"You will feel like
you took one giant step on a very very long path.”
That was how my best
friend described the journey. Having been through the 10 day silent meditation
course himself, I asked him for a bit of the behind the scenes.
I admit - walking into
the first day of a 10 day silent meditation course with 100 total hours of
meditation (yes - that's 10 hours each day) I had an expectation of reaching
some climax. Likely on day 7, 8, or 9. As hard as I tried to enter the journey
with no expectations, one does not volunteer for ten days of full silence and
meditation sits at 4:30 AM each day without expecting some benefit or the
attainment of some goal.
I should
list out some logistical details about the program before going any further.
There are dozens of meditation techniques and courses. From the
celebrity-endorsed transcendental meditation seen on GQ features, all the way to vinyasa yoga, sitting
down and crossing your legs has long breached full blown Williamsburg yuppie
appropriation and with that comes variations in technique and experience. This
specific 10 day course was in the practice of Vipassana Meditation at the Dhamma Dhara center in western Massachusetts.
The course itself is taught by video and audio tapes of S.N. Goenka along with an appointed
assistant teacher.
- The entire course is taught in noble silence . Students aren't allowed to communicate verbally or with gestures (i.e. eye contact or holding the door open). Students may speak to the teacher only when questions regarding the practice arise). I myself spent about ten minutes in total speaking with the teacher over the course of the ten days.
- No phones, email, computers, reading, writing, exercise, yoga, or sexual
activity.
- Meals must be eaten in the dining hall and never stored in the residence.
Breakfast starts at 6:30 AM and lunch at 11 AM. Other than those two meals, there is fruit and tea at 5 PM.
- Ten hours of the day are scheduled for meditation. The first session starts at
4:30 AM and the last session ends around 9 PM.
- Students are asked to refrain from practicing any other religion for the ten days. Though, Goenka is very adamant about the course being complementary to any religion. While Vipassana itself is taught by many different teachers in different organizations, Goenka has gained popularity and coverage because his tradition is easier for secular people to pick up in that it wipes out any classically “religious” components (no incents or chants or statues or gods) and other potentially alienating, non-universal norms.
- Men and women are separated for the entire ten days with the exception of the joint meditation hall. Meals and breaks are spent separate.
- Of the 40 men and 60 women in my course there were new students with minimal meditation experience, new students with zero meditation experience, and old students who had already been through a ten day course (in once
instance a woman was on her 11th (!) course). There was ample diversity in
race, class, and experience.
- The entire experience is run on donations. Students can donate after the ten
days or they can elect to serve as a volunteer in another course. In truth, the residence managers, the cooks, and the assistant teachers are all volunteers who practice Vipassana regularly.
My
interest in the course stemmed from a desire to take my meditation to the next
level. That means having a solid understanding on a theoretical and tactical
level and being able to describe what meditation really means beyond merely
sitting on a cushion and listening to my breath. In truth, practicing meditation was one of my New Year's resolutions. Before the course I had penned
myself an on-again off-again meditator, dedicating 20 minutes or so each morning
and evening to sitting. I was already aware of the proclaimed benefits of
meditation: reduced stress, increased ability to focus, and general increase in
happiness.
At the
end of the second day, I walked up to the assistant teacher (whom you are
allowed to speak with only when questions regarding the practice arise).
Moments away from pulling the plug on the remaining 8 days, I told him quite
frankly "Listen, Michael, I honestly don't think I can last the entire 10
days. I'm thinking about things back home. The plants that are going to die.
The thermostat I forgot to set on vacation mode. And the project at work I've
been managing that launches the week I get back." Michael smiled and
as if he had heard ten thousand iterations of this story from every other
student, replied "The mind will do that. Just let it go. You've dedicated
the ten days. Try to observe the highs and lows your mind will go through and
let them be."
The
first three days of the course are spent focusing on anapanna, a subsidiary
technique of Vipassana that focuses on the breath beneath the nostrils. In
doing so, one becomes better able to fix their concentration. Any time the mind
wanders away from the breath (which, to be clear, happened often) the meditator
tells the mind to bring the concentration back to the area of the body beneath
the nostrils. After the second day, any time my mind felt like leaving I
essentially told my mind to focus on the original intent of why I chose to
spend these ten days at the center. As I spent more time practicing, the amount
of time between distraction and focus became shorter and shorter. In other
words, the anxieties of the outside world became distractions, not anxieties,
and I was able to dismiss them as distractions from the present moment.
In the
Day 3 discourse, Goenka ended the session by echoing "You are the master
of the present." This became
the first of three takeaways on my journey. At the heart of Goenka’s philosophy
(and Buddhism as well) is the notion that enlightenment comes from
self-mastery. While it’s not entirely plausible to control circumstance or even
one’s own emotions, mastering the present means developing one’s ability to
control how the mind receives input.
I often
spent the ten minutes before a long meditation sit thinking about how my next
four hours were going to be spent with intense concentration and painful
sitting. Those ten minutes were often more painful than the third or even 59th
minute of the actual meditation sit. After Day 3 it became quite apparent to me
that my anxieties of the daily routine emerged from my reaction to the routine,
not the routine itself.
The
actual technique of vipassana isn’t taught until the 4th day.
