Vipassana: What I Learned
I have been a regular meditator since that 2017 summer trip to Pecatonica, a small town near Chicago. The ten-day Vipassana retreat was one of the turning points of my life, where I learned this ancient meditation technique practiced by Buddha himself some 2600 years ago.
When you read about it and hear from others, you can only imagine what it will be like. There is a curiosity and doubts if you can do it.
"Ten days of noble silence."
"Only one meal a day."
"Waking up at 4 AM for meditation."
"Over 6 hours of meditation every day."
After driving almost five hours along the lonely highways of Iowa and Illinois, we arrived in Dhamma Pakasa Vipassana Center - a beautiful place with little ponds, trails, beautifully maintained lawns and gardens.
After all, leaving everything behind, without even a phone for communication and away from family, and living a monk-like life for ten days, is a drastic change for a layperson.
These ten days were very special to me. In this quietness, I had the opportunity to reflect and contemplate. I was already interested in Buddhism and practiced meditation before this, but after the trip, my resolve strengthened, and I was able to take my Buddhism study further. Here are a few things I learned.
#1 There's a lunatic in all of us
The lunatic is in my head
... you lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me-- Pink Floyd / Brain Damage
Not me, I am perfectly sane - you must be thinking. But all it takes is taking a little deeper dive into our minds to see all its idiosyncrasies at play.
"What exactly meditation gives you?" people often ask. The short answer is like Pink Floyd sings, it will bring you face to face with yourself and let you see the lunatic in your head.
And you ask, who is this lunatic? It is the one sitting in some corner of all of our heads: the obsessive lunatic who always needs to be doing something, the one who wants to impress others, the one who wants to own the whole world and be wealthier than the wealthiest person, the one who wants to experience all possible lust and sensual pleasures out there, the one who is constantly chattering inside, telling stories, creating and recreating dreams and so on.
There's a story about a man I read. He was a wise man, who used to sing songs of "beauty of life" and how blessed we are to be alive, and that we should all appreciate this life. Once, he learned about the suicide by a young guy in town, and he told others how this young man did not understand life and wasted God's gift. Years later, the neighborhood people learned of the sad news that this wise man committed suicide. They were shocked. How is it possible? What this story tells us is until things happen to us, we are all sane. But few know that there is a very fine line separating the sane from the insane. As long as the situation is good for us, we are all happy and ready to sing songs of joy. But once it is not, the lunatic strikes back.
There's another song I like that depicts the sad state of our lunatic mind.
.. somebody stole my car radio
And now I just sit in silence
Sometimes quiet is violent
I find it hard to hide it
My skin will scream reminding me of
Who I killed inside my dream-- Twenty One Pilots / Car Radio
"Sometimes quiet is violent" - when I had first heard this song, I had smiled and thought: "He stole my words." Like it or not, this is the state of our minds - we simply cannot not do anything. You need to stop for a moment, sit with yourself to see how this silence will turn violent.
This is why Freud declared: "Man, as he is, can never be happy."
#2 Searching for a solution and why the God question is a distraction
After my mother's passing away in 2014, there was a big void in my heart - that just wouldn't go away. I remember the nights when I searched for answers on the Internet for questions like "What is bardo?", "Is there a life after death?", "Is there a soul without a body?"
If rebirth is true, I wondered; by now, my mother has been reborn somewhere. Will I be able to see her again in this life? Will I recognize her if I met her?
Have you ever looked into the eyes of an older person with dementia? What feelings has it evoked in you? What does that silent stare into nothingness tell you about the person sitting next to you? Can you imagine yourself asking your son or daughter: "Who are you? Have we met?" It is a terrifying feeling. You feel sorry. You wish you could find a way to help. And behind the mind, a thought is rising, and a certain fear grips the soul. It's the fear that we are all in a queue, to the same destination, and it is just a matter of time, and we will also be there. We come face to face with our mortality. Death is the mother of all fears, as they say.
