10-day Vipassana meditation
A story of neural plasticity
TL;DR
Good, now that I have your attention. Yes, you will experience those mind-blowing “floating in space” type of sensations. No, this is not what makes the 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat so special. The real impact on your life is so much more profound — in all the good ways.
What is Vipassana
Let’s start with the beginning, what actually is Vipassana meditation. Vipassana is one of India’s oldest meditation techniques. It’s said to have originated about 2,500 years ago with the Buddha, who used it to achieve enlightenment. Instead of mere intellectual understanding, the entire practice is focused on experiential and embodied wisdom, i.e. the truth is what you feel yourself, and not what some dogma tells you to believe in. This by nature makes the practice rational, universal and non-secular. Moreover, you can look at it as a complement to your existing faith (if you have one) instead of a substitute.
Let me try to explain the technique and its effect in steps of increasing complexity. Going from one word to a sentence and several paragraphs.
One word:
Equanimity
Short sentence:
Don’t chase, embrace
Long sentence:
A tool for deep observations of bodily sensations and a framework for what to do with them.
Short Paragraph:
Applied wisdom in which you become able to observe every smallest sensation in your body. Furthermore, you gain the ability to detect the two specific categories of sensations that lead to misery. By observing them instead of reacting to them for 100h during the 10-day retreat your brain undergoes long-term changes.
Longer version:
By training your attention you become able to laser focus and discern the smallest sensations/vibrations throughout your body. As you do this you will notice a flow of rising and falling sensations. You realise nothing is permanent, but rather nature and your body are governed by the law of impermanence. The contribution of the Buddha was the realisation from those deep observations. Namely that there are two categories of sensations that are at the root of all our misery. Those two are (i) aversion and (ii) craving. In essence, they are two sides of the same coin — your discontent with the present.
Because you observed the law of impermanence yourself, you realised that all sensations are rising and passing. As such you (i) shouldn’t react negatively to aversion as the feeling that you want to avoid will pass by itself. Similarly (ii) the feeling of craving for something that is impermanent will eventually lead to misery. Tantalus’ craving is in essence an optional torture of his own mind.
The proposed solution is to simply observe these strong feelings of craving and aversion and not react to them. In other words, remain equanimous.
So how does the retreat help you achieve those goals? The meditation artificially creates strong sensations of both aversion and craving, making it the perfect dojo to train your equanimity. On the one hand, you will face excruciating pain by sitting in the same position for 1–2h sessions, 10h per day. Sensations that scream in your mind to change posture to avoid that pain.
On the other hand, you will experience amazingly blissful psychedelic “glowing and floating in the cosmos” type experiences that will make you crave them more and more.
You keep training your equanimity for 100h over those 10 days without any other distractions. You’re not allowed to talk or even make eye contact with other meditators during that time. Because it is such intense and prolonged training, your brain will actually undergo neuroplasticity. This means the insights that you get are not mere at the surface and intellectual in nature but rather start to change your unconscious autopilot.
All of this work is built on top of strong moral foundations. Those can be summarised as wishing love and happiness to all.
In the original words of the Buddha, those three tools that help you towards enlightenment and a life with little to no misery are called Sīla (Morality), Samādhi (Observation), Pañña (Wisdom through own experience).
To conclude, let’s have another look at what Vipassana is and what it’s not:
Vipassana is not:
- It is not a rite or ritual based on blind faith
- It is neither an intellectual nor philosophical entertainment
- it is not a rest cure, a holiday, or an opportunity for socializing
- it is not an escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life
Vipassana is:
- It is a technique that will reduce/ get rid of your suffering
- It is a method of mental purification which allows one to face life’s tensions and problems in a calm and balanced way
- It is an art of living that one can use to make a positive contribution to society
Why it clicked so much for me
It was the toolbox that I had been looking for but didn’t expect to find. During the covid-lockdowns, I read many non-fiction books across domains. All of them with amazing insights (many of which are aligned with the Vipassana view – see below). However, it was all surface-level intellect. I lacked the tools to really integrate those sustainably into my life.
I decided to join the 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat primarily for the “Silent aspect”. I thought to myself, finally a moment to just sit and process many of the insights I gather from all those books.
