10 Days of Silence - My Vipassana Retreat Experience
So, I finally bit the bullet and attended my first ten day Vipassana retreat.
The idea to take part in one of these retreats had been swirling around in my mind for over two years.
I had been wanting to do this for a few different reasons.
First and foremost, as a spiritual seeker, the pursuit of Truth is my #1 priority in life and vipassana has been known to yield profound insight.
After all, it was the technique the Buddha taught to aid others in reaching “enlightenment.”
Many people who take part in one of these ten day courses say it was one of the most significant and moving experiences they’ve ever had in their life.
When I hear people speaking of things this profoundly, I tend to get curious and want to experience it myself.
I was also aware that a primary aim behind this technique is to retrain the habit pattern of the mind that craves certain sensations while being averse to others.
The method is to help one develop a present and equanimous mind, something that I could definitely improve on.
My mind has always been obsessive, jumpy, and impulsive.
In some senses this is a blessing, as my generation of creative ideas is off the charts, but at the same time it is extremely difficult for me to focus on a task for an extended period of time.
I also tend to become addicted to things: Certain foods, weed, video games, and porn are all things I am or have been dependent on in the past.
I know that in order to actualize my life purpose, some changes need to be made to the structure of my mind, and I figured learning vipassana could help me jumpstart that.
Previously, I had felt that I was not ready, thinking that I needed to be more experienced with meditation in order to handle one of these retreats.
But after two years of thinking this way, I decided to just throw myself into the fire.
And I am oh so glad I did.
Turns out that whether you are an experienced meditator or have never meditated a day in your life, you can benefit massively from one of these retreats.
But there is one caveat.
You must be willing to work hard.
Like really hard.
This is not some retreat that you attend to relax.
There will be plenty of pain, both physical and mental, but as long as you work diligently you will come out on the other side an improved human.
Now let’s get into it!
What is Vipassana?
The word “vipassana” means to see things as they really are.
Thus, vipassana meditation involves observing your bodily sensations from a completely non-judgmental point of view.
No projections, no labeling, no judging, just observing.
This is much more difficult than it sounds.
The primary aim with this technique is to retrain the habit pattern of the mind that craves certain sensations while being averse to others.
I’m sure that by reading the above line you can already imagine how profoundly this mental training could impact one’s life.
It is very common for people to make enormous progress in their path of healing from trauma, addiction, and various other psychological ills during one of these ten day intensives.
But even for people without any serious disorderly symptoms, learning and incorporating vipassana into one’s routine can aid immensely in dissolving unhealthy habit patterns and bringing balance of the mind to everyday life.
Being the primary method that Gotama the Buddha used to reach enlightenment, also known as “full liberation” (from suffering), the ultimate aim of serious seekers of this path is to become aware of the true nature of existence.
But more on the metaphysical stuff later.
What are the retreats like?
The common ten day course format was formalized and spread across the globe largely through the efforts of the late S.N. Goenka.
With now over three hundred retreat centers worldwide, virtually anybody on the planet can attend a course.
Before the course begins, one must turn in their phones and gadgets, as well as all items of spiritual significance.
The course follows a highly punctual structure, with the wake up bell sounding at 4 in the morning, while the final meditation concludes at 9 in the evening.
In the picture below you will see the daily schedule of these retreats.
Pretty rigorous, huh?
You are also to observe “noble silence”, that is you cannot communicate with any other student verbally or nonverbally throughout the entire ten days.
You are in complete silence.
Given that there are nearly twelve hours of scheduled meditation per day, and you are silent the entire time, you can see how the aim is to go fucking deep.
My Experience
Day 0
During my fourteen hour drive to the retreat center, a tightness in my chest manifested and slowly increased in strength the closer I got to my destination.
Similar to how I view an impending psychedelic trip, I was excited about what I would learn and uncover while becoming increasingly anxious as the hardships I was bound to endure drew closer.
I arrived at the center around three in the afternoon. I was promptly checked in and assigned to my “room”, which happened to be a tent that literally felt like a sauna when I first went inside it.
At this point, the noble silence had not yet begun, so I was able to chat with some of the other students who had also just arrived.
