10 days of silent Vipassana meditation
My experience learning Buddha's practical technique to achieving inner peace
Five months ago, Ayahuasca showed me the Truth. Unfortunately, she didn’t teach me how to make sense of my experience, so I eventually concluded that I should lean into suffering. But that didn’t feel right.
After Ayahuasca, the universe began drawing me towards Vipassana meditation. I first heard about it from a friend who took a course in Thailand, and then from a facilitator on my Ayahuasca retreat. When I unexpectedly found myself in India at the end of 2022, I saw it as a clear sign to take a Vipassana course. After all, the practice comes from India.
I applied to 10-day courses at five different Vipassana centers near Mumbai and was fortunately accepted to one within a few days.
Vipassana: a quick overview
2,500 years ago, Buddha discovered the Vipassana meditation technique and used it to achieve enlightenment. He then spent the rest of his life teaching it to others. Over the centuries, successive generations corrupted the Buddha’s teachings, and only a small lineage of gurus and students in Burma kept the pure technique alive. In 1955, successful Indian-Burmese businessman S. N. Goenka learned Vipassana and subsequently dedicated his life to scaling the pure technique globally.
The modern-day Vipassana Institute runs 200+ retreat centers globally, including 100+ in India, and every course is completely free of charge. Donations from alumni cover all students’ expenses: accommodation, food, course teachings, and facility construction and upkeep.
Starter courses for new students are 10 days, which is the minimum time needed to (1) calm the mind from the stimuli of modern life, and (2) learn the technique and begin experiencing effects of Vipassana. Once a 10-day course is complete, new students become old students and can access 1, 2, and 3-day “refresher” courses, as well as longer 20-day and 45-day courses upon completing more 10-day courses.
Day 0: Arrival
I arrived at the Vipassana center in Mumbai on a sweltering Wednesday afternoon. After determining that I was a foreigner, the staff shuffled me into a basement office where I was instructed to fill out additional forms. A seemingly Indian couple walked in after me. I caught a glimpse of her passport as she handed it over: Colombia. A nice lady came by with a thermos of delicious hot chai.
After filling in my forms, I returned to the main registration flow and entered a large, bustling room where we waited in line to receive our room allotment and relinquish our valuables and mobile phones for the duration of the course. Men and women were segregated into opposite sides of the room, a separation that, too, would persist for the duration of the course.
Everyone was fascinated by me. “You are from Japan?” they would ask me after seeing my U.S. passport.
“My parents are from China,” I would reply. I noticed one other foreigner, a Chinese man, also registering. I wondered what his story was.
While waiting in line for each registration step, we were handed plastic cards to read. “Vipassana means to see things as they really are… experience the universal truths of impermanence, suffering, and egolessness… The process of self-purification by introspection is certain never easy: one has to work really hard at it.”
Work really hard, indeed! The schedule noted 10 hours of meditation every day. Not going to lie, I was pretty nervous. Surely I would reach the darkest depths of my mind.
A staff member walked over to me and pointed at the thin red and yellow yarn tied around my right wrist. “I have to remove this,” he said. “Students must renounce all other spiritual practices during the course.”
“Okay,” I replied, and with one quick motion he deftly cut the yarn with a pair of scissors. It had been gifted to me in passing two weeks earlier by a monk at a temple in Rishikesh, a spiritual city in northern India and the global birthplace of yoga.
After turning in my mobile phone and laptop, I made my way to my assigned room. It was located at a busy intersection within the facility and there was no lock on the door. As one of the five Precepts of the course was Do not steal, I figured my belongings would be safe.
The room was spartan: a simple bed, desk, and chair. The bathroom was equally minimal. There were no towels or blankets. The bare accommodations intimidated me.
I turned on the shower, and hot water spurted out almost immediately. I breathed a sigh of relief; this was a pleasant rarity in my Indian travels so far. In retrospect, from speaking with old students who had been to other Vipassana centers in the region, we may as well have checked into a five-star hotel.
