Wax On, Wax Off
The long alley that separates the Auckland Vipassana center from the real world is exactly 36 paces long. That's the kind of detail that starts to matter when you're stuck somewhere for 10 days with no devices, no contact with the outside world and no one to talk to.
As you go up the alley for the first time, you may rightfully ask yourself: "what in the fuck am I doing here". If left unanswered, that question can continue to resonate in your head, getting louder and louder. Eventually it becomes a deafening cry to leave the meditation center.
This article is written for the few people who are either considering or have already booked a 10-day Vipassana retreat, to help them answer that question so that they may get the most out of their 10 days. It also contains advice which I was lucky enough to receive beforehand and helped me through my own experience.
Tip #1: make a vow to whatever you believe in (or to yourself) that no matter what happens, you will not leave.
What is a 10-day?
A 10-day meditation retreat is meant to teach students the supposedly invaluable skill of meditation, specifically Vipassana meditation. For 10 days you live totally disconnected from the real world and embrace asceticism.
Vipassana is a term in Pali which translates to "see things as they are". You may be familiar with philosophies like Stoicism which tell you "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters" or that "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them". This idea that perception forms reality continued to be embraced by other philosophies, and eventually became one of the core precepts of postmodern relativism.
Vipassana tries to take this one step further. While these philosophies and intellectual exercises work well at the conscious level of the mind, they merely offer a different perspective. But how do you practice this? How do you become the kind of person who instinctively acts like a stoic or is naturally compassionate like Christ? How do you imbue non-reactivity, or any of these philosophies at the deepest level of the mind?
Well you would have to completely rewire your brain. This technique tries to do just that, by accessing your subconscious and practicing non-reactivity.
Experience
It's been a while now, and most of those 10 regimented days have blurred together. Partly because they all looked identical (a lesson in how routine affects time) but also because my mind is not as sharp as it was then.
For the first 3 days you will be asked to focus exclusively on the breath. Nothing but the breath going in and out of your nostrils from 4:30am to 9:00pm.
The first 3 days are your "wax on, wax off" Karate Kid moment in which you receive blind instructions and just have to do it. You've vowed to surrender yourself to the technique, but can you blindly follow instructions? For better or for worse, the technique is fed to you in increments and never tells you "why" you're doing something.
The reason for that is simple, but not obvious. When you're taught to become non-reactive at the subconscious level, what that really means is to not give in to (1) your cravings and (2) your fears. If you're told what the expected outcome should be, you will either (1) crave this particular outcome, and become increasingly impatient or (2) fear that you’re not reproducing this outcome, and become distracted. For that reason, Vipassana is best taught through blind instructions and with no expectations.
I've actually removed most of my personal stories from this article, to not create any expectations for what your own experience might be like. You should enter it with the only expectation that it will be dull and very long, but that if you work hard it will be worth it.
Tip #2: You should treat the 10-day retreat like the gym, where you progress faster by focusing on the number of repetitions rather than on the actual gains.
Warnings
I. Agitation
You might expect, as I did, that meditation would appeal to the enlightened portion of the population, who transcend such human defects as anger and rudeness, choosing instead to float in a constant state of love and compassion. Unfortunately, most meditators are like most anybody else, and if you lock anybody in a confined location for days on end asking them to dig up their traumas, insecurities, and fears, they will respond with agitation and frustration.
If you're like me and end up with a roommate, you will learn about this lesson faster than most.
On Day 1, my peace and love roommate, who smelled of "I live in a Volkswagen van" and whose marijuana addiction had left him with a permanent smile on his face gave me a peace sign as he entered the room and lent me his blanket, before calmly putting his hands together and bowing, the smile still stuck to his face.
We were not allowed to break our Sila (a set of moral precepts necessary for meditation) which meant we had to maintain noble silence between each other, but also included something about not harming animals.
My roommate's carefree attitude and oneness with nature meant he often let mosquitoes into our room, which soon overwhelmed us and found every inch of exposed skin on our faces. This continued until Day 3, when I woke up to find my roommate had not only harmed animals, but committed a mosquito massacre. Our once pristine wall now covered in red spots as he broke one of the core rules of his Sila. By Day 4, noble silence was also out the window when he shouted at me to stop moving in my sleep. His Sila continued to break down day by day, and the once free spirited hippie turned into a tense, irritable presence.
The agitation building up within your peers presents an opportunity to practice your non-reactivity, helping you build resilience to stressful situations back in the real world. You might inadvertently break some of the Sila precepts, but the sooner you regain focus and return to meditation, the less likely the situation is to spiral out of control.
II. Ideas
A benefit of Day 3 and focusing on the breath is the clarity with which you begin to visualize your thoughts.
Discipline has never been my strong suit when it comes to writing. I usually rely on sudden bursts of inspiration, which means I often have a dozen half-finished drafts at any given moment. These unfinished drafts are like heaps of bricks, which I’ll occasionally return to and assemble into the structures I think they should form. But after a few days of meditation, these bricks started stacking on top of each other and completing my unfinished articles. Conclusions materialized for articles that had been endlessly turning in circles and fresh perspectives breathed life into stale topics. These new ideas flowed freely, fully formed, waiting to be explored with a newfound mental clarity.
Not all of these world changing ideas had been written down, and if I’m being honest, I later cringed at how horrible some of them were in hindsight.
