Vipassana – 10 days of silence. 10 days of torture.

‘I could never be silent for 10 days’ is most people’s reaction when you tell them you’re going to do a Vipassana 10 day silent meditation in the Blue Mountains.

To which I would now reply ‘you totally could. In fact you would enjoy the silence so much you’ll hate it when it comes back to actually talking, truly’.

If you’re considering or have considered doing a Vipassana this is what you’re up for:

1. No talking
2. No eye contact
3. No reading, writing, music, anything to distract
4. No contact with opposite sex (60 men stay on their side of the meditation hall and in their own quarters, 60 of us ladies on the other side).
5. 2 vegetarian meals per day, fruit in the evening.
6. Light walking only
7. You must sit in meditation for 3 supervised sessions per day, during each of these sessions it is 1 hour of determined meditation. Keep scrolling to understand what this means.

The Schedule:

4am Morning Bell

4:30 – 6:30 Meditate in the hall or in your room (room not advised, sleepy nap time tends to win here).

6:30 – 8:00 Brekkie

8:00 – 9:00 Meditate in the hall Vipassana style

9:00 – 11:00 Meditate in the hall or in your room

11:00 – 13:00 Lunch

13:00 – 17:00 Meditate in the hall or your room, except 2:30 – 3:30 is in the hall Vipassana style again

17:00 – 18:00 Tea break and 2 pieces of fruit

18:00 – 21:00 Vipassana style meditation, 1 hour discourse with a very funny and endearing Indian man called Goenka. You’re literally gagging to hear this man’s voice each evening. He is heartwarmingly witty and funny and makes you want to be a better person. And then we do another meditation (cause we haven’t done enough of them).

21:00 Lights out.

So to clarify, the whole 17 hours you’re technically doing Vipassana meditation. But in 3 hours each day it’s solid Vipassana, that is determined (intense) meditation. No moving, no scratching of the face when it gets an itch (and believe me, your face get involuntary itches ALL THE TIME) and no adjusting your posture when your leg goes numb or you hip sears with pain. Nup. You’re in that posture and you’re not going anywhere. And that’s the whole point, you sit with whatever you’re experiencing, you don’t run away from it or try to change it. You observe it.

This is Vipassana.

When I arrived and signed in, I asked the girl if she had any advice for me. She replied ‘just don’t leave’. I said ‘oh, I’m not going to leave’. She smiled and repeated ‘just don’t leave’.

Vipassana meditation is to observe the sensations of the body, whether they be pleasant or painful. It’s about observing them without preference. That is, no craving for the pleasant sensations, no aversion to the painful ones.

In mastering this compassionate observation of the body and its involuntary workings, the mind learns to stop ‘reacting’. Without the automatic reactions we have been conditioned to experience we create space to witness and experience our reality exactly as it is. We get totally present.

If you Wikipedia Vipassana you get this: ‘it is the insight into the true nature of reality. It is about impermanence, misery and suffering and egolessness.’ 

And so it is through the reprogramming of the mind to stop reacting unnecessarily that we understand the nature of impermanence, everything arises and everything leaves. Everything goes through a cycle of change and we need only look to nature to understand this. Nothing ever stays the same in nature. And we are nature, so why would we expect ourselves to stay the same? We are anything but permanent.

But to understand this intellectually is one thing and to experience it is another. This meditation practice allows this.

Sitting in the one posture, with no movement, you get to play witness to the various sensations the body is constantly giving off. Tingles. Spasms. Itches. Shooting pain. Numbing pain. By training the mind to just observe, you tune into and start to truly understand that things come up, but they don’t last forever.

As for our ‘misery and suffering’. This is largely thanks to our subconscious mind reacting to life. It is in constant state of ‘craving’ or ‘aversion’. We want want want and then we get and we want more more more. Or, we experience a situation we don’t like and we want to run run run.

And when you think about it, it’s totally true.

We create so much misery and suffering for ourselves because we move ourselves so far away from the reality of our actual experience.

***

Now like everything, this wonderful technique works only when you work it.

There’s a reason why you sit in meditation for 10 hours of the 17 each day. It’s gruelling and believe me there are many times you’re having a total hissy fit inside your head screaming ‘I don’t want to fucking meditate anymore’. You’re willing people to make eye contact with you. You want to get so far away from yourself it feels like torture – cause you can’t.

