Part 1

I came back from a Vipassana meditation course on Sunday. After 10 days of total silence and with no communication with the outside world, I have spent a good part of the last three days speaking non-stop. I have also been mulling over the experience, hoping to digest the input received and make sense of the experience. Some points of departure from how I use my time are already underway. There is a commitment to keep up the practice.

The first time, I registered on the advice of a friend’s father, Dr. Phadnis, a Vipassana practitioner. That was way back in 2002. I recall that experience to have been challenging and rewarding, but nothing of the details. The second time was in 2014. That experience was invaluable in dealing with the aftermath of losing my wife soon after, that same year. She was on board Malaysian Airlines MH370, whose whereabouts we don’t know to this day.

In recent months, I felt the urge to do the course again. I was feeling increasingly scattered and also bogged down, often on a short fuse, deeply disturbed by the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, and despairing of the degenerate divisive politics in my country. I needed a time-out. Vipassana seemed right for a reset in life. I registered for a course in February 2024—my third time.

(To those who haven’t encountered it earlier, Vipassana is a meditation technique attributed to Gautam Buddha. Deeply moved by the sorrow he saw around him, the Buddha sought to inquire into the roots of dukkha and the means to free oneself from it, but did not find satisfactory answers in the discourse prevalent in his time. His quest for answers led him to the practice of Vipassana, and it is described as the vehicle that led him to Enlightenment. To know a bit more about Vipassana and the course, see Part 2 of this post).

I came back from the course with some reflections and questions:

Self-Observation
I realise that no sooner does the body experience something than there is a rush to name, categorise, describe, compare with prior experience, differentiate, examine gaps, file, judge and conclude. Our imagination too interferes in making us ‘believe’ something as ‘experienced’ particularly if it has a favourable spin around it—the ‘as if’ quietly cast aside the ‘as is’. It sets off this whole mental chatter that in an instant takes away from continuing observation and triggers reaction. How does one more fully experience one’s reality, and observe non-judgmentally? Perhaps if we become aware of the reaction moment to moment as it rises, we may, over time, manage to observe without reacting to every trigger/stimulus, exercise true volition, and develop mastery of the mind and body.

Craving
One gets the impression of an underlying puritanical outlook towards desire, passion and sex. Perhaps this is a caution against being overcome with feeling and acting without thought or restraint? Or is it that certain feelings are deemed noble while others are distractions from the Path? How then does one approach spontaneity? How does one value and honour desire, and not let it turn into craving/clinging? The awareness of my yearning, craving and clinging to people, places, ideas and things were very much a significant part of my experience.

Aversion
There were many occasions to examine my aversions. Starting the day at 4 am every day for instance. I have seen daybreak only when I’ve had to take early morning flights. Having to maintain my posture for a full hour was another. Listening to some of the chants/singing by the teacher, I felt the impending breach of the end of my aversion scale. Jokes apart, I was left exploring my dislikes, avoidance behaviours, my disapproving self and the sources of background irritability and resistance. I saw how often my aversion and craving were obscured from view by a mask of indifference, distance and apparent amiability.

Impermanence and Equanimity
If all things are impermanent, why bother? Is this the anthem of the pessimist? What if we turned the argument and said, Nothing is permanent—even the difficult times will pass, and one doesn’t have to wallow in despondency? Also, what about this thing called ‘I’? Perhaps we cling on to it because we seek stability and significance. In the process, we imprison ourselves in the old definitions of self and halt our own growth through real engagement with emergent realities and new experience. It seems all too easy and escapist to think that being equanimous is to be inert and passive, indifferent and action-free. I have for long harboured this notion. I see now that equanimity is not about non-action/reaction, but about exercising volition arising from mindful observation.

