Vipassana: 10 days of Silent Meditation

Last year I promised myself that I'd spend my birthday somewhere new. Little did I know that this new place was going to be inside a meditation hall in India, meditating for 10.5 hours a day. Wasn't exactly what I had in mind back then, but this felt like exactly what I wanted to do.

Vipassana, which means “to see things as they are”, is the ancient meditation teaching of the Buddha. Amazingly, this powerful meditation technique is taught in centres all around the world for free. Yep, FREE. The only catch is, you are basically putting yourself in meditation prison for 10 days. You have to surrender your belongings and take a vow of silence, you are lodged, fed and taught the technique, all for free. You are invited to make a donation at the end, but there is no pressure.

You must leave your phone, books, writing material, food, musical instruments… Basically anything that would distract you, because the entire 10 days you are only practicing the meditation technique, eating and sleeping. The noble silence means you do not talk to anyone or make any non-verbal communications. If you need something you can communicate with the volunteers and there is also an allocated time to speak with the teacher if you have any questions related only to the technique (no philosophical questions). I asked for some raw vegetables and they generously sent 3 cucumbers and 5 tomatoes to my room. Oh yeah, I was lucky enough to have my own room and bathroom. In most centers you share the room and bathroom with at least one roommate.

Here is the schedule, only two meals a day, breakfast and lunch, then one snack at 5 pm with tea, which was this puffed rice with spices and a banana. I always asked for a second banana and more puffed rice haha… I really started loving that puffed rice. You are living the life of a monk for 10 days… You accept whatever food they give you and the very basic living conditions.

I could talk a lot more about the technique itself which I do find fascinating, or about other details and stories of my experience, but in order to keep this relatively short, I’ll just cut straight to some of the realizations I had during and after the experience.

Silence

Being silent was MUCH easier than I expected. I actually really enjoyed it. It was actually a relief that all pressure of interaction was eliminated. It was a nice break because as a solo traveler, I am always interacting with new people and it can get exhausting. In India I’ve been staying in my own private space basically the entire time so it’s been a lot easier to have time alone, but still when I am not able to show up as the highest version of myself in my interactions every single day, I get a bit hard on myself. So it was great to just stop for 10 days, be with myself and not feel any guilt for not interacting. I wasn’t lonely because I was sharing the experience with others, though they were strangers, we shared a common feeling of ‘we are in this together’.

Also, the 10 days of silence made me really feel how privileged we are that we have the ability communicate with each other all the time, no matter where we are in the world. This is insane. What is more insane is that we have this ability, yet we communicate bullshit to each other most of the time. We don’t say the important things, we have small talk, we are scared of speaking our truths, sharing our deepest longings… During the 10 days I had a lot of time to think about almost every aspect, time and person in my life… and it really gave me the feeling of wanting to write letters to these people, telling them important truths… telling them how I feel and how they hurt me or how they impacted me in a positive way, or literally just how much I love them with my entire being. Why don’t we do this? We have the ability to say whatever we want to the people in our lives at all time, and often we don’t tell the people we love that we love them! If you suddenly couldn’t communicate with anyone in your life anymore, at all, what would you regret not sharing/saying?

Time

The concept of time completely morphs when you remove all distractions such as cellphone, interations with people, etc… Between meditations we had 5 minutes to stretch our legs and walk around. I would go to my room, use the toilet, sit on my bed, walk around the place, look at the flowers, drink water, all in a very calm, slow manner. With 5 minutes!! On the very last day, we were allowed to talk again (a buffer before returning to the world), and this 5 minutes break was completely different. I stepped out of the hall and what felt like 1 minute later, the bell rang and I had to return inside. This is because I was talking to someone! I couldn’t believe it! I normally had so much time…

We also had breaks of 1 hour after breakfast and lunch, and I really started to learn to go slow. I named almost of the plants, I watched a caterpillar moving around in a half built cocoon for about 20 minutes.. When do we give our presence to nature like this? It was incredible I was delighted. I starred at flowers also... magical.

On the subject of time, I also realized how much I could actually do in one day, all distractions removed. I mean, every day I woke up at 4:00 a.m. and then meditated for 10.5 hours. Observing each second, minute, hour…. It so long!! It really gave me a new impression of time.

Space for Processing

Removing all distractions, all inputs (phone, social interaction..) and not having to think about food or make any decisions, gave space for ALL of your mental energy to go towards the meditation practice… AND… whatever else your mind decides to venture into. The first few days, my brain was just rolling through so much. I noticed I had almost no control over where my mind went. I would focus on the meditation technique, and sure enough after a minute or two, memories pop up, I lose myself in thoughts of past, future… but mostly past.

I’m really happy with how much I progressed, I literally watched myself regain control of my mind, my thoughts… Towards the end, I was able to be present and simply do the meditation technique without constantly losing myself in thought. But actually, as my teacher told me also, it can be viewed as an even better meditation when you get lost in thought. Your brain is processing whatever it needs to process. In our busy lives, FULL of distraction, inputs, and decisions to make… our brain rarely has time to process things. This happens during sleep, but allowing it to happen when you are conscious is incredible, because you actually untangle and clear your mind… and with 10 days, you can clear a lot!

Pain

Another thing Vipassana makes you acquainted with is… pain. After 15 minutes of sitting, most people feel physical pain in the knees, ankles, and back… Wow my back was killing me the first few days. 10 days of meditating for 10.5 hours each day, you learn a lot about pain.

