Today, on 28th April 2024 I came back from a 10 day Vipassana meditation camp. I wanted to share “in the moment” thoughts, experience before I re-interpret memories.
For starters, Vipassana is a meditation technique invented in modern-day India. It has zero affiliation with any particular religion, community or otherwise organized collective thinking – at its core, its a meditation technique that describes very precisely what you should do and what you should avoid. It expects the meditators to adhere to some basic life-rules that are generally and universally accepted as “moral code of conduct” across geographies and times – I won’t be commenting on value judgement of “good or bad”, “superior of inferior” on this code of conduct, to each their own!
With that intro out of the way, this will be a long post, so settle in and read when you have some time. Lets go!
Why?
First obvious question people ask is “Why” did you do this? For me it was (& remains) “Curiosity”, curiosity about consciousness, brain, body, mind. I was (& remain) very fascinated by how we “operate” inside, how are we wired to perceive things. So, in doing Vipassana, I was not trying to process any particular life-event or heal trauma or come to terms with anything or was not looking for “experiences”. Thanks to a wonderful upbringing in loving, caring environment that me and my wife continued to nurture for our kids with amazing support from family and friends, I live a quantitatively happy “outside” life and a qualitatively very happy “inside” life.
The Research Experiment
So owing to my curiosity, I was reading (books, blogs, articles, research), listening to podcasts, YouTubing and Vipassna kept popping up every now & then. I was fascinated by the scientific, practical and experiential nature of it. Imagine coming across a peer-reviewed research whose results were reproduced by a significant number of independent researchers over course of time, imagine the research was titled “A practical exploration of improving external co-operation and internal efficiency of Dynamic Systems“. Would you not be interested in trying out the methodology of this research yourself? Especially if it was within your capacity to do so with least amount of investment … well, I was and thus my 10 Day camp at Dhamma Dhara in Shelbourne Falls in MA.
I’d have loved to debate the findings, bounce ideas, share coffee with the lead researcher, but I never had opportunity to meet Him, he died about 2500 years ago (2,447 to be accurate), his name was Siddharth Gautama & because of this research and practical, universal applicability of it, he was later known as “the knowledgable one” or simply “Gautama Buddha“. We’ll keep the history lessons for later and keep pulling on the thread of this experiment.
Setup
So these Dynamic Systems have 5 sensory ports and a Connected Graph (for non software folks, here’s a short description of a “graph”: Let’s say you have a bunch of dots, and each dot is connected to some other dots by lines. These dots are like different points, and the lines show how these points are connected to each other. Now, think of each dot as a piece of information, like a city on a map, and the lines as roads that connect these cities. So, if you want to go from one city to another, you follow the road. Similarly, if you want to find some information connected to another piece of information, you follow the lines between the dots).
The ports are:
- Measure aerosol-pressure differentials (hearing)
- Detect wavelengths of EM radiation (sight)
- Sense chemical composition of aerosols (smell)
- Detect chemical composition of non-aerosols (taste)
- Detect pressure (touch).
The Connected Graph (mind) is meshed closely with these ports and has its own internal clock and logic to store some information and act on it, at times, independent of signals from 5 sense-ports. There are actuators, links, connectors for this system that can interpret the signals from the Connected Graph and move about in 3-D space (limbs, muscles, tissue, bones etc.). The Connected Graph has bi-directional connection with the sense ports! Us, humans are those dynamic systems.
Now, you have many millions of these systems – they do cooperate with one another from time to time, but sometimes they end up in a conflict situation – terminating, ruling or other wise overpowering other collectives. Also, given the potential and adaptive nature of these systems they don’t seem to perform as well as they could.
So the challenge was come up with a practical way of improving external collaboration and increase internal efficiency. Just publishing theories about it won’t help as there are literally hundreds of research articles available and they don’t seem to help.
