Sleep less, stay separated and shut up
04:00 am Morning wake-up bell
04:30-06:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
06:30-08:00 am Breakfast break
08:00-09:00 am Group meditation in the hall
09:00-11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room according to instructions
11:00-12:00 pm Lunch break
12:00-01:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher
01:00-02:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room
02:30-03:30 pm Group meditation in the hall
03:30-05:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to instructions
05:00-06:00 pm Tea break
06:00-07:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
07:00-08:15 pm Teacher's Discourse in the hall
08:15-09:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
09:00-09:30 pm Question time in the hall
9:30 pm Retire to your own room – Lights out
As you can see, the schedule for the retreat gives a pretty straight-forward message – meditate. A total of around ten hours a day is separated for meditation. Notice also that around six hours are separated for sleep per night and big meals are given just twice a day. What can’t be seen from the schedule is that the one hundred participants per retreat are separated according to gender. Men have the left side of the facilities for eating, sleeping and walking outside, and women have the right side. All the participants meditate in the same meditation hall, but, again, men are on the left side of the room and women on the right. Everyone sleeps in a room with two bunk beds and a bathroom shared by four people.
Last but not least out of all the rules, on Day 0 (you arrive on day 0 and leave on day 11), everyone makes a promise to adhere to the Noble Silence. This means you are not to communicate with the other participants during the ten days by any means – no words, no glances, no gestures. Glances and gestures still happen when you are in line for food or the bathroom, you can talk to staff members if you have practical questions, and you can talk to the local meditation teacher when you have questions about the meditation practice, but, generally, no communication.
All the measures mentioned above are designed based on the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of students who have participated in these courses worldwide, and with one goal in mind – to enable each individual to pay attention to their own mind and body as well as possible.
Not where I did it, but it gives an idea
Be very friendly to yourself
The first day was still new and exciting, but already from the second day it got tense. The first three days are for laying the foundation. The students engage in anapana meditation, which simply means observing your natural breath. First you observe the air moving in and out from your nostrils, then you observe the sensations the air creates inside your nose, and after that you observe the sensations on your nose and on the area above your upper lip. In theory, these are the most simple things to do in the world. However, different difficulties arise when you have to do those things for ten hours a day.
For most people, including me, the biggest challenge is pain. The inner parts of my thighs don’t bend well at all, so they started causing me pain while sitting in the lotus position. When I tried to stay with the pain it moved on to my knees. When I changed to other positions, I would mainly have back pain, because it’s hard to sit up straight in positions other than the lotus position, or sitting on your knees (but those were already hurting anyway, right).
Normally I could sit in the same position for around 30-40 minutes until the pain started to literally get on my nerves. During the first three days I tried to observe the pain and realize that it is also impermanent like everything else in this world, but normally I would have to change my position after around 35-45 minutes (according to my intuitive sense of time) of meditating.
I really wanted to do better. One of my hopes for the meditation retreat was that I will learn to sit comfortably in the lotus position. I would have probably beaten myself down for not being good enough with this during the first days, but on my way to the retreat I had gotten an invaluable message that helped me with my self-esteem.
I had to travel to the small city of Leer in Germany to get on the train to Meppen. In Leer I saw my friend Annika, whom I know from my psychology studies and who has done several retreats in her life. After happy greeting hugs, she asked me where I’m headed:
"Hey, Dan! Where are you going?"
"I’m going meditating!"
"Oh, it’s your first time, right?"
"Right."
"Good, good. Remember to be friendly to yourself. Ve-e-ery friendly."
That’s what I did. When pain arose and I felt like I’m weak because I couldn’t take it any longer, Annika’s comforting words rang in my ears and I felt alright with changing my position. I mean, it made sense as well, right? I had to observe my breath and sensations, not suffer in pain.
The friendly, laughing Buddha
Shaking towards balance
Well, yes, but only until the promise of Strong Determination. On the fourth day, all students had to give a promise to themselves that they would sit in the same position for the one hour “Group meditation in the hall” that takes place three times a day. "Fuck me" was all I could think when I heard about this.
There it was, the mid-day groupsitting on the fourth day of the retreat – the first time everyone had to sit in the same position for an hour. I don’t know if I was projecting my own fear onto others, but it it seemed like we’re all entering a battlefield, not a meditation hall.
On the fourth day, we also moved from observing the nose to observing the whole body. Everyone had to use their attention to hover over their body part by part and notice any sensations on every part of the body. Itching, tingling, cold, warmth, sweat, pain, numbness, vibration, air or whatever else you could feel. Once you felt a sensation, you had to stay with it until it passed away in it’s impermanent nature.
