Vipassana

I'm back from my Vipassana meditation course! I actually left a couple days early, on the morning of day 8, instead of staying for the entire 10 days. I definitely respect the technique, which incorporates mindfulness (which is emerging as a very effective psychotherapy technique), but Vipassana as a whole didn't really work for me. I disagreed with some of the philosophical elements of it that they put forth as being central to the practice, which made it hard to maintain my motivation through something so incredibly difficult.

The place itself was really nice and peaceful. It was extremely quiet, out away from the city, and the grounds were full of trees, flowers and long grass. There were butterflies everywhere during the day, and fireflies at night. The residences were like little houses that were all joined together, and each person got their own little house. The furnishings were pretty spartan: nothing but two rusty metal cots with thin foam mattresses that smelled like mold, but they gave me a clean sheet and pillowcase to use, and the room did have a fan, even if most of the time the power was out and I couldn't use it. My shower didn't work, but I had a bucket and a faucet so it was okay, and I had a Western-style toilet, which I wasn't expecting. There was no hot water, but it was way too hot to even think about taking a hot shower, anyway.

Everything there was completely segregated by sex: the property was divided down the middle by a fence, and we had separate residence areas and dining halls. The only common area was the meditation hall, but that had an aisle dividing it down the middle, and separate entrances for men and women. We even had separate assistant teachers who lived in the residence areas along with the students (called "assistant teachers" because all of the teachings are actually tapes recorded by the program's guru, and the assistant teachers are only there to answer questions about the technique).

A very important part of the program is observing Noble Silence, meaning no communication of any kind with anyone (except the management or assistant teachers if you need something) - so no talking, no gestures, no eye contact even is permitted. This is surprisingly easy to do, although by day 2 I had started talking to myself a lot while spending my breaks in my room. I guess talking helps me process things, and I definitely had a lot of stuff to process with what I was going through.

Another important part of the program is that they don't allow anything that will distract your mind from the work of meditation. That means no reading, no writing, no listening to music, no dancing, no singing, no engaging in religious practices - basically, you can't do anything. I spent my rest periods lying on my bed, sleeping or just enjoying the time off from having to concentrate so hard.

Here is the schedule we followed every day:

4:00 AM: Wake-up bell
4:30-6:30 AM: Group meditation in the meditation hall
6:30-8:00 AM: Breakfast break
8:00-9:00 AM: Group meditation (Strong Determination after day 4)
9:00-11:00 AM: Meditation in the hall
11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Lunch break
12:00-1:00 PM: Rest
1:00-2:30 PM: Meditation in the hall
2:30-3:30 PM: Group meditation (Strong Determination after day 4)
3:30-5:00 PM: Meditation in the hall
5:00-6:00 PM: Snack break
6:00-7:00 PM: Group meditation (Strong Determination after day 4)
7:00-8:30 PM: Teacher's discourse (taped lecture about the technique and the philosophy behind it)
8:30-9:00 PM: Group meditation in the hall, then dismissal back to our rooms
9:30 PM: Lights out

So, as you can see, that's a pretty rigorous schedule of meditation. Over 10 hours a day! (I'll explain the "Strong Determination" in a sec.) For the first few days, though, I was working so hard that I didn't even feel bored.

In order to prepare us for Vipassana meditation, we spent the first three and a half days practicing Anapana meditation. This entails breathing naturally - not controlling the breath in any way - and focusing your entire attention on the physical sensations in the area around your nose. As the course continued, the focus area shrank until we were supposed to focus only on the area of the upper lip below the nose. I found this part of the course to be really rewarding: when I first started, I couldn't feel anything on my upper lip, and I couldn't keep focused for more than about a minute at a time, if even that. I also got really bad pains in my upper back from sitting upright with no back support for so long. By the fourth day, I could easily feel the touch of my breath on my upper lip, and was able to concentrate for a full half hour or so without my mind wandering at all. It also became easier to sit up in a cross-legged position, but my back pain didn't really go away until I started practicing Vipassana.

