100 HOURS OF MEDITATION
— A WESTERNER’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE VIPASSANA MEDITATION TECHNIQUE —
“I can understand that you seek to better know yourself, and that for this you need peace and tranquility of mind, but why don’t you just make a retreat in an abbey, in the old Christian tradition? Why do you need to go all the way to India and explore remote techniques”?
This was a question from my father when I told him I would travel to India for a month. It left me puzzled: had I become wary of religion? Was I caving in to some exotic fashion? Maybe a little bit of both, yes, but it was definitely much more than that. Only at the end of my journey would the answer come clearly: I was at Kochi International Airport in Kerala, in the South West of India, when I stumbled upon a book entitled Jesus lived in India. This was about the unknown years of Jesus — the 18 years preceding his arrival in Galilee at age 30 — and how according to some religious researchers he had traveled to India to learn Eastern enlightenment techniques. I had heard of this theory in the past — it is also the basis of one of my favorite films, Man From Earth — but I did not linger on it, nor did I buy the book. I just saw it as a nod to my father’s question: if the god of the founding Western religion was said to have lived in India, maybe my spending a month there was not entirely the result of some hippie or hipster gregariousness. When pushing the analysis beyond the conjectures of this book, I believe some strong spiritual connections could be evidenced between our two worlds: after all, isn’t it only natural for Westerners, most of which raised in a mix of Cartesian logic and Christian faith, to be drawn to the rationality and altruist values of Buddhist meditation and yoga?
The following testimony is the detailed account of the 12 days / 100 hours of Vipassana meditation retreat I did during my month of travel in India. Vipassana — literally “seeing things as they are” — is a meditation technique discovered by the Buddha some 2500 years ago, and popularized in the last few decades by an Indian guru, Goenka guruji.
While traveling there, I also attended a yoga program entitled Inner Engineering: a technique assembled from different yoga exercises and “packaged up” by a growingly popular guru in India these days, Sadhguru. While there is also a lot to share about this other enlightenment technique, I decided to keep this story for the future, and focus first on Vipassana.
But what is enlightenment, really? A somewhat fancy, slightly hazy, definitely multi-faceted word. To me, enlightenment means reaching a state of deep alignment between mind, body and emotions. So that, for instance, when you feel anger growing within you, you can recognize the emotion and decide to be angry in full consciousness because you know it will serve a positive purpose, or on the contrary you can decide to defuse the emotion because you judge that it is not opportune to let it out. Enlightenment can have far-reaching, positive consequences: an increased sense of focus, enhanced creativity, or, better yet, foreseeing a life path with greater clarity.
Learning these techniques was such a compelling experience that I immediately felt I had to “give back.” This starts by sharing a testimony of my experience of Vipassana to my (narrow) circle of influence. I sincerely hope this will generate interest.
A disclaimer to close this introduction:
- this testimony is not so much about explaining the techniques I learned — which I apologize in advance for doing in such a limited, shortcutted way — as it is about relating my experience and impressions
- to recount the full depth of this experience, I am compelled to disclose some intimate bits about myself. If you anticipate this will make you uncomfortable, please refrain from reading on. If you decide to pursue, please accept this intimacy for what it is — simply a means to do justice to the techniques I learned.
INTRODUCING THE VIPASSANA RETREAT — AN ALLEGEDLY ASCETIC BUT POTENT MEDITATION
THE BEGINNINGS: WHY ON EARTH WOULD I ENGAGE IN AN ASCETIC MEDITATION RETREAT?
I was introduced to Vipassana by a friend of mine, Anémone, in 2014. Back then she was just out of her 2nd retreat in a Vipassana Center in Burgundy (France), where she had stayed not the standard 10 days, but 20 days in silent meditation — a path chosen by the hardcore meditation buffs. I remember thinking that it would never occur to me to commit to such a strict retreat — let alone be able to go through with it.
She then introduced me to Anapana, the first meditation technique you learn in Vipassana, which consists in calmly observing your breath to tame your mind. I remember trying a few times and never managing to focus for more than 30 seconds in a row. It’s crazy how the mind wanders, like a wild horse.
Thanks to Anémone I met Caroline Gupta, a spiritual teacher based in the South of France, whose activities include yoga, meditation, and the use of art to foster energy circulation and re-alignment. I started following Caroline’s guidance in 2015 as I was looking for a clearer life path, and well, though I did not always mentally understand the teachings, I could sense they harbored a great truth: the answers about my life are within me, not outside, and if I can manage to contact the energy flowing within me, harness it and understand it, then clarity will grow. The aim isn’t “well-being” as much as simply “being”.
In the summer of 2016, Caroline felt I needed a boost to increase my capacity to tame my mind, and suggested I engage in a Vipassana retreat — the dreaded Vipassana retreat, with the interminable 10 days of ascetic sitting. I took on the challenge. Now, because it was already fully booked in France where I lived, and because Vipassana teachings are allegedly better in English, we both agreed it would be nicer to do it in a warm, foreign land.
CHOOSING MY VIPASSANA CENTER
Vipassana boasts 300 centers around the world, some owned, others rented. I was quick to set my mind on India: it was the original country of Vipassana where the Buddha was born, people there spoke English, and there were enough centers so that it was easier to find a spot on short notice. Last but not least I had been wanting to visit this land for a while.
It took much longer to choose the right center within India. Between the dates, convenience of location or degree of (dis)comfort, I ended up choosing Dhamma Vipula Center, a new center in Navi Mumbai (New Mumbai district) designed for senior executives looking for practical tips on how to use Vipassana in their daily work… and looking for a higher level of comfort. When applying I had to fill in details about my job. Two days later I was accepted.
Note that Vipassana is completely free, and operates on donations from former students, which to me felt like the ultimate token of credibility.
After a few days spent in Mumbai at Vijay Asrani’s, a dear old friend from business school, I arrived in Dhamma Vipula Meditation Center in the afternoon of September 7th, 2016, already well accustomed to the local climate, food and people.
DAY 0 — SETTING UP, TURNING INWARD
Located a 50-min drive away from Mumbai’s city center on a hilltop in Navi Mumbai, the center offered a perfect mix of peace and accessibility, the way the Buddha himself intended.
At check in, they asked for my phone, all my readings, notebooks and pens, music device, etc, as I had agreed to in advance. The goal was to avoid any type of entertainment escape that would detract from turning inward.
I was then introduced to my room: from the readings I had gone through and stories I had heard, this center seemed to be the only one to offer single rooms. A priceless advantage — though combining “price” and “Vipassana” doesn’t make much sense. By Western standards the room was spartan, but guaranteed calm and enough comfort to focus inward:
- a one-inch-thick straw mattress covering a bed of… stone — after 2 days I must admit I had bruises on my hips. I did sleep well overall.
- desk, chair, and a low table for meditation sitting, in case one wants to meditate in one’s room.
- a private bathroom with Indian shower (i.e. with buckets, and taps at foot level), and Western toilets. Hot water only from 7 to 8am: perfect to wake up in the morning, while cold water is perfect to put yourself to sleep at night — and frankly hot water isn’t much needed in India anyways given the warmth of the air.
- air conditioning and an attic fan! The fan was enough at night.
I was especially happy to believe I was the only foreigner in an otherwise exclusively Indian retreat… or so I thought! In the early evening, as we were gathered in the hall for practical guidance and rules, I counted about 78 Indians, half women half men, plus not one but two foreigners: myself, and another guy, who by the looks of his clothes and haircut looked conspicuously French.
Irritated, I thought to myself: “I traveled all the way from France only to be reminded every day where I’m from, thanks to this dude”. What I didn’t know was that Vipassana would teach me to not care about this sort of things anymore. And even smile about it: what a funny coincidence after all, if there ever was one, that Nicolas (the other foreigner’s name) would end up with me there. In hindsight I’d even say I was glad Nicolas ended up meditating on the chair just behind me during most of the retreat, as we exchanged experiences on the last day.
In the evening we were greeted by the warm voice of the late S.R. Goenka for a first glimpse of Vipassana meditation. Goenka Guruji (or “beloved guru” Goenka) started spreading the technique in the 1960s near Mumbai. Some 50 years and countless thousands of Vipassana trainees later, he passed away in 2013 at the age of 92. His recorded voice, chants and videos in English and Hindi continue to guide and rock Vipassana meditation retreats across the world.
The rules: noble silence (i.e. no speaking and as little noise as possible), avoid eye-contact, women in one building area, men in the other one, 3 light meals at fixed hours, a meditation guide to answer our questions twice a day. 1 hour of mandatory meditation in the meditation hall 3 times a day, and another 7 hours that are highly recommended. Everything was designed to help us turn inward. Turn inward. Turn inward. And discover the “truth, the ultimate truth” within. The center even provided a cheap laundry service — a unique luxury for a Vipassana center — so that we could spend less time washing our clothes and more time focusing inward.