Approach
Siddharth Gautama’s ingenious way of approaching this problem was “Lets use the system you want to observe and improve as the tool of measurement“, read that again – that’s pretty amazing & then further more – “Since, I’m one such system, I can use myself as a measurement and experimental tool” and so he did, he worked relentlessly on the problem for many years, incorporated methods from existing research articles and invented a new, novel and practical approach that any Dynamic System (human) could follow and yield the desired results – he called it “Vipassana”. The Pali word literally means “seeing the things as they are“. His manuscript was very simple and short but extremely difficult to practice (given the Connected Graph has way too many nodes and not well understood storage and retrieval algorithm!).
Excerpt
The research can be summarized as follows (Gautama, the Buddha, of course wrote eloquent volumes that people spend lifetimes studying, but here’s how I’d summarize it):
- There is no “one mind”, instead there’s a chain of processing units (mini-minds) for each signal, regardless of port the signal is received on and regardless if the signal was truly physical in nature or simulated by lower level minds. You could examine each “mind” and find a way to intervene at specific juncture to accomplish results you want. Based on the contents of these mini minds every signal will produce a sensation on the body – every single signal (regardless of real or simulated) – every single time, day or night, awake or sleeping will produce sensations – always on the body & you could observe these sensations as a feedback.
- Everything, literally everything, is impermanent. Every object is made up of tiny wavelets (Kalapas) that arise and vanish with great rapidity giving us feeling of solid-ness and continuity. There’s no point is feeling attachment to the impermanent structures as everything, everything changes – all the time.
Its rumored that Ashoka, the Emperor of Magadha (the largest land empire at the time), seeing the results people were getting from this technique got so impressed that he sent learned ambassadors (Dhamma-doot) to spread this technique to parts of then known world. Rest is history, what’s believed is somehow the technique was retained in a close-to-its-original form in Mynamar (Burma, Bramhadesh or Swarna-bhoomi as it was known at the time of Ashoka). The technique gained popularity around 1960s and 1970s because of S. N. Goenka, a successful Burmese businessman saw usefulness of it in treating his own chronic illnesses and observe other positive changes.
Logistics
Now that I had an understanding of the experiment, next step was to actually try it and try it on – myself. A Vipassana course was the way to go. There’s a global organization, Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) that oversees independent trusts/entities in over 90 countries & each trust/entity operates centers that teach Vipassana courses, there are over 200 such centers globally – each with varying levels of facilities. Each center teaches the same exact technique for over 40 years now. Given I live in MA, I had the privilege of going to a center in MA – Dhamma Dhara, this was first center outside of India, started in 1982. The center is simply amazing and has top-notch facilities and amenities. The instructions are delivered by S.N. Goenka, himself via audio and video recordings (S. N. Goenka passed away in 2013). The instructions are translated to many languages for understanding by local population.
Here are some key highlights about these centers/course:
Centers
- Each center operates ONLY on the donations. You can NOT donate without doing at least one 10 day course at any center. (They literally turn down donations from anyone, including wealthy donors, charities. They do so in order to maintain independence, specificity and purity of the teaching)
- There no solicitation or suggestions on how much and/or what you should donate. The idea is you will provide the gift to a future student if you find the technique useful to you – if you don’t, no pressure – just don’t donate.
- Each center is operated entirely by volunteers, office, admin, cooking, cleaning, facilities maintenance – everything, there are no paid staff.
- The application process is online, usually courses book 3-4 months in advance and they tend to get filled as soon as they open, within days. I’ll include a link to scheduling in “Resources” section at the end.
- I applied on Dec 19th, 2023 for the April 17th, 2024 course.
Course
- There is no tuition fee, the course is free. You don’t need to provide credit card, bank info – ever at all.
- Each course is residential, the students MUST live on the center, effectively as monks/nuns.
- You are NOT allowed to communicate during the course duration of 10 days – communication in ANY form is prohibited – verbal, visual, signaling, none of it. So no phones, reading, writing, journaling, chatting (you can chat with yourself all you want, silently).