I unpacked my suitcase, took a quick shower, and then made my way to the dining hall for a light dinner.
I finished dinner at 5:30pm and returned to my room. The next item on the agenda was orientation at 7pm. Ah, 90 minutes to kill… I sat in my chair and instinctively reached over to my phone.
Oh wait - I had already deposited my phone for safekeeping.
Shit. What to do? I looked out the window. Twiddled my thumbs.
I was surprised at how empty I felt going cold turkey from my phone. I kept feeling like reaching over and picking it up, even though intellectually I knew that was impossible. Man, I was more addicted than I thought.
This would be the longest period of my adult life not having access to a phone. I suddenly felt utterly and completely alone.
Days 1-2: Wtf am I doing here?
After a restless night, tormented by mosquitos and discomfort from lack of a blanket, the sound of a loud gong blared over the facility loudspeakers at 4:00am. I was awake already, and so was everyone else too, it seemed - I had been hearing toilets flushing and shower buckets sloshing.
I climbed upstairs to the meditation hall and found my way to my assigned cushion. Slowly, 60 men filed in on one side and 40 women on the other. Old (returning) students, 25% of our group, sat at the front of the hall. We had already begun Noble Silence the previous night, where all forms of communication between students are banned - even non-verbal ones such as gestures or intentioned eye contact.
The morning started with the recording of an obnoxious male chanting. I found the chanting ugly and un-melodic, especially compared to the beautiful shamanic icaros at my Ayahuasca retreat in Peru.
The male voice instructed us to begin with anapana meditation - focus on our natural breath.
Focus on the breath. Focus on the breath. Focus on the breath…
…what? I realized my mind had drifted off for 10 minutes. I caught myself thinking about whether Chromie Squiggles was a good long-term NFT investment. Okay - focus on the breath. Focus on the breath…
…oh shit. I was thinking about Squiggles again. Okay - Focus on the breath.
My crossed legs hurt. I shifted my seating arrangement. Other students were shifting as well. Coughs and knuckle-cracking echoed through the tense silence. I couldn’t focus on my breath for more than 10 seconds before my mind drifted.
After what felt like an eternity, 2 hours passed and it was 6:30am. Another round of ugly recorded chanting let us know that it was time to take a break. I stretched my legs and groaned; my legs and back were aching.
Breakfast (6:30am) was a dull affair: rice porridge, sprouted peas, sliced papaya, bananas, some dry, and flavorless crackers, toast and jam, and chai.
Lunch (11:00am) was a dull affair too: steamed white rice, a bland vegetable curry, a daal curry, chapati bread, boiled vegetables (cauliflower, green beans, and cabbage), raw vegetables (carrot, cucumber, beet), and buttermilk.
Evening snack (5:00pm) was, you guessed it - a dull affair as well: dry puffed rice, bananas, and chai. Evening snack was available only to new students; old students could only drink lemon water.
We ate the exact same food every single day, day in day out. It was bland as hell. I downed cups of chai to inject as much sugar as I could into my bloodstream.
Many of the seats in the dining hall directly faced a blank wall, and old students were required to sit in them. New students at least had the option to look out the window.
By the second day, I was unbelievably bored. I had been expecting some kind of sudden magical revelation, but instead I was stone cold sober. My legs and back were in excruciating pain from 10 hours of sitting. I seriously considered packing up my things and leaving the course. Ultimately, the embarrassment to friends and family and self-disappointment kept me seated.
Indeed, in each evening’s video discourse (30-year-old recordings of the late S. N. Goenka), Goenka seemed to know exactly what we were going through. “Some of you must be thinking now, ‘I should leave. What am I doing here? Maybe another time.’” A couple of us chuckled, including myself, at his eerily accurate understanding of our emotions.
(Chuckling at funny moments during the videos felt weird, like I was breaking the Noble Silence. It felt taboo to express emotions outwardly.)