Turns out, not a lot of surface-level thinking and reflecting happened during those 10 days.. Instead, I realised that I was being handed the tools to actively integrate those insights into my life at a much deeper and more profound level. I can’t tell you how excited I was after day one as this insight slowly started to sink in😁
By means of analogy, imagine yourself wanting to learn how to drive a car for the first time. In the last few years, you have read a lot of material on how to be a good driver on the road and know when and what to do in each scenario. However, if you’ve never driven a car, that knowledge will just remain surface-level. It won’t become deep-rooted in your brain, i.e. muscle memory for thoughts and actions. In other words, while you might know what the right way of driving is, your actions are not always going to be aligned, especially in stressful situations. What the 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat did is giving me a car to drive and transcend those surface-level insights into a much deeper level. Ensuring my actions will actually be aligned with all those insights I have read about being a great driver.
Moreover, as it happens a lot of the surface-level insights from my non-fiction books mapped very closely to the empirical insights that I was gathering through the meditation practice itself. Below are a couple of examples:
1. Neuroscience – I went into more detail in this blog, but in summary, the 10-day Vipassana meditation taps into neuroplasticity (i.e. actually changing your brain). By analogy, imagine your brain as a large box. This box gets all types of sensory stimuli as input and outputs thoughts and actions.
So how does this “box” convert sensory stimuli into thoughts and actions? Imagine that when you are born your brain is a savannah of tall untouched grass. As you start exploring the world you crawl through that grass, bending it down and leaving some light trails behind. The more you walk specific paths the deeper & more paved those paths become. Moreover, the vegetation will grow back if you stop walking that path for a while. In neuroscience, we have a little saying to remember this neuroplasticity:
Neurons that fire together wire together. Neurons that fire out of sync lose their link
When you now have sensory stimuli coming to your brain, it will tend to take the path of least resistance (Similar to electricity). To stay with the analogy, those stimuli will tend to take the most paved roads in your jungle.
And as you grow older, the overall vegetation morphs from savannah into a thick jungle, which makes it harder to forge new paths. You will consequently keep walking your existing paths more and more which as result will become deeper and more paved. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you for example had a trauma as a kid and kept reacting in a bad way to it, this tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy for your mind patterns (thoughts and actions) later in life.
Knowing this, Vipassana gifts you 2 tools and a framework to actually change the layout of your mental jungle for the better. It gives you (i) a torch to observe sensations deep in the body. It also (ii) trains you to be equanimous and not instinctively react to them. Secondly, it gives you a framework to know which paths in your body lead to misery.
Putting it all together, in those 100h of meditation across 10 days you are sitting in a dojo in which you on the one hand stop walking the paths that bring you misery. You give vegetation time to reclaim those paths. On the other hand, you laboriously start slashing new paths in the thick jungle that lead to a more peaceful mind.
I as well as many others on the course physically and mentally felt the benefits. Quite profound actually, but it is something you have to experience yourself. Do the work and change the layout of your jungle, don’t just be aware of what needs to be done at a surface level. (This used to be my mistake)
2. Freud's Ego vs Id vs Superego — Freud has split the psyche into 3 parts. The unconscious Superego and Id. You can see them as the angel and devil on your shoulder respectively. The conscious ego has the tough job of balancing the different pulls from the superego and the id as well as dealing with reality. The way I look at the Vipassana practice is one where you make the ego (as Freud has put it, not our mainstream meaning of the term) stronger as to ignore many of the cries of the Id. Over time, the Id becomes smaller and you will become more aligned with the superego.
3. David Hume vs Plato – Plato was all about reason and how our mind is in full control. As you start developing your inner observation capabilities (Samadhi) you start to notice that the 18th-century philosopher David Hume was much closer to the truth. We are reactive by default but great at tricking others and ourselves via cognitive dissonance that our reaction came first, and the feelings to justify it later.
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them — David Hume
4. Shine light don‘t fight or hide — One of my core mantras. Sunlight destroys most bacteria. The best way to combat negativity in the mind or elsewhere is to bring it out into the light. This is also at the core of Vipassana.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche’s deepest truth by plunging into the abyss — In Thus spoke Zarathustra and Ecce Homo, Nietzsche described the ultimate truth he found by plunging into the deepest depth of the abyss. Eternal Recurrence which enforced his view of Amor Fati. This is also very aligned with Vipassana’s art of living
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it — Friedrich Nietzsche
6. Rider and Elephant analogy by Jonathan Haidt. He explains how the brain can be seen as a large elephant and a small rider on top of it. Daniel Kahneman's level 1 and level 2 thinking are also very similar. The elephant usually sprints off in a certain direction when the brain gets stimuli. Those sprints can be both thoughts and physical actions. The rider has some control to calm the elephant or slightly change its direction, but this is very limited and difficult. The toolbox that you get through the Vipassana meditation allows you to (i) observe the stimuli before it zaps the elephant, and (ii) train the rider to have much more influence over the elephant. Both are then used to avoid toxic reactive behaviour by the elephant and cultivate positive ones.