- Daily instructions are provided on the actual meditation – what to do, how to do etc. A local “assistant teacher” is available (one male, one female) to answer questions if you have and guide you along, but the teacher, really, is S.N. Goenka.
- Male and female student are separated, not for religious dogma – but to control the sensual pleasure signals received on the 5 signal ports! Special arrangements are possible for LGBTQ community.
- You are served healthy vegetarian meals, a breakfast and a lunch. No dinner, instead tea/coffee/lime juice and a fruit are offered in the evening.
- They teach humans! So any adult of any biological sex from any country, any race, any religion (or none) can apply.
- Daily Schedule is very demanding and exhausting both physically and mentally. So don’t think this as a “retreat”, there’s no “feel good”, “pampering”, “goodie-goodie” anything about this. The whole course is conducted with academic rigor like a clockwork and you are expected to follow that rigor and discipline. Here’s how a typical day looks like:
- 4:00 AM wake-up bell rings
- 4:30 to 6:30 AM: meditate
- 6:30 to 8:00 AM: Breakfast and break
- 8:00 to 9:00 AM: Mandatory group meditation in hall
- 9:00 to 11:00 AM: meditate
- 11:00 to 11:45: Lunch
- 11:45 to 1:00 PM: Break
- 1:00 to 2:30 PM: meditate
- 2:30 to 3:30 PM: mandatory group meditation in hall
- 3:30 to 5:00 PM: meditate
- 5:00 to 6:00 PM: Tea, fruit + break
- 6:00 to 7:00 PM: mandatory group meditation in hall
- 7:00 to 8:15 PM: Daily discourse to explain the days activities and rationale and thinking behind them. These are recorded video messages from S.N Goenka.
- 8:15 to 9:00 PM: meditate
- 9:00 PM : retire for the day
The technique
Meditation Mechanics
Here’s a quick listing of “mechanics” of the technique, I’ll try to best explain the thinking behind later, so for now – just read these are very precise steps-to-be-followed.
- Day 1:
- You commit yourself you learning and practicing this technique & suspend all your other practices, rituals for next 10 days. You commit yourself to “moral code of conduct” for next 10 days (at the end of 10 days you are “your own masters” & decide to continue to discard this technique)
- You commit not to mix and match techniques, that means so mental words for breathing, no mantras, no chanting, no visualization of any kind, no rosary, no pooja, no nothing – just follow the prescribed steps precisely and exactly to the last letter.
- You observe your breath, your natural breath, no artificial control, no “pranayama”, observe it as-it-is, not as you want it to be. If deep, let it be, if shallow, let it be, if going through one nostril or other – let it be.
- Your mind will run away from “focus on breath” very, very often and very, very quickly to all sorts of thoughts, memories, plans and schemes – just gently bring it back to the breath (& then repeat the cycle as many times as needed)
- Day 2 and 3:
- Now that you can keep focus on breath for slightly longer duration than when you started, focus your attention on triangular area – base being your upper lips and vertex being your pineal gland (top of nose) and your nostrils – inside/outside. You are only observing sensations you feel on this area and completely ignore sensations anywhere else on the body. Yes, you’ll have pain in knees, lower back, joints, you may feel ticklish, hot/cold – whatever, wherever – you ignore and simply observe the sensations on this triangular area & remember you are only observing whatever is there, don’t imagine or suggest feelings or sensations – observe what-is-there and not what-you-would-like-to-be-there.
- Day 3 & 3.5:
- Now reduce the area of attention just on upper lips and outside of nostrils. Same instruction, just observe what appears there without craving or aversion for any. Sensations arise, they stay for a bit and then they are gone – ad infinitum.