Pivotal to the learning of vipassana are “adhitanna” sits. Adhitanna meditation
roughly translates to meditation of strong determination and the sessions are
designed such that the meditator can’t move their arms, legs, or eyes for an
entire hour. We did this for three different hour-long blocks each day.
At this
point I should be clear that I experienced pain in every sit – it’s the most
obvious observation in anyone’s meditation experience. While Goenka is very
adamant that the technique is not designed to torture, sitting in the same
position for such long periods brought so much pain that I nearly asked the
teacher for a chair. In meditation sessions where I was allowed to take a break
and stand up, I did so without hesitation. Sometimes I even left the actual
meditation hall.
The
official stance on the physical exertion (yes, from sitting on your butt for an
unfathomable length of time) is that managing
pain – observing painful sensations with equanimity – is another layer of the
mental mastery process. Vipassana
uses the heightened awareness capability built from the first three days in
order to develop an ability for the mind to act equanimously. What this means (and
this is my second takeaway) is that by the end of the course I was able to
observe an itch on my nose, a jolt of pain in my left knee, or a pleasant flow
of body sensations with an equal level of objectivity. (There
are some students who request a chair if the pain is absolutely unbearable, or
if they have a medical reason. But eventually, every student was able to sit
for a full hour without breaking pose.)
There’s
a philosophical tie in to the equanimity. According to Goenka, pain represents
some of the anxieties (also known as sankaras) in your life that distract the
mind. Connect these anxieties to the physical sensations in your body and you
basically see them leave the body, and ultimately the mind.
Day 6
ended with one of Goenka’s parables. In the story, two brothers are bestowed
two rings from their deceased father. One ring is clad in diamonds, the other
just a simple band. While one brother opts for the shiny piece, the other
brother elects for the simpler ring. Years later, the brother with the diamonds dies and the brother with the simple band notices an engraving on the
inside. Etched into the material are the words “This will also change.” The
parable implies that the wisdom in those words provides more everlasting joy
than any piece of jewelry, diamond clad or other.
The law
of nature in Vipassana contends that the only constant is change. It might be hard to feel this truth in a home like New York City
where triangle patches of grass are sanctioned parks and people spend 101% of their energy making sure they don’t absentmindedly turn the coffee maker on without
placing the pot underneath (true story), but after sitting beside myself for 7
days in rural Massachusetts I started to feel the truth of this law in my
practice. Out of Goenka’s many parables, the two brothers and the
rings stuck with me because of it’s seeming incompatibility with my first
takeaway. On the one hand, there is a law of constant change that every fabric
of creation is held to. And on the other hand, the mind’s ability to focus on
the present, this moment, this breath, presents agency within that law.
Liberation and empowerment. They are both available.
As I
write this one week on the other side of this experience, I can’t help but feel
a bit mixed or hesitant about adopting a fully Buddhist way of living. The
reincarnation pieces and the ascetic lifestyle don't completely jive with me. But Parts of Goenka’s sharings
and the Buddhist philosophy are wholly human and beautiful. Vipassana
translates to “see things as they really are”. I love the idea of turning
within, looking inward to find happiness instead of practicing blind rituals or
appealing to gods. Who doesn’t like the idea of observing one’s anger instead
of reacting to it? Who doesn’t like the idea of training your mind to feel its
most subtlest movements at the most simplified subatomic particles in the
representation of pleasant vibrations across the entire body? (You can laugh at
this, but this is really how deep meditation feels and anyone who has taken the
course will agree).
----
My last
takeaway: meditation provides a way to cross the bridge from knowing these
truths on an intellectual level and knowing these truths experientially. It’s
the difference between seeing an entrée that looks delicious on a menu and
actually tasting that meal.
---
The
first book I picked up after arriving back in Brooklyn was Dani Shapiro’s Still
Writing: The Perils of Pleasures of a Creative Life, a memoir of her life and
journey as a writer. On the 50th page she hones in on the practice
of writing:
If I
waited to be in the mood to write, I’d barely have a chapbook of material to my
name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the
mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don’t know, but I
doubt it. My guess is that it’s the very act that is generative. The doing of
the thing that makes possible the desire for it. A runner suits up, stretches,
begins to run. An inventor trudges down to his workroom, closing the door
behind him. A writer sits in her writing space, setting aside the time to be
alone with her work. Is she inspired doing it? Very possibly not. Is she
distracted, bored, lonely, in need of stimulation? Oh, absolutely, without a
doubt it’s hard to sit there. Who wants to sit there? Something nags at the
edges of her mind. Should she make soup for dinner tonight? She’s on the verge
of jumping up from her chair – in which case all will be lost – but wait.
Suddenly she remembers: this is her hour (or two, or three). This is her habit,
her job, her discipline. Think of a ballet dancer at the barre. Plie, eleve,
battement tendu. She is practicing, because she knows that there is no
difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.
It’s the very act that is generative. Even now after over 100 hours of meditation under my belt, I
sometimes feel a reluctance to sit on the meditation cushion. My goal for the
year is to meditate 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening
(Goenka recommends one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening). The
act of meditation may not ever feel easy. I may never reach a point where I
yearn to meditate for hours on end. But the practice is the art.
There are a lot of things I have yet to fully understand - how to develop a career, eat oranges without getting my fingers sticky, and stir-fry tofu. There are some things I do understand. Meditation is becoming one of them. Figuring the rest out is a certain kind of practice, I've recently learned.