One of the most intense and challenging experiences of my life till date and also one of the best experiences. I believe that if one can handle a ten-day Vipassana meditation program either online or offline, it shall be one of the best experiences a human mind can possibly have.
Why’d I enrolled for a 10-Day Vipassana Meditation Course?
I’m a personal development junkie who believes that knowing your “why” is really important to get started on something and finishing it.
It’s been quite a few months since I was meditating between 10–20 mins per day. In spite of meditating daily for about two months, I wasn’t feeling that much satisfied with the results that I was getting. I wanted to experience the real benefits of meditation in my mind. I needed something which sort of guides me towards the path of clarity and not confusion.
Then, I read one of the bestselling books of human history, Sapiens, where author Yuval Noah Harari twice mentions the VIPASSANA MEDITATION practice with the highest praise.
So, I challenged myself and signed up for the course, which due to the pandemic was getting postponed. But I was so determined to take this course this year only.
When you want something the whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-Paulo Coelho
I found an online Vipassana course and without a second thought, took the challenge and enrolled myself in the course. This was even more challenging than an offline course because I was staying with my family and living like a monk, with all the disturbance around. But I was only seeing the opportunity to grow, learn and transform myself. I took the plunge.
The rules I followed for a more profound experience
- I Woke up at 3:45 AM every single day and turned off the lights by 9:30–10:00 PM.
- No Lies for 11 days. This was easy because I avoided conversations as much as possible.
- I had meals only twice a day at around 1:00–2:00 PM and 6:30–7:00 PM. I was following vegan-diet. I avoided sugar and caffeine completely.
- No to SOCIAL MEDIA
- No to exercise / No to reading books/ No to music (I said no to even all the activities that I absolutely love doing)
The Daily Schedule
A day-wise breakdown of my journey of self-exploration
The past week was really confusing and exhausting for me. I was in a state of deep dilemma. The only thing I wanted was mental clarity and I was desperately waiting for the course to get started. I was super ready to learn and grow as much as possible.
Day Zero(The Preparation Day)
I started preparing for the next 11 days as my day started by doing certain things. I just wanted to make sure that nothing comes in between my practice so that I can get the most out of it.
List of things I did before the course started:
- I contacted all the people who need to be aware that I’ll be gone for the next few days. I made my last calls, messages, uninstalled a few apps, blocked a few sites and turned off all the notifications. Though I kept my phone on in case of any emergency.
- I made a few social media posts that I’m stepping out from my regular flow for a few days.
- I did set up my practice space by dedicating a corner of my room for meditation. Make sure that I remove all the distractions from that place. Also, I did certain things to make sure that I get good vibes when I meditate.
- Told everybody at home about the course so that they don’t think I’m depressed and walking around ignoring them.
- I wrote down everything that I was doing in the past few days so that my mind doesn’t wander during the meditation hours.
After the commencement talk for the day in the evening, I realized I landed at the right place at the right time. I made a vow to myself to give everything I have to learn this skill. Tomorrow, we are to begin the exploration of the universe within.
A practice has a time, space and an intention.
– Thinker Stephen Pressfield
Day 01( ANAPANA: Foundation Skill )
Anapana is the same practice that took Buddha to enlightenment. Anapana means respiration awareness. The technique was simple to understand; Feel your breath coming in and out of the nostrils and let it be entirely natural and don’t react to it. If your mind moves away to a thought/emotion/memory/fantasy simply bring it back. As I started the practice I noticed that within a minute my mind started wandering.
I realized that I’m not flexible, as I sat in a cross-legged position for about half an hour and my legs started aching so bad and it seems like my knees are gonna pop out of my legs. Soon I realized that there is no way I can sit for two hours straight in one position. I kept changing my positions under instructors’ guidance. Initially, it was okay but minute by minute, hour by hour I struggled, somehow survived day one.
Day 02(Heightened Awareness — Nose Exploration Day)
Narrower the area of awareness, the sharper the awareness becomes. It’s just a matter of patience and time.