- Day 4: Until now you were practicing whats called “Anapana” meditation. “Anapana” is a Pali word meaning “breathing”. Now to “Vipassana”…
- By this time, your mind is expected to be trained to detect sensations on a very small area of your body, now its time to use that focus and observe sensations all over the body – pleasant or unpleasant, pain or joy, you only need to be aware of them without reacting to them & this is very-very-very important, you observe them, observe the lifecycle of every sensation, pleasant or painful without reacting to any. Reaction is meant in literal terms – physical or mental, if you feel something enjoyable don’t feel or develop attachment to it & conversely, if something is resentful, don’t develop aversion to it, because every sensation follows same lifecycle of arise-stay-vanish (& on and on). e.g. if you feel like a itch on left arm – only observe, the itch will arise, get stronger and will vanish. You can only be aware of now, for the past, you have memories, records, documents – thats not awareness, similarly for future you have plans, ideas, schemes – not awareness, so awareness is only about now & only about things you – yourself can positively witness – your own breath and your own sensations.
- Day 5 onwards:
- You fine-tune your ability, both to feel the sensations and develop ability to remain equanimous to them. It can not be stressed enough you need to learn both – “awareness” and “equanimity”. You keep on scanning your body mentally and methodically for sensations – for hours together.
- Day 10:
- You try to project “feelings” of inner peace and harmony to all other beings (humans, animals, birds, reptiles, plants …)
- & this is it! … as I said the manuscript of Gautama’s research was very short and simple, but practicing it is very-very-very hard.
The Theory
What Gautama discovered was, though we think of a mind as “one”, its actually made up of many, many sub-minds – he named about 100+, but for the purpose of better understanding by common people, he specifically clarified 4:
- Cognition Mind (Sañña): This is simply “detector” mind, it detects a signal has arrived on the input port or an internal signal from the Connected Graph (part of lower level mind) & passes on the context to next processor.
- Measuring mind: This processor mind only detects the strength, rate of change & other attributes of the signal & passes on this information with context to next processing mind.
- Registering Mind: This mind actually evaluates and registers the signal along with the context & gives it an effective boolean rating of “oh! this is good” or “no! this is not good”. Reason, I called it “effective” is there are shades within each classification but overall, its either “i want more” (craving) or “do whatever you can but avoid this” (aversion)
- Reacting Mind: This part of the mind is responsible for “react” phase, where the evaluated and stored sensation is used to form a response based on earlier learned patterns. The response is formulated and issued to appropriate part of the system – it could be perspiration, it could the punch-in-the-gut feeling or the dilated pupils when you are aroused, literally anything, but physically manifested somewhere on the body – always! no exceptions.
The interesting part is the signal may not be real, it may be just an internal state update or recall on the Connected Graph (mind) – this chain reaction happens all the time, every single moment of life. We form these “sankhara” (in Pali or “Sanskar” in Sanskrit) every single moment of living. Today’s scientific literature refers to this as “neurons that fire together wire together” (& vice-a-versa).
Next Gautama postulated that the trouble is not with the first 3 minds, its the last one that is root of the problems. So even seeing someone who might have insulted you years ago, gets reacting mind in action & triggers a physical response & unfortunately, the cycle feeds on itself – giving rise to all kinds of negative behavior or system characteristics such as stress, anxiety, animosity, hatred, physical bullying etc.
So what you are doing by only observing the sensations and not reacting (physically or mentally) is letting the “mechanical” part of the system do its job, but you are short-circuiting the response triggers, so are stopping new neural bindings from forming (no new “sankaras”). If you are successfully able to do this, your mind will still need some activity, so it’ll revisit, resurface older information/behavior patterns and kick the system in action – if you continue to only observe but refuse to react, you’ll start to unwind the learned-over-lifetime behavior patterns and there by free lot of resources on the Connected Graph (mind) and in the process slow the system down so it becomes more efficient with priority handling, fine-tuning the calibrations etc. But forcing a part that grew naturally with you not do its thing is very-very-very hard & hence implementing this techniques takes a lot of time, perseverance, patience, practice, grit.
