I recently left my job at Uber, and I wasn’t thrilled with the way it ended. It’s a long story but partially I blame myself for not having the right intent approaching the job; as a result, I couldn’t enjoy the journey fully and result in unfavorable ending. So before I decide what to do next, I want a reset, ask myself some tough questions and only commit to something I have the right intent for.
A friend suggested me to get away and give myself a break. I love the idea of disappearing and reappearing mystically different, like how Steve Jobs went to India for spiritual guidance and came back different. so I looked around and found a 10 days meditation retreat called Vipassana meditation. Vipassana means “see thing as what they really are”, and it is a practice under Dhamma (“Law of Nature” or 道), teaching by Buddha 2500 years ago. Sounds deep, I am intrigued! Only one problem, the earliest availability is at a place that is across the country, in some farmhouse in a rural area near Chicago; but I was determined, and with support from my wife, I am going!
Upon arriving in Chicago, I was carpooling with another fellow student from airport to the site. The student is also a tech startup guy like me, we even had bunch of common friends on Facebook, so I felt more comfortable with this retreat now. What is even more reassuring is that this is actually the 4th times he is doing it, now I feel I’ve made a good decision. I was ready to hang out and have some fun with him, share cool pics on Facebook and get a bunch of likes. Yeah right. I was stunned when I learnt the rules of the retreat:
- For 10 days straight, from 4:30am to 9:30pm, 11 hours of meditation everyday
- Like in a prison — no outside contacts, no phone/internet/tv, and gender segregation applies
- Like in a monastery — it requires complete silence and not even eye contacts between students
- Oh by the way, vegetarian food all the way and dinner was a grand choice of banana, apple and orange.
Here is the full schedule:
4:00 a.m. Morning wake-up bell
4:30–6:30 a.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30–8:00 a.m. Breakfast break
8:00–9:00 a.m. Group meditation in the hall
9:00–11:00 a.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
11:00–12 noon Lunch break
12:00–1:00 p.m. Rest, and interviews with the teacher
1:00–2:30 p.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30–3:30 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
3:30–5:00 p.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
5:00–6:00 p.m. Tea break
6:00–7:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
7:00–8:15 p.m. Teacher’s discourse in the hall
8:15–9:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
9:00–9:30 p.m. Question time in the hall
9:30 p.m. Retire to your room; lights out
Basically, the life of a monk. Perhaps that is why we had to turn in our car key, phone and wallet, everything we need to escape! However, there is a part of me feeling excited about these challenges. Extraordinary things comes from extraordinary environment, this looks “torturesome” enough that I must will rise from the ashes and reborn. I can’t wait to see how first day will be like!
First 3 days, Battle with concentration and importance of Breathing
Day 1 morning, I overslept and completely missed the 4am session. I don’t think anyone noticed though since that session has a “meditate in your own room” option, sigh of relief. After breakfast, I started my retreat for real. The meditation instruction was simple — pay attention to my breathing and pull the mind back whenever it wanders away. With all the comfy meditation cushions and my steel determination, I thought the task should be easy. Boy, wasn’t I wrong. Trying to keep my mind calm and quiet was like trying to tame a wild hungry elephant, floods of details about poker hands, life at Uber, hardships at my past startup was overwhelming, filled me with regrets and anxieties. This made me realize how erratic my mind was regularly, and how much I spent my mind on useless stuff, only in this isolated environment do I see it clearly now.
Another thing that made the first few days tough is that I was BORED outside of meditation. There is nothing to do! I started to clean my watch, reading text label on my shampoo bottle. But the thought of leaving next cross my mind. The teacher comforted me saying that bringing the mind back is already a meaningful effort, just let the thoughts come and go, it is normal.
My concentration finally improved when we learnt a breathing technique called Anapana. It is to observe my breathing through my nostril, in and out, and concentrate on the triangular area of my nose. Practicing this technique gave me my first epiphany there — breathing is the only activity that can be physically controlled to influence my mental state. It is the key to the door of someone’s state of mind. It works directly and instantly. The teacher told us this 10 days will be like a deep surgery of our mind. But for anyone who just want a light and quick fix to gain more mental balance and calmness, I suggest learning some breath technique. It is a good “pain killer” you can take without any major surgery.
