Three Days of Vipassana
When I was 19, I packed my bags & booked my spot at the Vipassana Centre in Jaipur, India. One night before I was meant to leave, my mother refused to let me go as according to her, participation in a program like this was meant for people in their 50s & beyond, looking for meaning in life after having lived it.
At 29, I packed my bags again & booked my spot at Dhamma Pabha, the Vipassana Centre in Hobart, Tasmania. One night before I was meant to leave, Abhay held me tightly in his arms all night, tightly enough to make up for the 10 nights he wouldn’t be able to.
For those unaware of what Vipassana is, it’s described as a “way of self transformation through self observation” and it takes place in complete isolation over the course of 10 days.
On a Wednesday morning, I boarded my flight to Tasmania. I reached the center around 4pm that day and I was stunned at how well tucked the location was, far enough from civilization that you could truly dwell inside. The center was located on top of a hill so you were surrounded by tall Eucalyptus trees and the sound of the wind & birds chirping.
The program began at 8 that night which meant we would all fall silent and cease contact with each other. I began talking to the girl who sat beside me and we began with the disclaimer, “We aren’t going to be speaking after these 2 hours so no time for small talk — let’s dive right in” and we began to serve the deepest scoops of our stories.
The schedule was as follows:
4.00am — Wake up
4.30am-6.30am — Meditate in Room or Hall
6.30am — 8am — Breakfast
8am — 11am — Meditate
11am-1.00pm — Lunch Recess
1–2.30pm — Meditate in Room or Hall
2.30pm-5.00pm — Meditate
5–6pm — Tea
6–7pm — Meditate
7–8pm — Discourse
8–9pm — Meditate
You are meant to observe complete silence and don’t have access to any technology, books, or any form of information consumption or production so you’re stripped down completely to your bare thoughts & breath.
I woke up with a lot of vigor exactly at 4am, heading right in for a cold water shower that helped me stay awake for the morning hours of meditation. I would take multiple walks after meal times and observe my thoughts. One of the things I quite enjoyed about my thoughts was the ability to switch on my mental Spotify as and when I needed. I would switch between Justin Bieber & Olafur Arnolds and when I had enough music, I would simply stand still in the sun & listen to the birds.
This is quite rightly described as the surgical operation of the mind whereby challenges were to be expected which would manifest in the form of fear or doubt or other emotions that look intolerable at the surface but are a natural symptom of this operation.
You are taught to observe the sensation of your breath which is a way for you to train your awareness to focus on subtle sensations. This technique in turn helps you in observing your emotions & reactions as simply sensations in the body that will pass, allowing you to cultivate mindfulness towards your emotions instead of reacting to them.
The thought I had on the first day was,
“Shit! This is so cool. You get to be in nature by yourself with no technology and no one to talk to. This is awesome. I should do it every year.”
The thought I had on the third day was,
“Shit! What did I get myself into? Why am I even doing this? I guess 3 days is enough!”
What I realized was that my excitement by the third day had died down for whatever reason. I usually wake up with a lot of vigor to be alive which I lost by the third day. My body was aching all over due to long hours of meditation and I began to question the reason I came here & decided to dedicate 10 days of my life. In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure whether this can be attributed to the symptom of doubt that I would have overcome eventually or whether this was my intuition telling me it wasn’t my time.
Either way, it wasn’t my time and by the evening meditation sitting on the third day, I had caught on to the thought of packing my bags & leaving for home. I head to Hobart that night, checking into whichever hotel I could find. For that whole night and the whole of next day, I was quite dazed with the experience.
On a Sunday morning, I went to a cafe in Hobart to read. My mind was crystal focused & I didn’t have any urge to be anywhere but in the present. I sat for two hours, simply reading, no distractions. Later, when I was having breakfast, I lost myself in the particles that were lit up by the sun’s rays filtering through the window. It was very refreshing to be lost in the seemingly mundane events in life. Most of the empty moments in life were occupied by my phone and I hadn’t realized just how content I could feel just being. Empty. Nothing to consume. Nothing to produce. Just existing.
I was kind to myself for quitting the program but not complacent so decided to give myself the Quitter’s Punishment which is as follows & applies to this entire week (in hopes of building a longer term discipline):
Wake up between 6–6.30am to complete blocks of -
Stretching
Skill based movements (ie. pullups, handstand)
Higher intensity bout of workout
1 Hour of Meditation
I designed the above program to take advantage of the break in my repetitive patterns of life that came with Vipassana. The patterns I wish to cultivate include building a healthier relationship with the space I inhabit ie. my home. I want my mind to see this space where I dwell as my mini Vipassana, the place where I work towards mastering the art of body & mind. In the daily grunt, I forget this and instead rush from one thing to another just to get things done. I forget that one of my foundational purposes in life is to first & foremost, serve myself which for me comes through a good discipline that involves my mind & body.
Here are a few precious musings I had at Vipassana:
Presence
One of the things that 3 days at Vipassana gave me was the ability to be present with myself which I want to keep close to myself until it becomes a natural part of me. When I was stretching in the evening in my room, I realized that I had never been so present with my body when I worked out at home.
I had nothing better to do after working out so my mind was laser focused on the present moment. My present moment wasn’t being weighed up with the better things I could be doing since there was nothing else literally to do. This brought to me to my first insight -
When you constantly have perceivably better things to do, which could even be simply scrolling through your phone due to it’s addictive effect on the mind, your mind craves the next thing. To make the present more expensive relatively, the mind has to believe there is nothing better to be done after.
