That first night I got my initial taste of what the next 240 hours of my life was going to be like. There is a main Dhamma Hall, where both the men and women retreaters congregate for each sitting. We all gathered at 6 pm that evening and sat, awaiting. A man dressed in white robs walked in and sat on a raised cushion at the front of the hall, seated towards us. With little to no instruction we were expected to sit quietly and meditate. No instruction. Like he didn’t say anything. I caught on to what I was supposed to do but I wondered what others were thinking especially if this was their first exposure to the practice. I know that there were some that hadn’t meditated before from conversations I’d had earlier that day. I’m sure they were wondering what the hell was going on and what they were supposed to be thinking about or not thinking about and how they were supposed to be sitting and what if they had to sneeze and change position and what if, heaven forbid, they have to pee all of a sudden. I didn’t know too much more about what was expected so I just used my what I already knew to get me through that first horrendously long hour.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, a gong rang out marking the end of the session. In a quiet, staggered voice he first spoke in Hindi and then the same directions in english telling us to move into a different hall for our first discourse, whatever the hell that was. The hindi speakers stayed in the hall and the english speakers went to a smaller, stuffier hall to watch a talk given by Goenka on an old TV, kinda like the TV I got to play Nintendo on when I was little. He introduced himself and explained what the next day was going to look like for the students, what to expect and how to overcome the inevitable hardships of the first full day of meditation.
What he really focused on were the precepts that all students vowed to observe in their ten day stay at the Lumbini Vipassana Centre. He went in quite a lot of depth behind all of them and had some very entertaining and profound anecdotes to go along with each one but here they are in simple form:
1. To abstain from killing any living creature;
2. To abstain from stealing;
3. To abstain from all sexual activity;
4. To abstain from telling lies;
5. To abstain from all intoxicants;
6. To abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decorations;
7. To abstain from using high or luxurious beds;
8. To abstain from eating after midday (only for returning students)
The last “law” that we were to observe is what they call Noble Silence. For the entire duration of the course, no one is allowed to talk. No verbal, written or signed language. No body language. No gestures. You are to create a world for yourself in this center so you are living with just you and your thoughts, regardless of the people around you..
Daily Schedule:
4am – Morning gong wake up call
4:30-6:30am – Meditation in the hall
6:30-8am – Breakfast
8-9am – Group Meditation in hall
9-11am – Meditation in hall
11-12pm – Lunch
12-1pm – Rest and interviews with teacher
1-2:30pm Meditation in hall
2:30-3:30pm – Group meditation in hall
3:30-5pm – Meditation in hall
5-6pm Tea
6-7pm – Group meditation in hall
7-8:30pm – Discourse from Goenka
8:30-9pm – Meditation in hall
9pm – Bed/lights out
That is the gist of ten days of my life recently. The few outsiders that I’ve discussed it with have commented on how utterly boring and dull it sounds and they wondered what the hell I did with myself in my precious moments of rest. I’m like, “what rest? You try concentrating on nothingness for 10.5 hours a day and see if you can find any rest.” The truth is, so much happens during those meditation sessions that it often seemed like they should have allowed more time for mulling over any big ideas, hangups, emotions or whatever else that comes up while trying to focus the mind for so long. It sometimes felt like I was sitting in a rainstorm, each drop an idea, thought or emotion about one thing or someone and then all of a sudden a flash flood rushed through all the cavities and crevasses of my mind, engulfing me in an emotion or thought, perspective so precise that I couldn’t tell if I had it all figured out or if I was slowly drowning. I know it sounds like an over the top way to describe what I felt and I admit that those moments were brief and fleeting but when they hit they always left an impression on my brain that I’m still trying to sort through, coming on two week after the retreat.