One of my most anticipated concerns then came up: how would I be sitting? This was critical. 10 hours x 10 days of seated meditation can turn sitting posture into torture. I will confess it here: I had asked in advance for a chair, arguing I had a pinched disc in my back. This was true even though it had happened 4 years earlier and was not a painful situation anymore. I just knew from my little meditation experience in France that I was not flexible enough to handle hours of meditation sitting on a pillow. Unless meditating was synonymous with enduring lingering pain, which I refused to believe it was. The staff accepted the chair request, but suggested I try the pillow for a bit, using several if needed: it was, after all, “the real experience”. I accepted to try. I wanted the real experience.
DAYS 1 & 2 — TAMING MY MIND WITH ANAPANA: DAYS OF SATISFACTION, FRUSTRATION AND CONFUSION
After 6 hours of sleep, I was awakened at 4am by my alarm clock, which was soon joined by the center’s bell.
I had slept well as I’d taken 4mg of melatonin, an over-the-counter drug that helped me make do with the jetlag and recent busy evenings in Mumbai. On Day 0 the staff had told us to come see the meditation guide if we were under medication, presumably so they could assess whether the medication could interfere with the quality of our meditation, and possibly agree together to stop it if not absolutely necessary. I was used to staying away from medication as much as I could, but this time was different: I was under 4 different types of drugs at once! I chose not to tell them: I really needed these 4 drugs in order to adapt to the country and new environment, but it would have been awkward to explain. I had pills to help me sleep at 9:30pm (melatonin), pills to strengthen my intestinal flora (I like spicy food, but not as much as Indians do), pills to prevent malaria, and pills to help my pale skin adapt to the sun. I was reasonably confident all these drugs would not impact my meditation.
At 4:30am, guided by the voice of Goenka, our first meditation session began. The late guru introduced us to Anapana, the breathing observation technique I had been attempting to practice in France for over a year without ever managing to focus for more than 2 minutes in a row.
We were allowed to take breaks to stretch our legs, drink water or use the restroom if needed, and to do so were asked to leave the meditation hall silently. Five-minute breaks were scheduled about every hour, and meal breaks 3 times a day: 6:30–8am for breakfast, 11am-1pm for lunch, 5–6pm for dinner.
The first two days confronted me with a series of difficulties.
DIFFICULTY NUMBER 1: THERE IS NO TOOL TO TAME YOUR MIND BUT PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
The Anapana technique is dead simple: just observe your breath in the nostril area, i.e. inside the nostrils, at the entrance of the nostrils, and just below the nostrils. Just observe the sensations. Dead simple in theory, but tremendously difficult in practice. And this for a simple reason: the mind keeps wandering away. The paradox is you can never realize it immediately: you always realize it after the fact, a few seconds, minutes, or sometimes tens of minutes after the fact.
So there I was, engaged in an attempt to tame my mind through Anapana yet again. “oh wait a second, what am I here for again? Oh right, I’m supposed to observe my breath, not think about politics / my Indian trip / an ex / my late dog / my brother / my job / my life / how cool the Buddha seemed to be”. And so on and so forth. For hours and hours.
My mind kept wandering away like the wild horse it was: almost never in the moment. Clearly judging the here and now too dull, it preferred dwelling in past glories or mishaps, imagining future debates or designing projects. All the people I knew passed through my mind at one point — yes, if you are reading this testimony and happen to know me personally, chances are I thought of you at some point during my retreat. The observation of my breath was occupying my mind just a fraction of the time.
Goenka’s recorded voice kept on explaining at the beginning of every one-hour session: “Focus on the area around the nostrils, within the nostrils, and below the nostrils. Just observe the sensations, without forming any judgment. Just observe”. “If the breath is passing through the right nostril, just remain aware of it, if it is passing through the left nostril, just remain aware of the sensations. Or if it passing through both nostrils simultaneously, don’t interfere with the natural flow of the breath. Just observe the reality as it is. Not as you would like it to be”.
At times, I felt that observing my breath was altering it. Creating some discomfort. One usually never needs to focus on one’s breath unless there is a problem with it. But the deal was to not interfere and just observe the sensations.
At times, I was breathing slightly more deeply to keep me focused — a piece of advice Goenka had been giving, but only as an exception. The deal remained to not force the breath, just observe the natural sensations.
I was, however, never feeling anything special. The area remained blind, if I may say, and my memories and imagination kept getting the better of me.
I therefore quickly resorted to a trick to tame my unchained mind: count my breaths. I had
taken up apnea a few weeks earlier, and had learned to count my cycles of breaths to rest my mind and slow down my heart rate. I just used the same method. At first I could only stay focused for 10 breaths in a row. Then I improved to 30. Then I reached 60. Improving my record began an objective. So much that in the late afternoon of Day 1, I was feeling satisfied: in a way, I had tricked Anapana. I could observe my breath for minutes and minutes in a row.
The evening of Day 1 ended with a one-hour video of Goenka — as every other day after that. “The first day is over. You have nine more days to go”. In his trademark affable yet poised style, S.R. Goenka delivered a comforting and motivating speech, intertwined with his experience of hundreds of Day 1 of Vipassana trainings, as well as stories of the Buddha.
He spoke without seduction, being honest about the task at hand: to expect good results, one would have to “work very hard, very diligently, continuously, patiently and persistently”.
Then came a first letdown: he recounted how some students in Day 1 sometimes used some mantras, phrases, mental verbalizations or visualizations to calm their mind down and fix their attention on the breaths. And how much it helped them. “yes, yes, I did the same today, I counted my breaths, and I came up with the idea on my own”, I thought, as Goenka was awakening in me the vibes of the good, obedient student I used to be in school and at work, trying to please the teacher and overperform.
Goenka was just making a concession to better explain how this was, in fact, a mistake: visualising, verbalising, counting your breath, or, worse yet, mixing up Anapana with other breathing techniques like Pranayamas (yoga) or apnea cycles, was in fact taking me away from the sheer truth of my breath. And I had to admit it was obvious: as I was counting, I was trying to control my breath, not observing it in its sheer, natural flow. Also I was only partly focused on the breath, as I needed to focus on counting, and on reaching a higher number.
This generated a small bout of hopelessness before going to bed. But it was, in hindsight, a mistake I had to go through: in the face of confusion and loss of my bearings in this new environment, counting my breaths had given me some short-lived but opportune satisfaction, and some hope for the remainder of the retreat. Also, it was after all reassuring that I had made a mistake so many students had made before me. I realized how much this feeling of hopelessness in fact expressed this tendency I had always had to jump the gun in a desire to overperform. This was one of the first lessons of Vipassana, a lesson I had learned so many times but needed yet again to experience by making a mistake: awakening to my true path was not a competition, not with others and even not with myself, so I had to learn every little, tiny step at a time. The hopelessness was thus limited, I knew I had 9 more days to go. And the rest of my life to continue the search.
On Day 2, I had to start again from scratch, trying to tame my mind and focus on my breath while not counting or visualizing it. Discovering “the truth, the ultimate truth” within, was the promise of Vipassana. So I just had to continue to work patiently, bringing my mind back to Anapana. And bringing it back. And bringing it back. Not feeling anything in my nostril area, dreaming away, and bringing it back.
Until I finally started getting some sensations: some occasional tingling in the area below the nostrils, that came out of nowhere, but which I was clearly able to feel because I had reached a more subtle level of concentration on this area. As pointed out by Goenka, I could also feel how subtly warmer the air was when exhaling, as opposed to inhaling.
DIFFICULTY NUMBER 2: PAIN IS ONLY WHAT YOUR MIND MAKES OF IT… UNTIL A CERTAIN POINT
I had accepted to sit on a pillow, to try the real experience, as opposed to settling for a chair. And this was proving very challenging. I had brought with me from France my robust fuzen pillow to add some comfort. I was alternating between 2 positions: sitting cross-legged with my buttocks perched on the fuzen, or kneeling down with the fuzen supporting my crotch. Both positions would have been okay for 20 minutes, but for hours and hours they were both proving terribly painful. Sitting cross-legged was slowly killing my back and neck, while numbing my right leg. Kneeling on the fuzen was helping keep my back straight, but was so tough on my right knee it was beginning to swell. My left knee and leg proved much more flexible than the right, something I had never noticed: my legs were not created equal. Some older or bigger people around me had chosen to sit on a regular chair, or on a ground-level meditation chair with back support.
I didn’t know how long I could take the pain, but it was clearly not helping me focus on my breath. I was changing positions more and more frequently to relieve the discomfort. Why was Vipassana having everyone sit on the floor when a chair would have been so handy? Was there just more glory in that? Or was it to pay respect to the Buddha, as he was meditating outside or in poor conditions and did not always have a chair to sit on? How about evolving the method?
I did not get any answer during my Vipassana retreat as to why sitting on the floor was the preferred way, but I did develop a more acute relationship to pain. I understood pain was very much what my mind was making of it: I went through phases when I managed to focus on my breath while the pain in my knee or neck was just a side information. Being able to pull off this level of concentration actually generated some pride. The pain would also constantly help keeping me awake: never did I feel a pinch of drowsiness or sleepiness when I was sitting on a pillow on a floor. In a way, pain was acting as an agent of the moment, keeping me in the here and now.