The meditation technique teaches how to simply observe the sensations on your body without placing judgment. Having done a lot of yoga, I was already a little bit experienced with just “observing” discomfort and not “reacting”. With Vipassana it took it to another level, where I actually transcended from pain. It didn’t happen right away, but with strong determination and remaining equanimous (what S.N. Goenka keeps repeating… Remain equaminous… Equanimous…) I was able to watch the pain dissolve into a sensation that I didn’t label as good or bad. It was just “sensation”. A few times my leg completely fell asleep and when I got up I almost fell right back down haha...

We were also taught to remain equanimous with what happens in our minds. You are there to meditate, so the automatic reaction when your mind doesn’t cooperate and constantly gets distracted, is to get feelings of discouragement/frustration, but the exercise is to simply observe. If you are able to meditate for one entire hour with a focused attention on the technique, OK fine, but don’t get so happy about it that you become attached to this accomplishment. If the entire hour your mind was in old memories, completely distracted, OK also fine, don’t feel discouraged about that. Simply observe.

There is physical pain, but there is also mental pain. I wouldn’t skip over that of course… A few times in the meditations I started crying a lot. One of the days during the Vipassana was the day my father passed away 2 years ago. Another day in the Vipassana was my birthday. A lot of emotions were happening. Sitting with these emotions and allowing them to fully come out, having the space to process, it’s extremely healing. I’m not going to lie, most of the time I was actually pretty content and happy. I even laughed a lot by myself. Every day I would come back into my bathroom, look at myself in the mirror, make silly faces and just feel so grateful for the experience and having the courage to do it.

Returning to the world

As I mentioned, on the last day we were allowed to talk to each other, and we also received our belongings - most notably, the cellphone. Just talking was already… a lot. It was weird, don’t know what to say… but it was also funny because we all felt the same. I already felt that it consumed a lot of my energy and a certain return of social pressure… the feeling that I want to connect with certain people or whatever.

Then with the phone, that was reallyyy really overwhelming. Honestly I didn’t even want to open it. I only glanced at everything to make sure there were no emergencies (I had this terrible fear that during the vipassana someone I know would die – dark, I know). Nobody died, so I told my mom that I was still alive and then I put my phone away and figured I’d go through the rest of the messages the next day during a 20 hour bus to Goa. Yup – the day after Vipassana I decide to take a 20 hour bus to a new place in India... LOL. And Goa of all places.

Before the 20 hour bus, I shared really beautiful conversations with others who did the Vipassana, treated myself at a nice restaurant with a new friend who we basically shared our entire life stories, hopes, fears, dreams… And then I had to go on a 20 hour bus. That wasn’t as much of a nice experience, it broke down and I got stolen 2000 rupees (~40$). AND THEN.. I arrived in GOA! Lol…

Ok let me explain why this is funny… Goa is a very touristic place where many travelers go to party, dance, do drugs, so basically the energy there is veryyy intense. Not exactly ideal after doing a deep 10 day silent meditation. Mistake #1. Luckily I had some friends that were in a small town outside of where all the chaos is, so I went there. However, because this place was so small, I didn’t find a private room at a reasonable rate, so I stayed in a dorm. Mistake #2. It’s normally really cheap to sleep in a private room but they were double the price here, so I went for a dorm. Any sane person with self-respect would have just paid the double, but I was extremely tired from the bus ride, just got stolen the 2000 rupees and in my frugal-traveler patterns.

Reintegrating into the world, the most difficult part for me was the social interactions/pressure, especially since I didn’t have my own space to retreat to for the first 3 days… It was really overwhelming. I ended up moving to another place where I had my own room afterwards. Then, having to make all the small daily decisions, what to eat, how to spend my time, if I wanted to stay where I was or not, etc… Also trying to continue the meditation practice without having my own space… this was a challenge. One of the main reasons I also really wanted to have my own space.

Last thoughts / advice

This experience was truly incredible for me, even though reintegrating in the world was difficult, it came with really interested insights and lessons. I had a much better experience than I expected and I definitely recommend it to anyone who feels called to do it. My advice is to remove as much stimulation from your life as possible before going into the Vipassana. They ask you to stop alcohol, drug use, cigarettes, etc.. at least 3 weeks before, and it’s for a good reason. You don’t want to be in withdrawal. You will already be in withdrawal of other stimulants like your cellphone, etc…

Seems obvious but, I also recommend meditating every day before the Vipassana and trying to wake up early/go to bed early. You will adjust pretty quickly to the schedule anyway, but might as well just give yourself a good start.

The first and second day are, in my experience, the most difficult. You are not used to not knowing what to do with yourself without all your regular distractions and you resist the schedule, like WHAT have I gotten myself into? This is crazy. These feelings are normal, just try to get past the first few days…  Honestly I even got some anxiety towards the end, not wanting it to end. Life was so simple and easy. I surrendered to the experience, and felt really good in it. I was generally happy the whole time. A few times I felt really impatient and frustrated, but I was really aware of how I choose this experience and I am actually really lucky to be doing it. There are signs everywhere that say “Be Happy” and that also helped haha. Try to focus on gratitude.

That being said, the most important thing before going into an experience like this is that you are willing to take on this challenge and be open. Take it all as lessons and remind yourself that its only 10 days of your life. If you decide to do this, do it as a gift to yourself, and accept it with grace.

All is temporary in this world. This too shall pass!