I recently completed my first 10-day Vipassana Meditation course.  It has been perhaps the most intense 10-day experience of my life.   80 sessions and 100+ hours of meditation across 10 days, with each day starting before 4 am and ending at 10 pm, and off course maintaining complete silence through the period (all mobiles, laptops, reading or writing material are taken away at the start of the course)!!  

Many friends and colleagues have been asking me about the Vipassana course.  I thought I would share my understanding of the key concepts and personal experiences from the course.

Vipassana meditation’s objective is to purify the mind and to do so by getting to the root cause of our miseries (e.g., cravings, aversions, obsessions, ego centricity).  Many forms of meditation use verbalization (e.g., mantras) or visualization (e.g., some image or other focusing forms) that help you get to a meditative state quickly and feel a state of bliss and calmness.  Vipassana takes the tougher but perhaps purer route of just focusing on natural breath and body sensations.   Its core philosophy is that you are responsible for your own salvation and you have to do that within the framework of your body.  You start by observing your breath at the tip of your nostrils.  As the mind starts getting calm and more attentive, you start observing body sensations (which are always there but the mind is not tuned to observe them) and progressively their intensity and flow through their body increases.

Vipassana is the meditation technique discovered and taught by Gautam Buddha over 25 centuries back in India.  From India Vipassana traveled to other parts of the world along with Buddha’s teachings.  While Buddha’s teachings have largely been preserved in many parts of Asia, the Vipassana meditation technique in its pure form survived only in Myanmar (Burma).  From Myanmar, an Indian industrialist based there, Shri S.N. Goenka learnt this technique and brought it back to its country of origin India after 25 centuries.

Key concepts of Vipassana

Every evening over the 10-day course there was a 1.5 hours video talk by S.N.Goenka where he shared some deep lessons about the philosophy and concepts of Vipassana and Buddha’s teachings.

The practise of Vipassana meditation occurs in three trainings; Sila (sheela), Samadhi (samardee) and Panna (Panya). Sila is  living with morality. At the start of the course you have to commit to sticking to several key precepts; abstaining from: killing any being, stealing, sexual misconduct, telling lies and intoxication. These precepts aim to help you abide by  a life of morality during the course (and of course, if it suits you, after the course). If these precepts are constantly broken then it means the foundation of the meditation will not be solid and you will not get good results.

As this foundation is set up you are then able to enter into the field of Samadhi, ‘Mastery of the mind’. Because Vipassana meditation is based upon observing your own sensations you need to sharpen your mind, so you spend several days practicing Anapana meditation. This involves observing your natural breath as it goes in and out of your nose. Because this is something that is always occurring and is natural it means that your mind is slowly slowly focused in on observing the reality of the moment in and around the nose. Of course, every five seconds you mind begins to wander, thoughts of other things crop up, worries, wishes, angers, none of which are related to the reality of the moment, but as soon as you realise your mind has wandered you once again bring it back to the breath, and observation of the reality of the moment can begin again. Like this, over 4 days you are able to sharpen and focus your mind and it becomes very aware of sensations around the nose. A subtler reality, subtler sensations, can be felt that you were never able to feel before because your mind was constantly thinking of things related to the past (something which is gone forever) or things related to the future (things that have not yet occurred). In fact, just try it now; sit back, close your eyes and focus on your breath going in and out of your nose, try and sit dead still for 8 minutes, just 8 minutes, and see what occurs in your mind. See how quickly the mind switches from thought to thought, from desire of something that you want to happen to annoyance of something that has happened, to this, to that.

How agitated our minds are, constantly agitated. And how little control we have over them! We know our minds are very powerful and yet we have no control of them, its like letting wild beasts flail around at random. This Anapana meditation helps to take back control of the mind, to calm the agitation. If you really consider the thoughts that occur in your mind you will realise that almost every one is something related to the past or the future, our minds do not want to exist in the present, which is, inexorably, the only thing that can ever be occurring.

So, after a couple of days you are able to sense all sorts of tingles, itches, vibrations, buzzes, wetnesses, drynesses etc, that you were never aware of before. Sometimes we do notice these sensations (the massive ones at least, like a big itch of a dribble of perspiration) but what do we do when they occur? Do we acknowledge what is occurring at this moment in the present? ‘Ah there is a sensation occurring under my nose’? No, we react blindly, we scratch the itch. And why? Because our minds are concerned that the itch will continue into the future and we don’t want to be itchy all the time. We miss the most blatant and obvious truth; that all things arise, stay for a period of time (be it a million years or a nanosecond) and pass away. It is a universal constant, everything arises, stays for some time and then passes away. How on earth can we get agitated or angry or greedy for sensations when all of them, sooner or later, pass away? It is not a wise thing to do, surely?! And this is the source of so much misery, because we want pleasant sensations to remain and so get attached to them, we then become negative when they pass away, and we want negative sensations to go away immediately and so get negative when they remain, again, unaware that they always have to pass away anyway.

So, this then takes us into the field of Panna, wisedom, and thus into the field of the Vipassana meditation. Here, you start observing the sensations on all of the body, not just the nose. Having sharpened your mind with Anapana meditation, it is very good at picking up all sorts of sensations. When you focus on them you have to try and remain aware that, sooner or later, they pass away and so, instead of reacting blindly to disliked sensations (like a lot of pain in your legs as you sit for hours!) or with greed/craving for the pleasant sensations, you simply remain equanimous, balanced. You learn, through your own experience and NO ONE ELSE’S that all these sensations pass away, so no attachment to them need be made. Simple, logical (at least in theory).