I felt, whatever I knew, everything I had read, all the rituals of my religion - was simply useless. I needed answers. And this is when I found Buddha - with a clear message and a clear path to follow. And he proves Freud wrong. Buddha said the questions of God and a Soul are a distraction and mask the fundamental problem of human suffering. And I realized, at that very moment, he is right. How will it help if someone told us that there is a God? There is a God, but you still suffer. Then, you will ask what use is God.
You are like a man who has been shot, who is bleeding and suffering. But instead of treatment, you are asking stupid questions: Who is the shooter? What kind of bullet have I been shot with?
How can we get to the answer if all this time we had been asking the wrong questions? I didn't care if there is an Almighty God out there somewhere. I didn't care if there was a heaven or if there was a soul. I cared about this deep-seated anxiety that I faced right here and now.
This is how a new chapter started in my life - diving into Buddha's teachings and practicing the meditation technique he gave us.
#3 Understanding sage Durvasa's rage
Coming from a Hindu background, I have always wondered about our angry Gods and sages. For example, why is sage Durvasa always angry, always cursing anyone and everyone he meets? He curses Indra to lose all his powers. He curses goddess Laxmi to be separated from her husband ( Sita ). He even curses Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva. And take Indra - the king of the Gods - always running after lustful things - women, power, and whatnot. And the silly and crazy things he does to top it all - it goes beyond my understanding why is he even called the King of Gods. Is this the picture of a fully enlightened being?
And then there's a picture of the Buddha - calm and peaceful, and of course, always compassionate.
After Vipassana, I seemed to find a hint for the answers to my questions. In Vipassana, we learn that both concentration and insight are essential to get enlightened. Could it be that our Hindu sages practiced only concentration and just got the powers, but they did not have insight and therefore lacked compassion? My small mind wondered.
Vipassana - the direct translation of this ancient Pali word into English is insight. But then again, we might ask what insight is? Insight into the nature of things and the ability to look at things as they are. Reading this one sentence, it seems simple and straightforward, but it is not. It took me some time to understand what precisely this insight meant, what it has got to do with meditation, and why Buddha called it the highest wisdom.
Vipassana, as taught by Goenka, might be slightly different than what Buddha must have taught. It seems to be the simplified version to suit the laypeople. There is no such sutta as Vipassana, but references can be found in Satipatthāna Sutta discourse.
So the next question we might have in our minds is how is Vipassana different than the meditation techniques that have existed for thousands of years, even before Buddha. It is difficult to say what kind of meditation was practiced 2000 - 3000 years ago, but what we can say, with some level of confidence, is the meditation techniques before Buddha mainly focused on concentration ( Samatha ). Samatha meditation can indeed bring deep levels of absorption and is responsible for higher states of Jhanas. But according to Vipassana, Samatha is only one aspect of the mind. It should go hand in hand with Vipassana for the final penetration of reality.
So concentration can give you powers, but insight is needed for final liberation. Could this be the reason why sage Durvasa had powers but not insight? They say even Devadutta had powers and reached higher levels of Jhanas but lacked the insight. Because once you have the wisdom through insight, you are not capable of cursing anyone. You will be compassionate to all and everything - like Buddha was.
#4 Losing and then finding my religion
To everyone who is not a Buddhist already, this question is always at the back of our minds. Born a Hindu, I also had my doubts and fears. Do I need to give up my gods and goddesses? Do I need to give up my rituals? This fear comes from the fact that we have not understood what we call my Dharma.
It is easy to declare: "I am a Hindu," "I am an atheist," "I believe in God," and so on.
But if we look a bit deeper into our own words, we understand that what we believe is some hollow words and concepts that have been put into our heads by someone else - that are loud but have no meaning. Our Gods and beliefs, or non-beliefs, are made up by our minds.
Buddha shows us a new meaning of Dharma.
