Reflections from 100 hours of meditation in 10 days (vipassana)
Early last month, I completed a 10-day meditation retreat where I was presented with this proposition:
There is a way to end all of life’s suffering, permanently. It’s free, but you have to work. The process can get extremely uncomfortable, and requires patience and persistence.
This method is called vipassanā.
Vipassanā is a specific type of meditation taught by the Buddha. It translates to seeing things as they really are. It is said that diligent practice of the technique allows you to experience reality as it is, and will bring you to the final goal of full enlightenment.
If you’re hearing about this kind of thing for the first time, I know how it sounds. You’re free to believe or disbelieve as you please. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. This is me sharing my personal experience with meditation.
The why
I didn’t know it at the time, but my “journey” on this path began at 15, when I entered an existential crisis.
I contemplated deeply about the meaning of life and struggled to find a satisfactory answer. It wasn’t a passing thought I could ignore, I needed to know what was the point to all this. I needed it to have reason to keep on living.
Obvious answers like altruism, pursuing happiness, or leaving a legacy behind weren’t enough. I needed an unyielding, dependable meaning, one that I could build my thoughts, actions, and life on. I was searching for the Truth, with a big T, objective Truth.
I looked everywhere for it.
I tried to find it in god and religion. But the deeper I dug, the more I found the teachings conflicting and illogical.
I used logic and philosophy to try to reason my way into an answer. But I found that when I took any line of reasoning to its end, it would always result in either a paradoxical loop, or a never-ending chain of infinity.
I did what “normal” people did. I looked to accumulate things and peak experiences, but I quickly realised it’s futility. Indulging in hedonism is like feeding a hunger by stuffing your face at buffet — it feels good in the moment, but it expands your appetite in the long run.
None of it worked, and I fell into a nihilistic hole. Until I chanced upon meditation five years ago.
Einstein once said that no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. Meditation raises your level of consciousness. I experienced that first-hand.
There are many different types of meditation. The most popular versions today boast benefits like improved mood, increased focus, or reduced anxiety. These types of meditation sell because they make you feel good. For my purposes, “feel good” meditation is like duct-taping a crack in a dam — it provides temporary relief which is useful to some extent, but I wanted a permanent solution.
Eventually, I discovered a niche community online that discusses enlightenment as a tangible, attainable goal. The more I read, the more it made sense to me. What stood out were two things:
- No one was trying to sell their beliefs or dogma. Unlike religion, you don’t have to believe first. You verify through your direct experience.
- People described having very similar experiences on “the path”. Which suggests that it’s a repeatable, hence, viable path.
The more I read, understood, and practiced, the clearer it became. Perhaps enlightenment was the only thing truly worth pursuing in this life. And meditation was the tool for me to get closer to that goal.
The moment that I discovered these 10-day meditation retreats, I knew I had to go. Mentally, I had planned to go for my first retreat once I graduated university in 2020. At that point, I would have been progressing steadily for three years. I had no idea what I was going to do career-wise, but in my mind, this took priority. It was the perfect time to take my practice to the next level.
Unfortunately, 2020 also happened to be the year that the pandemic hit. Retreats stopped running, and the trajectory of my life shifted along with the rest of the world’s.
I spent the following three years giving myself to the world of work and money. It was quite literally the opposite of how I believed my life would turn out. At some point I genuinely considered the possibility of monkhood, or being a full-time nomad who worked in exchange for meals and lodging… or something along those lines. Instead, I spent my days participating in what people nowadays call “hustle culture”.
Fast-forward to 2023, I’d lost sight of what’s truly important. This was the year I decided to change that. Part of that change was to finally do all the things I’ve always wanted to, but put off for too long. This retreat was #1 on that list.
Meditation was still a part of my life, but my personal practice had become sporadic and unfocused. I often sat for the sake of sitting, without intention or effort. It had become just another thing to check off my to-do list for the day.
Despite that, I was determined to do this now. I was afraid that if I didn’t, I never would. So I signed up for the retreat, without realising what I was in for.
The rules
“Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void — words words and more words — something important rises to the surface.” — Lori Gottlieb, Psychotherapist
When I first mentioned to my friends I was going for this retreat, the most common reaction was that this was going to be “hardcore”, and I could see why.
For the 10-days, there would be no reading, no writing, no talking, no electronics (hence no internet), no meat, no eating after midday, no exercise, no drugs, alcohol or other intoxicants, no telling lies, no killing all beings, no sexual activity, no using high or luxurious beds, and there will be complete segregation of men and women.
If you’re thinking that this sounds eerily similiar to prison… you’re not completely wrong. Prison is designed to keep criminals out of society whilst giving them the time and space to reflect on their actions. Similarly, the course is designed to strip away all the distractions and provide a conducive environment to meditate.