These benefits from pain quickly proved too limited though. Day 1 had not been easy with the pain, and Day 2 was getting worse: I could not find a balance, pain was spreading. I was also starting to fear for my right knee: its swelling was dwelling. After all I had also come to India for some hiking and exploration of the land, I needed my knee! Worst of all, focusing on my breath was proving too difficult and uninteresting a task for my mind to help keep the growing pain at bay: it proved much easier for my mind to forget the pain when it was in full day-dreaming mode, reminiscing about the past or projecting away. Less and less acting as an “agent of the here and now”, pain had turned into a major obstacle.
Concentration requires a working position that is neither too strenuous nor too comfortable: that common word of wisdom was proving truer than ever. So on the eve of the 2nd day I asked again the meditation guide for a chair. He accepted with a smile. As much as I came to understand how integral to the Vipassana technique pain management was, I never regretted asking for a chair. Even if the majority of the people, a good chunk of them older than I was, remained seated on a pillow on the floor. Had I been naturally more flexible, I probably could have taken the pain longer. The mind, like a muscle, needs a bit of pain to grow: it’s up to one’s own judgment to gauge how much pain they can endure. 2 days had been enough for me. If I had to do this first Vipassana retreat all over again, I would do exactly the same: endure the pain for 2 days, before opting for the chair.
Over all, Vipassana taught me to make do with the omnipresence of pain or physical discomfort in my life: my shoulder here, my feet there, my bloated stomach, etc. “Everyone always feels some sickness here or pain there” as Goenka elaborated in one of his evening discourses. “So what”? Just observe it, remain equanimous in the face of it, i.e. keep mental and emotional composure and neutrality as much as possible, and focus on what matters to you.
Later on during my Indian trip, I would come to encounter Sadhguru’s view of pain:
“pain is good for you”, he claims. “It keeps you safe: if there was no pain, you would poke your own eye, cut and throw your arm away […]. Pain is a natural process, but suffering is not a natural process. It is always your creation”.
DIFFICULTY NUMBER 3: COHABITING WITH MY FELLOW MEDITATORS
I had been assigned a seat at the very back left of the meditation hall, which proved almost perfect a location.
This position meant I’d remain as far away as possible from women, since they were all sitting on the right side of the hall. I’d only briefly see them twice a day, when entering and exiting the meditation hall — since time in the hall was supposed to be spent eyes closed. I knew myself: coming across a remotely attractive woman while walking in or out, even just for a split second, would be distracting. I had enough sexual impulses on my mind to deal with already. Therefore sitting, entering and exiting the hall opposite the women came as a blessing.
Second, because I was sitting in the very back, I had no one to my left or behind me: this was alleviating the weight of other people’s presence — they all made rather discreet, yet always disturbing noise when changing position.
The stars were thus almost perfectly aligned. Except for this one guy, this — I dare write it — douchebag sitting to my right. I’m not one to easily harbor hostile feelings toward my fellow beings — quite the contrary. That is, unless they attack me. And this douche was attacking my sense of smell. Head on. With his dirty clothes and hat, he was just reeking of sweat. It was as simple as that, but the assault on my nostrils was relentless and the smell was making me retch. He had no excuse, hence my total inability to make peace with him in my mind: the meditation center offered free lodging, showering, and extra cheap laundry. Yet, with his long and clumsy figure, he just looked like a stupid teenager who’d escaped from his home and was too lazy to shower or wash his clothes. Everything about him felt out of place actually: from the way he walked, to the way he behaved in the kitchen. One could sense he was struggling with the whole experience, wondering how he’d ended up here. On Day 2, not only did he skip the 4:30 to 6:30am meditation session — to my great relief — , but he also skipped the 1st mandatory session at 8am. I was starting to hope he’d get kicked out. But he eventually showed up at 9am, still stinking. I was contemplating asking the staff to tell him to pull himself together and have a freaking shower.
Hours passed. Toward the end of the 2nd day, my anger started quieting down. After all, I was not the only one suffering from his smell. I was mustering so much negative energy toward this poor guy that I was almost losing sight of why I was here! There would always be something wrong: pain in the knee, smell, noise, agitation, a persistent memory not willing to go away. And paradoxically, a bit like the pain in my neck or my knee was doing it at times, my neighbor’s bad smell acted as an agent of the moment, bringing my mind back to the here and the now when I had lost my way. Little by little, Vipassana was teaching me to let go of this negative vibe I kept needing to feed, and just observe the stink for what it was: yet another type of difficulty to live with, not better or worse than the pain in my neck. After I asked to be seated on a chair for Day 3, he asked to do the same, so he and his smell followed me closely, sitting just behind. It almost made me smile, in a mix of hopelessness, irony and, well, buddhist detachment.
Things eventually caught up with this young fellow however: after missing probably one too many meditation sessions, he got called by the meditation guide at the break, over what seemed to be an argument. He never came back after that. He either left or got kicked out for lack of seriousness. In a way, his leaving sent a message: we were all in for a rough training that had barely started and would require thorough, diligent work. Even though meditation guides and Goenka himself kept urging us to stay until the end to give the technique a fair try, it may not be for everyone. Indeed it might have been too soon in his life for this young chap to undergo Vipassana, and while it may take him some time to realize it I’m sure the 3 days he completed benefited him greatly. Maybe he’ll come back.
DAYS 3 & 4 — DISCOVERING THE VIPASSANA TECHNIQUE ITSELF: DAYS OF INTENSE EMOTIONS AND STRONG DETERMINATION
UNDERSTANDING THE DHAMMA: THE WAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT TAUGHT BY THE BUDDHA
During the first few days, Goenka introduced the 80 students to key concepts of the “Dhamma”. Dhamma is the name given to the teaching of the Buddha, his path to enlightenment. Is it the same as Buddhism? It is, minus the rites, the offerings, the blind beliefs, and everything that turned the Buddha (a.k.a. prince Siddhartha Gautama, born some 2500 years ago) into a god. Goenka kept reminding us: this is not a religious retreat. The Buddha never intended to create a religion. The Dhamma is only a form of wisdom. I suppose summing it up like this might be a bit of a stretch: in any case this is what I took out of the discourses of Goenka and readings here and there.
The diagram above is a simple way to understand the Dhamma. It is called the noble eightfold path. In order to reach enlightenment according to the Buddha, one must:
- practice Sila (pronounced Shila): a set of morals that are followed particularly closely during the retreat. In essence: do not kill, steal, lie, engage in sexual misconduct, or take intoxicants. During the retreat, this means no killed animals as a meal (therefore: vegetarian food), no sex, no alcohol or cigarette, etc. Relatively straightforward for a healthy vegetarian like me. The food was not very varied but always good — I happen to love Indian food. A strong Sila should translate into your speeches, actions, and way of life. It is the foundation for a greater wisdom, like the image of the dome above.
- practice Samadhi: once your Sila is solid, you can build your faculty to meditate.That means taming your mind, and concentrate it on a single point. During the retreat Samadhi is taught through the Anapana meditation technique, i.e. tame your mind and concentrate it on your breath. Hence the concept of mindfulness: meditation is often mistaken for the art of emptying your mind; quite the contrary, it is the art of filling it up with one point of focus, in a very intense way.
- practice Panna (pronounced Pania): this is about understanding the laws of nature within yourself. The meditation technique taught to reach Panna is Vipassana. So Vipassana is both the name of the meditation retreat, and the meditation technique taught starting on Day 4, after 3 days of intense Anapana. Yes, that’s a lot of terms to remember, you should probably read the few lines above a 2nd time, and hopefully you’ll still be with me.
So what on earth does the Vipassana technique consist in? I had signed up for this retreat without having any idea or almost, and after 3 days I still did not know! That was nothing though: it took the Buddha years of meditation to uncover this technique. I was about to discover it after only 3 days. These 3 days were necessary.
On Day 3, we continued to practice Anapana meditation, but reduced the area of focus to the zone below the nostrils, above the lips. So it wasn’t about observing the sensations of the breath anymore, but just those in the tiny zone in between the mouth and nose, basically the moustache area. Obviously breathing generates sensations there, but not as much as within the nostrils. I quickly understood why it was necessary to undergo 3 days of Anapana before being introduced to Vipassana. Anapana forces us to sharpen our mind, focus it on the tiniest part of the body for longer and longer stretches of time. The longer and the more intense the capacity to focus, the easier Vipassana would become afterwards.
On the evening of Day 3, Goenka concluded: “The actual work starts tomorrow. These three days you were preparing yourself, to start the actual work of Vipassana meditation. Without strong Sila [strong moral foundation], it is not possible to practice Vipassana, to get the results, proper results. Without good Samadhi [strong power of concentration, taught through Anapana], it is not possible to practice Vipassana”.