Evidently, I wasn’t the only one struggling mentally and physically. At each meditation session, more and more cushions would remain empty as their owners failed to arrive. About 15% of the attendees left in the first 3 days.
Day 3: Attacked by… something
I was bored out of my mind. We had moved on from pure anapana meditation to instead focus on our nose and any minute bodily sensations we felt there. I felt nothing. My mind kept drifting off.
I thought about NFTs, a lot. Just prior to Vipassana, I had a couple of busy NFT trading days. I kept dwelling on what I’d done well, and what I didn’t.
I thought about my ongoing job search. I wondered what it’d be like to move to Seoul or Tokyo and build my life there. I thought about my friends in Asia. I though about the food scene - yum. I wondered if the intense nightlife culture would break my old soul.
I thought about a missed connection from an Uber Pool in San Francisco a month back. I pictured us in various intimate situations. I wondered what it would be like to introduce her to my family.
Focus on the nose. Any sensations? “No, nothing,” I replied to our in-person teacher during a check-in session, one of few times throughout the day when we are allowed to speak.
“The sensations will come. Just focus. And when you feel a sensation, focus on it,” the teacher advised.
For the late morning meditation session, we moved into a nearby pagoda. We were each assigned one of 120 meditation cells inside the pagoda. Cells indeed! They were claustrophobically small chambers, built with imposing white walls with a tiny circular window at the top. Measuring 2 feet wide x 6 feet long x 9 feet tall, it was a scene straight out of “World’s Toughest Prisons.”
(I wish I got a picture, but the pagoda was already locked by the time we got our phones back on Day 10.)
I sat down and began to meditate. As instructed, I focused very, very hard on the narrow strip of skin below the nostril and above the upper lip.
I focused so hard that I… began to feel something. I felt an increasing pressure on my eyelids and closed lips, a familiar feeling of “channeling the third eye” that I have achieved during meditation before.
Suddenly, this pressure ratcheted up in intensity. The pressure on my eyelids was immense. It was pulling at me; I felt like an angry bull with a rope pulling hard at my nose ring. My neck and head buckled under the weight of the pressure. I had never felt anything like this in my life. Was this Vipassana? My eyes began to shut so hard that I thought a blood vessel would break. My eyeballs were about to explode. With some effort, I snapped out of the pressure and opened my eyes.
I gasped for air. The familiar sight of the meditation cell walls grounded me in reality. What was that? I felt like I had tapped into a rogue spiritual energy.
The gong rang over the loudspeakers. I stood up from my cushion and headed to the dining hall for lunch.
After lunch, I was looking forward to meditating again. In the afternoon session, I consciously tapped into the rogue energy again by channeling my third eye. This time, I was in control; I rotated my head slowly in various directions as I played off the energy. I was lightly smiling. This was… kind of fun.
Later that session, we had another group sit with the teacher. “Tomorrow, we will teach Vipassana,” the server translated for me.
What? We haven’t started Vipassana yet? What the f*ck have we been doing?
Day 4: “This is Vipassana.”
Day 4 was full of anticipation. I was looking forward to learning Vipassana, and evidently other new students were as well - the energy was palpable.
We began the session with a very special recording from Goenka. He first led us in an ancestral chant to open the gates of Vipassana before guiding us step-by-step through the process.
“A very important part of Vipassana is that you do not move for the entire meditation,” Goenka emphasized, as had our teacher earlier in the day. If we felt pain in our legs, we were supposed to power through it instead of making adjustments as we had been the previous three days.
“Focus your awareness onto the scalp. See if there is any sensation… any sensation at all. It can be a tingling sensation. It may be a pulsing sensation. Sometimes you may feel a sensation of heat. Sometimes you may feel a sensation of cold. It can be a sensation of wind. It may be an itching sensation.
Now, focus your awareness onto the face. Feel if there is any sensations, any sensation at all. It can be a sensation of heat, or a sensation of tingling. Sometimes you may feel a sensation of pulsing, or a sensation of itching…”
…so on and so forth. Man, Goenka knows a lot of sensations, I thought. I heard more words for types of sensations than I thought existed.