Upon talking to a few people, I quickly realized how similar some of us were: Initially having powerful insight via a psychedelic experience, and now curious about what intensive meditation would be like.
Dinner was served around six in the evening. As the course had not yet begun, it would be the only day we would be eating a meal after eleven in the morning.
While others were happily chatting away while devouring their vegetable stew, the internal battle had already started for me.
Although vipassana is a completely universal and non-sectarian practice, its roots are in Buddhism and thus the retreat centers provide a vegetarian diet.
And I cannot recall a day in my life where I have not eaten meat in some form.
Whether it was me naturally being averse to many foods from a young age or the fact that I had caretakers that would force me to eat food that I did not want to eat (they would literally shove the food in my mouth sometimes), I’ve never had a healthy diet.
In other words, when it comes to food, my entire life I have clung to the good sensations of taste while being highly averse to the bad.
It was not until age 15-16 or so that I started having a diet that incorporated more than ten different foods.
While my palate has expanded significantly since, to this day my body still has a habitual, almost uncontrollable, reaction to spit out food that gives me unpleasant sensations, although this mechanism is a lot less strong than it was when I was a young kid.
So I knew I would be practicing meditative eating at many meals on this retreat.
I ate my vegetable stew slowly, but I tried my best to not judge the sensations and it actually tasted pretty good!
Already progress and the retreat has not even started!
At eight in the evening the 25 women and 22 men gathered in the meditation hall (each gender was on different sides of the room), and we watched the introductory discourse on the big screen given by S.N. Goenka.
He’s such a funny, happy, well-spoken, and jubilant guy.
Just look at him.
He provided a brief introduction of the philosophy behind Vipassana, as well as Buddhism in general, emphasizing the need of noble silence throughout the duration of the retreat.
After the discourse ended, the noble silence officially began and we did our first group meditation.
We were instructed to simply observe our breath as it arises naturally. If we noticed the mind wandering, we were to non-judgmentally bring awareness back to the breath.
Although this is not vipassana, the idea is that we get used to holding our focus on a sensation within a small area of the body.
After the meditation, we retired to our rooms to sleep for the night.
Day 1
The bell sounded at 4 in the morning and I began meditating in my room at 4:30.
I figured since my tent would become a sauna not long after the sun came up, I ought to use this two hour chunk of solo meditation time to meditate in my room.
It was rough.
I changed my posture multiple times between sitting on my meditation cushion and the chair that was in my tent, but either way I soon started falling asleep after holding my attention on the breath for a few minutes.
This went on for about 45 minutes, until I gave up and decided to sleep for another hour before breakfast started.
The breakfast was the same every morning of the retreat: oatmeal, steamed prunes, toast, and fruit. There was also tea to drink at every meal.
This part was easy for me, it was the lunches where I had to practice meditative eating.
At eight in the morning we had our first hour long group meditation.
Before it began I went into the closet outside the meditation hall to gather an assortment of cushions, pillows, and blankets as I was seeking the perfect arrangement that would allow me to find a comfortable posture.
It was difficult at first, during the meditations I found myself constantly changing my posture along with the arrangement of the cushions.
I was getting frustrated as I could not sit still. My leg or foot would always fall asleep after 5-10 minutes and my back felt extremely sore as I had just pulled it a few days prior playing basketball.
Turns out this is normal. There will inevitably be pain and as a meditator your objective is to find the posture that is most comfortable for you, although working through discomfort is a natural part of the process.
By midday, I had found the posture I would use in most meditations for the remainder of the retreat.
I called it the ol’ straddle.
Basically I stacked three cushions on top of each other and straddled them.
Sort of like this but with three cushions instead of one:
The position was hard on the knees but easy on the back, which I needed.
A few other meditators used a similar position while most people sat in a normal legs-crossed pose.
A few others also used a meditation bench.
Like this:
Throughout Day 1 we continued to observe the breath.
We learned that this form of meditation is called anapana, which consists of focusing attention on a certain area of the body.
My mind would wander often, but by the end of the day I was able to concentrate for longer than I had ever been able to previously.