As you continue, your perception of sensations becomes sharper and you begin to feel sublter and subtler ones, vibrations. At times you are able to perceive the entire outside of your body as it really is, a constant mass of particles that are vibrating, that are arising and passing away with great rapidity. Modern molecular physicists will tell you that everything in the universe is made of particles vibrating. Since 2500 years ago Vipassana meditators have know this but whats more, they haven’t just known it through observation of the outside world, the world beyond their sensations, they have experienced it themselves, that is true Panna, true wisedom, to know something through your own experience, not through someone else’s, and it is this that, ultimately, brings harmony.

The Vipassana meditation courses train in ‘pure Dhamma’ (Dhamma being the law of nature), that is, it is purely about sensations and your own experience, no one elses. This means it is totally universal, anyone can practise it anywhere and at any time. No sectarianism, no ritual, no God or scientist to ask for help from, no picture to put on your wall of some special person, no small figurine to have on the shelf, just ones own mind and body and hard work with which one finds out more truth.

The final part of the meditation involves Metta Bhavna. This involves being aware that one must always share any love and compassion and peace one has found with all other beings and not keep it to oneself. This was the one thing I found hardest to get into on my 1st course (because you imagine sending out the good feelings to all other beings, something that didn’t really fit into my mental paradigm of the way the universe works before), but since, in my own practise I have found it to be positive and after 10 days of intense meditation, the feeling that overcame me when we finally practised Metta Bhavna was unlike anything I have ever known, immposible to describe.

My personal experiences in the Vipassana course

Vipassana is a very tough course.  Sitting for such long hours in meditation and maintaining silence and no contact with the external world is a tough process.  However, this also led to some deep, moving experiences.

1.       Taming of the monkey mind.  It is amazing how much garbage is filled in our mind, and when you sit in meditation for long hours that garbage starts coming out and you feel lighter.  Mind also keeps flitting between past and present.  Again, sitting in meditation for long hours forces the discipline of being in the present moment.  Moreover, sitting at stretch and that too without changing posture was a huge test and development of my will power.  There were moments most days when I questioned myself why I was putting myself through such a tough process.  But I feel good that I preserved and completed the process.

2.       Overcoming cravings and obsessions.  Over the 10 days, I was able to get to the root of many deep-rooted insecurities and limiting patterns.  And, this happened without forcing myself to do so.  The most dramatic change that happened was in my craving for food.  I love to eat and it is perhaps my comfort spot.  Over the 10 days my diet progressively reduced to less than 1/5^th of my usual intake.  By the end of the 10-day period my diet was a light breakfast at 6:30 am, lunch without rice at 11 am, and lemon water with a banana at 5 pm.  This would have been unimaginable for me earlier!!

3.       From Gross to Subtle, there is always another level.  Almost every day expectation from the meditation process kept getting raised.  From observing your breath, to doing so in a narrower area, to observing sensations progressively across the body, to eventually feeling a flow of vibrations across the body – you traverse quite a journey in 10 day.  Two powerful realizations happened in the process.  First, vibrations always exist in our body, but normally we feel only the gross sensations like pain and itching.  It is only when our mind gets calm and attentive are we able to go from gross to subtle and observe these vibrations.  Second, the process keeps surprising you.  You always keep on discovering a next level of subtlety in your body that one could have never imagined.

4.       From intellectual to experiential.  I like to understand things at an intellectual plane.  That can be intellectually exciting but concepts can remain abstract.  Vipassana approach allows you to experience vividly deep, seemingly abstract concepts. One of the core concepts of Vipassana is impermanence (mentioned in the section above).  This came alive for me across meditation sessions.  The nature and intensity of sensations your experience changes significantly across sessions and often within sessions.  Initially there was a feeling of disappointment with that (not being able to feel subtle vibrations in a sustained manner).  But it did drive home the concept of impermanence and that we should maintain equanimity across all situations.

Vipassana was a tough process and it did not always bring the feeling of calm and bliss that one often gets some other meditation techniques.  But I really appreciated that it is a very intellectually honest process.  There is little hype, no leap of faith or reliance on the divine.  It is a scientific, practical and down to earth process.  It does not promise a ‘quick fix’ and sets expectations clearly that the 10-day course is just the beginning of a long journey of self-observation, purification and realization.

I am too new with Vipassana to have definitive views on its efficacy but I do feel compelled by my first experience to give the technique a fair try.  It is recommended to practice meditation every morning and evening for an hour each, and to do a 10-day course once a year.  I hope I can live up to this!!

My final thought is a sense of wonder about the progress ancient India had made in the science of human existence and what a wealth of concepts and techniques they created for human advancement.  Being a long-time practioneer of "Art of Living", I always felt it was such a brilliant synthesis of ancient Indian thinking and practices.  Vipassana has exposed me to a different but equally powerful powerful technique and set of concepts.  Truly, Spirituality and Meditation as its primary vehicle are India's great gift to the world.  I pray that all of us discover meditation in our daily lives, whether this form or another!!

Be Happy!!!