DISCOVERING THE VIPASSANA TECHNIQUE ITSELF, OR BODY SCANNING
In the middle of Day 4, Goenka’s voice guided us through our first Vipassana session. It sounded quite simple: it consisted in scanning our body slowly “from head to feet”, as he would repeat countless times. Inch by inch. Bit by bit. To observe the sensations.
“Start from the top of the head”, and observe the sensations at the surface of your body, without forming any judgment. Stay for a bit on each part, and when you feel the slightest sensation, be it only the touch of cloth on your skin, move on to the next bit.
In order to so, one needed to remain constant in one’s observations, but also equanimous to the sensations, i.e. do not favor one type of sensation over another, do not try to come back to it or recreate it elsewhere, etc. Observe, and stay neutral.
Scanning my body proved a much easier exercise than staying focused on my breath. Much more fun. I knew I had to beware of finding it entertaining though, I had to go beyond any sense of judgment. I was just to observe. In any case I quickly realized how much I had needed to tame my mind and sharpen my sense of focus on my breath before attempting the Vipassana technique.
ADHITTHANA — SITTING OF STRONG DETERMINATION — OR THE PACIFIC VICTORY OF THE MIND OVER THE NATURAL IMPERMANENCE OF THE BODY
In order to be successful with our first encounter with the Vipassana “body scanning” technique, Goenka asked for a special type of commitment: we were to commit to staying still, perfectly still for the thrice-daily hour of mandatory meditation (8am, 1pm, 6pm). This was called Adhitthāna, or sitting of strong determination. We had had 3 days to find the least uncomfortable position, and get used to it. Yet, even after 3 days we all still needed once in a while to stretch our legs, sneeze, burp (oh my God the burpings going on in this hall…), cough, get up and get a glass of water outside, etc. The idea here was to be determined to overcome the little itches in our body. Our body would always be filled with impermanence, or “anicca” as the Buddha called it: it was the body’s nature, we would always feel the need to scratch our arm, pick our nose, stretch our legs, drink a bit, let out a cough, etc. How about we tried to overcome these itches for one hour in a row, so to give our full, devoted attention to our meditation? That was Adhitthāna.
I had opted to use the chair, so my first Adhitthana unfolded well. Only my neck started to generate growing pain. I must admit I slightly tilted it here and there to make it go away, but was generally able to sustain the pain, and resist the itches. Those sitting on a pillow on the floor must have had much greater difficulty. Talking to Caroline when I got back to France, she insisted that sitting on a chair was a major difference to a true Adhitthāna: sitting on a pillow on the ground could generate unbearable pain, granted — she even seemed to think this was too harsh for beginners, creating too much “fire” in their joints — but she also believed this was the true way, that it could produce major progress. This goes back to the inner debate I had had on Day 2 regarding my pain threshold, trying to push back the moment pain turns into suffering. Did the chair choice ultimately slowed down my progress, making it too easy on me? Possibly, but I’ll never know. I believe the chair was inevitable anyway.
LEARNING BEYOND INTENSE EMOTIONS THAT THERE IS NO GOOD OR BAD MEDITATION
Therefore, our first body scanning was accompanied by this commitment to staying perfectly still. I remember feeling a deep sensation of joy when finishing this hour, and I left the meditation hall with a smile reflecting well-being. It’s only toward the end of the retreat that I realized that this feeling of joy and well-being immediately following a meditation was a dangerous, ambiguous one. When depicting this post-meditation joy, I was able to decypher two emotions within me: satisfaction, and pride. I felt satisfied because I was able to follow the technique with precision, going through each part of my body, slowly and persistently, while staying equanimous. And I think that was a normal, healthy emotion. But I was also feeling joy because I felt successful, proud, and I was only starting to understand there was danger in forming any type of judgment toward my meditation. Some other students around me probably had difficulty sitting through the pain, others probably could not feel anything in their body at first. I was proud because deep down I was comparing. I was competing.
For instance, I discovered on the last day that Nicolas, my fellow student from France, went in the middle of the retreat through 2 days of troubled mind and great difficulty to focus. At some point our guide had the both of us come talk to him to gauge where we stood with absorbing the technique: I felt I was progressing and told him so. Nicolas appeared less sure of himself, and I remember how the guide told Nicolas that his body was here but his mind seemed elsewhere. My emotion at that time, though I tried to bury it as I knew it was out of place, was that of the good student satisfying the teacher, all the more since the slow student was receiving an admonition. What I took some time to grasp was that burying this misplaced feeling of pride and superiority was a good start, but enlightenment starts with not only the right speech and the right action: it starts with the right thought. And the first thought that came up, while seeing Nicolas struggle, was pride and superiority. It takes a lot of work and wisdom to instinctively come up with the right thought. In that case, I believe the right thought would have been: no thought at all. No emotion at all. The retreat was meant to have us turn inward, I was not to feel any emotion whatsoever for my fellow student. How about some sympathy? Sympathy would have been a suspiciously generous emotion, as if trying to escape the confrontation with my own meditation. Why would I need to project on him? Yes, definitely the right thought would have been: no thought at all. I was there to be entirely focused on myself. I should just have stayed equanimous to Nicolas’ information. Part of me did try to stay equanimous, but part of me also felt superior, because I seemed more successful at Vipassana than he was.
This feeling of success, however, was far from systematic during my retreat. My meditations were inconstant: I also felt some distress, after sometimes spending one hour, sometimes two, sometimes more, lacking patience, rushing my body scan, botching up my work, not managing to focus well enough. These days 3 and 4 were marked by intense feelings of both joy and anger, which I would let out by doing slow rounds in the small courtyard in the middle of the meditation center — just a few dozen square meters of grass, in turns burnt by the Mumbai sun or drenched by the monsoon rains.
I probably needed to let these intense emotions express themselves. What I got on to understand progressively during and after my retreat was that there was no good or bad meditation. Granted, in turn, daily practice of meditation should yield progress, sensations become keener and body scanning happen faster and be more thorough. Sometimes though, the mind would be restless, needing to stray away more than ever before, and one hour of meditation would only generate one good minute of equanimous observation. Sometimes the mind would be tired, especially when waking up at 4am, and it would struggle not to go numb, or even stay awake. Sometimes, “seemingly bad” meditations could stretch for hours, generating an irrepressible feeling of regress.
Yet, I needed to refrain from forming a judgement toward a frustrating meditation session. Because as long as I was trying, even if it looked like regress, it meant progress. Using a basketball analogy, did I prefer to play against a better team, logically struggle, end up losing but at least give my best, or did I prefer to play against a weaker team, enjoy the fun of flawless execution but win too easily? I know I needed both situations to progress: the former would stretch me, while the latter would improve my current skills.
The key here was just to continue hard work: stay equanimous in the face of my body sensations in the moment, and also stay equanimous toward the quality of my meditations as a whole.
As the first few days of exploring the Vipassana technique unfolded, something was still missing. As focused on the body as I was, I could not prevent my mind from thinking rationally: why on earth would one require to observe the sensations in his body to reach enlightenment? What was the link between body scanning and reaching the “ultimate truth” or the “end of all suffering” (another promise made by Vipassana)?
DAYS 5, 6 & 7 — BREAKING THE “SANKHARA”: DAYS OF DETACHMENT FROM MENTAL CONDITIONINGS
In his evening video discourses, Goenka elaborated on the bodily sensations, and why observing them could free us from suffering, and thus lead us in turn to enlightenment. This was the most crucial and intricate demonstration of the retreat, one that required a bit of faith.
This was how I understood it: everyone goes through their day feeling some sort of craving and aversion. Desire or disgust. Actually, the majority of what we go through in our lives boils down to this two types of feelings. For instance:
- It’s late at home, I’m watching TV and suddenly crave for chocolate
- I am at a work meeting, with this person seated in front of me. I hate this person’s guts — his face, his voice, his attitude
- The weather is grim. I badly feel like having a weekend at the sea
- I’ve always wanted to become a pianist. Why am I not a pianist?
- I daydream in the bus and I can’t help thinking about this failed relationship and wallow in regret
- I just got home, I simply feel cold
More often than not, these feelings of craving and aversion are deeply rooted within us: they’re engraved mental conditionings we never take any perspective upon. And they cause great suffering. Using the made up examples above, we can try and imagine how rooted these feelings are:
- It’s late at home, I’m watching TV and suddenly crave for chocolate. Indulging into chocolate and temporary pleasures has always been my way to escape higher stakes and issues in my life
- I am at a work meeting, with this person seated in front of me. I hate this person’s guts — his face, his voice, his attitude. Maybe I tend to associate this person with another person or group that was harmful to me in my past
- The weather is grim. I badly feel like having a weekend at the sea. I have been romancing the sea since my childhood summers
- I’ve always wanted to become a pianist. Why am I not a pianist? Actually, my job has been boring me for long, maybe I lost my way some long time ago and fundamentally need to feel some sort of magic and spread it around me through my craft
- I daydream in the bus and I can’t help thinking about this failed relationship and wallow in regret. This has been years since it happened, but unresolved guilt of ruining that past relationship has been haunting every next one ever since
- I just got home, I simply feel cold… well maybe there is not much rooted craving or aversion here, just a feeling of the moment. I will turn up the heater at once.