Gautama concluded, if you are able to do this successfully you will notice increased capacity to do things/activities/tasks, keep your attention on a given task for longer duration, context-switch quickly and be able to deeply grasp new task to be solved, increase senses sharpness, increased internal energy, life-force, vitality (whichever word you prefer!) & as a side effect you develop more empathy, compassion & better appreciation of other humans and their internal struggles and will be kind-er to them. (In all likelihood, he might have started with this goal of empathy, love, compassion etc. in mind first, but me being me – understood it in reverse :)) He gave himself as a “case study” & thousands of subjects followed during his lifetime and then for last 2500 years each claiming to either have mastered the ability to observe without reacting to every-single-signal/sensation (thus become “liberated” from the cycle of signal –> response –> signal loop) or having in general “better lives” for themselves & thus Siddharth Gautama became Gautama, the Buddha – the learned one.
He also discovered there’s no solidity to anything – literally anything, including your body, animate, inanimate objects, metals – everything. Instead everything is made up of tiny waveforms – he called them “Kalapas”, Kalapas arise and vanish with such rapidity that give us a ‘feeling’ of solidity or continuity. Thus even at the core of it all – there’s only impermanence, tiny waveforms arise and vanish & we cling to it all – he termed it “Anicca” (or “Anitya” in Sanskrit) and warned us to be aware of Anicca – at all times and of everything. Anicca was a main theme throughout the meditation instruction.
My Own Findings/Experiences
- Physical pain: I practiced daily sitting cross-legged for 1 hour about 2 weeks prior to the course, that definitely helped manage the pain. Even with hours of sitting, I was able to comfortably walk during breaks and maintain pace. No matter how much you prepare for the physical ability for this course, you will still struggle. I alternated between using the sitting chair (still on the floor, cross legged), using a meditation bench (sit like “vajrasan”) and using a slightly taller cushion to let my crossed legs use the extra height.
- Focus: Focusing on breath & staying with it for longer duration was harder than I imagined. But when you get there, you enjoy a very silky, smooth breath-in-breath-out cycle, its very effortless and enjoyable state. You’ll feel the cool-ness of incoming breath at the back of throat and warmth of outgoing breath towards end of nostrils. The lowest continuous hart-rate I clocked was 38 & it lasted for 30-45 mins out of the hour. This is the time when you have slowed down the velocity of thought generation and rapid context switching of the mind. This is also the time when you may notice lot more sensations on your body that you otherwise don’t register such as short bursts of tickles, bubbles, feeling of crawling ants, bubbles moving about, intense pain from your legs, joints, lower back.
- Body scans: Scanning body to detect sensations part-by-part was hardest part for me! I’d lose track of what parts have I mentally scanned or for how long I was scanning. If you have accomplished the ‘smooth breath’ state in # 2 above, you may sense mind-games such as “I don’t feel my hands anymore, I know they are there, but can’t feel them”, “I think rest of my body is located all the way to right side & ‘I’ am here”, “I don’t feel my head at all”, “‘I’ see the breathing process as if I got minified and placed near my rib-cage” & so on. You’d may also start sensing that the “heavy” sensations are giving way to more subtle sensation as if you started noticing “oh, this large ant colony is made up of small clusters & each cluster is made up of tiny grain clusters & so on)
- Feeling awareness: Not being able to visualize body parts during scanning turned out to be advantageous for me as I had no trouble “mentally” scanning body, other students reported they ended up visualizing their body parts, something the Vipassana technique expressly prohibits.
- Experiences: It was very well emphasized that every individual will have different responses, reactions, sensations so there’s no one yardstick to measure. While some students reported many experiences, mine were pretty earthly and non-exotic such as seeing past or future lives, floating in eternal bliss. I was able to slow down mental activity while still remaining alert and awake, I was able to feel subtler sensations on head, face, hands and legs but torso remained stubbornly wooden.