Days 2-3
On days 2 and 3 I suffered a similar problem as I had on the first day: Feeling frustrated by my lack of ability to meditate in the mornings due to drowsiness.
When I would find myself falling asleep during meditation, I would try to snap out of it by taking a walk or splashing water on my face.
This would usually wake me up for about five minutes, but then I would get drowsy again.
It was not until lunchtime that I would finally feel awake for the rest of the day and was able to have deeper meditations.
In terms of technique, we continued with anapana, however our region of focus shifted slightly.
Instead of focusing on the breath, we were to mentally note any sensation that appeared within the triangular region from the top of the nose to the corner of each lip.
On day 3, we were instructed to shrink the area of focus to the region beneath the nose and above the upper lip.
The purpose of doing this type of meditation was to sharpen the mind to feel subtler and subtler sensations, which is highly necessary in order to practice vipassana.
I found my concentration increasing, as I was able to feel more and more sensations the deeper I went into the meditation.
The discourse given by Goenka on Day 3 was also highly insightful, as he discussed a concept known as kalapas.
A kalapa, as the Buddha called it, is the tiniest particle of sensation that one can feel.
The idea is that the deeper one goes into the meditation, they eventually reach a point where they see that the entirety of their direct experience is composed of tiny little kalapas blipping in and out of existence trillions of times per second.
This is the same insight that western scientists have discovered in that all of reality is simply composed of vibrating waves, and that there is nothing truly “solid.”
However, knowing something on an intellectual level does not yield change on the “being” level.
Realizing a truth in your direct experience is what actually changes you.
When one goes this deep, they realize what the Buddhists call “anicca”, which is the notion that EVERYTHING is impermanent and changing from moment to moment to moment.
When you can literally SEE that your experience is just vibrating sensations, you realize that there is no permanent self.
No sensation is permanent, and the self is just a bundle of ideas and concepts that also arise and pass away.
“No I, no me, no my.” as Goenka would say.
By directly experiencing the transient nature of reality, the mechanism of the mind that wishes for something to be permanent, or to be one way and not another, naturally dwindles as a byproduct.
With the combination of solid meditations that left me feeling quite harmonious as well as an informative discourse, I came away from Day 3 ready to work very hard for the remainder of my time there so I could get as much out of the experience as possible.
Day 4 - Vipassana Day
On Day 4 we learned Vipassana for the first time.
Basically, Vipassana involves scanning the entirety of your body, feeling and mentally noting the sensations you feel along the way.
We would start focusing on the top of our head for a few moments, then once we felt sensations there we would move to the front of the head, down to the forehead, to the rest of the face, and continue downwards until the entire body was scanned, from which we would start again.
At the beginning, some areas of my body were devoid of sensation, or had sensations so subtle I could barely feel them.
At first this was frustrating as I would hold my concentration there for several minutes at times while feeling nothing.
I also quickly realized that vipassana requires significantly more mental energy than anapana does.
I had about 30-40 minutes of continuous concentration in me before my mind would take over and start thinking about all the random crap it likes to think about.
While walking back to my tent to take rest for the night, I felt frustrated by my lack of ability to focus for long periods of time and I was determined to hold a longer focus the next day.
Day 5
Day 5 was the beginning of the “sittings of strong determination”, meaning that for the three group meditations we had each day, our goal was to maintain the same posture for the entirety of the hour.
In the first meditation, I was able to hold posture for about 50 minutes before I could no longer handle the pain in my legs and changed posture.
In the second meditation, I was able to hold posture for the entire hour. However, in the last 10 minutes of that meditation, I was wishing for the hour to be over and was not actually meditating.
In that scenario I was probably better off changing posture so I could continue with the meditation.
In the third meditation and afterwards, I had an amazing experience.
I was able to hold posture for the entire hour, at around the 45-50 minute mark I had a similar experience in that my mind was just wishing for the meditation to be over.
But, I started scanning my legs, feeling subtler and subtler sensations.
All of a sudden, my mind quieted, and the pain vanished.
The sensations were the same, but I no longer experienced them as pain. They were neutral.
In that moment it was clear to me how large of a role the mind plays in our perception of a sensation.
I felt elated after this meditation.