The first real day of meditating was tough. We were instructed to practice anapana which is at the simplest form of just following your breath. In and out. For you readers, take 2 minutes right now and try and focus your mind on your inhales and exhales, leaving all other thoughts alone and really concentrate just on that. I bet you can’t keep your train of thought for more than 10 or 20 seconds before you wander. 10.5 hours of this seems like a lot for the first day and it was. Now think of doing it sitting on the ground, cross legged with a straight back and good posture. The meditation was one thing. The posture and numb legs were something completely different. Sitting has never been painful for me. It can be uncomfortable at times but when you try to focus your mind while battling intense sensations all over your body was pure misery. The breaks were not enough. I didn’t need the time to think and mull over my discoveries of the day, I could do that at the end of the retreat. I needed the breaks to lie down and give my legs and back a break. That first real day lasted the whole ten days in my mind. It would never end. It finally did and I had this empowering feeling that I just accomplished something so big, so earth shattering that I was smiling for an hour while trying to get to sleep.
Then the gong sounded at 4am the next morning and I realized that I was merely 1/10 the way through the course. I felt lucky. I had been practicing this before I came here. Not in such long intervals but I had experience. I estimate that before the retreat I had maybe sat with anapana for 80+ hours but that was over 8 months. Day 2 was slightly easier. My back was still constantly on fire. My legs begged for relief. My head was still strong. I made it through and thought that this may not be so bad. At this point if you needed to shift position you were allowed to, very quietly not to disturb your neighbors.
Day 3 followed the same pattern. I was getting it, I was feeling good. I had three or four real discoveries about myself, priorities that I’d taken for granted for so long that I realized were more important in my life. This is going to work! The first three days we were instructed to focus on the area of your nostrils that the air comes in and then exits. We were to focus on any sensations that we might have in that area. Day 2 and 3 the area of focus got smaller.
Day four we began the real practice of Vipassana meditation. It’s a method of body scanning from the top of your head down to your feet. As you move down you focus on quarter sized sections, spaced 3-4 inches apart. If you don’t feel anything then you remain, focusing hard until something arises. If nothing comes then you can note the temperature of the air on your skin or the feel of cloth from your shirt or pants. And down you go. Again and again. I felt like a total idiot. My body doesn’t have sensations everywhere! But up and down, up and down you move. Again, again, again.
Day 5 was better. I began noticing that I have lots of what I would call a tingling sensation in most parts of my body and I could follow them down. Until I got to my legs. Then, well, the tingling turned into fiery pulsings that begged me to move. This was the day that during the one hour group sessions it was mandatory that you do not move your legs, arms or open your eyes. One hour, three times a day that you have to sit with your misery, no matter how severe.
After day 6 I almost threw in the towel. I couldn’t take it. The more I thought about my legs the worse the feeling became. I told myself once the day was over I was packing up my stuff and demanding my passport. I’m done. Then in the nightly discourse Goenka, almost as if he knew exactly what I was going through and what I was wanting to do explained that this is the most crucial part in learning the practice of Vipassana. It is not just one person feeling these terrible sensations. Everyone was. The last step in truly understanding the path of enlightenment is to not become attached to any one sensation, good or bad. If you have a pleasant sensation it doesn’t matter, it will pass. If you have an unpleasant sensation it doesn’t matter, it will pass. Everything in life is impermanent. They key to ending the suffering of our lives is to observe each and every sensation that we have and not react to them. Just observe. Just observe. Just observe. Don’t react. Just observe. So I stayed.
On day 7 I tried really hard to just notice each and everything that I felt during my sittings. Yes, my back still ached like crazy. Yes, my legs screamed at me to move. The more I just observed the pain and then moved on to other parts of my body, the less those sensations controlled me. The rest of the retreat was me working on this technique. I had plenty of moments of pain and agony as I listened to the clock’s tick tick tick, seconds hitting hard. But I also had sittings where I sat down, did my thing and before I had thought of my legs the gong rang, releasing us from the session.
No day went quickly. No night’s sleep was long enough. Due to the schedule I wasn’t able to see a sunrise or a sunset for 10 days. Breaks were never long enough. It sounds terrible at face value. Along the way you somehow develop this sense of acceptance as your routine pushes on. The gong would ring into my room at that early hour and my eyes would open. At some point along the way I stopped the knee jerk reaction of automatically moaning that I’m having to get up at such an ungodly hour. I began to like it. They give you 30 minutes to wake up and get moving so I began to use that time.