7. Alan Watts’ backwards law — Also aligned with the core of Vipassana
The more you try and grab a hold of something, the more it slips through your fingers. I.e. chasing a positive experience is an inherently negative experience and accepting a negative experience is a postive one — Alan Watts
8. Siegmund Freud in Civilisations and its Discontents — In this book Freud argues how our behaviour is largely dominated by what he calls the pleasure principle: the idea that we move toward perceived pleasure and away from perceived pain. The Vipassana meditation aims to put a stop to this.
Happiness is only an episodic phenomenon. It comes more from a state of contrast, rather than prolonged feeling which will turn into mild contentment — Siegmund Freud
It is in other words better to cultivate prolongued feelings of gratitude and equanimity rather than the pursuit of our default rat race to the bottomless pit we call happiness.
9. Stoicism: Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Stop seeing yourself as a victim and assign meaning to the pain. Vipassana allows you to rationally observe the feelings instead of amplifying it by creating a story around the suffering.
10. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil — Step away from the binary framework of assigning sensations as good or bad. Just observe them for what they are, a sensation. Through the ages, especially in the West, it has become deeply ingrained to look at the world through those binary-tinted glasses. Vipassana allows you to take those glasses off, and lift the veil.
11. Kant’s Categorical imperative — Kant’s reason-based moral compass is largely aligned with the morality aspect of Vipassana (Sila).
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end — Immanuel Kant
12. Spinoza — every action is in reality a reaction if you truly look at it. This is also what you experience yourself through Vipassana. As Spinoza said, the real god is nature. Live in accordance to the laws of nature and don’t put all your faith and prayers into imaginary constructs outside of our actual universe. It also highlights the importance of the environment you’re in, especially as a kid. To use the neuroscience analogy, your environment dictates what paths you set out to crawl in your mental savannah and which paths you keep reinforcing. The larger takeaway is that while you can work hard on yourself through the Vipassana meditation technique, you should also make sure you are in a healthy environment that pushes you in the same positive direction. It is always easier to swim with than against the current.
I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings — Albert Einstein
13. Physics project of Steven Wolfram — He has a new computational theory of the universe where both general relativity and quantum mechanics are emergent. His theory is very aligned with the “law of impermanence” that you also observe through your meditation practice. In essence, the universe is the result of the continuous updating of tiny particles. If you look closely at it, i.e. the atom level, nothing in this world is permanent or stationary for that matter. Similarly, heat is just the vibration of atoms which only come to a halt at zero Kelvin, the absolute zero (Third law of thermodynamics).
14. Stilness within the story of a barrel — The way I look at it, most people can be seen as a barrel, which as long as it doesn’t overflow allows them to act with reason and compassion. The moment it overflows, we go into tilt mode and have much less control over our actions (the Id takes over from the Superego). The inner stillness the Vipassana practice creates can be imagined as both the draining of excess water from your barrel and increasing its size. As a consequence, you remain calmer in all types of situations. Moreover, you will be able to absorb stresses from others whose barrel is about to flow over and generate an overall calming and suiting energy in your immediate sphere of influence. Helping yourself helps everyone around you too.
My Main Critique:
As you might have guessed I am a big fan of the universal, non-secular and experimental nature of Vipassana (read: I actually am feeling the benefits in my own body and mind already). However, I do share one major critique point together with Nietzsche.
To master the technique one tends to withdraw from the world, and create one’s own sanctuary and dojo. One uses it as a refuge. However, in my opinion, one should use these newly gained powers to embrace life. You could look at it as the synthesis of Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund. The apollonian ascetic ideals and the dionysian worldly experience.
Being an ascetic monk allows you to fully dig into the meditation with minimal other-worldly temptations. However, if you pay close attention in the real world you will find endless opportunities to remain equanimous towards feelings of aversion and cravings. They just come in more flavours and are therefore harder to recognize.
In the end, happiness and inner peace are only true when shared, and you do that in the real world.
I am truly grateful to everyone who allowed me to experience this Vipassana meditation. From Siddhartha Gautama to the lineage of teachers and students that kept the practice alive in its purity over the last 2,500 and finally, Goenka who managed to spread it back out of Burma into the world.