"All that we are is the result of our thoughts,
It is made up of our thoughts
If a man acts or speaks with evil thought,
Pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage""The world does not know that we must all come to an end here;
But those who know it, their quarrels cease at once."-- Buddha / Dhammapada
Dhamma is one and universal. There is no Hindu Dharma and Buddhist Dharma, my Dharma or your Dharma. Dharma is eternal, a reality of nature and our lives - a natural phenomenon. Dharma is to be able to see and understand the impermanence in nature and our own lives. Good deeds will bring good to you; evil intentions, thoughts, and acts will eventually make you live in a state of hell. There is no need for a God who oversees this task - to keep records and punish. As Buddha said, these natural laws were there before me and before all the buddhas of the world, and they will continue to be.
Thus the Buddha declared: "Es Dhammo Sanatano ( Dharma is Eternal )"
#5 Stop counting others' cows
This is one of the biggest lessons for anyone, in any field. So it gets its own title. You can read all Vedas and Puranas, you can have all the knowledge in the world, but the realization is far from you unless you practice. And that practice is meditation. As long as we just read books and listen to nice YouTube talks, we are like that cowherd who counts others' cows but has none of his. Buddha is asking us to talk less and practice more.
#6 The path is simple, but it's not easy
We start with our breath as the object of meditation. Such a simple thing, it seems. But watch your mind for the next ten seconds, and you will see how your mind has fleeted away from breath to something else. And now you have to bring the awareness back to your breath - again and again. Simple, yes. Easy, definitely not. And breath is just the beginning.
Before we begin something, we need to have a clear understanding of what we want to achieve. When we talk about motivation to meditate, some want just to relax, some want to fall asleep, some want to do it because now everyone started doing it, and some want nirvana.
To me, the motivation are these words by the Buddha:
Meditate, don't be negligent,
lest you may later regret it!-- Buddha
I first heard these words by the Buddha to a monk in a discourse called Introduction to Jhanas by Bhante Gunaratna. Bhikku Analyo's book Sattipathana Sutta also starts with these words of the Buddha. Whenever I am negligent and lazy to meditate, these words are sharp reminders to get up and meditate. Hearing these Pali words gives me some sense of how Buddha's original discourse must have been like. It feels like Buddha is directly talking to you. This has been my motivation.
#7 The mind is the master
Buddha, as part of Sila, laid out five precepts for laypeople and then extended it to eight precepts for more serious practitioners (or for laypeople during certain times of dedicated practice):
Refrain from killing living creatures
Refrain from taking what is not given
Refrain from sexual misconduct ( as part of 8 precepts, this will mean no sexual activity )
Refrain from false/hateful speech
Refrain from intoxicants
Refrain from eating outside the time ( #6 )
Refrain from dancing, singing, music, going to see entertainments, wearing garlands, perfumes, and cosmetics ( #7 )
Refrain from high or large sleeping beds ( #8 )
The ten-day Vipassana course is the practice of 8 precepts. I had doubts about #6. What to do if you are hungry in the evening? I noticed that there were pangs of hunger the first few days when the body asked for food. But after that, no more. It showed me first-hand how the mind is the master. Once the mind accepts and tells the body there is no food in the evening, the body obliges and stops the revolt.
Another incident that taught me something about the mind was when I felt excruciating pain sitting hours in a half-lotus position. The pain started on the 3rd day, and on the 5th day, I decided to use a chair instead. After all, many were already doing that. Then that day, after lunch, I got a knock on my door, and a senior student told me the teacher wanted to see me. I was surprised. Why would she want to see me? When I went there, she asked me about using the chair. I told her about the pain sitting in a half-lotus position, and she smiled and said, "look at your Samkharas - observe the pain, and they are bound to go away. Don't give in so easily." And I gave up the chair, and yes, the pain went away the next day.
So the lesson is: the mind is the master. We are not aware of what we are capable of until we do it.