We have been told to pick a small area between the tip of the nostrils to the top of the lip(an inverted triangle). I slowly started to shrink down the amount of space and finally decided to focus my awareness on a smaller circle just beneath the septum for the rest of the day. My body was aching very badly and most of the time I found myself focusing on the pain. By evening my mind started wandering with frequent visits to my past memories but as soon as I realised that I’m losing my awareness I would come back and focus on the small circle.
Day 03(Equanimity)
Feel Everything and react to nothing.
By today I had some momentum of the practice behind me. Now I was clearer in my head, which is an utterly blissful event for me. My mind wandered for quite a time but I was quick in noticing and I would quickly come back and focus on the breath. I was able to sit for an hour without fidgeting though I struggled to close my eyes for a longer period. I was feeling the pain in my lower back and realised that there is a threshold value to the pain after which it doesn’t matter and everything feels the same. There were times when I found myself saying “ALL IS WELL”, just to play with my mind.
Day 04(Non-reactive movements of awareness)
I discovered that in the past three days I’ve been sharpening the mind and not doing Vipassana meditation. Today, we begin actual Vipassana meditation, unleashing our newfound abilities throughout the body. I was about to take my awareness to the world of sensations. I’ve been instructed to start with the area of focus where I’ve been building my awareness from the last few days and slowly taking that awareness throughout the whole body in a repeated predictable pattern.
Something weird happened which I’d never felt before. When I focus all my conscious attention on top of the head, it immediately feels like a bunch of ants are running around on my scalp, which is weird, yet oddly satisfying. As instructed, I move my focus place by place throughout my body. Though I have trouble finding any sensation in most areas.
Day 05(VIPASSANA: REALITY AS IT IS)
We don’t want to be believers, we don’t want to be students, we want to be explorers and truth seekers
Today I had the option to choose to build even more focus and clarity or to explore and expand myself through direct experience of reality. I chose the latter. I became curious about the sensations and often found myself questioning what is this new thing that I’ve never felt before, as I go deeper scanning my entire body spot by spot. With every pass through, I notice another slight sensation here, another detail there. As I place my focus in some sensitive spots I begin to encounter these rapid tingling sensations that I’ve never felt before in my entire life.
By the evening I started feeling heaviness in some parts of the body and experienced some sort of fear as if something really important to me is leaving behind. The fear was deep; I simply observed it and remained equanimous as much as I could by focusing on my breath. In the QA Session when I asked the instructors about this strange fear, he said: “You have to go deeper into your meditations to know the reason and to become immune to it.”
“Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.”
-Murakami
Day 06(HEIGHTENED AWARENESS — Body Exploration Day)
We’re told to swiftly sweep our awareness throughout our bodies every now and then. I started focusing on each spot with full awareness and now for an even longer period of time. On one hand, I run into those rapid, pleasurable tingling sensations wherever I focus my awareness on another I find myself recalling some past memory.
In the Evening, something amazing happened. As I sat down for meditation within a few minutes my heart started beating very rapidly. I found myself full with the feeling of gratitude listening to the song of my heart and a stream of tears started rolling down my cheeks. I will never forget this experience in my entire life. I had the best and intense meditation session today.
You are the sky, Everything else is just weather.
Day 07(META-BHAVANA: The Technique of Loving Kindness)
With this technique, we can take VIPASSANA and start to extend it outwards to everyone in our lives and clean the record between us and the external world and all the things we’ve come in contact with. Today we did meditation with an open mouth to access the internal world in an even deeper state. It started by focusing on the people we love the most and then extending that love to the people we are more neutral with followed by those with whom we share difficult relationships.
The Buddha teaches love as a natural extension of stable loving awareness. It all started making sense now, I myself have always considered love as something bigger than just an emotion. For me, the most mind-blowing moment of the entire course was when I found this loving position within me. In a moment I realize love is inside of us. I could have stayed in that moment forever. Also, this is the technique that has helped me in taking the practice in my daily life.
Giving the best of ourselves to the best of others.
Day 08(Open-Eye Meditation: Bridging the gap)
Today’s meditation is with open eyes to bridge the gap between our practice(meditative state of consciousness) and our world(regular state of consciousness), which is also the objective of the retreat to be able to apply learnings in the world.