Goenka’s recordings are always spoken first in Hindi, and then in English, so everything takes twice as long. The Hindi portion would drone on and on. What the hell could Goenka possibly be saying that is taking so long? I wondered every time. Ah - he is just naming sensation after sensation after sensation, I would realize when the English came on.
By the time we were focusing our awareness on our right arm, I began feeling extremely annoyed. Here I was, body cramped to hell, unable to find even temporary relief, trying my hardest to focus on detecting the most minute sensations on my body, but this droning recording kept going on and on, and on and on, and tingling and pulsing and itching and YES MR. GOENKA I KNOW WHAT A SENSATION IS! I seethed.
But there was nothing I could do to stop the recording, and so Goenka went on and on, and now we were on our left arm, and sometimes you may feel a sensation of tingling, or sometimes you may feel sensation of heat, or maybe wind, or - YES I KNOW WHAT A FUCKING SENSATION IS! I KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR! A GOD DAMN TINGLE! I was simmering with anger.
By the time we started scanning our upper back, I had had enough. Sweat and stress were oozing out of every pore of my body. I envisioned leaping up from my cushion, running over to the speaker installed on the wall, and jumping up and bashing it down. Anything to end this torture.
“…it can be a tingling sensation…”
FUCK!
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Still, Goenka’s voice continued inexorably, undeterred by my passion, anger, and uncontrolled emotion.
We moved our awareness down to scan our lower back, and I detected a huge knot in my right lower back. As my awareness enveloped the knot, my body contorted and I twisted in my seat. The knot was so tight. As I continued focusing on the knot, I could feel it unravelling and releasing pressure, like a top-notch physical massage administered purely by my own mind.
And suddenly - the knot completely released, and I felt relief.
Relief.
Oh sweet, heavenly relief.
My anger towards Goenka dissipated. My entire body relaxed and felt lighter. I felt a warm, rejuvenating glow wash over myself and my painful cramps disappeared.
“Now focus on the right thigh. See if there is any sensation…” Goenka’s voice continued. Now, I felt only calm. Any semblance of annoyance was a distant memory.
I scanned my right thigh agreeably. Tingling and pulsing and itching were now music to my ears. All that anger in me had been concentrated in my right lower back, and through the power of my mind alone, I had massaged that knot - and its emotions - away. Trauma is stored in the body, indeed.
After finishing scanning our left foot, our session finally ended. “This is Vipassana,” Goenka concluded. The sound of that declaration is seared into my memory.
“Take rest, take rest,” our teacher spoke into the silence. I opened my eyes and looked down at my watch - two entire hours had passed! Everyone else seemed equally stunned by the experience. It took us a good 30 seconds to stand up from our cushions and file out of the meditation hall.
Day 5: Understanding Vipassana through Indian philosophy
At 4:00am the next morning, the gong rang. Unlike previous mornings, no one was already up. It seemed like everyone was trying to grab a couple of more minutes of sleep. Servers walked around with bells, ringing shrilly in front of our bedroom doors.
The gong sliced through the most lucid dream of my life. This corroborates with what old students later told me - that dreams are much more lucid while the mind is in a Vipassana state.
That evening, Goenka’s video discourse adddressed the purpose of Vipassana. “Everything in life is misery,” he explained. “From the moment we are born until we die, we are suffering. Vipassana shows us that there is a path out, but it is a path we must embark on and experience ourselves.”
He explained sankaras, a term in Indian philosophy that refers to our cravings and aversions. By focusing our mind on bodily sensations, we bring the subconscious mind to the forefront, consciously experiencing the minute sensations that it monitors 24/7. If in doing so we can remain equanimous to even unpleasant or painful sensations, we stop the body from generating new sankaras.
To remain equanimous, we must understand that all sensations share the same quality of arising and falling. This is the law of impermanence. Anicca.
When we stop generating new sankaras, our old sankaras will evaporate, like how a twisted rope will unravel once we stop adding new twisting pressures.