Tradition and Purity
Reference was made many times to the purity and fidelity of the 25 century-old tradition associated with the Vipassana technique, handed down to the course teacher and in turn to us, participants. Does one take its practice and efficacy as context-free and eternal—like the laws and rhythms of nature? Apparently. I have always had a curious mix of respect and suspicion of all things handed down as tradition. The language of purity and defilement itself has been a troubling one. I have long believed that when tradition is ring-fenced and is untouched by the air of the times, it suffocates, ossifies, and dies. What does preserving a tradition mean? How does one understand a ‘living’ tradition? Questions and doubt must be accompanied by inquiry rather than swift dismissal, I remind myself. From the Vipassana standpoint, inquiry sans practice is perhaps an empty pursuit.

Many parts of this post were written and re-written in the head as the course progressed. This process of reflecting and logging, itself a habit, may have been counter-productive in the context of the course’s requirement to stay with the practice of non-judgmental observation of the reality of the body and whatever emerges. I recall Krishnamurti, in one of his books, asking the listener/reader if it is possible to experience a tree in all its beauty and fullness without at once feeling compelled to name, describe, qualify, etc.

Our minds do carry on ceaselessly. Never a quiet moment, it seems. Not something I am proud of any longer.

In a lighter vein, with all participants in session with eyes closed and under a vow of ‘noble’ silence, the hours of the day were punctuated by the occasional short incoherent noises, sniffles, and cracking joints. This, along with the random belching, burps and farts, may well have been interpreted as an ‘attack’ on the system, albeit non-violent and non-verbal, by an observer of unconscious processes. After the first couple of days, I told myself, suppressing a laugh, that this wind too shall pass.

Maybe it was at that moment when my quest to regain equanimity truly began.

Part 2: About Vipassana and the course

Vipassana
Vipassana is a meditation technique attributed to Gautam Buddha. Deeply moved by the sorrow he saw around him, the Buddha sought to inquire into the roots of dukkha and the means to free oneself from it, but did not find satisfactory answers in the discourse prevalent in his time. His quest for answers led him to the practice of Vipassana, and it is described as the vehicle that led him to Enlightenment.

The regular practice of Vipassana, undergirded by a set of precepts, puts the practitioner firmly on the path of liberation from the yoke of bondage to a life of misery originating from ignorance, and the twin processes of aversion and craving, and associated habit patterns. This was the grand insight of the Buddha.

With the Vipassana technique, the practitioner, over time, gains insight into the habit patterns that reinforce aversion and craving in their own life, and their origins at the deepest levels of bodily sensation.

The body is the laboratory, the site, and the object of one’s meditation. The process entails penetrating self-observation by a sharp and sensitive mind. With time and practice, one moves from awareness of gross, surface sensation to deeper, subtler sensations—a journey supported by purification and stilling of the mind. Mindfully observing one’s body, from head to toe, without reacting to whatever the body experiences helps cultivate equanimity, yields self-understanding and insight. Not reacting turns the tap of aversion and craving off, and weakens their potency—ripe conditions for a departure from conditioned unhelpful habit patterns.

You are asked to work with direct experience—the reality, nay, the truth, your truth—within the framework of the body as the source material for subsequent sense-making pertaining to triggers, inner processes and outcomes. Intellectualisation is viewed as flight; received, second-hand wisdom as unhelpful; and blind devotion as a blind alley in the pursuit of truth and liberation.

Impermanence in body–mind–matter is an observable, a universal law. Being aware of this, moment to moment, enables one to be non-attached and equanimous.

The Course (as taught by S. N. Goenka, in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin)
The 10-day residential course introduces the Vipassana technique, step by step. It is a brilliantly designed and executed programme, encapsulating the entirety of the practice. It has ample practice sessions and a talk every evening that places the day’s instruction and experience in the context of the overall purpose of Vipassana, the technique, and the course.  Some of the aspects that attracted my attention were:

I started this post not intending to make it an enrolment call for the course and for the practice. But I do hope it has generated curiosity to know more. I would like for some to follow up on their curiosity, check out course dates during the year, and add an item to their ‘to do’ list. Visit dhamma.org to know more.

Image: Silhouette