4–5 days, the Revelations
By day 4, I am well adjusted to the “monastery life”. I was able to wake up at 4am and meditate in the half filled meditation hall. I felt ready to enter Day 4, the Vipassana day. For that, we had a special 2 hours session that no one can leave the meditation hall. In there, we finally received the technique of Vipassana. We were asked to concentrate our attention at the tip of our heads, and feel the sensation there. A sensation could be anything from a tickering, a temperature change, or an ache etc, we were told to “sweep the body” head to toe, and trying to use the mind, which has been trained and sharpened in the past 3 days, to notice those sensations. We were also told to observe the Annica (impermanence, 无常) nature of the sensations, observe how they rise and pass away, like how quantum particles appear and disappear. This comparison has profound meaning later.
I couldn’t feeling anything on my head, so I kept moving down. When I got to my back, something happened. Starting at my shoulder, I felt some tinkering. I took a deep breath, squeeze my attention tightly trying to “be there” at my own back, my face must looked as me feeling constipated or something. All of sudden, I felt this shower of vibrations across my whole upper back, it felt like someone is pouring some warm honey over it, an incredible feeling I don’t want it to stop, but it disappear a few moments later. While I was still mesmerizing this strange experience, this phenomenon is explained by the teacher.
According to Buddha, the scientist invented Vipassana 2500 years ago, the body is made up kalapas, extremely small “indivisible units”, and these units constantly moves and vibrates. It is amazing how closely that matches quantum physics discovered 2500 years later, about subatomic particles that makes up human, or anything for that matter. The sensation we observed are those units vibrating and changing at the boundary between our body and the outside environment.
While I was trying to wrap my head around these concepts, a movie scene popped into my mind. It is the moment Neo in Matrix can see the “reality” in green codes.
Me seeing the material world in sensations (particles vibrating) is kind of like Neo see the material world in bits, did I just got some superpower? My heart was pounding with this thought, but felt so painful I couldn’t talk to anyone about my world-ending discovery!
At the nightly course, which play a video by the late leading Vipassana teacher in India, S.N. Goenka, further revealed why should we observe the sensation and how can that lead to happiness and success. First to all, he explained the 4 step process of how we receive and process information. A fellow student Gabriel summarized it well:
- [Perception] We perceive something with one of our six senses (the five sensory inputs + cognition).
- [Identification] We identify and judge that “something”.
- [Sensation] We get a physical sensation according to our judgement of that “something”.
- [Reaction] We label that physical sensation as positive or negative and develop craving or aversion towards it.
A lot of our miserables happen at step 4. See this example of someone saw a brand new Tesla. Step 1, he perceived a big red object, step 2, he identified it as a Tesla, thought it is really attractive, step 3 he felt a physical sensation that accompanies these thoughts, maybe a slight flux of vibrations on his lips, step 4, he develop craving for these sensations and the craving comes with reaction of jealousy, self-pity and motivation.
The theory of Vipassana is that we don’t desire things in themselves, but only the sensations we associate them with. A heroin addict isn’t addicted to heroin, but to the sensations produced by heroin. People sometimes say “Someone pushed my button, so I reacted”. The “button” is the association we created between things and feeling, whenever there is a “push”, we would instantly and blindly react — say or do things impulsively to protect ourselves or hurt others. This is how miserable happens.
Vipassana addresses this madness by training the mind to be more aware of subtle sensations (acknowledging the 3rd step) and learn to see them with objectivity (without judgement). By observing the sensations, and its disappearance, we axe the chain between 3rd and 4th step and thus stop blind reactions. When we see things objectively, our actual response will be much more balanced and ground. Neurologist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor E. Frankl, has this famous quote:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
This made a lot sense to me, I want my freedom!