Once we have no more sankaras, we attain Enlightenment and break the cycle of life and death. Until then, our consciousness continuously reincarnates so long as we carry sankaras (and as such, suicide does not end suffering, as Goenka pointed out later in the week; suicide merely pushes the same sankara “debt” onto the next corporal body).
This philosophy hit me hard. I had studied the same idea just a week earlier, during philosophy classes at my 7-day yoga retreat: suffering can be eradicated by neutralizing our likes and dislikes. Until we neutralize them all, our jiva (consciousness) will continuously reincarnate.
Day 6: Anicca (“onny-cha”)
I had been battling mosquitoes every night so far. If there’s one aversion, one sankara, that I hold onto dearly, it’s my hatred for mosquitoes. For five nights, I had been experimenting with all kinds of methods to prevent the two-winged devils from entering my bedroom, including never opening my window to let in fresh air, keeping my bathroom door permanently closed (as it has a mesh-screened window), and even sleeping with the lights on.
This night, I was abruptly awoken at 2:30am by a mosquito buzz, along with a sensation of pain on my right ankle: a fresh bite.
I bolted upright, heart pounding, and slapped the light switch by my bedside. Against all odds, the vampiric culprit was chilling right there on the wall. Easy target, I thought to myself as I raised my palm, poised to strike. I’m a skilled mosquito hunter.
My palm swiftly descended towards the wall.
Abstain from killing any being. The Vipassana Precept suddenly popped into my mind, along with a vision of the Buddha himself, palm raised.
I fumbled. My palm missed its target awkwardly, and the mosquito took off into the air. Fuck.
Terrified, I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. At 4:00am, the gong rang, and I realized I gotten less than four hours of sleep.
That afternoon, the thick pollution over Mumbai had subsided somewhat. The sun, usually setting in a dull red color and disappearing into the smog well before reaching the horizon, shone bright yellow today in front of a clear blue sky - the first we had seen so far. Anicca, anicca, anicca. Goenka’s teachings echoed in my mind. The law of impermanence; everything changes.
The sun setting was divinely beautiful. Half of us were out in the garden, overlooking Mumbai from our vantage point on a hill. Some of us walked laps around the brick path, some stood overlooking the pagoda railing, some sat cross-legged on the grass. We all faced the same direction - towards the sunset. We all sat alone. We all observed the Noble Silence.
Here we were, dozens of strangers, not even knowing each other’s names much less our life stories, sharing a beautiful, reflective, meditative moment together. One that’s all too temporary. Anicca, anicca, anicca.
I returned to my room that night after the evening discourse. I took a shower and reached over to a black T-shirt, my makeshift towel. As I moved my shirt off its hook, something flew out of it: the mosquito. It settled onto the bathroom wall.
Fuck the precepts. It was now or never. I raised my palm, and in one smooth motion, made direct impact with the wall. The living being sandwiched there, that flickering light of consciousness - it splattered into a fantastic bouquet of bright red blood. My blood.
I wiped the wall with my palm and rinsed my hands clean in the sink. I slept like a baby.
Days 7-9: Transcending
After lunch on day 7, I reached a new state. I felt a great purity of mind, a quiet peace that I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was sublime. It was beautiful.
I returned to my room after meditation and sat in my chair, facing the window looking out into the courtyard. Memories of my late mother washed over me. She passed when I was just 24 years old. I couldn’t believe I was now already 28. I cried.
There was construction going on in the walking garden. A team was building a new stone wall, and not under the Noble Silence, chatted among themselves. They stared at us, and we stared at them. I’ve never seen a stone wall being constructed before, and it was interesting to observe the process. It looked like difficult physical labor. Day by day, noticeable progress was made. Anicca, anicca, anicca.
In the evening, voices singing from some distant city festival carried through the air to our ears. We crowded around the window to look out, as though we could realistically see anything. I felt like a prisoner, deprived of society and community.