At first I would just lie in bed and dread the second bell telling me that it was for real and time to move. The gong would sound, my eyes would open, I’d rollover and sit up. I’d undo my bug netting around my mattress and drop into some stretching. Yoga during the retreat is forbidden for some idiotic reason that was beyond me so my stretching just so happened to have a sequence to it… but I was just stretching. Then I’d move into rolling out some scar tissue in my lower back from a ski injury long ago with a cricket ball I picked up in Kathmandu. Brush my teeth, wash my face… by the time that second gong hit I was awake, fresh and ready for the day and ready for two hours of deep concentration or sometimes no concentration at all. My brain fluctuated and I am no Buddha. This routine would have never happened a year ago when the first and only thing I could accomplish in the morning was making coffee and then drinking said coffee.
The 10th day after our first group sitting the Noble Silence was lifted and we could finally talk. It was one of the strangest interactions I’ve ever had with a group of people. First off, my voice was hoarse like I’d been yelling at a ballgame since my vocal chords hadn’t seen any action for so long. Finally being able to make conversation with people was easy. We had all become close over the last 10 days. We knew each other’s mannerisms. We knew who was happy, who was talkative, quiet, funny, sad or serious. It’s amazing how much you can infer from someone just based on their body language. That’s one of the lessons I’m taking away from the experience. Body language is a much larger force of communication that people give credit.
The bond was incredible. I think I hugged just about each and every guy in the retreat, most were Nepali men that don’t often have physical contact with foreigners. We still had a full day left for meditation but we acted like we just bagged a Himalayan peak together. Each person went through their own form of determination. Some shared how they were getting over divorce, others losing a job, some death. The man that sat behind me in the hall everyday was learning how to live a life after he lost his leg in last year’s earthquake. I befriended an English fellow before the start of the course and he was working through losing his dad last spring after 5 separate battles with cancer, moving his mom into his home with advanced Parkinson’s that just showed her first signs of dementia, getting out of a 10 year relationship, leaving him 38, single and without a clue about how to tackle this next part of his life.
We all had our own demons in this thing. We all had to work through things that other’s couldn’t necessarily relate to. But I think the common ground that we all found is that in leaving Lumbini, we all have a new tool to wield, sometimes as a sword, sometimes as a shield but a tool nevertheless that will be impossible for us to be without, as long as we remember to be mindful. I’m certainly not enlightened, nor do I feel like I’m on the path to becoming enlightened. But I at least have a new skill that could help me through both the good and the bad times in my future. I’m really proud and surprised that I did it. It wasn’t perfect but it’s not supposed to be. I’m not sure if Vipassana is something that I will stick with but I do know that if I have the willpower and determination, I will stick with some form of meditation. Yes, it’s that good. I dare you, try it. I bet you’ll find it’s more sensible than you ever thought.
***Sad update but a reality that we were warned about. During one of the discourses Goenka talked about how going so deep into the mind, opening old wounds can be a dangerous thing. He cautioned us that there may be some dark thoughts that rise to the surface and it’s our job to navigate through them. Some have it harder than others but we were all in this together. A Nepali woman I befriended on our last day emailed me the other day and let me know that an American girl in the retreat called her from Pokhara and needed help. So she got her on a bus back to Kathmandu. Long story short she tried to commit suicide twice while being helped by my friend Anu. She’s hospitalized right now, not sure of her condition. They won’t let her fly on her own so someone from her family has to come to Kathmandu to get her.
I had breakfast with a group after the retreat was over and the American girl sat across the table from me. I didn’t talk to her much but I do remember that she put a napkin over my bowl of fruit to keep the flies off it. We all are fighting our own battles. She was obviously fighting some big things. I feel really grateful for her kind gesture and I wish I was thoughtful enough to talk to her more, I missed an opportunity to help someone who needed a friend. You never know who needs help. Some people scream silently. I will try to be kind to those people sitting across the table from me. Maybe ask how they’re doing. And really ask, not just for formalities sake.
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