward!
Most pains went away progressively after terrible, frightening peaks on day 4, and hours of practice, observing pain as closely as possible while letting go of my well-honed “aversion-to-pain” reactions such as “this is hurting, I have to change positions!”.
My famous last words to Paolo, a fellow yoga student, before heading up the hill to Vipassana, were: “With my experience of pain, I can do pain”. I discovered that it wasn’t that simple; that I had a lot of anxiety, past memories and emotions bundled along with the pains … that I also had to let go of! I learned that these were called sankharas.
Sankharas
Pains or pleasurable sensations that arise are called “sankharas”, meaning fruit of the past. It also means seed of the future. Every reaction creates a sankhara. We create them every time we react to a sensation with craving or aversion. The Vipassana process aims to let the sankharas arise and pass; each time we do so we eradicate an old sankhara and avoid creating a new one. Little by little we eradicate our stock of past cravings, past aversions and make progress on the path of equanimity. It was crystal-clear to me that the pains, past memories and emotions that were surfacing to my awareness qualified as sankharas. When I could let them pass without reacting, by just observing them, they would completely disappear. Completely!
Meanwhile, back in the meditation hall, my equanimity was pretty erratic… or perhaps should I say “impermanent”.
The entire experience was a roller-coaster ride, with little sense of progressing from one day to the next. I had inner experiences of total quietness and peace, my consciousness soaring to elated heights, my body’s absolute stillness, its most subtle sensations, all this with a fulfilling sense of discovery and progress. In the same day, I would feel shrilling pain, react to it by restlessness and posture shifting and feel helpless, in despair and self-pity. Still later, I could remain totally immobile for the prescribed hour and pains that I could observe literally stabbing my back for 40 minutes, without me reacting, would all of a sudden disappear and totally vanish, without leaving the slightest sign of tension. As though they had never, ever existed…
A fellow student had an extreme acute arm pain for several years that totally disappeared during our retreat, after not reacting to it when it was peaking at its highest.
Vipassana instruction per se started day 4. From the heightened awareness we had developed through the observation of our breath, day 3 we were asked to focus only on the sensations arising on and in our nose and upper lip area. Only nose and upper lip area.
The nose focus was a first step towards the full-body scanning that was introduced to us the afternoon of day 4. The technique is to sit totally immobile and scan the entire body from head to feet for any and every sensation. Feeling continual changes in our physical sensations gives us the direct experience that our body is in permanent flux; just like any other matter, it is composed of sub-atomic particles arising and passing away. We experience that there is no stable state of “I” and that by observing the sensations and not reacting, we actually can access their ephemeral, changing nature, experience and observe our body as an entity of vibrating energy.
Actually observing subtle physical sensations like sweat coming to the skin’s surface is fascinating; I felt my facial hair growing, my skull’s skin undulating, my blood flowing, temperature differences between tops and bottoms of my ears, energy flowing along my legs to my feet and back… I was able to explore the inside of my body like never before, ligaments under my knees, muscles, tendons, my skull cavity.
The following 4 days I spent learning the scanning technique and finding myself “in search of the perfect posture”, trying to avoid pain by engineering it away… Not the focus of the retreat; getting comfy to avoid sensations is not the objective. The end goal is to overcome craving and aversion reactions, reduce and eradicate our sankharas. Kamala would often get a glimpse of me from the woman’s side, thoughtfully re-establishing my sitting area for the next session. An Indian neighbor had two positions he alternated, with the help of two small cushions, while I was shifting, layering, folding, spreading, interchanging cushions. I made progress as to what did or didn’t work and on the ninth day I stripped my area and went back to the simple posture I’ve practiced for years – and dealt with the pains that arose.
My agitation or quietness and varied from one session to another, totally unpredictable. When I talked to our teacher about it, he looked at me with his caring smile and simply said “Anicca” (pronounced aneecha), the Pali term for impermanence. He was pointing out to me that my learning curve was inconsistent, like everything else. Impermanent,… and not to worry about it.
We have to get over it, there is absolutely no linearity, no stable state in human experience.
In any given day, any given hour, we go through a multitude of physical, mental and emotional states, ever changing, coming and going, arising and passing. And we like to think of ourselves and present ourselves as constant, stable beings.
I lack words to describe the power of 100 people silently meditating together for an hour in total quietness and peace. It’s a beautiful and moving example of the harmony human beings can create when they so desire.
My quietest moments brought breakthroughs in my awareness of physical sensations and in my ability to consciously develop equanimity.
The last day we broke the silence and had a lighter schedule so I got to meet fellow students and share impressions. Everyone had gone through highly agitated and deeply quiet moments. Those I talked with all felt moved and transformed for the better by the experience.
Kamala and I were also able to talk to each other that day. We were so moved that we agreed not to even attempt to find words or share insights immediately. We felt profoundly peaceful, with a new quality of balance and equanimity; the feeling has been lasting for the past 2 weeks as we’re integrating the experience through mindful practice in our day to day life.
I felt my mind and my body had been clarified, simplified and purified. As one of the deepest inner experiences I’ve had, it brought me a bit further in my quest of wisdom and knowledge of my Self… It reminded me of when we ended our two weeks of fasting in Thailand last February. We had taken a journey within, and cared for our very inner selves.
The shifts I’ve noticed in my attitude since this retreat lead me to think how critical a skill it is to withdraw within one’s self and “get our house cleaned up”, in order to be better people, to act thoughtfully in the world and live life to its fullest.
If you’ve read this far, this might have perked your interest. Here’s a great book that gives a clear, concise overview of Vipassana philosophy and technique: “The Art of Living” by William Hart, Harper and Row, 1987.
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