My Experience With Vipassana
Late post: Last Sunday I returned from a three day Vipassana course at the Southern California Vipassana Center in Joshua Tree National Park. I had also attended my first ten day course at the same center back in June 2021. This was my second course there and overall. I had been meaning to write about my experience ever since last year, so this post is actually long overdue.
When I had gone to the course in June last year, I went with zero expectations or mental prep. I only knew that it was a silent course and I wouldn’t be allowed to have my phone or any reading or writing material with me. I knew several people in my circles who had done it, but they hadn’t given me any spoilers and I hadn’t bothered to research. I’m going to admit with some (or much) embarrassment, that my mental picture of a silent meditation course was mildly shaped by what I saw in one of my favourite shows Fleabag. It’s the episode where Fleabag and her sister go to a silent retreat (sans the screaming hateful men). But that’s about it.
The course turned out to be quite intense, and quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. Of course, there are the obvious aspects of it that sound difficult right away. The fact that you’re on a very strict schedule of waking up at 4am and retiring for the day by 10pm, you can’t talk or make eye contact or any communication with anyone other than the teachers, being in sitting position for almost 12 hours a day meditating. But it’s only when I started the course that I realized that these were in fact the easier things to do. When people ask me about experience, and gasp at the ’10 days of silence’ part, I say that being silent is easier than you think. It is the part that follows after the silence that is harder to deal with.
When I got there the first time, and this last time- on the evening before the course starts we were allowed to mingle with other students and chit chat for a bit over dinner before the bell rang for Noble Silence to begin. In both courses, I preferred to not make acquaintances of anyone before the course. I didn’t want that during the course I should look at someone and think about their back story or a conversation I had with them earlier. It was just my way of minimizing distractions. There were plenty of thoughts in my head already.
The first three days were the hardest for me. Without going into too many philosophical terms, I’d say that severing attachments from all things in the outside world wasn’t easy. It all came out only when I went into silence. My mind was trying to fill the silence with its own chatter. My head was reeling with thoughts of all the things that I had said and done in the days leading up to the course. I would think with panic about whether I left the stove off before I left. I would think of what people I knew must be doing. As the silence continued, I started to think about the things I should have said in ‘that argument’ or the thing I forgot to do at work. These were harmless thoughts but so many and so rapidly changing. Sometimes my thoughts were a little less benign. I would revisit significant episodes in my life from the past, and try to understand how and why they still affect me. That would set me off on a thought journey of questioning and reasoning- a lot of back and forth with myself until I had exhausted all “thoughts” and it would naturally die down. Some of these recurring thoughts would come up again and again at different times of the day, but I’d go through the same process of having that back and forth with myself, eventually to find that the thoughts have gone and I’m left being at peace with myself in the moment.
There was one particular warm evening during break time when I was sitting on a rock looking at the gorgeous sunset over Joshua Tree. I was sipping on water from my water bottle and accidentally spilled some water on the grainy sand. I stared at the dark wet patch of sand. It captured and held my attention. Within a few minutes I could see the dark patch lightening, lightening, lightening. Until a point where I only knew that there was a patch there but I couldn’t actually see anything with my eyes. And it is in this exact way that I realized all my thoughts started to evaporate away. As the days passed, I really started to imbibe the idea of impermanence. A concept which is at the heart of the Vipassana meditation practice.
The concept of impermanence makes an extremely strong argument for why we must curb our reactive nature. This is another cornerstone of the Vipassana practice. It is something that I started to realize in a tangible way during the course. Several incidents in my past that I didn’t have closure on would play repeatedly in my head as I described earlier. But each time they would bring a different sentiment in me. Sometimes I’d view it with the perspective of hatred, sometimes empathy, sometimes disappointment. But the fact that I was there all alone and in silence meant I couldn’t react to it right away. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it or be confrontational about it. I realized that I had the capacity to look at the exact same incident in so many different ways. By not reacting I was giving myself a chance to let them “glide over me”- somehow that’s how I visualized it. Like droplets of rain gliding over a raincoat. Eventually they affected me lesser and lesser, and in a grand way making me realize that not reacting is in fact the wisest thing to do.
As the days passed things progressively got better. My inner voice was quietened and pacified. Of course the mind is so very hard to tame, but at least there was some higher realization of “this too shall pass”- even the wandering mind would slow down and pause eventually. Some meditation sits would still be hard, but some would take less effort. Somewhere along the way I started to find answers within myself, and discover latent creativity and even managed to amuse myself in a way that would make me smile from within and outside. From the hours of meditation, my vision seemed to clarify to the point where I could see the colours and textures of things around me very vividly and with great resolution. There was joy in experiencing very subtle flavours in every bite of food. I almost felt like Remy from the beloved Pixar animated film Ratatouille.
Not reacting with craving and aversion to life’s situations is infinitely easier said than done. While I was in a controlled and peaceful environment of the Vipassana Center, I had plenty of emotional space to process and release my thoughts as needed. But that isn’t the real world per se. In real life, at the risk of sounding a tad bit negative, we walk around every day and meet life with the crippling weight of our own insecurities, regrets, desires perched on our shoulders. It might be a lifelong process of coming to terms with these, but they undoubtedly lose their strength over time when you don’t react to them. For me, the Vipassana courses were a way of understanding the existence of these emotions within me. Learning to gracefully accept and let go of these is the work I must do everyday.
When I came out of the course I felt lighter. I suppose you realize the weight of your burdens only when you have off-loaded some of them. This didn’t mean that I was burden free after my first long course, or that I’m sorted (as a true Bangalorean would say) even after the most recent course. But my hope is to continue to stay equanimous to the fact that there is plenty of inner work to be done. What a beautiful journey we are on!