On Day 8, I cried again. I thought of my mother and the love she had for beautiful things: flowers, gardening, food, cooking, music, and art. The gong rang. I wiped my tears, stepped out of my room, and headed to the dining hall for lunch.
There was a new dish: Indo-Chinese chow mein. It was delicious. I went to get a second helping, and I noticed the other Chinese student had stood up to get a second helping as well. I felt more at home.
After lunch, we were instructed to take our Vipassana further by reversing our body scan from toe-to-head after going head-to-toe. We were also taught “flow” scans of our body instead of always patiently scanning part by part. Regardless of method, we must always be aware and equanimous, with an understanding that all sensations share the same property: of arising and falling. Anicca.
On Day 9, I fell into my usual post-breakfast nap. As I was falling asleep, I saw a bright white light emerge from the left periphery of my vision. It was blindingly bright. Was this the light foreshadowed in Tibetan Book of the Dead, a famous tome which I had read at my yoga retreat? The book instructs the dying to lean into the light to find salvation. In a lucid split second, I decided it wasn’t time for me to die yet. No, not here at a Vipassana center in Mumbai, when I couldn’t even say goodbye to my father, my sister, and my friends. I pulled myself away from the light and forced myself awake.
That afternoon, I thought of other amazing maternal figures who have touched my life. I thought of my wonderful Airbnb host in Istanbul, who cancelled her next guest and let me stay indefinitely at no cost when I unexpectedly contracted Covid-19. I thought of the Chinese mother in Oaxaca, Mexico, who fed me Chinese food on my late mother’s birthday. Tears welled up in my eyes.
That night, I vividly saw my mother in a dream. I had approached the gates of death, dropped off by a roller coaster cart. I was a leap away from joining my mother on the other side. I could see her clearly. She was peering at me as though through a window. The roller coaster cart was returning to pick me up; I knew it was time to return to the land of the living. “I love you! I love you! I love you! 我爱你!” I yelled over and over again at my mom as the cart approached closer. She stared at me, wide-eyed. The cart hit me and I jolted awake.
I looked at my watch. It was 3:45am.
Day 10: A return to normalcy
After our post-breakfast meditation on Day 10, we ended the Noble Silence. I was unsure of whether I wanted to speak with others, but I quickly got swept up in the community exuberance. People were dying to chat with others, it seemed. “How was your course? Was this your first one?” were common opening questions. From old students, I learned about what other Vipassana centers are like, and how each course and facility is unique. The course curriculum as administered by Goenka’s recordings is always the same but our ever-changing life circumstances teach us something new every time.
I had assumed the old students were only on their 2nd or 3rd courses. Instead, I met students that were on their 4th, 7th, and 8th courses. One of our servers had completed a 45-day course!
We held a variety of occupations in life, from engineers to business owners to seasoned executives. At 28, I was among the youngest cohort of students; many others were in their late 50s and fathers to children my age.
I chatted with the other Chinese student who I was so curious about. Against all odds, he was Chinese-American like myself, and we found many topics to connect on.
We received our cell phones back. Despite being turned off when handing them in, all of our phones now had dead batteries. “That’s surprising,” someone said. “Well, we’ve never turned off our phones for 10 days before, so maybe it’s normal,” someone else replied, and we laughed at the truth.
There was a book sale in the hall where we had registered for the course 10 days earlier. Most of the books were by Goenka himself. “Can I gift these to you?” one of the old students asked me as I held a couple in my hands, hemming and hawing over the summaries. “Uh… sure! That’s very kind of you.” I smiled, and he smiled back.
It felt weird to hold my iPhone in my hands again. Moving my thumb on the touchscreen felt alien. The sensation of tempered glass against my skin felt unnatural. I connected to the Internet and 10 days’ worth of notifications and messages poured in, including several from people who I hadn’t spoken with in some time.
It was overwhelming. I switched off my phone. (When I left the Vipassana center, it would take me 3 days to work through all my messages - the process was exhausting.)
