In April 2017, I completed my first Vipassana retreat. I spent 10 days in a meditation center in Tuscany, cut-off from the outside world, in complete silence, meditating 10 hours a day. I long hesitated before sharing my experience but I finally opted to write a few lines about it.

The meditation hall I sat in cross legged for 100 hours over 10 days :)

Why the hesitation?

It is by definition a very personal experience, and I’m a private person (it literally took me years before adding work related acquaintances on Facebook). Adding to that, despite a notable recent shift, mental health/fitness unfortunately largely remains a taboo. Lastly, it is a very powerful metaphysical experience. I find that those experiences tend to be difficult to convey with words. Also, I think that I just wanted to let it “sink in”.

So, what is Vipassana meditation?

In a nutshell: it is a meditation technique invented in India by Siddhattha Gotama about 2,500 years ago. It is the technique that Buddha used to “liberate himself”, and that he later transmitted to others until his death. For various reasons, the technique almost got lost and was only preserved in its originality in what we today call Burma, passing from monk to monk. In the 1970’s the late S.N. Goenka, an Indian industrialist and Vipassana teacher who grew up in Burma decided to leave the country, in order to spread the technique to the rest of the world (unlike his predecessors, he had a passport and was free to travel).

The essence of Buddha’s teaching is that life is hard and that pain is inevitable. Suffering is however optional. We suffer because of bad unconscious habits of the mind that we accumulate over the years, and that we basically have to unlearn. More specifically, we suffer because a) we develop reactions of both craving and aversion to external objects (other people, stuff, money, thoughts, etc) ; b) we develop ego and become attached to the sense of “I”, “my”, “mine” (“why is this happening to ME?”, “this is MY thing”, etc). For Buddha, the key to a happy life and to a purified mind is to free oneself from those cravings and aversions and to realize that the self is an illusion (bare with me). On freeing yourself from cravings and aversions, he wasn’t the first person to say that. Monks previously instructed students to train their mind not to react to external objects, to remain equanimous, but it had always remained very theoretical and very hard to apply. Where should I even start? How can I practically train my mind not to react to this person/thing that I dislike? This is really what Buddha brought to the table. A very practical “101 guide”, a method rooted in practical experimentation that can be learnt and applied by anyone. Vipassana meditation is this method. It is what has inspired all mindfulness based forms of meditation.

The missing link = bodily sensations

Buddha was finally able to “crack it”, to make it so tangible, by coming to the realization that mind and matter are intimately connected (something that we are more and more rediscovering in the West). He concluded that our minds were actually not craving or averting the external objects themselves, but rather the sensations that those external objects create on our bodies. Growing up, we unconsciously assign a positive/negative value to those sensations. Some become pleasant and we start chasing them (food satiation, sexual release, highs from various addictive substances, the feeling of approbation by others, the feeling of winning/being better than others, etc). Other sensations become unpleasant and we start averting them (physical pain, the feeling of rejection, the feeling of losing/being worse than others, etc).

It basically goes like this:

we see/smell/taste/feel/think about external objects → this creates a sensation on our body → we find that sensation pleasant/unpleasant → we react to that sensation with craving or with aversion.

Now, the aim is certainly not to stop feeling those sensations. They have proved vital to us from a natural selection point of view. If we stopped feeling them altogether, we would die of hunger and not reproduce ourselves. But the problem is that without realizing it, we become enslaved by our sensations and they drive us much more than we admit it to ourselves.

A crash course in reality investigation and resilience

What Buddha suggested is that the only way to break this never ending cycle is to train yourself a) to spot and observe the bodily sensations ; b) not to react to them. To merely observe them as they are, without any judgement, with total equanimity ; and with the understanding that, like everything else, they too are going away! This is pretty much what the 10 days are about: teaching you how to become aware of those bodily sensations that can be extremely subtle ; and training you to remain equanimous to them, to appreciate them with the understanding that they are impermanent. I like to describe it as an intense crash course in reality investigation and in resilience.

In practice, 60 of us gathered in a beautiful meditation center on the Tuscan hills of Lutirano and spent the following 10 days in complete silence, meditating 10 hours per day from 4.30am to 9pm, eating twice a day, and sleeping in dorms of 7 people. Having handed out our phones and other belongings on arrival, we were also completely cut off from the outside world. The retreat is completely free of charge. Like monks, we were living there on the charity of others. Those that finished the retreat could elect to make a donation at the end of their stay.

Why did I do that ?!?

Doesn’t sound like the most relaxing way to spend your Easter holidays :) It was really a combination of different things. Mostly, I felt that I was at a point in my life where I needed to become better at managing Life’s emotional roller coaster. I felt that I needed help, in the form of a technique or a practice that I could go back to. I found out about Vipassana through a couple of friends whom I deeply respect and who shared their own Vipassana experiences, which all resonated with me. Meditation had been a part of my life for quite some time, but I wanted to go a few levels deeper. Then, I come from a family of scientists and psychologists. We grew up with a strong belief in the scientific process and rationality. In that sense, I was attracted by the secular and empirical nature of this practice. I know that by now I’ve mentioned the word “Buddha” several times, so some of you might wonder why I refer to Vipassana as a secular practice, but it really is. Last but not least, I was also attracted by the radical nature of the experience. I’ve always had a thing for these radical experiences that “shock your system”, that take you out of your comfort zone. I’ve done several of those and have never regretted any. Living the life of monk for 10 days certainly sounded like one of those!

I felt that this practice would help me in many different facets of life, including professionally as a VC. And it does in many ways, but I’ll keep that for another post.

How was it?

It certainly was the strongest and most transformative experience in my life so far (I’ll have to revisit that after the birth our daughter to be). It was also probably the hardest one. The funny thing is that it is not at all what I expected to be hard beforehand that proved to be the hardest. For me, the hardest thing was by far the physical pain, which frankly felt excruciating at times. Next in line was the fact that you have no choice but to face your own thoughts for 10 days. Including the darker ones :) You don’t really have that many distractions, so you do think A LOT. In that sense it was a very strong and positive introspective experience. I feel like I’ve learnt more about myself in 10 days than in 10 years.

It would be lying to say that I didn’t feel like running away from that place every single day. But I’m glad I didn’t :)

Do I want to do it again & would I recommend it to others?

I feel no urge to do another 10-day retreat anytime soon. I would however like to do a 3-day retreat every year, and I’m starting to plan my 2018 one. Students who have completed a 10-day retreat can sign up for shorter “top-up” retreats, but you can only start with a 10-day one, which is the time it takes to master the technique.

I usually don’t explicitly recommend it to other people because a) I think it’s not for everyone ; b) given how hard the experience is, I think it has to start from a very strong personal desire. This is certainly not something that I would recommend to do “just to try it”. It needs serious personal commitment because it is probably one of the hardest things that you will ever do. I strongly felt that it was something for me beforehand, and if it is also something for you, you’ll feel it too.