Anapana meditation isn't exactly relaxing, in the same way that chanting meditation or getting a massage will actually produce a feeling of relaxation: at least for me, it just quiets the mind. You don't feel relaxed, but you feel calm. Being the kind of person whose mind is racing all the time, this was a really new experience for me. I remember once, during a rest break, I was lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, and I realized that I had completely stopped thinking. I wasn't really capable of having a reaction at the time, since I my mind was so exhausted from the intense, continuous concentration of meditation, so I just sort of thought, "Hm, interesting," and carried on staring at the ceiling.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, we began actual Vipassana meditation. This entails observing physical sensations, like Anapana meditation does, but you scan the entire body part by part, starting from the top of the head and moving all the way down to the toes. The focus here is on maintaining equanimity as you observe, neither feeling desire for pleasant sensations nor aversion from pain or unpleasant sensations. This is where the Strong Determination comes in: three times a day, for an hour each, we would have these sessions. Strong Determination is so called for good reason: you have to sit in a position of your choosing without moving at all or opening your eyes for the entire duration. This doesn't sound nearly as hard as it is. When you normally sit, you make all kinds of minute adjustments to make yourself comfortable - this becomes clear when you're not able to do so. Within 5-10 minutes, my legs would be completely asleep, which was a sensation that was really hard for me to tolerate for extended periods at first, and for the first few sessions I couldn't last longer than 20 minutes because of it. But I talked to an assistant teacher about it, who assured me that the feeling in my legs would come back on its own if I sat long enough, so I resolved to sit for longer.

At about the 20 minute mark, I would start to feel pain in my upper thighs, where my weight was resting. This would be unpleasant but dull at first, but if I pushed though it, about 10 to 15 minutes later it would become excruciating. This severe pain is what the exercise is designed to produce. While experiencing the pain, you're supposed to keep in mind the impermanence of all things, and that the pain will pass if you wait long enough. In keeping with the Buddhist concept of self, you're also supposed to view the sensations you experience objectively, without attaching personal investment into them. So, the idea that "this is hurting me" is an illusion, because there is no "me" to hurt, at least in the sense that you conceive of it. If you simply say, "oh, that sensation is pain," but feel no personal attachment to it, then you can endure it without difficulty, or so the theory goes.

Even when I couldn't last the full hour and was still fully connected with my pain, it was interesting to watch my body's reaction to the sensations I was feeling. In addition to the 95+ degree heat and the fact that they always turned the fans off during meditation, the sheer concentration made me sweat, and then withstanding the intense pain made me sweat even more. It gave me an interesting opportunity to see the way my brain prioritizes sensations: even when I had sweat rolling down my face, beads of sweat hanging from the tip of my nose, if I was in pain, that feeling was very easy to ignore, even though it would have been maddening otherwise. My back pain, which had been persistent for the first few days, vanished almost completely as well when I started practicing Vipassana. Even when I wasn't in pain, though, I was surprised how easy it is to learn not to be bothered by itching, or tickling, or other sensations that normally drive you immediately to scratch them away.

The first time I managed to withstand an entire hour of Strong Determination was on the evening of the 5th day. As I was sitting through the pain and trying (and failing) to focus on the different parts of the body one by one and ignore the pain (you're supposed to give painful sensations no more importance than any others), I found that I needed to support myself to get through it. I tried to keep in mind the concepts taught by the course, repeating to myself, "this is the reality of your experience, just observe it, don't try to escape it." As I kept thinking this to myself, suddenly something happened, and I felt my mental state change. I felt the pain, but it didn't hurt anymore. I was calmly aware of it but didn't feel any aversion to it. I then felt this really strange sensation that my body was made of empty space (that's the best way I know how to describe it) - like each part of the body that I focused on was miles away from every other part. I finished the hour with relative ease, and when I got up, I found that my legs were fully functional and not asleep, and that my whole body felt lighter than air. I was in a sort of trance state for about two hours afterward, but even though it felt awesome, I didn't feel as though I had "recognized the truth at the experiential level," as the tapes claimed was the entire purpose of the practice. As far as I understood it, it was self-hypnosis, plain and simple.