6–8 days, Equanimity and State of mind
At this point, I thought I got a good recipe to manage triggers and not overreact. So when the wife yells at me next time, I can observe my sensation on my body, calm down, and respond in a more balanced way. The question then is how about times when there is no triggers, just regular hours when I am running, working, talking…. Vipassana is more than a conflict resolution technique, it is a way of life. That is what the next 3 days were about. Once we were able to feel sensation in meditation hall, we were told to also feel our sensation outside, during walking to our dorms, eating our lunch etc, make it our second nature.
I was excited to start developing this capability in all hours, and it turned out to be almost impossible. Winds, noises, temperature changes dominated my senses, and I couldn’t feel any sensations. The teacher outlined the concept of equanimity. It means a state of mind that is neither in craving or aversion. To me, it means the feeling after someone takes some deep breath and is very aware of what is around. So in order to feel those sensation, I need to be in equanimity first.
Getting into equanimity takes some serious work — I have to remind myself to relax, breath well all the time. After a day, I can handle it with some clumsiness. I eventually felt an itching sensation on my right calf when I was walking, I was so excited. At the time of this writing, I am back home and have practiced for 2 weeks now, I finally had more success staying in equanimity. I noticed I can avoid looking at my phone immediately when I am bored, and I can notice I am getting tired before I become tired, so I will go outside to take a few deep breath before I became tired and agitated. This is a big shift and I feel motivated to continue this practice because another revelation the Goenka made.
He stated that happiness, the feeling of peace and harmony, is actually our default state. It is not pursued, it is already there. What we need to do is not let other things obstruct it. Other things being all the attention grabbing electronics, self created desires and social based fears etc, everything that can rock our natural balance. Pure and simplified mind is the happy mind.
Final days, Compassion
As we are near the end of the retreat, I felt empowered by learning some eye opening concepts and techniques. However, the original objective coming to the retreat is still unfilled. I still don’t know what to do next, career wise. Moreover, I am concerned with the passive nature of Vipassana would not be able to serve my ambition. The practice of equanimity — no craving and aversion indeed reduce miseries, but craving also creates drive. Does Vipassana have an answer for someone who is ambitious and want to change the world. S.N.Goenka gave his answer by telling us about his own teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin.
U Ba Khin was not only a dedicated Vipassana teacher, he was also 4 heads of ministry in Burma, simultaneously! He had been work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 40 years! His multiple secretaries sometimes couldn’t work anymore and crashed, while he could kept going tirelessly. Goenka attributes this superman energy and the significant achievements by U Ba Khin to his compassion, the pure selfless desire to serve his countrymen. Finding and executing one’s compassion give great purpose in life, and is what makes Dhamma the opposite of passive, but an extremely active and positive drive to serve and better the world.
What Goenka said hit me hard in realizing serving others, not myself, is the key to bridge the sometimes conflicting personal satisfaction and real world achievement. Serving the people you care deeply about creates a virtuous cycle: working on your compassion enables you to enjoy the process of working, without worry too much about result. Enjoying the process allows someone to work hard, a requirement for anything great to happen. When someone works hard, like he got nothing to lose, that is when breakthrough often happens. All these start with finding one’s compassion. So even though I didn’t get a specific answer in next step, I learnt a key condition on what my next adventure needs to meet. I even learnt a tip on finding my compassion.
I heard the phase “giving is better than taking”, thought it is noble concept, but never practiced much. Before I left, I volunteered to clean the kitchen, it was messy but I felt great afterward. Thinking more about it, doing chores and serving others is actually a great way to lower one’s ego, which is a blocker that could blindside people. So less ego, the easier one can see what he is truly compassionate.
Looking back
Despite all the learnings, I know if I expect my life will be completely different right away, it is bound to fail. However, things will never be the same. The seed of a tree had been planted, the tree of Dhamma, of happiness and compassion. To this tree, craving and aversion are the pests, continuous practice is water and fertilizer, I am thankful to this experience and looking forward to see how a life of “seeing things as they really are” is like.