#8 The 10000-hour rule and the point of no return
Meditation does not come easy. It is not something you can force or learn. It is not a magic pill that someone can give you to make you happy. It takes hard work and determination. Some time back, my friend reminded me of the 10000-hour rule that makes us experts in a specific skill, recommending me to read a book called Outliers. I had read an article earlier about this 10000-hour rule. And it made sense to me. We have to put our hours to be good at a meaningful skill. Some might have had good luck being born with carry-over of good karma from previous lives. For the rest of us, the only formula to get results is hard work.
The last time I looked in my meditation timer, I had almost 1000 hours logged. And maybe 1000 more before I started tracking? It seems silly, but I am curious about this and how it will play out in my practice.
Many have taken the Vipassana course. They tell stories about how wonderful it was and so on. But as time passes, we seem not able to keep up with the two-hour meditation routine. It seems much easier to binge watch TV, browse the net, social media or do something else to forget yourself. It is a real problem, but we have to come back to it repeatedly, just like the technique.
Those who cross the river are few
Most will just wander around the banks-- Buddha / Dhammapada
On the bright side, there comes a stage or a moment in a meditator's life when he has a beautiful experience.
"Wow! There's a state like this!" he wonders.
Yes, there is a state that is better than anything else you have experienced in your life: better than any sensual pleasures, better than when you felt rich when your best stock skyrocketed, better than any intoxicants, and better than the best food you ever had—a state of total silence. It's a paradox because we always associate happiness with some external activity or happening. Until this moment, we are skeptical; we have doubts about the meditation practice. But after this moment, there is no return. We will move on and will not look back. Our doubts about Buddha and the path will disappear.
#9 All imaginations are just imaginations
"I felt an out-of-body experience," "My chakras are awakening," "I think my third-eye is opening" - I have heard and read some stories like these. People telling such stories have no clue what they are talking about. If your third-eye opened, you wouldn't be talking about it. But it definitely makes us smile to hear such stories.
These imaginations are more prevalent in visualization meditation techniques, where meditators start imagining all kinds of things. That is why Vipassana emphasizes bare attention that should see these as mere mental formations and let them go.
But are there not special experiences happening to meditators? Yes, there are. If you read Gunaratna's A Critical Analysis of Jhanas, he describes in detail all the stages of these meditative states - and what you will encounter. But there is a clear distinction between what you "imagine" and the energy-level changes that happen during meditation.
#10 Gurus and shops
Sometimes, I wished for a guru like Ramakrishna was to Vivekananda. According to Vivekananda's biography, something that happened to him on his second visit to Ramakrishna shocked him. Ramakrishna had touched Vivekananda with his foot taking him to a different realm. I think we all have wished for such a guru.
But where are gurus like Ramakrishna these days? Yes, there are gurus, but all of them are busy building billion-dollar empires. There are shops everywhere, and I try to stay away from anyone trying to sell something to me. I found Goenka's Vipassana center different from this perspective. The center relies on dana ( generous offering or gift ), not a fee. It is based on what one is capable of giving vs what is asked for. Just like your visit's cost has been paid by someone else before you, your dana is paying for the students who visit after you.
Buddha's teachings and teachings of other great gurus should be free for all humanity. Be wary of gurus setting shops of religion and putting a price on the teachings of the original gurus. Buddha has said, the Dhamma dana is the greatest dana. We should be careful of anyone trying to set up a shop and create their spiritual business empire.
If you did not find a guru, no problem. Buddha is your guru. Shiva is your guru. Try to get to their original teachings. Study their original works. I don't think I need more gurus. Buddha has already laid out in detail the path in his eight-fold path. All you need to do is diligently and honestly follow it.
#11 A word of caution ...