I was already familiar with the routine of my body and my mind. Around 30 minutes goes by just fine until the stretching tension in my thighs grows into pain. After around 35 minutes it starts pulling the knees as well and the pain occupies the mind. This also means that the simple sensations become like the hidden treasures Indiana Jones was always trying to find. I would be observing my forehead and thinking „just give me an itch you little shit“. And when the little shit did give me an itch – or any other sensation – it was something to pay attention to for a couple of seconds instead of the pain. At around 40 minutes I started shaking. You know the plank exercise people use to train the core? It’s the same type of shaking that comes when you get tired during the plank exercise. At first it’s just a little bit of shaking, almost innocent. Five minutes later I’m already trembling like a construction worker holding one of those concrete breakers. All of my body feels like the uncomfortable sensation you have in your knee when the doctor hits it with their small hammer to test your reflexes.
From what I could hear in the room, the atmosphere was tense. In earlier sessions I could hear people changing their positions, but now it was complete silence. All I could really hear was the A/C slowly fanning in the background, and my own trembling breath. The pain, the tension and the silence kept growing, which means I started thinking about changing the position. “C’mon Dan, you can do this…” I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Until suddenly, somewhere in the room, someone blasts a short yet powerful thunder of a fart. A wave of giggles swept the room and for the first and last time throughout the course I witnessed the teacher say something during the session itself to calm the people down.
"Farting person," I thought to myself, "thank you so much for being the beautiful human being you are. May you become as liberated as that fart."
I remembered Annika’s wise words again: "Be friendly to yourself. Ve-e-ery friendly." I changed my position and didn’t even begin to feel bad about it.
Everything went the same way during the evening session on the same day, but without any farts to loosen the tension in the room, and inside the meditators. The routine started all over again: pain again, shaking again, trembling again. "Don’t give into it," I told myself, but then I also had to tell myself: "Wait, stop talking to yourself, you’re just supposed to observe." I kept observing my trembling body until I realised where I’ve seen this sort of trembling before – my grandma. My dad’s mom, who passed away in the summer of 2015, had Parkinson’s disease and would sometimes tremble or have a limb tremble in the same way. "Holy shit, I’m going to break into my Parkinson’s disease right here." I know Parkinson’s doesn’t work like that, and rationally I even knew at that moment what a stupid thought it was, but the fear was real for me at that moment. "Fuck that." I changed my position again.
Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam
I had a boost of hope though. Most of the teachings and the chanting during the course are played from the recordings by the original teacher, mr. Goenka, who started with these courses in the first place. Around five minutes before the end of a one hour sitting, his chanting would start from the speakers. During that evening session on the fourth day, I had changed my position just a couple of minutes before his singing voice spread across the room.
In the evenings you can ask questions from the local teacher. I went up to him with a question:
“I shake. Any guidance?“
“Stop it willingly.“
Stop it willingly? Okay, thanks. The next morning I was in the meditation hall again. Forty minutes passed and the regular process starts again. First pain, then shaking. Alright, let’s try this: I stop the shaking. After that I could observe sensations on my body for two seconds and then the shaking would start again until I stopped it again. Yet again I could only observe my sensations for two seconds until I started shaking again. This is what I had to work with. At a later session these two seconds of not shaking and being able to observe my body became three seconds of not shaking and being able to observe my sensations. In the morning groupsitting on day five I didn’t manage to sit in the same position for the full hour, but I came closer again.
***
We’re now at the mid-day groupsitting of day five. I had just had a good nap after lunch and I felt calm. You know what happens next, right? Thirty minutes of the sitting pass by just fine. Then, as always, the tension in my legs grows into pain. At around 40-minutes I start shaking, but I’m already more used to it than during the previous days. I start again with the rounds of shaking, stopping the shaking, and observing the body for a couple of seconds. The shaking increases and becomes trembling again. The core of my body trembles and makes the rest of the body tremble as well. I try to observe it as any other sensation on my body. I can feel I’m getting closer. Every time I stop the shaking I can just barely observe the sensations on the part of the body that I’m trying to pay attention to. My body feels warm from the shaking and from my own mental pressure to stay in the same position. I start sweating and I can’t stop myself from thinking: „Please start chanting already“. The trembling and sweating has taken over my body. I can’t even stop the shaking for a couple of seconds anymore.
Until, boom, I can hear mr. Goenka’s voice from the speakers: “Anicca-a-a-a“. The teacher’s chanting meant I only had a maximum of five minutes until the end of the session. I kept on trembling at my spot, but I didn’t really care about that anymore, because the chanting had grasped my attention. I was going to make it.
At this point you should know that the chanting ends with the teacher repeating the words “bhavatu sabba mangalam“ for three times. This translates into “may all beings to be happy“. To this, the students reply three times with “sadhu“, which means “wise words, we agree.“ At one of the earlier evening discourses, the teacher said that saying “sadhu“ is by no means a religious chant or a rite of passage. “You should only say it when you really feel that you wish all beings to be happy.“ So far I had been in so much pain myself, that there was no room left inside me to wish all beings to be happy.