It's possible that my brain was desperate for any entertainment, that it propped up these article ideas and held them up like an oasis in a desert of boredom, or perhaps the decreasing sharpness of my mind after leaving the 10-day now prevents me from seeing the key details that made those ideas great.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The more you entertain these thoughts on the retreat, the more you rob yourself of progress on the technique. The mental clarity can stay with you and even improve if you continue to practice daily, so you won't forget them or lose this ability.
Tip #3: Before re-engaging with your old habits or talking to too many people, write down all of the thoughts you want to retain in as much detail as you can.
I had even come up with ideas for novels and plays, and as cliché as some of those ended up being in hindsight, I had never contemplated writing anything like that, much less been able to hold an entire story, separated into acts and chapters neatly and clearly in my head.
The brain has thousands of ideas every day, some of them are going to be great, while most will be terrible. Developing the ability to notice each one of them is great, but just as important is the ability to see them for what they truly are.
Meditating is the single most effective skill I have discovered to improve my writing, but there is a time for writing and there is a time for meditating. If you’re learning meditation with such a specific goal as “become a better writer” or “discover patterns in financial markets” you will miss the greater lessons it has to give you.
III. Secularism
Your teacher S.N. Goenka will sometimes allude to karma and patterns of the mind originating from past incarnations of your soul. Now perhaps in the East, where the concept of reincarnation is shared amongst so many belief systems, it can be seen as transcending religion and almost atheistic, but to a western audience it comes off as religious and almost pagan.
If it really bothers you, you could replace the rare allusions to reincarnation with the loose concept of heaven and hell and the teachings of the technique would be identical, or you can decide to ignore it all together as you probably should. What matters is that you do the technique. When you do it you may experience what some buddhists did, or you may come to different conclusions as many others have. It doesn't really matter, although it did feel like that eastern cultural frame unnecessarily harmed the otherwise perfectly secular teaching.
It’s easy for the mind to pick out one of these grievances, or make up another, and decide that it disqualifies you from learning Vipassana. It would be a shame to let that happen, and you should ultimately stick to your initial commitment to see things through. You will only be able to make an informed decision after the 10 days are over.
Your peers
On the final day I tried talking to as many meditators as I could to extract any valuable wisdom they had to offer, but the reality was extremely disappointing.
One meditator said: "I like meditation, but this technique didn't spend enough time dealing with my emotions. [Insert name of another technique] taught me that different emotions are like different kinds of seeds. Anger is like a weed, love is like a flower, [etc.] and you should watch each of them as they flourish"
Or as a different meditator explained: "I prefer this other meditation technique that teaches me to wrap myself in love…"
I understand now that different people require different teachings or techniques, but at that moment, all I could think as these grown men spoke was "Wow, what a bitch”. How could someone go to the depth of their psyche and witness, like I had, how weak and powerless they truly were, only to come back with the sole conclusion that they should suppress this reality in artificial bliss.
Some will find yoga, sailing, or another activity where they achieve a state of "flow" to be their meditative outlet. This does a good job of creating focus and training this muscle we call concentration. They can even do a great job at suppressing unhappiness. Vipassana is not that.
Vipassana is best suited for the seemingly few individuals who are genuinely interested in seeking the truth and willing to do the work to fix whatever they find is broken. Seeing things as they are sometimes means confronting a lot of ugliness, but it is a necessary starting point for those serious about creating change—not only within themselves but in the world at large.
Common questions
"How do you get past boredom?" If this is your first worry, you are probably the kind of person who would benefit the most from spending 10 days without electronics. You’ll find that boredom isn’t relevant.
"Did you feel ecstatic? Did you dissolve? Levitate?" Just expect it to feel like shit. You're taught that any sensation (pleasurable or not) has to be ignored, so if you feel ecstatic or go around telling people about this and that sensation, you missed the point.
"Did you fit in?" On the surface, no. I was clearly not like the others there (culturally, politically, socio-economically, professionally, etc). That much was obvious and almost comical. However, some of them lived the aesthetic of being a meditator but obviously seemed to have missed most of the benefits when I later spoke with them. You won't know if you fit in until the 10 days are over.
“Was it painful?” Physically it wasn’t too bad. I went into this with 2 previous knee injuries and found that if you spend enough time in the first few days finding a posture that works for your body, you can reduce most of the pain. In the later days the pain actually helps you focus and becomes a useful tool once you no longer fear it.
Tip #4: if you aren’t scared, then you probably aren’t going far enough.
“What should I do to prepare?” Not much. The people I spoke to who didn’t understand the technique usually showed up with their own biases and priors, which got in the way of them learning Vipassana. Best to show up as a blank slate and eager to learn.
“Have you continued to meditate after the 10-day?” Not as much as I should have. You will likely find integrating the technique into your daily life to be one of the hardest things about the technique. I manage a minimum of about 1 hour a day, but 2-4 hours would probably get me closer to my maximum productivity in my writing, coding, and businesses.
Any more information than this would probably do you a disservice, so I’ll leave it at that. I only hope that you can get as many benefits as I did, if not more, but that is really up to you and how hard you’re willing to work.
If you’re curious about Vipassana and want to learn more, you can visit https://dhamma.org/ to find a center near you, or you can message me here for more specific questions you think I could help with.