At lunch, the kitchen had prepared a surprise: plump samosas with a tangy tamarind sauce. I engorged myself on the fried, flavorful goodness. The monotony of our course diet was something I am not keen to repeat.
As the sun was setting that afternoon, we stayed out in the garden chatting about all sorts of topics.
After evening discourse, most of us stayed out on the kitchen balcony, chatting and catching up under the hazy night sky. At around 10:30pm, the servers called us back in and told us to go to bed. “We still need to wake up at 4:00am tomorrow morning,” they reminded us.
Day 11: Vada Pav and Molly
After a final morning meditation, we assembled in the dining hall for one last breakfast before departing.
I instantly recognized our breakfast - it was Vada Pav, the local specialty I had seen pop up repeatedly as I was researching Mumbai weeks ago. Vada Pav is a fried mashed potato patty in a bun, accented with dry chutney. I was turned off by the dish when I first read about it. It’s just a carb sandwich? What’s so delicious or special about that?
But this Vada Pav… oh man… I wish I had had my phone with me so I could have taken a photo of my tray. It was quite possibly the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. We took fried potato patties and used our hands to split our rolls open to make space for the patty. Using our hands, we flavored our patties with a dry chutney of chili powder and peanuts. I ate several green chilies that I would find to be so common in Mumbai. They had a texture like Japanese shishito peppers, and I was sweating and hissing from the heat as I said goodbye to my fellow students.
That dish brought me back to life and Vada Pav became my favorite dish in Mumbai. It will forever be spiritually memorable.
Our Vipassana center was located on a small hill. One of the old students, Raj, offered to take me on his motorcycle down to the main road.
It was 8:00am when we left. Early enough that the cacophonous Mumbai traffic hadn’t yet started. Local residents were already active, jogging up the hill we were coming down. The morning air was crisp and cool, blowing softly against our cheeks. Trees on both sides of the road leaned over and met in the middle, their leaves forming a gentle green tunnel for us. Birdsong filled the calm, pure space.
I’ll always remember those few minutes. I was seeing the beauty of the world for the first time. I was glowing. I felt like I was on MDMA.
“I can’t tell if this is really beautiful, or if it’s just the Vipassana,” I told Raj. He laughed and didn’t say anything.
Takeaways
Although I’m only 1 week out of my Vipassana course, I can already tell that it is one of the most powerful and influential experiences I’ve had, albeit in a subtle way. As a follow-up to Ayahuasca, Vipassana was perfect in showing me that suffering is not necessarily our destiny.
This week, I’ve found myself more aware of emotional situations and my reactions to them. I can break out of negative thought loops more quickly. Instead of dwelling on an anger-inducing situation by replaying moments over and over in my mind, I have now learned to sit with and observe the anger, the emotion itself. How is my breath? What sensations does my body feel? By observing with equanimity, the emotion slowly loses its strength and dissipates.
I have far stronger conviction now in my sobriety from alcohol. Indian philosophy teaches that addiction, a craving, is an affliction of the subconscious. Addicts often have a intellectual and conscious understanding of their self-damaging actions. Addiction must be cured at a subconscious level, and there are institutes in Switzerland and Australia using Vipassana to cure addiction.
To continue my practice, I have been meditating in the mornings and evenings, although only for ~20 minutes instead of the recommended 1 hour. The Vipassana Institute also recommends gathering with like-minded meditators once a week for a group session, something which may be more difficult to do once I leave India. Within Mumbai, I have stayed in touch with Vipassana meditators and kept this up.
“This is real education,” Raj told me as we were eating Vada Pav on the last morning. “Asia, especially India, Nepal, Tibet, and China, is the Land of Wisdom. So much was lost when the British came in and dismantled our education system and imposed their own. The Indian education system is terrible today. We need to reclaim old wisdom, like Vipassana.”
In India, I find that most people have not only heard of Vipassana, but have family members or friends who have attended courses. India is truly a holy land and the world stands to learn much from its spirituality.