- Sharpened senses: The plants at the Center appeared more intense in color, more beautiful, the edges of objects appear sharper, I could spot birds (still no good with identifying most!) on top of large tress on a hill, listen to gently flowing stream from afar, on clear days – it felt like the sky is ‘fake’, it was so pristine, so blue – so unreal as if someone placed a giant, brilliantly colored dome over. I could smell smells from great distance and feel air moving about head and face that normally I’d not register. I think this is all explainable as we were depriving the senses (eyes closed for good 10-11 hours of the day), no sounds, fragrances were discouraged (so no deodorants, intense soaps – if someone used it – you could smell from 100s of yards away!) & no physical contact with any other being, just inanimate objects. Today, its still Day 1 after the camp & colors are still extremely vibrant and brighter than usual, so I’ll see how long this effect lasts.
- Food: The food was nutritious, plentiful and varied in menu. I never missed the dinner, only overate for 1 breakfast (& suffered inability to breathe well on next meditation session), all in all, I had no complaints about food.
- Course content/teaching: Goenka-ji is an absolute master story-teller, he delivers his message in a funny, witty way using stories from life of Gautama, made up stories and one-liners. The teaching specifically is:
- Focused on self-experience Vs intellectual circus, word-play, hypotheticals & assertions about theories. Large emphasis on “don’t take anything from anyone – be it founder of a religion, a saint, a Buddha, be it God unless you can reason with it & most important, you can experience it yourself while not harming other beings in the process and all of this within framework of your own mind and body. This message of “experience” Vs “theory” is something I’m drawn towards naturally.
- Is non sectarian, “if the human condition is universal, the solutions must be universal”, “there’s no Hindu solution or Muslim or Christian or Jew or any other specific solution, anger is anger, killing is killing – there’s no Christian anger or Muslim anger or a jew death is no different than jain death!”, so treat humans as humans, let them believe what they want to believe but provide solution that works for everyone. Again something resonates very much with me.
- Contains traces at times about re-birth, re-incarnation, carry-over Karma etc. & what may appear to tilt in a religious way – but Goenka-ji is very clear, don’t take rest of it if you don’t like it – but take the meditation technique in it entirety – only if you find it useful, as everything in technique is universal. So I left behind those religious-ish aspects as they don’t resonate with me.
Post Course Impressions and Conclusion
Post Course Impressions
It has been 1 day since I’m back and …
- My internal state feels more happier, more optimistic
- I was able to sleep for about 4 hours and was able to get up feeling energized
- I feel more energetic to do my company work, house work without feeling a sense of drag.
- Colors are still brighter, I’m able to notice more things around me that I knew existed but never registered.
- After 4 hour sleep, I practiced meditation for 1 hour in morning, followed by resistance training at gym and working on company and the blog since coming back, well over 6 hours – but not feeling tired yet
Of course this is Day 1, I’ve been away from work & things I care deeply for 10 days and some amount “catch up” & “after glow” effects are bound to be there, so I’m not sure how long observations above will hold true, but I’ll keep on monitoring & now I have new tools to get back this state, so even if things wear off, I should be able to put a shine on.
Conclusion
To conclude, these 10 days were very well spent. I learned something new, gained “Experienced Wisdom” termed as “Bhavanamaya Pannya” in Pali (Vs “hearing” from others, “Suttamaya Pannya” or intellectual thoughts, “Chetana-maya Pannya”)
Next obvious question is do I recommend you do it? & the answer is absolutely, yes! At-least-once-in-your-life. It takes commitment both from yourself & your family – to be totally detached from world for 10 days that too in a physically and emotionally demanding environment. I am “the lucky-idiot” who can afford to skip work and suspend life for 10 days & my wife, kids, family and friends supported me going away whole-heartedly. At the course, you get to meet people from different backgrounds, different age groups, different belief systems, different in-course experiences (we are allowed to talk and share on 10th day, thats when you meet, hear, learn about others), you get sobered up on your views of “right Vs wrong”, “outlandish Vs reasonable”. Your ego gets questioned seriously and hopefully you walk away a better person able to view and reason from other people’s perspectives.
However, if you have some trauma, a chronic situation thats more emotional such insomnia, stress, anxiety, fear – I’d suggest this as a therapeutic measure & hence do it asap.