Afterwards, we watched another discourse given by Goenka followed by another group meditation.
The meditation was blissful, and I walked out of the meditation hall to one of the most beautiful sunsets I had seen in my life.
An enormous smile that arose from deep within my body came upon me as I saw the view.
It is hard to describe this with words, but I felt so close to everything in this moment.
I felt connected to the Earth, to all humans, to all living beings, and wished peace and harmony to everyone and everything.
As I was walking back to my tent, I heard a group of people laughing at the campsite across the street from the retreat center.
When I heard them laugh, my heart was filled with joy and tears came to my eyes.
They continued to laugh, and I could not stop smiling for what felt like around 10 minutes.
It was the most beautiful laughter I ever heard. Pure joy.
I felt more in touch with my life purpose than ever: to inspire and invigorate peoples’ spirits, to help them step into greater authenticity, to help them find Truth within themselves.
I was so grateful for how my life unfolded, it seemed perfect. I did not wish for a single thing to be different.
Days 6-7
Day 6 was a stark contrast from Day 5: I felt very contracted, was worrying about petty things, and often got lost in craving.
Craving for good food, sex, any sort of stimulation, you name it.
I had gotten attached to the blissful state of Day 5, and was assuming it would only continue.
The universe was giving me a reminder of anicca, that nothing is permanent.
I had a difficult time meditating on this day, as my mind would wander constantly.
I tried my best not to get frustrated by this, to simply be aware of the state of my mind without judging it, and I managed to have a couple solid meditations near the end of the day.
On Day 7 I had the “deepest” day of meditation throughout the whole retreat.
I was feeling subtler and subtler sensations, and I was able to hold concentration for longer than ever before, while maintaining the same posture for over an hour at a time.
The body scans became quicker as I was able to feel sensations easier, in some moments it felt like I had a free flow of sensations throughout the body, with no blank areas.
Some interesting occurrences took place while in these meditations.
My body started to feel wonky, as if my legs were noodles, as if my body was only 3 feet tall, or as if I was extremely hunched over, even though I was not.
Sensations also blended together. At times, I could not tell whether a sensation was on my leg or on my arm.
For a brief period during one of my meditations, it felt as if the outer edge of the right side of my face was the center of my face!
It felt like I had nothing on the right side of my face, and my entire face was on the left side.
Pretty strange.
I came out of Day 7 feeling highly equanimous.
Cravings came to my mind but I gave no reaction to them and thus they quickly dissolved.
I really felt like I was making progress.
I could see clearly how maintaining a regular meditation habit in everyday life could profoundly impact my life.
I was excited to keep progressing with the remainder of the time I had left.
But that did not happen.
Days 8-9
It is interesting how my best days of meditation were often followed by some of my worst days.
On Day 8 and 9, I had a difficult time focusing.
I kept wondering about what might be going on in the world, what my family was doing, what my friends were doing.
My mind was filled with creative ideas regarding my business and future videos.
Part of me wanted to let my mind run with these ideas, while another side of me knew I should be meditating.
I had bursts of good concentration here and there, but I did not feel like I progressed from Day 7.
In the discourses on these days, Goenka implied that people usually do not have very deep meditations after Day 8, so I felt reassured.
Still, a part of me kicked myself for not being able to meditate better.
Days 10-11
On Day 10, the noble silence was lifted.
We still meditated during the scheduled times for group meditation, but other than that everyone spent the rest of the time chatting.
In talking to other meditators, everyone seemed to have had a major takeaway from the retreat.
One person said he could “enjoy the journey more”, and stop being so fixated on the goal.
Another said they felt they learned a technique that would help them stop being so impulsive in day to day life.
Others spoke of being able to let go of past romantic partners.
A few were courageous enough to share their deepest traumas and elaborated on how vipassana has helped heal them.
One guy talked of abuse among members of his family and how he feels inspired to be the light and spark change within the household dynamic.
Another woman shared the story of the death of her daughter and how vipassana had given her the ability to finally be able to think of memories of her without getting depressed.
Before I attended the retreat, I had heard about how people often described taking part in a ten day course as one of the most significant things they did in their lives.
For many of the people I talked to, this statement holds true!