I experienced a few past memories that were not so pronounced anymore. As I was doing things I noticed I was observing details of the things around me and at the same time I was able to focus on the breath as well. I was calmer and at peace more than ever, though I was feeling huge pain in my lower body. But that pain was so small in comparison to the things I felt. I sat for hours with open eyes and wasn’t feeling bored at all and realised
Boredom + Attention = Interest
Day 09(TRANSFIGURATION)
I had a dream and I did remember it after which I started thinking about the things I will do after the course. Felt tired and heavy in my head so I slept and had the best nap ever for about 15 mins.
Today’s session is about taking VIPASSANA to relationships. I haven’t had any partner to meditate with so I meditated in front of the mirror with open-eyes and tried to not think anything and focus on the details. In the evening I decided to focus on the flow of breath.
Day 10(THE TRUTH)
Observe the truth. The truth will set you free.
Death is a certainty, whenever we are born into the world we are gonna die, we all have to face it. The Shamans said that death was an ally. Some of the traditions within South America say that our death is always waiting for an arm’s distance away from our left shoulder and it can touch us at any moment. If we keep this in mind that at any moment it can reach out and touch me and I’m gone, then I’ll remain in the present always.
Let all the unnecessary layers die. This also teaches us that everything is impermanent. In today’s session, we performed an activity where we have to speak whatever comes to mind while meditating without any filter. REALITY AS IT IS. That is how we bring VIPASSANA TO communication. And then meditated listening to the words coming out of my mouth with full awareness. Beautiful!
Day 11
With this day I was already feeling appreciation for the inner and outer world. I’ve got a chance to communicate with other meditators. We expressed gratitude to everyone that allowed this technique to come to us. The more I practice, the more I realise that everything(Books, movies, music, work, relations) we encounter is a position of awareness that we choose to meditate on or not. Even as I write this blog, I’m meditating.
Daring to live means daring to die and daring to be born again.
What I Learned from Vipassana Meditation?
VIPASSANA MEDITATION is not about closing eyes or sitting in a certain position. Vipassana is a skill that we learn and we can take it to everything. It isn’t some serious complex routine. It’s about learning focus and how to really be present into the moment wherever you go.VIPASSANA can help us to bring our total self in whatever we do. It isn’t a belief system or a religion. It’s a very simple method refined down to enhance our function as a human.
With each technique that I learned, I could see clear results. That’s something so exceptional about VIPASSANA. Here we literally don’t have to believe in anything, simply put in the practice and it takes us to the results.
VIPASSANA teaches us wherever we are. It is a beautiful position and it has something for us and we can be content here without the moment.
Would I Recommend Vipassana Meditation to Others?
Yes! But know your “why” first and once you feel that you are ready for this intense journey of self-exploration, take the plunge.
This technique has a huge impact because it is a practical technique. I tried to cover as much as I could, to know VIPASSANA best you have to experience it. As asking the experience of VIPASSANA is as similar as asking somebody the sweetness of a mango, you can only experience how sweet mango is by tasting it, through a direct experience.
We are all like icebergs. We see the tip at the surface above the water but underneath we’ve got this massive mass of ourselves waiting for us to be explored and if we are willing to put our heads under the water and to dig in, then we can reclaim the potential. Then it’s up to you where you want to apply it. The only question is are we willing to unfreeze them consciously?
Lastly, if you’ve made it this far in this lengthy article, you might be curious how much a ten-day Vipassana course cost? It’s absolutely free. The program is entirely run by volunteers and financially supported by past students.
Interested?
Dhamma.org — The homepage of Vipassana Meditation.
The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation — A simple written explanation of Vipassana from S.N. Goenka (the cheerful, old, smooth-voiced man who posthumously teaches all the classes via recorded lecture).
Yuval Noah Harari on Vipassana Meditation — A five-minute interview clip of mega-bestselling author of Sapiens on Vipassana Meditation (he’s taken a sixty-day course).
May you be happy, whatever you are going through, whoever you are.
THANK YOU FOR READING.