My 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat

This is by far the most difficult blog I have ever written. Usually any blog post takes me about 10 minutes to write, maybe 15 if I feel like checking my spelling and grammar. I don't think about it, I just write whatever happened to me the way that I perceived it and that usually suffices. Whether the blog is about one day or three weeks, the size usually does not differ that much. However, the ten days that I spent at a Vipassana meditation retreat in Kanchanaburi, Thailand were by far the 10 longest days of my life. I have so many thoughts, insights and opinions about these
10 days that I do not know how they will ever fit in a book, let alone a single blog post.

Nonetheless, I will try.


Background of Vipassana meditation:


As some of you know, I took a 10-day silent retreat. I called it that because that's what I thought covered the load of it: I was going to spend ten days in the forest of Kanchanaburi, to meditate and be silent. However, I now feel more comfortable calling it a Vipassana meditation retreat.

Vipassana is a type of meditation which was (re)invented by Gotama the Buddha, 2.500 years ago. Although discovered by a Buddha (note: Buddha is not a person, Buddha is a title. It means "awakened one" and therefore covers many people), it is not a Buddhist rite or ritual. The meditation technique itself explicitly identifies as non-religious and the idea is that anybody from any religion can practice this technique without feeling like they would somehow act against their own religion.

The main aim of Vipassana meditation, in my own words, is to eradicate suffering. Suffering, according to this meditation technique, is based on either one of two factors: craving and aversion. The idea is that every human being is miserable due to either craving things he or she does not have or by the occurrence of things he or she hates. This is a theory that I can actually agree with, in the sense that I know that most of the time, I crave things I do not (yet) have. Because of this craving, I feel like I am never fully happy in the present. Of course, when bad things happen to me, I also don't feel happy. So, by practicing Vipassana, the goal is to eradicate those feelings of craving and aversion and just accepting what happens as it is. If you don't crave things or feel aversion when something bad happens, then you should have inner peace. Eventually, after years of practice, this could lead to enlightenment.

In practice, Vipassana meditation is a type of meditation where you perform body scans. Part by part, you go past every part of your body to see how it feels. From the top of your head to your little toe and back. Each and every part has a sensation (even though from the start you don't actually feel them) and the idea is that you have to learn not to lend weight to your feelings. So, for example, if you have a back ache, then you are to observe that pain without giving that a negative feeling (of aversion). If you feel a pleasant sensation, you are also not to give that sensation a positive feeling (of craving). More often than not, when you meditate, you reach a point where you feel good but then that feeling goes away and you feel frustrated or depressed that you could not keep that feeling. This, is also suffering.


The time table and the rules:


So, for ten days, we were to practice Vipassana meditation, according to this time table:

* 4:00 Morning wake-up bell
* 4:30 - 6:30 Morning meditation (in the meditation hall or in your room)
* 6:30 - 8 Breakfast and rest
* 8 - 9 Group meditation in the meditation hall
* 9 - 11 Meditation in the hall or your room, subject to instructions
* 11 - 1 Lunch and rest
* 1 - 2:30 Meditation (in the meditation hall or in your room)
* 2:30 - 3:30 Group meditation the meditation hall
* 3:30 - 5 Meditation in the hall or your room, subject to instructions
* 5 - 6 Snack and rest
* 6 - 7 Group meditation in the meditation hall
* 7 - 8 Discourse
* 8 - 9 Group meditation in the meditation hall
* 9 - 10 Getting ready for bed (and ask questions to the teachers)

So, if you add it all up, it comes to 11 hours of meditation, 6 hours of sleep, 1 hour of discourse and 6 hours of rest.

NOTE: There were four meditation sessions where you were obligated to sit in the meditation hall, between 8-9, 2:30-3:30, 6-7 and 8-9. Between 4:30-6:30 and 1-2:30 we could choose the location ourselves. Between 9-11 and 3:30-5 it depended on the teachers' instructions and changed every day. I always meditated in my room when I was allowed to, as I could lie down or stretch my legs there.

Aside from this timetable, there were also rules we had to abide by:

* No distractions (i.e. No phones, no electronics, no books, no music, no paper, no pen etc.);
* No real meal after noon, at 5 you could take some cookies or bread but otherwise your last full meal was at 11 AM;
* You had to practice Noble Silence at all times. This means you could not talk to fellow meditators but also you could not look at them, smile at them, gesture at them or in any way acknowledge their existence.


My expectations:


Beforehand, knowing the timetable and the rules, I had expected it to be difficult. I had read some blog posts and watched some videos by other people who had done this retreat and I was mentally prepared for physical pain and boredom. However, I must say that reading a timetable and actually following it are two completely different things. On paper it seemed so feasible but in real life it was one of the hardest things I have ever done.