But, the practice does work. Sure enough you drag your daggy track suited arse into the meditation hall, you get in the zone, and when you leave, the same thought that was making you depressed or sad or anxious in the morning pops back in and YOU DON’T REACT TO IT. You observe it. You place no craving or aversion on it. And you watch it pass.

Remember my check in gal said ‘don’t leave’. I didn’t once think about leaving, but that’s only cause my ego is too strong (I haven’t quite mastered egolessness just yet) and plus they have all your possessions, so it’s kinda embarrassing to ask for them back.

But I understand what she was saying. In all honesty it wasn’t until day 8 or 9 that things really started to feel different. As in, my head would do it’s thing, ‘story story story’ and where my body would normally react with an unsettled, contracted anxious feeling in the chest and gut it was instead replaced by… nothing. It was peaceful. It felt like liberation.

***

They advise you need to do 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour in the evening for a year to really experience the true true benefits. This is a serious commitment, right? And I’ll be totally honest, I got back last week with intentions of the highest willingness to follow through. And instead red meat and red wine and socialising came on my path.

But, for the past 4 days I’ve stuck with it and I have to say, I feel better. I do feel different.

I spoke with a woman who had just done her 7th Vipassana over the last 10 years. She informed me that she practices everyday as they say to and has done for 2 years now. I asked her what life’s like.

She replied ‘it’s everything they say it is. You have so much compassion for humanity it moves you every day. And all the shit we react to, just stops. You start to cut through it with an ease and grace.’

Compassion for humanity and ease and grace. I want this. I want to experience my world like this. I come back to this when the excuse pops up to skip meditation. Cause it does. All the time.

The reality of my experience while I was inside.

It was total torture at times. I had numerous hissy fits in my head. I missed (so much) laughing. I missed people smiling (it’s a pretty somber affair, eyes cast down, no smiles, deep contemplation). I took myself down to the bush one afternoon when everyone was up drinking tea and I thought back over all the hilarious moments from the previous week and just lost my shit, laughed out loud, hand on my belly, tears streaming down my cheeks. Was like having an orgasm. It was bliss.

And by hilarious moments I’m referring to the old lady who let one rip, so loud, in the middle of one of the intense meditations or the time the blow fly flew into the hall (it’s buddhism, no use for mortein here) and buzzed around for the entire session. Still don’t know where the fly ended up. Or the lunch where the tongs weren’t working properly and salad flung everywhere each time someone used them. Or when the male kangaroo (yep, you get kangaroos too, wild ones, just doing their thing) trying it on with the lady kanga and she was having none of it!

These things made me laugh – a lot. And you just have to contain em. Although in fairness I think I failed at this. Life amuses me. It really does.

Being able to witness my thoughts and the patterns of them was enlightening and disappointing (painfully so). Most days I was like ‘really mind, that is the best you can come up with?’ or ‘really? we’re going to play over this conversation or this story, again?’.

But as the days go by, you become less judgy about them. You learn to just watch them and no get so carried away. This for me was massive. Coming back to ‘normal life’ I’ve done my best to remember this. At times I’ve failed miserably, other times I’ve caught myself and the reaction has stopped.

Coming back to reality your senses are totally overwhelmed. People stink. Everything is noisy – almost unnecessarily so and very quickly your vision loses the heightened colours and lustre. Which sucks a little. You notice the distinct difference of life out here with life in there, because in there, there is nothing to distract you. You spend ample amount of time staring at clouds and insects. Blades of grass. Trunks and leaves. You move into a state of wonder and awe. You marvel at the creation of all of life and you realise how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of it all and how connected you are to all of it. It’s humbling.

Would I do it again?

In a heart beat. Not straight away, but I can see myself there again. A girlfriend asked me last week if I wanted to go on a cruise at the end of the year, (which is not really my thing), and I replied ‘I’d rather do Vipassana’. And it’s true. And not just because the thought of a cruise makes my skin crawl, but because it’s a pretty amazing experience. You get a taste of what it’s like to ‘just be’. To be with yourself, with the incessant ramblings of the mind, to exist in your world more peacefully. I experienced it in there. And I have experienced it out here – in snippets. It’s a work in progress. But that’s the thing, they don’t promise you that it’s a one fix wonder, they drill in to you that it’s something for you to work at and work on. And that’s life. So be it. It’s not a practice for victims, but who wants to be a victim?

So if you’re wondering whether you should do it, whether you could – you totally can and it’s totally worth it. It is worth all the torture.