These tendencies for craving and aversion, the Buddha called them “sankhara”. More specifically, sankharas are these mental conditionings that create craving and aversion through our lives. Sometimes they are just shallow, fleeting feelings, which I’m not even sure we can call sankharas: I feel cold, I avert cold, I crave for some heat and need to turn up the heater at once. Sometimes they are deeper, more “obstinate” cravings and aversions, which are much more difficult to unravel: the chocolate urge, the person I hate, the weekend at the sea, the pianist aspiration, the relationship regret.
But enough with the examples and analysis: this retreat was not therapy, this was not about mentally understanding my every ailment and desire, and deconstruct them. This retreat was not about using the left brain. Instead, Vipassana was about uprooting these sankharas: uproot the deep, repetitive cravings and aversions, weaken them, then hopefully manage to eradicate them for good. Hence one of the promises of Vipassana: to let go of all suffering.
So how exactly could meditating on body sensations eradicate deep craving and aversion? That was the part of the demonstration that required some faith: it just so happens that every feeling is born out of body sensations. This is of course true for purely physical feelings like feeling cold; it is also true for more elaborated and emotional feelings, like hating this person or aspiring to become a pianist. Feelings of fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, shame, surprise: all emotions, aspirations, regrets, projections, start within the body, whether it’s an itch in my stomach, goose bumps on my forearms, a chill through my spine, or a more subtle discomfort.
As Goenka unfolded the explanations, this was not immediately understandable to a rational Westerner like me, yet it was something I somehow intuited. Body and mind are just two sides of the same coin: every emotion — or on an even more basic level: every thought — translates into bodily sensations. One could also say that it translates into energy. Weren’t we all incarnated beings after all? Modern science still has ways to go before fully grasping the complex engine that our body is, the complex energies that traverse it. For instance, the benefits of meditation or acupuncture have been acknowledged, but understanding why they work still remains a mystery, at least to Western science.
So to sum up my understanding of how Vipassana works:
- Through careful observation of your body sensations you train your mind to better apprehend the feelings and emotions that traverse your day
2. Through perfect equanimity in the face of these body sensations — e.g. not favoring this sensation in your nose or getting annoyed if you have no sensation in your arm — you train your mind to take some perspective on the emotions that traverse your day
Let’s take “pride”. Pride is a very complex emotion, but let’s simplify it into a two-sided emotion: one that can be considered a deadly sin, but also one that powers self-esteem, which is needed to drive respect. When an event occurs that triggers a feeling of pride, my Vipassana experience could help me see more clearly through that emotion, by just letting it grow in me, observing it, thus allowing me to better apprehend it. Vipassana also helps me take some distance from it, and decide whether I want to accept this emotion fully and act upon it if I feel this is positive pride, or walk away from it if it’s an excess of ego.
Let’s take another example: anger. When I get angry in my daily life, my Vipassana experience can help me feel the anger grow within me, locate it, recognize its many facets, and thus better apprehend it. It would also help me take some distance from this anger and not overreact in the heat of the moment or in an inconsequential way, but rather choose to react according to what I believe is right. It could also mean choosing to delay my reaction because it’s not the right moment to let out my anger. In any case, experience with Vipassana could help me control anger and not let anger control me. The same would apply for more complex emotions and combinations of emotions.
THE INTUITION OF IMMEDIATE GOALS: ERADICATING SOME STRONG INCLINATIONS AND ADDICTIONS
In one of his evening video discourses, Goenka shared the story of an Indian prince who was hopelessly addicted to alcohol: the prince felt so desperate about it that he felt alcohol, not blood, was running through his veins. The story unsurprisingly ended on how Vipassana ultimately helped cut off the roots of alcoholism that had taken hold of him. That story immediately resonated with me: a day after starting off the actual Vipassana technique, thoroughly scanning my body bit by bit, I started sensing how the technique could help alleviate the burden of two inclinations that had been plaguing my life for too long. Traveling far away from home can often be a way to escape one’s daily life, or even escape oneself altogether. It suddenly became clear why I’d felt the urge to travel so far and on my own, to such distant territories and mindsets: my coming to India appeared as a subconscious attempt at a profound break, namely an attempt to wean myself off these inclinations for good.
OPTIMIZING NO MORE: THE EFFECT OF VIPASSANA ON MY OBSESSIVE NEED TO COMPARE AND OPTIMIZE
The first of my two inclinations is something I’d call “digital optimization”. By digital I mean technology and the Internet. I don’t exactly know when and why this strong inclination started; though it probably did long before I got into technology and the Internet. Deep down, I’ve always enjoyed getting into the depth of things, listing pros and cons, and optimizing my choices as best as I could. Only I could never sense when I had enough information to make a decision. As a teenager, I’d parse through the Fnac catalogue (a French tech retailer) for months before purchasing a VCR, memorizing the number of almost each device. These endless quests for the best could be, however, very time-consuming and exhausting, even if I did enjoy the quests themselves: it’s not because you like running that you can be put through a marathon every week. At what point was a decision informed enough to be the best possible one? That I never knew, so I would compare and optimize on and on.
When I was 24, I remember falling in love with a certain brand of shirts — Xoos. I liked the brand’s cut and style. I liked that older, trendy colleagues were wearing it. Therefore I found the wholesaler to get a cheaper price, so that Xoos shirts ended up being the total package: cheap, trendy, and fitting me well. I kept on buying 2 or 3 different colors every other month, ending up with close to 20 of these shirts. The research process had been so tedious: since I had found the right model for me, I would no longer have to worry about buying shirts ever again. A sound plan except I started losing interest in the brand, and completely disliked it two years later. I had worn it out in all senses of the word. For those recognizing themselves in this pattern, the New York Times article “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?” was an illumination: decision-making is a tiring exercise and when performed repeatedly it can lead to burnout. Indeed, that moment when you’re supposed to “decide” may last a split second, yet it takes so much energy, requires such a complex mix of facts, experience and instinct, that people like me could easily get lost: they would keep looking for more information to weigh the pros and cons and thus eternally delay the moment when they need to, well, “make up their mind” — the expression says it all, it’s a process, however instantaneous it seems.
The shirt example may sound familiar to some, but I have many more worrisome examples in store, very simple choices I sometimes just couldn’t make, like ordering at a restaurant: I could get ridiculously stuck and embarrassed in front of appealing dinner menus — yet another good reason for me to become vegetarian, as veggie options can be scarce. Before Vipassana, what I had barely started to be taught was that my optimization problem was partly caused by an imbalance in the way I went about life: I had a hypertrophied mind that would always second-guess or minimize my instinct. I would thus always look for more information, treating instinct as yet another piece of information, and one to be wary of at that.
This optimization tendency got exacerbated by the omnipotent access to everything, everyone, everywhere, enabled by the digital world. Technology companies facilitate this: on your mobile phone, you can look up anything in any situation: translations, itineraries, history, hotel prices, news, books, etc. You can also photograph any moment, and share it with your ever-growing circle of friends on your ever-growing list of social networks and instant messaging platforms. This power is limitless, and people are now crafting digital diet techniques and retreats. The digital world is not a negative force, but it’s a ferocious one we were never taught how to handle. In a way, the power of digital technology today is as strong, attractive and dangerous as that of the sun in the 1950s and 60s, at a time when people were discovering the joy of tanning and when sunbathing at the beach was becoming a mass leisure activity. Only later in the 20th century would public health authorities raise awareness about the risk of overexposure and the need for solar protection. To be fair, I was not the worst type of digital addict either: for a few years already I’d made a habit of switching my phone to airplane mode whenever placing it in my back pocket — a friend got repeated testicular cancers so I took it very seriously. As I had grown sick of voice messages, I deactivated my voicemail: callers would get an oral prompt to send text messages instead — something that still puts off my dad whenever I miss his calls. When having dinner at the restaurant, I had developed the habit of turning my screen facing downward on the dinner table as not to be disturbed by incoming messages. That said, when leaving the restaurant table to go to the restroom, I’d still take my phone with me to optimize my time and check for messages. I am not one to travel with a selfie stick or to immortalize a meal with a snapshot. But when facing a beautiful scenery, I’d usually take the necessary few minutes to get the perfect shot. All in all: I wasn’t the worst kind of technology addict as I knew a few tricks to protect me from its dark side. Nevertheless technology clearly wasn’t helping my severe inclination for optimization. Could I take hours and even days to buy an airplane ticket!