As for myself, I feel there are a number of profound takeaways, but only time will tell the impact this course will have on my life.
On the morning of day 11, the retreat ended, we were given our phones back, and I was plugged back into the matrix.
I spent the 14 hour drive home mostly reflecting on my takeaways.
My Takeaways
In doing this ten day course, I see with crystal clarity how practicing vipassana can help me immensely with impulse control and my “addictive personality.”
Learning to be equanimous, to feel sensations without judgment, without craving or aversion, is something that anyone can benefit from.
I have always had a distractible, jumpy mind that makes doing deep work difficult.
I imagine that continuing this practice back in everyday life will aid me in being able to write, edit a video, or do some other task for longer periods of time.
I have already seen differences in my conversations with other people, in which I previously would often get caught in a thought process while someone is talking to me and then I miss pieces of what they said.
I also intuit I will get caught in “doom scrolling” on my phone far less often.
And perhaps most significant of all, I feel inspired to make radical changes to my diet.
Whenever there was a food during lunch that I had either never tried before or knew I did not like previously, I practiced meditative eating.
I discovered that I actually like many of these highly nutritious, vegetarian meals!
Foods such as asian vegetable stir fry noodles, tofu, tempeh, and cazuela verduras (coconut vegetable stew) were all foods I found very enjoyable.
The Bottom Line
In all of this, vipassana is learning to be present.
To be aware of the sensations in your direct experience as they arise.
Not to judge, not to label, not to react.
To just be with what is.
I heard a saying once that went something like “in every situation there are two options: to open or to close, to love or to fear.”
Vipassana teaches you to open and accept yourself at deeper and deeper levels.
In properly practicing vipassana, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to do but to accept your direct experience as it is.
One of the most memorable lessons I took away from the Goenka discourses is that as you retrain this habit pattern of the mind, you stop REACTING and you start ACTING.
You stop reacting to all the cravings and aversions that have led you astray and made you miserable your whole life.
If you’re blindly reacting, you are not truly in control, your mind’s reactions are.
By breaking down this habit pattern of the mind, we can take whatever situation we find ourselves in, and truly ACT from a place of love and compassion, rather than this blind, selfish, reactionary behavior.
The High Spiritual Path
Vipassana is a path that one can take as far as they want.
Attending and working diligently at one of these ten day retreats experientially opens many people up to a high spiritual path that has the potential to lead to a full liberation from all suffering.
Of course, it takes several years of dedicated practice to reach this enlightenment, but it becomes clear that it is a possibility.
As for me, I plan to start off my post-retreat life by practicing vipassana for 30 minutes in the mornings.
Ideally, I would like to practice more but my life purpose currently has me spending about 60 hours per week working.
I am not sure how far I will go on what I deem to be this rather traditional Buddhist path to enlightenment.
I’ve always had issues with following a school of thought, them laying down the entire path for me, and then I go and follow it as if it will lead me to the ultimate Truth.
I am not trying to say this path is “wrong”, but I have gone far enough in my spiritual pursuits to know that one is COMPLETELY on their own when it comes to discovering Truth.
No one can ever tell you the Truth, there is absolutely no Truth found in language. The Truth can only be realized by you in your direct experience! Anything else is just an intellectual game.
The great thing about vipassana though is they tell you precisely this.
They do not force anything upon you, all they ask at these retreats is that you give the technique a fair trial, and then afterwards you become your own master again.
We will see what the future holds for me.
If I further my practice, am getting results, and deem it the right thing to do for my life, then this might be a path I follow.
However, in my spiritual pursuits I find my intention not necessarily being to eradicate all of my suffering.
I simply just want to understand reality.
And whatever path helps me do that is probably what I will end up following.
As for now, I will continue practicing vipassana to help maintain the balance of my mind while I rigorously pursue the growth of my business.
All in all, this retreat was a deeply moving experience.
I highly recommend attending one of these retreats to any spiritual seeker or person who is trying to improve their life in any way, shape or form.
If you were with me this whole way, I would like to thank you for reading this mammoth of a newsletter.
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With love,
Wyeth
Enjoy some pictures below of Intermountain Vipassana Center in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho!
