2500 years ago, Siddhartha Gotama set under the tree, in firm determination to not move until he reached his enlightenment.

It could take days, weeks, years. His flesh could decay, his bones turn to dust, but he would just sit there and observe the reality as it is.

Observation brought awareness of sensation and with it, the understanding of his sankharas, the cycles of repeating misery, caused by craving and aversion.

Equanimously, he noticed how the sankharas from his past lives were coming up to the suffice and under his non-reactive attitude, disappearing. By the morning, his mind was pure, without holding on to anything, without running away. He has awakened as Buddha, the enlightened.

The emerging popularity of 10 day meditation retreats has brought the attention about this ancient tradition to the West, usually with people making a huge deal about the retreat itself, making it seem as if it’s a sort of spiritual initiation ritual, without which, enlightenment becomes impossible, in a way making it spiritual bypassing instead of actual practice that would benefit the development of one’s impact on the humanity.

This post is not about how much I suffered the first few days and then reached the pure bliss on day 8. You can hear that from anyone who has done it already. This is a factual, although maybe slightly biased, description of what the process is. So if you are thinking about doing it, the question ‘why?’ is yours to answer.

The experiences will inevitably vary from person to person, but the 10 day retreats will be almost the same, no matter where in the world you do it. So let’s get straight into it.

What actually is vipassana?



Vipassana meditation is a technique of actively observing the sensation in your body, without moving or reacting to it, described in two concepts; awareness and equanimity.

As you pay attention to both pleasant and unpleasant sensations in your body, you are learning to be non reactive to either one of them.

By doing the practice, according to the scriptures, old patterns of craving for pleasant sensation or aversion towards the unpleasant ones start to emerge.

Those patterns are the root of your misery. They are the conditioning that makes you feel restless or unhappy, even when things are objectively perfect in your life. In this tradition, they are referred to as Sankharas.

By not reacting to sensation they don’t result in the cycle of misery, the rollercoaster of emotions. On the factual plane, without needing to believe in neither sankharas nor karma, you can probably see how this way of mental conditioning can help you be in better control of yourself. It gives you the ability to stay calm when everything is going wrong and to not fear losing what you have.



Awareness

The first concept, awareness is built upon in the first three and a half days of a ten day retreat. Introduced as anapana meditation, this simple practice is anything but easy. You start with the awareness of your breath, feeling the air on your nostrils.

From meditation to meditation, you are bringing your focus back to that space, building up your ability to concentrate on a small area of sensation, and as you progress through the practice, the area of focus is smaller and smaller.



This helps you develop the ability to be present and focused. Unless you’re experienced meditator, it’s probably the first time in your life that you’ll notice the places where your mind goes when not attended to properly.

The chaos of constant chatter needs to be skilfully controlled, otherwise, you might fall victim to your thoughts. You’ll notice that thoughts are a great ally, but a terrible master. And you’ve spent your whole life having them as the latter. They were the driver of your emotions, mood, decisions.

When you silence the mind for a moment you realise, that the absurdity of what comes up can in no way be identified as You. Even more, they aren’t even yours. They are arising and passing, coming from who knows where.



The aim is to just observe. No judgment. Your mind wandered, so what? Bring it back to sensation. It’s just that simple.



Equanimity

On the forth day, beginning with the initiation into vipassana meditation, you are taking an extra vow- to not move during the guided group meditations, no matter how bad the discomfort from sitting becomes (Adhittana).



As you observe the sensation, you might notice that your natural reaction to pain is moving or readjusting. That is a consequence of being unable to accept the pain as a current reality. Through the next meditations, you learn to do just that.



The technique itself is simple; feeling the sensation from the very top of your head, through every smallest part of your body, all the way down to your toes. Part by part, slowly, and with the understanding that all the sensation has the quality of arising and passing.



Think of where the sensation comes from. What it actually is? We believe that it comes from change, either your body adjusting to the temperature of the air, the feeling of the clothes on your skin, maybe itching, or on the more subtle level, feeling the reaction to something internal, causing tingling, vibrations, maybe the sensation of electrical current under the skin. It could be adjusting to the environment outside or the reaction to something internal. At any given moment our bodies are reacting to countless things in countless ways, and our mission is to bring that into our awareness.



Those small changes in your body are the root of feelings, emotions and moods. And throughout our whole lives we’ve been programmed to react accordingly to them, so conditioning through equanimity is giving you the ability to reverse that and take control of how you react (or not react).



In a way, moving your awareness between the sensation and reaction instead of on the very end of the process. So as the neutral observer, you aren’t there to label anything as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Even the good sensations should not be dwelled on, but noticed and moved on from.