Vipassana did not exactly cure me from this inclination. Along with the rest of my stay in India, what Vipassana did instead was help me better understand where the optimization reflexes were coming from, by bringing me more in touch with my bodily sensations. My friend Caroline (who had suggested that I do a Vipassana retreat) had suggested I go about India with no phone, exploring the country the old-fashioned way. I therefore turned off my phone for almost a month, which forced me to rediscover some lost connections: with certain sensations, with my intuition, and with the world around me. One of the stops of my trip was Top Station, a famous vista point in the Western Ghats of the Kerala mountains in South West India. On an otherwise cloudy day, the clouds momentarily vanished as I sat there to enjoy the Kerala view of the valley and the Tamil Nadu region. With no phone, and thus no camera, I gazed and I listened. The birds gliding by sounded almost like supersonic planes, as they were soaring and ascending around me. I sat there for four hours, just mentally recording the scenery. I connected to this landscape like I could never have otherwise. A phone would have captured a particular angle and moment, and thus biased my visual memory. Thanks to Vipassana, I was more in touch with my sensations: observing them, I could feel vertigo caused by the physical heights and by the smallness of my being within the immensity of the Indian territory; I could feel a profound yearning to free fall like the surrounding birds, along with a renewed desire to take up skydiving again; I could feel the sensation of fitting in, just fitting in with the nature all around, like it made more sense for me to be there rather than in the city. I had a lot more planned that day, I was not supposed to stay at Top Station for four hours just sitting next to a rock. “Goodbye optimization”, I thought, “this is where I belong today”. Freed from my phone and my need to optimize, my intuition had a simple message: soak up the view and enjoy the atmosphere.
That said, phone or no phone, my need to constantly weigh the pros and cons and delay decision-making was not to go away that easily. Backpacking in South India after the retreat, I quickly felt the need to optimize my itinerary. So many parameters to take into account! Deprived of digital information, I turned to my tourist book and to the local populace: shall I go to Munnar or shall I go to Ooti? And then shall I fly back from Madurai or go back to Kochi? And I had thought Vipassana and the phone diet had cured me! I was trying to listen to my sensations, but I had never seen all these places and everything looked so interesting. Hadn’t my intuition gotten sharper thanks to Vipassana? After days of second-guessing myself, I finally got it: my intuition was helping me, it was showing me that the more I digged to discover information, the more all these places to visit looked fascinating. All exciting information I could find about one of these two places, I could find different but equally exciting information for the other one. So much so that there was no difficult choice to make after all: any choice would be good. There would be no disappointment. And once a choice would be made, it would be easy not to look back since I‘d have nothing to compare it with anyway! So I decided to go to Munnar in the Kerala mountains, then go back to Kochi.
The day I decided to go to Munnar, or more precisely the day I realized that going to Munnar was an easy decision to make, my life partly changed: I had finally understood that 95% of the dilemmas bore a simple answer: just pick any of the possible alternatives. Indeed I usually weighed the pros and cons so well, that if any dilemma persisted, any of the remaining solutions would be good enough. This is not a revolutionary discovery at all, I’m well aware of that: this is very much akin to a decision-making notion named “satisficing”, which was coined in the 50s and is a combination of “satisfying” and “suffice”. It just took me 33 years not so much to experience “satisficing” but to deeply understand the inner roots of its mechanism within me — and why it had been jammed for so long. I had done my research thoroughly enough to narrow down my alternatives to just Munnar and Ooti: both would be equally good decisions. Deep down, I had finally clicked. I ended up choosing Munnar solely because I had heard of it first, but it was essentially like flipping a coin: in any case, I had no way of knowing whether choosing Ooti would have been more fun or not. The die had been cast.
TAMING SEDUCTION AND SEXUAL IMPULSES
There is a strong inclination I always had to deal with in my adult life: it is related to seduction and sexuality. Without dwelling on too personal details here, I had the tendency to let the laws of sexual attraction lead my life: extensively creating it, seeking it, relishing it. In practice, this had translated into a tendency to charm whomever I was interacting with. Younger, it had meant frequently judging members of the opposite sex on the basis of attractiveness and altering my behavior in order to seduce those I found attractive — therefore never being fully myself. It had also meant using and abusing the joys of sex as a refuge — through partners, dating websites…
This strong inclination had been a form of addiction because I could not always help it, because it could become obsessive at times and because it was overall draining a lot of energy. I could have felt some form of helplessness in the face of it, wishing I could control it more, put it more at bay. My sexuality had not been all negative however: it was also the source of an immense drive. In a way it had been the purest proof of energy. So many fruitful interactions, endeavors, conquests or attempts thereof, and generally so much firepower within me. Maturing through the years I had managed to tame some of it, focusing less on seducing and more on being myself, which helped improve the quality of my interactions. But the root of it, the sheer sexual energy, always proved very difficult to regulate. I was still under the control of my sexual drive and impulses, and not the other way around.
In that context, I feared that the 12 days and 11 nights of complete seduction and sexual abstinence entailed by Vipassana would present too big a challenge. I remember reading that the production of semen inside the male body increased to reach a peak after 7 days, when it plateaued and production just got renewed. I always felt I could actually sense that process taking place: sexual abstinence carried over multiple days would mean that not only desire and attraction, but also the need to seduce would become heightened. Every little sensation within and at the surface of my body would become more acute. Even just 2 or 3 days of complete sexual abstinence had always proven enough to heighten my sensations. I must admit I was jealous of women who could completely hibernate sexually in-between relationships, or when their partner was away, sometimes for months, and unleash the accumulated sexual energy when in the presence of a desired partner. Strangely I had never met any man capable of it. Most men I knew had systematic impulses, however infrequent. Yet most seemed able to resist these impulses to some degree. I, however, would mainly cave in to them. Worse yet: I was sometimes seeking them out for their promise of quick gratification. And the more I did, the less fulfillment I felt.
When learning Vipassana, one needs to hold the “right speech and right actions” (the aforementioned commitment called Sila). Vipassana then shifts your mindset, so you can have the “right thoughts” (the aforementioned wisdom called Panna). Therein lied the challenge: could Vipassana lead me to the right thoughts? More specifically, could Vipassana hold wild seduction and sexual thoughts in check?
Inclinations and addictions are strongly rooted “sankharas”, i.e. mental conditionings. In my case, I started feeling much distance toward seduction and sexual impulses after just a few days. Detachment. Perspective. I could feel the impulses coming from a mile away, and I could choose to take other directions, i.e. the “right actions”.
Of course, the environment of the Vipassana retreat was designed to help me succeed. As mentioned earlier in my tale, sitting, entering and exiting the hall opposite the women came as a blessing: never in my life would I have spent so much time with so little feminine presence. In almost 11 days, my gaze never once crossed that of a woman. I don’t think I even saw the features of a woman’s face, except maybe those of the female meditation guide sitting at the front of the hall. But it was always dark, hard to see, and she could have been my mother anyway.
In the end, I had almost no difficulty meeting the 11-day chastity challenge. I now honestly believe that in a Vipassana retreat, the ascetic environment coupled with the solid meditation technique can effectively weaken the roots of many if not all kinds of inclinations and addictions, through a very natural, steady process. Now, this may hold true during a retreat, but the real difficulty would come after the retreat: would the effects last? Could Vipassana continue to impart the right thoughts over the long run? Fast forwarding to a few weeks later, the answer is yes. Yes, but with much practice. After the retreat for instance, I went through weeks without watching any pornography: a real achievement for a Western male in his 30s. Oh yes, it is: most guys I know watch a bit of pornography here and there. The little I did watch left me so detached that I quickly stopped. Not unlike a recovering alcoholic, I became, if not disgusted, at least bored by the object of my inclination.
Within a few more weeks however, I felt the strong inclination creeping back slowly but surely: the context of a hectic Western life, combined with little to no meditation practice, opened a small breach in my system, and sexual impulses began getting the best of me again. The good news was: I knew for a fact that Vipassana meditation could act as potent cure. I had been in contact with the effects of that cure, I had experienced the process of observing sensations equanimously during the retreat, and how it could help detach from sexual thoughts and impulses in everyday life. As my inclination towards seduction and sexuality started to crawl back, it was just a matter of applying regular doses of the “Vipassana cure”. But for how long? Had I worked harder and more persistently during the retreat, would the inclination have gone for good? Maybe I need multiple retreats to fully get rid of it, like sometimes cancer-patients need multiple chemos. Or maybe I’ll need to meditate everyday for the rest of my life.
LISTENING TO YOUR BODY HELPS IMPART THE RIGHT THOUGHTS
I’d like to come back to the idea of the “right thoughts”. At first, controlling my own thoughts, controlling the way they can spring to my mind, seemed completely Utopian. But thanks to Vipassana, I know think it is possible.
Let’s take the example of “falling in love”. I remember having debates in the past about the process of falling in and out of love, more particularly falling in love with someone other than your official partner: whether it just “happens”, or whether this is controllable. When you feel your heart slowly slipping toward someone else, are you responsible? Or are you just the victim of that heart, that “wants what it wants”, as the saying goes? After learning the Vipassana technique, I have the beginning of an answer. I actually believe Vipassana, as it helps you better understand yourself, helps you identify someone who’s better fit for you.