So yes, in a way, it is a self-imposed prison for the purification of your mind, like how prison functions to purify society.
The schedule
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this the daily schedule:
4:00AM: Morning wake-up bell
4:30–6:30AM: Meditation in the hall or in your room
6:30–8:00AM: Breakfast
8:00–9:00AM: Group meditation
9:00–11:00AM: Meditation in the hall or in your room according to the teacher’s instructions
11:00–12:00NN: Lunch
12:00–1:00PM: Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00–2:30PM: Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30–3:30PM: Group meditation
3:30–5:00PM: Meditation in the hall or in your room according to the teacher’s instructions
5:00–6:00PM: Tea break
6:00–7:00PM: Group meditation
7:00–8:15PM: Teacher’s discourse in the hall
8:15–9:00PM: Group meditation in the hall
9:00–9:30PM: Question time in the hall
9:30PM: Lights out
The schedule remains the same everyday from day 1 to 9.
The group meditations are compulsory full-hour sits where all students must not leave the meditation hall. From day 4, moving is no longer allowed during these sessions.
On day 10, the silence is lifted right before lunch. This is to help students re-adjust to normal life before being released into the real world.
Before starting, you are asked to acknowledge that you will follow all the rules and confirm that you are prepared to stay till the end of the 10 days. Thrice. It felt like travelling down to ride world’s most dangerous roller coaster, and you’re asked to sign a waiver before you buy the park ticket, then again at the beginning of the queue, and then once more right before you get strapped in.
On the first day, I quickly understood why.
The technique
To end suffering, we must first understand where it comes from.
Our ingrained mental habit is to reel in the pain of unpleasant bodily sensations, and to roll in the pleasure of agreeable ones. However, when we start to observe sensations objectively, so many realities are revealed.
– S. N. Goenka
According to the teaching, suffering stems from our mental habit of craving and aversion to sensations. When we experience pleasant sensations, we grow an attachment to them and crave for them when they are absent. On the other hand, when we experience unpleasant sensations, we react negatively to them and grow an aversion to them when they are present. This applies to all sensations: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, and feelings, which are also felt as sensations in the body. When we participate in craving and aversion, we resist what is. This resistance multiplies our suffering.
The practice of vipassanā is actually very simple. Sensations are observed as they are, as you scan the body from head to toe and vice versa. This diminishes suffering in two ways.
When our concentration increases through practice, we start to notice the space in between the sensation and our reaction. After we realise the existence of this space, the opportunity opens for us to not to react. Non-reaction prevents the multiplication of suffering; all that’s left is the pure sensations. This is equanimity.
The other aspect is deepening our understanding of true nature of sensations — impermanence. Theoretically, we know that everything ends and the only constant is change, but mentally recognising that does nothing to lessen our misery in the moment. What helps is to experientially understand the nature of sensations. To watch the sensations morph, change, disintegrate, and reappear from moment to moment. This is possible through vipassanā.
The more I practiced, subtler and subtler sensations started revealing themselves. It’s like weight-training, except that instead of muscles, my lens of perception became sharper and sharper. Previously solidified sensations started to break down into smaller, subtler sensations, that further broke down into micro-vibrations.
That’s as far as I got during the retreat.
It’s hard for me to comment further on where this goes from here. Theoretically I know where this goes next, but I want to speak only from personal experience and not knowledge. As an introductory course, the retreat’s teachings also stop at this level.
The experience
For me, the 10 days were excruciating. This is one of those experiences that you spend wishing for it to end whilst knowing that after it does, you’ll look fondly back on it for the rest of your life.
The teacher, Goenka, likens vipassanā to performing a surgical operation in the depths of your mind. Undergoing surgery is extremely uncomfortable, and potentially painful.
The hardest part wasn’t being silent, nor was it being disconnected, and it definitely wasn’t being vegan — it was the combination of all those things. It’s only when all these “pleasures” were taken away that I realised how much I leaned on them as a crutch in my daily life.
When we’re sad, we eat.
When we’re bored, we whip out our phones.
When we’re stressed, we (insert vice of choice).
By being silent, I realised that even interacting with others could be used as distraction for our internal discomfort. It’s too easy for us these days to numb out any undesired sensation with an equally powerful dopamine hit.
So suddenly I found myself forced to sit with everything that arose. Every thought, every urge, every sensation now had to be faced head-on. This, accompanied by the physical pain of sitting still for 11 hours a day, was mentally and physically unbearable. Halfway through the first day, I couldn’t imagine doing it for another nine.
I wanted to give up. I thought about it multiple times. Specifically, on day 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, since a number of people actually left.
