When I did a Vipassana retreat years ago, it was because I thought it was something for the spiritually adventurous (which I considered myself to be). I packed my bags, and I went off to find answers in silence. It was not popular then, nor were there so many centres. Today, many years later, as I write this, I still consider this intensive meditation course as one of the hardest things I have ever voluntarily chosen.
Over the years Vipassana’s popularity is growing in leaps and bounds with bankers, lawyers, doctors, business people, teachers, nurses and students and retirees flocking to its centres to learn the technique. So what makes Vipassana so attractive? Study after study in the corporate world is finding that the method helps reduce stress and absenteeism while increasing productivity and creativity. The rise in popularity of yoga and meditation probably represents a general shift in attitude for most age groups. For adults, it could also possibly be a combination of the omnipresence of yoga studios and meditation apps, or even the multitude of studies showing what the practices can do for body and mind over a lifetime, especially meditation which has been shown to affect everything from symptoms of depression to attention to creativity to brain health as we age. Schools too are using meditation and yoga, as a plethora of studies continue to show how powerful the practices are for brain and behavioural development in children. And most of us have a friend who swears by their Vipassana practice and how helpful they found it to be.
Vipassana is one of the most structured and disciplined forms of meditation with stringent rules and a process that is tightly controlled. It’s a tool, a training technique that gives you another way to view suffering and pain. Vipassana can be translated as ‘insight’ and is based on two primary tenets – concentration and self-observation, a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. A technique practised by Buddha himself. Over time, as it spread to Myanmar and Sri Lanka, the practice all but disappeared from India until Burmese-Indian meditation guru S.N. Goenka began teaching classes on Vipassana in India in the 1970s. In 1955, Goenkaji, turned to Sayagya U Ba Khin, a Vipassana teacher, for relief from the migrane attacks that had been plaguing him. When he arrived in India many years later as a teacher, he started conducting sessions in dharamshalas, temples, mosques, and churches. By the time he died in 2013, Goenka’s students had established 200 retreat centres around the world for meditation!
Buddhism addresses two major types of meditation – Vipassana and Samatha. Vipassana can be translated as ‘insight’, and Samatha can be translated as ‘concentration’ or ‘tranquillity’. Most systems of meditation emphasise the Samatha component where the meditator focuses his mind upon some items, such as prayer, a specific chant, a candle flame, a religious image, etc. and excludes all other thoughts and perceptions from his consciousness. The result ‘is a state of rapture which lasts until the meditator ends the session of sitting’ – which as they say is beautiful, delightful, meaningful and alluring, but only temporary. In Vipassana meditation, the meditator uses his concentration as a tool by which his awareness can chip away at the wall of illusion that cuts him off from the living light of reality. It is a gradual process of ever-increasing awareness into the inner workings of reality itself. It takes years, but one day, the meditator chisels through that wall and tumbles into the presence of light. The transformation is complete, permanent, if you will, and called Liberation.
Vipassana is a gentle technique. But it also is very, very thorough. It is an ancient and codified system of training your mind, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more aware of your own life experience. Participants spend three days learning to observe the breath and quiet the mind and seven days understanding the technique of meticulous body scanning to remove our innate human tendency to react with craving or aversion to all bodily sensations. The object of Vipassana meditation practice is to learn to see the truth of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of phenomena. Today, the technique is taught in 10-day courses all over the world that are free of charge. The world-wide centres are built, maintained, and run by an organisation founded by the late S.N. Goenka. The organisation is nonsectarian and welcomes people from all faiths and backgrounds. Goenkaji remains the primary teacher of the technique through audio and video recordings taken from his previous retreats.
These days I meet many people who either are wait-listed to do a Ten Days of Silence retreat or have recently completed one. Sanjay Prakash, educationist and architect, said that he experienced everything from fits of rage, to epiphanies about his purpose in life, to ones where the beauty of life moved him to tears. Because all thoughts and actions, whether external or internal, trigger a physical sensation in our body, developing a highly sensitive awareness of these sensations and eliminating subsequent emotions of attachment or anger helps us to accept reality as it is and not as we want or like it to be. This helps us diminish some of the most significant causes of human misery from within, and we also directly experience the truth of impermanence – which characterises every living and non-living thing. We learn to treat all experiences with love, compassion, and patience because we have a firsthand understanding of the ever-changing nature of reality. Would he go back for another course? No, he says, but the experience was eminently worthwhile, and he often takes ‘silent’ days.
Jamuna, a home-maker, could not get a seat at the centre of her choice and so she went to the centre that had a vacancy as she did not want to wait. She had apprehensions at first but also said the experience was unparalleled. I also spoke with a young filmmaker Tushar Prakash who had recently completed the 10-day course for the second time. He first did the course in 2007 and left in-between because he wasn’t ready. Then in 2017, he did complete the 10 days for the first. And then again in 2019. Why twice, I asked. “Because along with the meditation, the 10 days also serve as a cleansing process for me. I shut off all the noise, re-calibrate my mind and body, and get in touch with my real needs and thoughts. Other young people I spoke with mentioned the minimalist approach at the centres and the fact that there were no pictures, statues etc. as something that they resonated with them. I am listing a few takeaways that ran common amongst the people I spoke with, and with me too.
1.
Struggle and keep at it. There is no getting away from this fact. So if you want to be good at something, do it for 12 hours a day, for 10 days at least!
2.
We realised that stillness both of the body and mind is a wonderful tool. We live under the constant assault of mobile phones, internet and mass media, so much external stimulation, but when we come to a stop, then we release a repressed flow of internal stimuli, resulting in ideas, inspiration, and profound clarity. It teaches you to stop thinking and start feeling.
3.
That answers come from within, and there is a particular uncertainty to the process. There is no final answer, no expert as we are both teacher and student.
4.
Sometimes we need a breakdown before we can break through.
5.
When face with a difficult or unpleasant situation, we could respond with compassion and patience.
6.
Discovering the automatic ways that our mind had been trained to work without our conscious involvement, and how important it is to begin to master our internal dialogue from one driven by ego and self-absorption to that of an observer with a purposeful vocabulary.
7.
Become aware of what we convey with and without words.
8.
All truth can be found in the intuition of our body, so we need to pay attention to the physical sensations and experience the world through the body.
9.
Constant change is the only thing we can ever be sure about – the constant arising and passing away of sensations and situations.
10.
Our obsession with and anticipation of the future instead of understanding that we can only solve a problem when faced with the reality of it, and we must trust ourselves to make the right decision.
And finally, no one can teach us how to be ourselves. Or even how to live in this moment, or how to listen to our bodies….These are things we have to learn for ourselves. So keep searching, exploring. Keep living. And if you feel ready for your own Vipassana experience, then explore courses www.dhamma.org.
Author: Raji Menon Prakash
