Vipassana

The past 10 days I've spent in complete silence. I made a vow of silence to join a course to learn Vipassana meditation. I had 12 days in Dharamsala, and the morning of the second day, I hike up into the woods to ask about this course. The administrators told me that luckily for me, the course started that very evening, but unfortunately, all 50 spots were filled and there were 58 people on the waiting list. Despite the odds, I still put my name down for waitlist #59. When I arrived that evening, it turned out half the people didn’t show up. Still, I was 2 places short of getting into the course. Then, one girl dropped out because of dysentery and another left because her boyfriend didn’t get a place. And that was how I got my chance to learn about Vipassana meditation.

The Vipassana meditation is the method as taught by Buddha (Guatama) during his lifetime. During that period, all of North India, regardless of local religion, adopted this meditation. This was the story I heard. Three hundred years after Buddha passed away, an Indian king, named Ashoka the cruel for his massacres and conquests was introduced to Vipassana meditation. And he transformed into a benevolent ruler. Thereafter, he sent dhamma emissaries all over the world to help others and teach them this meditation technique. There was a prophecy then that this knowledge would disappear from India and would spread again all over the world 2500 years after Buddha’s passing. The practice did eventually disappear, but it was preserved in Burma by a line of very few practitioners. The prophesized year arrived a few decades ago. That year, a Burmese business man name Goenka, suffering from severe migraine, which no doctor could cured, decided to give Vipassana meditation a try. He was the leader of the Hindu community and was determined not to leave that for any other religion or belief. Nevertheless, after his first course, he started to pursue this technique further and further. A few years after he started this practice, he went to India, where his parents lived, to teach Vipassana to his mother who was suffering from psychosomatic pains. There, his initial teaching to 15 people quickly spread and now thousands in India are learning the same technique.

The only way to learn Vipassana is through these 10 day courses. To start, we have to agree to 5 precepts during this period- that we abstain from stealing, sex, telling lies, intoxicants, and killing any animals. We also agree to complete silence so that our minds can be free from daily chattering. Each day we woke up at 4am to meditate till the sun rises. From waking to bedtime at 9pm, we meditated over 10 hours each day at 1-2 hour intervals.

The course offered a structured and scientific technique. After he became enlightened under a tree, Buddha taught what he realized to other, and this teaching only consisted of 3 things. To gain peace and complete control over the mind, only these 3 parts are necessary. First is Shila- to avoid any action that will harm other living beings. During the course, we fulfilled this by observing the 5 precepts. The second is Samadhi, tranquility of the mind. The third is Pungna, total understanding of reality as experienced by oneself. From the very first day we began to develop Samadhi through common meditation method of observing one’s respiration. By the 4th day, after our mind reached a calm state, the teacher introduced us to Vipassana, the method to develop Pungna.

In all religious and philosophical teachings, we assume that the understanding of reality (also called god, nature, or soul by various beliefs) can be reached through intellectual discourse. Buddha was the only one who taught that this understanding can only be achieved if we experience total reality of our senses and penetrate the subconscious level of reality. So he developed Vipassana to help individuals explore reality as pertaining to themselves.

In the beginning, the most difficult part of the course for me was not the 4am wake up call by the gong, or keeping complete silence. It was the pain in my leg from sitting all day. I probably shifted positions 40 times a day and I tried every position. Once, I even folded my cushion into a saddle and meditated by straddling them. It didn’t work so well.
After 3 days of Samadhi, I was still a fidgety meditator. On the fourth day, I started Vipassana meditation. At first the leg pains became more acute. Then, after a many hours, I felt a strange change in sensations. The pain in my leg started to dissolve. The solid pain was being reduced to hundreds of tiny pinpoint sensations which arose and faded every half-second. Everywhere in my body, sensations were felt on a much subtler level. By the end of the 10 days, I was able to sit for entire sessions without moving a single appendage. And it was during these moments of subtle sensations that my mind came closest than it ever did before to understanding the reality of existence.

It would be in vain to try to explain my inner experience and insights, when so many wiser and more articulate people have written volumes on the subject of ultimate reality. And even if I can find a few abstract vocabularies to try to encompass my experience, just as every reality is colored differently, this experience for you would be completely different from mine. If you are interested, the only way to find out is to try it yourself. I would recommend this course for anyone with a bit of curiosity about the nature of existence or anyone suffering from mental or psychosomatic pains. But when you do go, leave your gods, gurus, holy waters, and rosaries at home. All you need for this experience is a comfortable cushion.

There are Vipassana centers all over the world. Anybody with questions about my experience can email or contact me. I’ll be happy to share whatever I can.