First, I have come to believe there is a confusion between “thoughts” and “heart”. I think that a lot of the times when someone feels their heart slipping away toward someone else, it’s actually thoughts, projections, not the heart. The thing is, to identify someone who’s better fit for you, I believe things should happen in a sequential order: first the person speaks to your heart, and finally to your mind. The heart is just a romantic image to describe what I would call bodily evidence of love — when you’re drawn to someone in the most natural, obvious and least mental way possible. Bodily evidence of love, as with everything else, starts with bodily sensations. Independently from the heart, if you work hard at observing your sensations and everything that is happening within you, without judgment, then you will better understand your values, who you truly are, and you will become more self-reliant emotionally. That is a natural consequence of Vipassana practice. Then when the heart comes into play, this practice will help you choose the right partner, one that is well aligned with you, one that “speaks to your heart”. It’s an experience that encompasses physical attraction, but is much more thorough and true to who you are as a whole. Consequently, thoughts should follow: Vipassana should help you have the “right thought”. Therefore, if you chose well in the first place, and yet feel like you’re falling for someone else, chances are you’re not falling for that other person, you’re projecting, you’re fantasizing. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just that it’s not “love”. It’s all thoughts, your mind is deceiving you: it’s excited at the thought of a new relationship and what it entails — new experiences, new partner body, etc. Chances are the reality would be very different if you actually proceeded with that new relationship. Vipassana should help you clearly distinguish the nuances between the fantasies of mental projections and what you really feel deep inside.
DAYS 8, 9, 10 — DAYS OF DOUBTS, LOVE AND CONTINUATION
“BUUUUURN, MY COSMOOOOS!”
With my boss back home, we used to joke that my practice of meditation and other Eastern techniques would help me create fireballs some day. Like in the animes and mangas of our childhood — Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya (Les Chevaliers du Zodiac in French). In the last few days of the retreat, I had created a good routine, akin to feeling a fireball running through my body: when scanning my body for sensations, I could feel some heat in almost every little part I was scanning. Whenever I was moving my attention, I could feel the heat intensify. It was very easy to feel it in my hands, through my fingers, in my palms, whereas ironically when I was being taught meditation in France and told to focus on my palms, I could not feel a thing. After days of Vipassana, I could feel the heat in my palms just in a snap. It was almost like I could heat them up at will, and heat them up pretty strongly: the more I focused, the more my palms would seem to radiate with heat. It was less true for other parts of my body, but in the hands it was spectacular. And I could do it about everywhere: I could light up a small fire on the surface of, say, my armpits, or my knees.
I got so excited with these feelings of heat, whenever I was resuming meditation and wanted to intensify the heat, I would imagine being Seiya in the eponymous anime I grew up with, and would shout in my head “brûûûûûle, mon cosmooooos! ” (buuuuurn, my cosmoooos!).
Goenka made us aware that we were not controlling anything happening in our body. Everything in the body, every particle, just comes and goes myriads of times per second. The actual calculation of an atom appearing and disappearing every second is something science put a number on just recently. It was, however, something the Buddha discovered himself through Vipassana 2500 years ago: everything in the body is “anicca” (pronounced anicha), i.e. impermanence. So there was no control to have: we were just to focus our attention on the myriads of sensations happening, passively. Technically, I was not controlling the heat, I was just focusing my attention on something that was already here, and the more I focused the warmer the sensations appeared.
I say “technically” because it sure seemed at times that I was moving a fireball within me, wherever I wanted. It sure seemed I was controlling it. It may sound like a useless debate, but controlling your sensations, or believing you can do so, is opposite the Vipassana technique, it’s a whole different mindset. Succeeding through Vipassana means accepting to passively observe without judgment, without desire. Yet, somehow, when it came to this perception of fireball flowing through me, I could not help thinking I had some level of control over it.
An idea then started running through my mind: this heat was probably what the Chinese call “Chi” or “Qi”. I contacted this heat when I took introductory classes to Chi Gong and Tai Chi Chuan. This heat is a healing energy flowing through our body. I had a tendinitis in my shoulder during the retreat, an injury that can take months to heal because of how complex shoulder joints are: I started focusing my attention on my shoulder, thinking that the heat may heal it faster. Maybe I had a gift. What I wasn’t realizing was how much of a kindergarten student of meditation I was. My mind was projecting magic here and secret superpower there. I was developing exactly what I was supposed to stay wary of: I had turned this perception of heat into a pleasant, but sluggish habit, generating a sankhara of craving for it.
WHEN DOUBTS STARTED CRAWLING
Therefore I felt this heat for days, constantly looking for it and trying to intensify it. As opposed to staying as equanimous as possible and just observing the sensations, be it heat or anything else. On Day 8, Goenka started differentiating gross and subtle sensations, and discussing how we were supposed to reach a stage where our sensations would be subtle. I wasn’t sure what he meant exactly, so I asked the meditation guide about my sensations of heat: he confirmed these were gross sensations. And it made sense: after all, however intense these heat sensations could be, I could only feel them at a gross level, e.g. on my forearm or on my wrist, but rarely at a granular level, like this mini spot at the very top of my skull. This awakened another sankhara, but one of aversion: I was disappointed after myself — a common pattern for me. How could I have spent so many days wallowing in this sensation of heat? Once I had contacted this particular sensation, I had barely progressed in my meditation. I had become lazy. Almost complacent.
In the last few days, Goenka encouraged those who felt subtle sensations about everywhere to move their attention as quickly as they could, on the surface but also inside the body, something he called experiencing a “free flow” of sensations. It became rapidly clear that Day 9 would be the most serious day of the retreat: Day 9 is make or break, it is how far you can take the Vipassana technique. Indeed on Day 10 noble silence gets broken, allowing students to share their experience and transition back to real life on Day 11, and thus the quality of meditation cannot remain the same. Going to bed a bit discouraged on the evening of Day 8, I set my mind on having the most rigorous day of my retreat on Day 9, trying to reach a free flow of sensations that would be more subtle than just heat.
So I worked relentlessly on Day 9. And in the afternoon, I reached a level of inward concentration I never had before. I was so focused, at some point I managed to contact a very weird sensation that seemed akin to what Goenka called a “free flow”: the closest comparison I can make is getting electrocuted. I started generating this sensation in my stomach, then the body scan went up and down slowly but surely, applying a slight tension on my nerves as the flow ascended and descended, as if electrocuting my body bit by bit. I had to almost halt my breath for it to work. Yes, it definitely seemed like getting electrocuted, or at least the image that I project of an electrocution.
I managed to recreate this sensation of electrocution on the 10th day as well, and weeks after my retreat I can still recontact that sensation almost at will, though clearly not as sharply as during the retreat. I quickly had doubts that this was a free flow though, because I felt I could control it, I was making it start from the stomach, in the exact same area I would usually have a anxiety itch: I would contact this anxiety itch in my stomach, and unleash it through my body, creating this electrocution flow. It’s funny the more I write about it, the more it sounds to me like a real Vipassana free flow, like the liberation of sankharas. Goenka once told the story of a student who was a weapon engineer — he built missiles if I remember well — and how Vipassana meditation was creating massive trembling in his body: it was said to be the release of sankharas. With this “electrocution”, I had sensations everywhere, and it was not particularly pleasant. I still believe it was not a proper vipassana free flow, because I was the one igniting it from the stomach, at odds with the passiveness conveyed by Vipassana observation. But you never know.
In any case, I clearly managed to generate a free flow of tingling at the head level, moving my focus up and down the head, mainly at the surface but also inside. It was not akin to an electrocution: this was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, I could continue breathing normally. It was just a flow of tingling. I could not get it below the neck area, where sensations were too limited.
STAYING IN A CONTINUED STATE OF MEDITATION
I felt some level of satisfaction after this afternoon of Day 9. In an ideal world I would have stayed detached and tried to remain in contact with a meditative state: this is something Goenka recommended that we start doing on the last two days, namely try and focus on our sensations at all times, including outside of meditation time, like at meal time or in the corridors. But it proved very difficult for me. And so when leaving the meditation hall on the afternoon of the 9th day, I relished at my fruitful afternoon, at my progress.
Also, throughout the retreat, after an hour or two of meditation, I would always feel I needed a break. I wish I could have sustained a permanent state of meditation, but it felt like undergoing a ceaseless apnea. I needed to just rest my mind off of it. Maybe this was a misconception: after all, Goenka had elaborated on how Vipassana was resting the body and mind so much it naturally reduced sleep quota. I had heard stories of other Vipassana students who were so into it toward the last few days, with ceaseless free flows of sensations in their body, that they would almost not sleep, continuing the experience as long as they could. I did not reach that state. I wish I did of course, maybe I had not worked diligently enough during the first few days when practicing anapana (observing our breath) to sharpen my mind. Maybe I had been a bit too lazy. This is something I’ll get back to when concluding this story, as doubts played a key role during my retreat, and that until the end.