Now I had almost made through a full hour without changing my position. “Bhavatu, sabba, mangelam,“ I hear the teacher slowly chant for the first time. „Bhavatu, sab-ba, manga-a-alam,“ he goes, even slower. I’m thinking: „Come on, man, you’re killing me here!“ The teacher has one more time to sing it and now he goes as slow as he can: „Bhavatu-u-u, sa-a-ab-ba-a-a, man-n-nga-a-alam-m-m...“
Tears of relief arise into my eyes. I’m here. I made it! And I wished all beings could feel this sort of relief from their sufferings. I wished all beings to be happy. I could hear myself whispering to the teacher’s singing: „sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.“
My legs were dead after this. Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? The scene where they eat too many of those old ludes and can't stand on their feet anymore? That’s what I remembered when I was trying to stand up after that session. I would just fall over once I tried to put any weight on either of my legs. I seemed so extremely stupid to myself right there that I had to laugh at myself. I stayed on the mat, giggling, and waiting for my legs to recover. I felt humbled by my own limits as a human being. It was a nice moment.
This was me, but with a smile on my face
After that I managed to sit through all of the groupsittings during the retreat. The next ones were still really hard, but always a tiny bit better than the previous one. By the seventh day I even felt fairly comfortable with sitting through an entire hour of meditation.
My focus became narrower and narrower while observing the sensations on my body. When we started with observing our bodies part by part, I was happy to feel an itch while observing my entire forehead all at once. After that I could hover over my forehead from the top to the bottom of it with my attention ranging from one edge of the forehead to the other. The next level was moving over my forehead with my attention being as thick as a painter’s brush; I could move over the surface of the forehead stripe by stripe. This is how narrow my focus mostly remained until the end of the retreat. However, on the eighth day I did have a moment where I was going over my neck, stripe by stripe, when I suddenly realized that I could narrow my focus down by at least five times. The stripe that was as thick as a painter’s brush became as narrow as a one millimeter laser going over my skin. I really felt as if I was burning the skin of my body with a hot laser. It felt as it I could observe my sankharas with a burning glance and let them fade away.
This was the most focused I managed to get during the retreat. During the evening discourse after that sitting I felt like on some sort of drug. I was as stimulated as one would be after drinking five cups of coffee, but without having any of the sideeffects.
Just... why, man?
Why? Why do all of this? I could have spent these ten days working ten hours a day on learning a new language, learning a new skill, spending time with the people close to me, watching a whole series, etc. Why sit in silence and shake in pain for ten full days?
As I said in the beginning of this post, this was the hardest, and most intense, but also the most liberating thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I got a closer look at my own mind than I ever have before. As my focus became sharper and sharper with each day, the awareness wing of my Vipassana bird became stronger and stronger. At the same time, I saw how my mind reacts to the physical pain in my body. Day by day, I could train my mind to react less and less to the physical pain with its own mental pain. The more I was able to just observe the pain, the less I felt the pain mentally, and the equanimity wing of my Vipassana bird became stronger and stronger.
The pain became an analogy of staying with whatever task in everyday life. We often get stuck in our daily work tasks, and it’s so easy to pick up your phone, or get a snack, or even go to the toilet, when you would just need to stay with your task for a few more minutes to figure it out. Both the aversion towards the pain of doing the task, and the pleasantness of doing something else are impermanent, thus, they will pass. The task itself will pass too of course.
“A ten day course is just one step on a path towards liberation, which is 10,000 miles long,” says Goenka. By observing these cravings and aversions in our mind during a ten day Vipassana course, we become only slightly better in being able to guide our mind instead of letting it guide us. To guide it a tiny bit more towards love and compassion for others.
This is why I decided that the first thing I’m going to do when I get home is to call my dad. Without being afraid of the emotions that came up in me, I was able to tell him about things and emotions connected to him, both positive and negative, in a way I had never done before. I’ve said many of the things I said to him during that call before in my life as well, but now they came from the depths of my heart where they had never come from before – I had developed my wisdom of experience. The words „I love you, dad“ had developed a new, deeper meaning.
The hardest, most intense, and most liberating thing I’ve done in my life. For anyone looking to improve their mental health, or for someone, who is just curious to learn more about their own mind – a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat is what I would recommend first.
PS! Please keep in mind that while this was an amazing experience for me, and – because of that – I write about it very expressively, this does not mean I want to say that a ten day course works like magic for eveyone. People with particular backgrounds and certain traumas can have a very traumatic experience at a retreat, which needs some more attention than just observing the pain as it is. Nor does it mean that I think a ten day Vipassana course is the only thing that brings these benefits to you, and through your liberation, to others. There are other ways both inside and outside of the meditation world, to achieve these goals, and I wish to hear more about and explore these ways as well.