My experience:


As we were not allowed to write during our retreat, I cannot recall any little detail but there are a few that I memorized and obviously also I know how I experienced everything overall.

The best way to describe my experience in one sentence is that it was extremely difficult in every aspect possible. Physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually it was so, so difficult. I never felt like I wanted to escape or like I was actually going to leave but every day came with its own hardships.

Physically, the whole thing was very challenging. I was actually really scared that I would get back pains from sitting straight for 11 hours a day, on a cushion, without back support. To make matters even worse, we also could not point our feet forward so we had to sit crossed-legged at all times. I did not have any back pains until day 5 but when they came, boy were they present. Just putting my hand on my lower back hurt so, so much that I requested a back support plate thing. I had seen other people in the meditation hall getting them so I requested one, which made my life a little bit better. Another type of pain I had not expected was lower leg pain. On day two and three I could barely walk because my legs hurt so, so much I actually thought my muscles were going to snap. This pain dissolved but then the back pain came up which lasted all the way from day 5 to 10. That was very difficult, especially as we had to not give any weight to pain, but of course that was part of the challenge.

Also, I want to make a disclaimer right here and right now that I hardly ever meditated from 4:0 to 6:30. I felt like the whole thing was hard enough without getting some sleep. Being prone to migraines and not wanting to trigger those, I made sure I had at least 6-7 hours of sleep a night, which often meant sleeping through part of the morning meditation session.

Mentally, it was an impossible challenge to sit for 11 hours, doing nothing but forcing your mind to focus on the sensations on your body. Especially the first three days, we were taught another meditation technique as a stepping stone to Vipassana: the Anapana technique. Anapana meditation is focused purely on respiration. This means that for the first three days, all we were allowed to do was to observe and focus on our breath. Let me tell you, the first hour you're like "Okay, this is fine" but it gets old really quick. My mind wandered off so often enough the first and last few days. I think my meditation was best around day 4 to 6, before that I was still learning and from day 7 on I was too excited about the whole thing ending to focus even for an hour.

Emotionally, it was really difficult because I was very concerned about my loved ones. I had given some people the number of the meditation center but half the time, there was nobody near the phone. I had also told everybody only to call in case of real emergencies (like sickness or death) but once in the center, I realized there were so many more things that could go wrong. I also realized I had not given the number to everybody important. This fear, that something would be wrong with someone I love, was intensified by recurring nightmares. Every. Single. Night. I dreamt that someone was very sick or dead. I also dreamt my boyfriend broke up with me several times. It is incredibly hard to wake up from a dream where a family member has passed away and you can't call them to see if they're okay. Every single morning I convinced myself something was wrong. It was hell.

It is also hard emotionally as your are being faced with a lot of life lessons and you are forced to self reflect a lot. When one has nothing else to do but sit and think, traumas are bound to bubble up and you have to deal with them.

Intellectually, the whole thing is challenging because, well, you have 0 distractions. I found myself thinking of the craziest things, counting tiles, trying to understand Thai writing etc.. At some point, I found myself counting the number of movies I knew that starred Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. I counted the songs I knew by Demi Lovato, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Katy Perry and more. It was madness. One good thing is that I taught myself how to write numbers in Thai. I have no idea how to pronounce them but I can write from 0 to infinity in Thai, which is kind of cool. In any case, I was obviously bored.


Reflection:


Some people value Vipassana meditation retreats so much that they go home and tell all their friends and family they must try it. I am not one of them. I feel like while the experience was interesting for me, I did not gain very much. Maybe it was not the right time in my life or maybe I just didn't apply myself well enough. In any case, I never really felt like I had to get out of there, but I also didn't feel like I had an epiphany at any point. And that is okay.

For me, the most memorable moments were the ones that I did get to talk to people or when someone would smile at me. It was right there and then I realized that gestures are so very important. I can deal with not talking, but not even acknowledging each others' existence made me feel so awful. Every smile, every nod was so precious.

I will say that this experience differs for everybody and there are several people who do these courses over and over again, so obviously there must be something to it. At this moment in my life I think I won't do this again, but then again, if there is on thing I learned is that everything is subject to change. Who knows, maybe in a few years I will be jumping up and down to do this every half a year.

So this blog is only the tip of the iceberg but it is long enough as it is. Maybe some time I will post a blog with regards to the interesting things that happened day to day. For now though, this suffices. :)

Right now I am in Cambodia, and I am having a good time. :)

With love,

Demi.