I have read several articles recently that are anti-Vipassana or anti-meditation in general. Here's one from Harper's magazine I came across recently:
More than fifty published studies have documented meditation-induced mental health problems, including mania, dissociation, and psychosis. In 2012, leading meditation researchers in the United Kingdom published a set of guidelines for meditation instructors, noting "risks for participants," including depression, traumatic flashbacks, and increased suicidal ideation. Four years later, the U.S. National Institutes of Health cautioned that "meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people with certain psychiatric problems."
-- Harper's Magazine / Lost in Thought
So, is meditation dangerous? I think it could be.
But let's be clear about a couple of things -
(a) Buddha taught Dhamma, not just meditation
In my Vipassana retreat, I had the opportunity to meet and talk to a fellow meditator who was a neuroscientist and a professor at a university studying the effect of meditation on the mind. It was a good talk on how the mind is so complex, and scientists have not understood everything and still figuring out how meditation works.
But the important thing is Buddha taught Dhamma as a way of life, not just meditation, which is being used as a quick remedy to mental problems. It is only recently the Mindfulness meditation gurus have started taking bits and pieces of Buddha's teaching and packaging into small bundles as a remedy for relaxation, calm, and some mental issues.
When we say Dhamma, it includes:
Sila - the morality aspect,
Samadhi - meditation or concentration aspect,
Panna - final wisdom to see things as they are.
We see that people do not want to follow the Sila or the morality aspect, which is the foundation for Samadhi.
(b) Understanding Buddha's teachings in the context
Buddha taught his Dhamma more than 2600 years ago. Now, we need to understand the context and his teachings as a whole. So meditation should go hand in hand with Buddha's core philosophies. Without that, we just get attached to a few ideas that appeal to us.
(c) Understanding one's mind and facing the fears
"I have anxiety and depression. Without a cause."
Have you heard such words before? I have. The first part is fine, the problem is with the second part - "without a cause." According to Buddha, everything that arises ( what is called Samkhara ) has a cause and a condition and is bound to recondition ( disappear into some other form). So, the answer is no - nothing happens without a cause and condition. The mental phenomenons happening inside our minds are no different.
Bhante Gunaratna, in one of his discourses, talking on fetters, asks, "Have you seen a small plant in a desert? It is so small, but when you try to take it out, you can't do it because, below the ground, it has a huge network of roots."
Yes, our mind is like that small plant in a desert. What we can see and grasp is just the conscious mind. Down below, there is a vast unknown - the subconscious mind. There has been much research, but even scientists do not know how this unconscious mind works.
Imagine this. You sit to meditate. It's all quiet. Suddenly you realize that at this moment, all the tags and labels you have been accumulating are slowly disappearing - "I am an engineer," "I am a father," "I am a mother," "I am a doctor," "I am a celebrity," "I am famous." The world goes on without you. And you thought it would stop. In this quietness, there are no relationships. In this quietness, it's time to face yourself. And for most of us, it is the most challenging thing to do - to face oneself. To face oneself is to face one's egos and demons lurking around in the subconscious mind. They bubble up when you meditate. It is indeed difficult to face these fears and feelings we weren't even aware existed. And that small lunatic in you becomes a monster lunatic and totally overwhelms you.
So if you want to meditate, be prepared to face the dark side of your mind.
#12 There is no tomorrow - hurry!
Buddha says, there can only be 2 mistakes on the path: (1) Not starting and (2) Not finishing what you started.
The time is now, not five-years later, not ten-years later. Green leaves are turning yellow, if you noticed. You do not know how much time you have before the yellow leaves dry and fall down. Therefore, Hurry!
You are as the yellow leaf.
The messengers of death are at hand.
You are to travel far away.
What will you take with you?
You are the lamp
To lighten the way.
Then hurry, hurry.
When your light shines
Without impurity or desire
You will come into the boundless country.
Your life is falling away.
Death is at hand.
Where will you rest on the way?
What have you taken with you?
You are the lamp
To lighten the way.
Then hurry, hurry.
When your light shines purely
You will not be born
And you will not die.-- Buddha / Dhammapada
Source: https://www.amatyalabs.com