That was definitely the peak of the trip - after that, things started going downhill. On the 6th day, I had trouble focusing, and noticed myself starting to feel increasingly agitated and irritable. I was able to sit through the full hour of Strong Determination on the last session of the day, but I had no experience like the one the night before. I had a few moments where I felt personally disconnected from my pain, but they were very brief and I spent the majority of the session just trying to grit my teeth and bear it. I lasted the whole hour, but just barely. In the latter half of the session, I found myself silently chanting the same mantras I had the night before, but this time I was critically analyzing them instead of just accepting them. Awareness of the temporary nature of my experience seemed like a much less compelling reason to endure it this time - temporary or not, it still hurt, and I could have easily taken action to end it. This was how the first seed of doubt was sown in my mind. Afterward, in that night's discourse, the guru was discussing the theory behind the practice. He talked about how the practice will teach you "at the experiential level" that all sensations arise just to pass away, and "why trouble yourself with something that arises just to pass away? It is so meaningless." And even as excited as I was at the time to have made it through another hour of Strong Determination, I felt another twinge of doubt here. The fact that something is temporary makes it meaningless? That doesn't sound right. But, I didn't analyze it and just went on with the rest of my night.

The next day, at our first Strong Determination session, I found that the seeds of doubt from the night before had grown. As I sat there in pain, I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? If the 'truth' I'm supposed to realize is that you shouldn't care about things that are impermanent, then I'm never going to get this." Not believing in any kind of eternal life or eternal cycle of reincarnation, and that everything is impermanent, the logic of the course would force me to conclude that everything is meaningless and that you should not care about anything.

I talked to the head teacher about it, but due to a language barrier issue, he was unable to understand my question and told me to "not create problems for myself" and go back to the practice. Of course, I couldn't do this, so I went back to my seat and kept thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more objections I came up with. The aim is to free yourself from attachment to impermanent things to avoid the suffering that comes when you lose, or fail to acquire, something you are attached to. But I'm not even opposed to the idea of attachment - I think that we often attach excessive amounts of meaning to inconsequential things, which can cause undue hardship, but I really don't want to rid myself of attachment entirely. If Jordan leaves me or dies or something, I want to be upset about it. Plus, I treasure the happiness that comes from getting something I really wanted, and accept the occasional disappointment that comes when I don't. So, basically, I think they have a good idea - I agree that sometimes our attachments can develop into unhealthy dependence, and that it's important to keep things in perspective - but I just don't take it as far as they do.

So, I decided on the morning of the 7th day that this wasn't the program for me, and I wanted to leave. I told the male assistant teacher as much, but he (as I had expected) was reluctant to let me go. He attempted to put my questions to rest, but, again thanks to a language barrier problem, was unable to do much more than just repeat phrases from the tape. When I told him that my issues weren't resolved, and I wanted to use their phone so I could call Jordan to ask about train availability (they didn't have internet there), he refused. He told me that if he let me use the phone, he would be allowing me to drop out of the course, which he couldn't do.

I was totally taken aback by this, and walked back to my room, stunned. I knew that leaving early was highly discouraged, but I didn't think they could actually forbid you to leave. At the beginning of the course they took all of my valuables for safekeeping (because the residences don't have locks on the doors), so I couldn't just pack up and leave without their permission. I was stuck there. I was upset, probably more upset than was warranted by the situation, but the stress of being there was really wearing me down. A schedule consisting entirely of prolonged periods of extreme boredom, punctuated by regularly scheduled hour-long intervals of severe pain, causes a lot of psychological stress.