For me, the way I would make my present more expensive is through engaging in lesser & lesser activities so I can expand my presence in each. Secondly, training my mind through regular meditation to focus my awareness in the present. Thirdly, most importantly, is timed usage of the phone since the fleeting moments I spend on my phone convincing myself that they’re harmless keep collecting over days & months until they’ve silently conditioned my mind to seek distraction, thereby making my present moment cheaper.
Observe WHAT IS
The initial technique I learned (which isn’t Vipassana but the building block to it) is to observe my natural respiration. Not to regulate it, but to observe it. Observe WHAT IS. This has really changed the way I observe the weather inside of me, at least for now. I feel my emotions rising & falling inside of me, like waves washing over the shore. I keenly observe my reactions to different things and will continue to build on this. Vipassana inserted a tiny moment between what I feel and how I react and now, expanding that moment is entirely up to me. For example, I have been able to catch moments which would simply fly under my conscious radar like when I pick up my phone for no reason. Usually, I would pick it up, open Whatsapp & Instagram and keep it down all within a span of less than a minute. Now, I catch myself like a thief. Once I catch myself, I no more default to the automatic reaction.
Habit Pattern of the Mind
The discourse at Vipassana talked about the habit pattern of the mind, whereby our minds are constantly replaying the past or the future, finding any escape from the present. Our minds are like monkey minds, going from one thought to another and another. Accepting gracefully that this is indeed the habit pattern of the mind and practicing bringing back the mind to the present moment with softness is the essential skill which means to not get agitated or frustrated that your mind wanders, because all minds do.
Instead, like a parent, cajoling it back to the present. Softly and gently. There is a certain level of peace that comes with accepting that your mind is not a strange mind for being a constant chatterbox or a record player of the past. We all come preinstalled with it. The idea is to train it with discipline & grace to help it become the powerhouse it is capable of being.
Power of the Environment
My environment at Vipassana was simply a big hill surrounded by trees. No phone. No talking. No contact with people whatsoever. Simple food served two times. Nothing to do except walking & stretching & meditating. I got up at 4am fresh every day and functioned well on 2 meals a day which were ideally for meditation expenditure but I also worked out in my room on them. I was fully present and had no need of anything (except Abhay — man I missed him like a bitch!).
My heart began to speak in my ears — it was like my meditation was churning the wheels of my heart until I could feel it throbbing in every part of my body. The rotten outer layer of my mind had cleansed away, paving way for clearer thoughts. The inner state I inhabited was so peaceful — this was just in 3 days I was there. This led me to see very vividly how much our environments control us.
The more accessories you add to your environment, the faster your rate of living becomes.
This led me to question how I make my environment work for me since I had to go back home, to the very place I came from. Some aspects of this influence I cannot control however, some I might be able to.
Examples of what I’m currently thinking of include intentional spaces in my home to do dedicated focus work — be it my work, my meditation or my workouts. They also need to be free of distractions. Another one is to remember to come to regulate my breath when I’m going very fast.
After my experience, I came to see how the heart is the internal clock. Time is a subjective concept that’s felt differently by each one of us. This is why the same 24-hour day can seem to pass by very slow for someone yet very fast for another. The heart is at the center of it all.
The slower the heart rate, the more expanded the present. There is, I believe, an inverse relationship that exists between Presence & Heart Rate.
For presence to increase, heart rate has to decrease and vice versa.
Now we can also start thinking about the activities that cause our heart rates to go up (which implies that we can use this relationship to our benefit rather than being slaves to it) -
- Scrolling through the phone — Heart Rate increases
- Caffeine — Heart rate increases
- Meditation — Heart rate decreases
- Slower movements — Heart rate decreases
- Faster movements — Heart rate increases
Since a faster heart rate is also correlated with emotions of anxiety, nervousness, anger and fear, perhaps there’s a way to tackle these emotions by understanding the causes in our environment that lead to a faster heart rate and tackling those to enable a waterfall response that affects not only our presence of mind but also the emotions we feel on an average.
I am not taking into account physical activities that lead to a higher heart rate for a period of time — clearly that’s extremely beneficial. We’re only considering unintentional activities that govern our internal clock and ways to make them intentional so WE SET THE DIAL OF OUR OWN CLOCKS.
Humor is the Balm of Life
I used humor a lot to crack jokes on myself when my body was in pain. Humor distilled the seriousness of the environment for me so much that I would catch myself laughing at my own jokes. When I’d stretch my legs after sitting cross legged for an hour, I’d whisper to myself,
“Yes Grandma. Stretch them legs. All that working out has clearly not helped.”
When I would sit down with my breakfast and crave for more bread, I’d usually crack a joke or two.
“Eat one more bread. Common. This is clearly a 5-star buffet madam.”
When I would take a break from meditation to pee, and walk on a silent big hill by myself, I’d slip another one.
“Good excuse to sneak out from meditation. Let’s see how much pee comes out.”
When I’d take walks in nature and feel the energy of the trees, a voice in my head would usually go,
“Obviously you’re not weird. Talking to trees is absolutely normal. Tell me also how they’re doing today — any new gossip in the family or same old?
I realized how I could make seemingly serious moments funny and in turn, they’d become bearable.
Maybe, I go back to Vipassana again. Maybe, I don’t. But I will keep these learnings close to me and hopefully, build on them as time goes by. Who knows, I might pick up my bags again at 39, just to keep the synchrony alive.
“Don’t be satisfied with stories. How things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Rumi