The process of people dropping out was quite mysterious. Their presences would disappear without warning, and their meditation cushions and meal trays would magically vanish. Seeing others leave both strengthened the temptation to leave and hardened my resolve to stay. The former because I wouldn’t be the first and only one, and the latter because I didn’t want to be “weak-minded” like them (the teacher’s words, not mine).
So I pushed through sit after sit, hour after hour, day after day. If you’ve read the first line of this piece closely, you’d know that I made it through to the end (spoiler alert lol).
Everyone’s experience will be different. For me, it was quite the rollercoaster.
After the first two days of getting used to my new life, I calmed down and actually started to enjoy the process.
There’s a sense of peace that comes from being in that kind of environment. It’s so starkly different from our over-stimulating “normal” lives that it’s a deeply refreshing reset.
Everyday I would find new ways of entertaining myself like watching the farmers work across the wall, or walking back-and-forth on the same 20-meter pavement. On day 5, I discovered this praying mantis that showed up on the exact same leaf which attracted flies (perfect hunting ground). From that day, I visited it daily. Following the rules of the retreat was like being forced to stop and smell the flowers, which I think we could all use more of.
Of course, the periods of peace didn’t last. Once I got used to a set of circumstances, the next challenge would emerge.
Challenges came in many forms — not being able to execute the meditation technique properly, an unexpected bout of difficult emotions, or suddenly being extra triggered by the insects crawling on you during sits, just to name a few. It didn’t help that with increased concentration, you could clearly feel every single leg of an ant causing tingles as it crawled up your skin.
But the most difficult moments would again be followed by segments of deep peace, joy, and acceptance of what is. Throughout my 10 days, this cycle repeated itself almost daily.
Interestingly, with each cycle, I felt something inside me shift. I can’t explain exactly what it was, but that process was changing the way I functioned. Instead of a surgical operation, I’d describe the process as closer to running a programme that updates your internal operating system. With each body scan, I could feel byte by byte being reprogrammed.
The after
As I’m writing this, it’s been close to a month since the retreat. Here are some of the after-effects I’ve experienced.
First off, talking again for the first time was a wild experience. When the silence was lifted, I could feel myself shaking as I spoke to the other meditators. Talking felt like a high and I couldn’t stop smiling. Everyone else couldn’t stop smiling too. Their faces were visibly lighter compared to when we first arrived, and I felt the same on the inside.
I also felt a lot clearer. During the retreat, I barely spent any time thinking about the next steps for my life. I focused mainly on the meditation. So when all the narratives and conditionings that obfuscated how I saw my own life — what I should, shouldn’t, could, and couldn’t do — fell away on their own. Ironically, the silence helped me to see through the noise.
After returning to “real life”, I’ve noticed that I’m less reactive to life’s situations. Earlier, I talked about the space between sensation and reaction. I’ve been noticing that space more, which gives me the choice of how I want to respond.
Admittedly, I haven’t been perfect. I still get caught up in both pleasant and unpleasant sensations, and when I do, I revert to being extremely reactive. The difference is that even when that happens, I am more aware that it is happening in real time, which primes me for change in the next opportunity.
If I’m being honest, I don’t think I’ve been drastically changed by the course… in the sense that if you knew me from before the course and met me after, you wouldn’t feel a significant change. But that was never the expectation nor the goal. Instead of a life-changing experience in itself, the course feels closer to taking the first steps on a long journey toward enlightenment.
The Truth
The biggest takeaway for me actually isn’t these “after-effects” that I’ve listed.
As mentioned earlier, three years ago I inadvertently shifted away from this path. Going through this experience reminded me again of why I began in the first place.
This put me back at a crossroads of deciding whether to keep going down the pursuit of money, comfort, experiences or whatever I was telling myself could fill this existential hole, or move forward in the path to awakening.
Revisiting the original proposition I posed, choosing to “pursue” enlightenment might seem paradoxical or illogical. You’re trying to end your suffering by putting yourself through more suffering. But choosing the alternative (continuing to live life as I, and most of us, have) means constantly bouncing between bouts of craving and aversion, participating in the never-ending chase of highs, and wallowing in the misfortune of lows. One option at least gives me a chance at eventual catharsis, while the other keeps me trapped as a prisoner of my own mind.
Even as I’m writing this, it’s hard to make the obvious choice despite it being… well, obvious.
“What does it even mean to go down that path?”
“Does it mean I meditate all day until I get enlightened?”
“How will I earn a living?”
“Will I still be able to relate to others?”
“What will I have to sacrifice along the way?”
These are all valid questions that I don’t have the answers to. But something inside me tells me that it’ll be worth it.