This brings us to the next step: free flow. As your awareness becomes broader and clearer, as you are able to perceive all of the smallest sensations in your body, you start moving the awareness faster and over more parts simultaneously. From top to bottom and bottom to top. Scanning first in this way and then releasing the superficiality of feeling and starting to go deeper into your body.

Skin shouldn’t be the medium you rely on, but merely one of the aids to make it easier. If you are able to feel deep within your body, the organs, the nerves, from your heart beat to the lungs pressing on your rib cage, you’ll find that at some point, the feeling of the body being separated from the outside world disappears. You can feel the vibrations not within the limits of your body, but as everything.



The traps your Ego lays before you

As we sat motionless there, so many of us all packed in one room, mere centimetres from each other, there was no way to know what each one was going through individually. With a blank expression on their faces, some people were fighting the hardest battles in their minds, holding a tough expression, some of the people in the room were going through the saddest memories. Some of us had a slight smile on our lips, as the disassociation from our thoughts reached the point of non-identification: the ultimate goal in the moment.

Why so many different experiences from the same practice?



Each and everyone of us is a collection of our thoughts, memories, feelings, experiences, etc… The Ego makes it seem like these elusive plays make up some steady version of self, which is a story that meditation directly exposes for what it is.

And so the Ego tries to distract you from that realization by reinforcing the stories.



Notice as you sit down, in what way the resistance comes up for you. Are you suddenly tired or too alive? Too much energy to sit still, maybe?



Or oh, don’t worry, you can always meditate later, right now it’s just too many too important things to do.



Do you see where I’m going with this?



They are all the games your Ego plays.

Don’t fall into that. The stronger your practice, the stronger the resistance.

When you recognise the game, the best action is not to engage, but step back and smile. Smile at yourself, at that creation of your mind. And then continue the practice.



According to Goenka, the five enemies (hindrances) of the practice are:

Craving Aversion Drowsiness Agitation Doubt

Five strengths (friends) on the path

The first friend on your way is faith. You need to believe in the process before you see the results. If you approach the practice with skepticism, as soon as it gets hard, you’ll probably be on your way. Trust that it works and it will work for you.

The second one is effort. Proper effort is not doing something blindly, same as with faith, it comes from the understanding of the technique. If you work for 10 days, you can work as hard as you can, but if you are doing the wrong thing, the proper results will not come.

Awareness can only be of the reality of the present moment. One cannot be aware of the past, one can only remember it. One cannot be aware of the future, one can only have aspirations for or fears of the future. One must develop the ability to be aware of the reality that manifests within oneself at the present moment.

Concentration is built upon on the first days with Anapana. It must be free from visualisation, craving, aversion. Pure concentration will liberate you from the constant chatter of the mind and distractions of your ego.

From Sīla to Pannā

Noble Eightfold Path is followed in three steps: sīla (moral conduct), samādhi (Concentration), and pannā (wisdom).

The fifth friend on your path is wisdom. Which kind of deserves its own paragraph, as it’s often confused with knowledge.

The knowledge you acquire from the books is not the same as experiential one, where you know the reality because you’ve felt it, seen it, tasted it. As my yoga philosophy professor in India once said; ‘you can read a thousand books describing salt, but until you’ve seen it, touched it and tasted it, you won’t understand what salt is.’ {read in strong Indian accent}

So here, in Vipassana, the wisdom is, as well, described as something you acquire, in this case by remaining equanimous to the sensations. You start understanding that all is change, all is impermanent. And therein lies the liberation.

Loving kindness as a spiritual practice

On the last day of the retreat, another technique gets introduced. Metta Bhavana or loving kindness is a way of transferring and sending the energy of pure love beyond the bounds of your physical self, or in hippie way of putting it, sending good vibes to everyone and everything.

The way this is done is by feeling the free flow in your body, but then, instead of observing it with the understanding of annica (change) and equanimity, you fill the atmosphere and sensation with unconditional love and kindness, expending the emotion far from your core towards every single person, first in your proximity and then beyond.

You become a medium for the loving energy of the universe to flow through to everyone.

This is supposed to be done only once you’re able to stay aware only of the pleasant sensations, without annoyance or pain or resentment. What a wonderful practice, isn’t it?

Although the 10 day retreats can be painful and confusing, they have many benefits. As you can superficially scratch the surface with this blog, to be able to experience the full benefits of the practice, you need a proper guidance.

If you’d like to attend one of these retreats, follow the link on this website.

But understand that it’s hard work, not a vacation. You’ll have to wake up at 4.20 every morning and meditate sitting for about 12 hours per day, fed only with two meals (tip: less is actually better, it’s hard to concentrate with a full stomach).

If you’ve attended one of the retreats and wish to add something or maybe talk about your experience, feel free to do so in the comments bellow.

Much love, Jakob