Determined to leave, I tried again later that day by asking the female assistant teacher. I got much the same result, although she was a lot more hostile about it. She asked me to explain my problem, which I did, and she responded by spouting dogma and belittling my beliefs. (Example: Her: "Do you believe in God?" Me: "No." Her: *rolls eyes* "Well, what DO you believe in then?") I told her I was feeling very stressed and that there wasn't any point in staying there if I didn't believe in what I was doing. Her response was, "No, no, that agitation is just your sankaras coming out." (Sankaras, at least according to my understanding of what the course teaches, are like sins in Buddhism - they're attachments that keep you weighted down and bound to the cycle of reincarnation.) When I told her I didn't believe in sankaras, she exclaimed, "What do you mean you don't believe in sankaras? It is truth, not belief!" She ended up getting very irritated with me for not just accepting the "truth," repeatedly refused my requests to leave, and then abruptly ended the discussion when the bell for nighttime meditation rang.

At this point, things got a little scary for me. Here I was, out on my own, far away from everyone I knew and trusted, and I was basically being held captive by people who increasingly seemed to be religious fanatics. The program bills itself as being totally nonreligious, but it makes assertions about metaphysical concepts as though they are objective fact. It seemed completely unthinkable to the staff that I might object to anything said in the course, since, as the tape said repeatedly, "dhamma is the law of nature, it is truth." They didn't recognize it as being a belief system that someone could disagree with.

So I went back to my room, stressed out, scared and exhausted, and cried. I didn't fear for my physical safety at all, but it is incredibly unnerving to be (unexpectedly) deprived of your freedom, especially on the very first time you go traveling alone in a foreign country. Plus, my ability to handle things was considerably eroded by the regime of the course. I barely slept that night.

The next morning, I got up for meditation at 4:30, and sat in the meditation hall silently crying some more. Naturally, I was totally unable to meditate, and at this point I stubbornly didn't want to, anyway (not the most productive attitude, I admit, but I was feeling pretty stressed out). After breakfast, I went back to my room, determined to leave that day. I showered, packed up all of my stuff and waited. When meditation reconvened, I planned, I would demand to be let go and threaten to disrupt meditation until they kicked me out, if necessary. But, to my surprise, 15 minutes before meditation started, the female assistant teacher came to my residence and told me to go pick up my passport and things from the office and I would be free to go. Apparently they had seen me crying during meditation and finally realized that this course was not a good thing for me.

The male assistant teacher wanted to give me a ride into the little town 4 km away, since we were out in the country, but the head teacher refused to let him use the meditation centre's auto for that purpose. I thought it was a bit strange for someone who is supposedly motivated solely by compassion to be so petty, but whatever. The assistant teacher walked me out to the street and got me on a tempo, which is like an auto rickshaw but bigger, and holds more people. I had to take a series of vehicles to get back to Lucknow, which I only managed with the help of a little Hindi and several friendly and helpful strangers.

Having left early, I found myself out in a strange city all alone, with no idea how to get home. But, the oppressive atmosphere of the meditation centre having been lifted, this was now incredibly exciting and fun instead of stressful. Again, with the help of several friendly strangers, I ended up with a second class ticket on a train back to Delhi, and got home around midnight.

Although it ended badly, I'm still really glad I went to the course. I did take away a few important lessons from it, and I feel calmer, happier and more mentally stable in general than I did before I went. Plus, it was really empowering and fun for me to go on a big adventure like that all by myself. As much as I'd heard it's not a great idea to go traveling alone in India if you're a woman, I found that strangers were incredibly eager to help me with everything. It was an experience like I'd never had in India, where I'm used to being wary of people, because they are often trying to scam you or sell you something. But I actually felt like I could trust the strangers I met, and everything worked out well in the end. I had borrowed some pepper spray just in case, and was glad I had it, but I never even got into any situations that made me feel like I might need to use it.

Sorry this turned out to be such a long post, but it really was quite an experience. My taste of Anapana meditation was a very positive thing for me, which gives me even more reason to try to work some kind of meditative practice into my life. I think yoga might be the next option I look into.

So, Caleb is currently on a plane on his way to visit us, and Jordan and I are both super excited. We have lots of fun planned for Caleb's visit: trips we have tentatively planned are to the Taj Mahal (of course), to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, and a week-long trip to Ladakh and Kashmir, so Caleb can see the Himalayas and we can enjoy what we've been told is some of the most beautiful scenery in India.