HOW THE TECHNIQUE SLOWLY DRIVES YOU TOWARD MORE LOVE AND COMPASSION
My anger was tested quite a few times during my Vipassana retreat. At first by my young, stinky neighbor, who then left the retreat. Then when I decided to sit on a chair on Day 3, the neighbor seated immediately to my right started getting occasional burps. And it became increasingly disturbing. Maybe I was unconsciously looking for a distraction or something to rant about, I don’t know. In any case it certainly seemed his eructations were getting louder and deeper as the retreat advanced. He looked so peaceful though, each detail in his physical appearance seemed sweet and poised, the opposite of my original, stinky neighbor, who looked like the caricature of a teenager, namely untidy, agitated and clearly out of place. As the tag on his floor pillow showed, this new neighbor was an “old student”, i.e. it was not his first Vipassana retreat. When the bell would announce a break, he would usually stay longer. And when he would finally get up from his pillow, his eyes would still be half closed, as if in deep, continuous meditative mode.
The burps coming out of this guy’s system, oh my… It would happen every other minute, and stop me abruptly in my meditative tracks. I would start anticipating the next eructation, losing focus, until after some long minutes I would finally be able to block out his noise and keep my focus. The anger toward this guy accompanied me almost until the end of the retreat, until Goenka, in one of his last evening discourses, described exactly what I was going through: a Vipassana retreat is a very pure environment to help grow one’s sense of observation and equanimity, but it is not a perfect environment. Sometimes neighbors sneeze, cough or burp. That is annoying because they directly invade our personal space. But is it so much their fault? What if they are sick? The environment is never going to be perfect anyway. Also, burping and farting, from what I later understood, are not socially frowned upon in India: they seem to be considered normal, body reactions that one should not feel ashamed of. Actually, burps were happening all the time in the meditation hall. But I must say: not as loudly and horridly as with Swapnil, my immediate neighbor.
Yes, I later got to know his name. After his discourse on burps, Goenka pushed me toward more compassion, and in the last few days I started feeling compassion for this guy. Maybe he was sick after all. Maybe he was heavily gluten-intolerant but did not know it, and his stomach was rejecting whatever wheat was present in our meals. The toughest part was that the adhitthānas (the sittings of great determination, i.e. meditate in a complete absence of motion and noise) were to happen just after the meals, in full digestive time: I could clearly hear Swapnil actually refrain his burps as much as he could during adhitthānas. You could hear the eructations start from the stomach, then be silenced probably to the best of his capacities.
Swapnil definitely was an obstacle to my meditations, and yet Goenka helped me transform him and his burps into feelings of compassion. Toward the end of the retreat I was feeling much less annoyment, and definite empathy toward him. “Only love and compassion, may all beings be happy”: Goenka would always finish his evening video discourses with these words. It was, I believed, what characterized all great enlightened beings: this capacity to not only act and speak of love and compassion, but also constantly feel love and compassion toward others. It is what Vipassana ultimately teaches us: Panna, or the right thought and right understanding, e.g when you understand that your anger comes from your ignorance, or that other people’s anger comes from their ignorance and you feel for them.
In the last 2 days, Goenka invited us to finish all meditations with a few minutes of “loving kindness” meditation. The idea was that the accumulated, pure meditative energy be radiated in thought to everybody we knew, and beyond. The approach was not very detailed, definitely not as much as the rest of the meditation technique we had learned until that point, but it seemed like a very natural thing to do. It was like a prayer, in a way. I thought of other people I liked, and beyond, and how much more empathy I had grown toward them at this point. We had accumulated such wisdom, keeping it all to us would not have made sense.
In the last days, another thought started coming to me about Swapnil, my “burpy” neighbor: I realized maybe it was the breaking of the sankharas that were generating these burps. He seemed so happy and peaceful, how could he be traversed by such massive series of burps? I read a testimony of a Vipassana student undergoing what she called a kundalini experience, where she described the need to burp to clear out the sankhara hooks releasing energy toward her crown. A feeling I have not experienced at all.
On the last day, when allowed to talk to one another, I naturally came to Swapnil to get a glimpse of who he was. His voice and behavior was as poised as his demeanour. We engaged in a long conversation about Vipassana. It was his second retreat, he had done one the year before and had been practicing morning and evening for a year with his wife. It was only at this second retreat that he had finally managed to generate a process of free flowing observation in his body. I did not mention the burping. I could have hinted at it with a smile, or taken a more compassionate attitude and asked him whether he had some sort of stomach condition. But it was behind us at this moment. Mainly I had become certain at this point that his burps were caused by the free flows liberating the sankharas. We extended the discussion as he kindly accepted to drive me back to Mumbai. And as Vipassana imparted its love and kindness vibes within us, he ended up driving me all the way to the airport, where I had a flight to Kerala.
CONCLUDING WITH TWO STORIES, ABOUT WORK AND COMPASSION
THERE IS NO MEDITATION WITHOUT WORK
During one of his evening discourses, Goenka told the story of a young boy whose mother had sent him to fetch some oil. On the way back, he tripped, dropped the bottle of oil and spilled half of it. He came home saddened and full of regret, explaining he had “wasted half of the oil”. His mother urged him to see things differently. He realized that he could indeed see things the opposite way, what we Westerners call “seeing the glass half full”: so he changed his story and told his mother that he’d tripped, dropped the bottle, but managed to “save half the oil”. His mother told him that was not enough. The boy ultimately declared: “mom, I dropped the bottle when coming back, but I managed to save half of the oil. I will now go work hard to earn 5 rupees and buy the missing oil back to fill the bottle.” Vipassana is not just about changing your mindset to see things as they are; it’s also about hard work.
The doubts I experienced in the last few days were something I had to go through. These are the types of doubts I have been going through all my life: maybe it was my fault if I was not sensing much when meditating, maybe I had not worked hard enough, maybe I had been lazy and complacent, etc. On Day 10, hearing about other students discussing their own sensations and alleged free flows did not help of course. Some of them seemed to have had fewer sensations than I did; some seemed to have had more. I remember this moment in my room in the evening of Day 10, when I thought: “the hell with it, I tried my best, it did not work as well as expected, I did not get a real free flow of sensations, I got stuck with mainly gross sensations, it was nice while it lasted, now I give up”. Not surprisingly, this was the type of moment when my sexual impulses almost got the best of me again. I could feel them rushing back. I was weaker, and once yet again developing a sankhara of aversion toward myself, as I had done so many times in the past: the eternal myth of the insecure overachiever, always seeing life through the perspective of students and teachers, or as a competition.
On the very last day though, I finally came to what I think was the right conclusion: when Nicolas an Swapnil asked me about my impressions on the retreat, I told them I felt like the boy in Goenka’s story. I had had some doubts but achieved results, however partial, so it was overall a positive experience that required more work. For best results, Goenka exhorted us to work one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening in our everyday life — which I have deliberately not been doing, not because I don’t believe in the power of Vipassana, but because I decided I’d rather deepen the yoga “Inner Engineering” technique I learned later during the trip. That said, I have continued to practice Vipassana on occasions, though clearly not enough to notice any improvements. Whenever I feel like turning inward, I do so and try to contact the quality of meditation I had reached during the retreat. I know I will get back to it some day, probably through a second retreat.
MEDITATION: A CATALYST FOR EMPATHY AND COMPASSION
During one of his evening discourses, Goenka told the story of a Vipassana student who’d come to him to let him know he was a proud Christian, probably fearing that Vipassana would lead him astray onto the territory of some other religion. Goenka asked the student what it meant to him to be Christian, and the student replied: “I am a devotee of Jesus Christ because I believe that he was son of the God”. “So what?” Goenka laughed. “As if [Jesus] wants a testimonial from you?” He then elaborated on what he believed Christianity ough to be about: Jesus on the cross, telling his God “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke, 23:34). Jesus and the Buddha’s main message are essentially the same: only love and compassion, even in the face of ignorance. True devotion is about living by these principles. Not so much believing that Jesus is the son of God.
If there is only one lesson I took out of Vipassana, it’s this one: meditating makes you happy because it puts you at peace with yourself, thus it puts you at peace with the world. It gives you so much perspective over yourself, that you start getting perspective over life and others. It develops both your sense of empathy and compassion:
- empathy: you start understanding why other people think the way they do, you put yourself in their shoes with greater ease and subtlety
- compassion: you start feeling for other people, especially when you realize they ache or misbehave because they are ignorant
Vipassana develops these senses within reasonable limits of course. It’s not meant to turn you into a saint, or at least not until you’ve developed the capacity for it! As my friend Caroline used to say, Jesus Christ’s exhortation to “turn the other cheek” has to be used cautiously, in a case by case basis, or else it could be dangerous: not everyone has the wisdom and strength to act with such empathy and compassion as Jesus or the Buddha.
If you have 60 more minutes to spare on Vipassana, I’d urge you to watch this fantastic documentary from 1997. We watched it at the end of the retreat: this is the story of how the largest prison in India, with the harshest conditions and prisoners, hosted massive Vipassana meditation retreats on premises. The documentary begins and ends with the sharp contrast between the spirituality and the brutality of this land — a contrast illustrated by the striking image of a prisoner bursting into tears in the arms of his warden, upon completing a Vipassana retreat. He had finally understood that he had failed society and his victims, not the other way around. And he felt sorry for it.
A catalyst for empathy and compassion.