An 11-Day Vow of Silence Changed My View on the True Nature of Objective Reality
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Meditation isn’t an activity, it’s a state of awareness
“I am the looker, but the Universe is the See-er.
Every set of eyes in the world is witnessing on behalf of the Universe (Brahmān), witnessing its own existence in multiple forms, witnessing one slice of reality at a time (Bhāgya).”
On the morning of 11th October, 2020, as the sun touched the horizon from below, I heard my voice for the first time in 11 days. I chanted ‘OM’ in a deep tone, vibrating the air in all the hollow spaces of my body, and the air around me. This followed by an ancient Pali phrase ‘Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam’ (may all blessings come true for all beings).
Having been informed and motivated by a good friend, I had decided to try the practice of Vipassana meditation, to truly experience what it was all about. Beforehand, all I knew was that for 10 days, I am not allowed to communicate with others, limit external stimuli, eat in a disciplined manner, and merely meditate many hours a day. However, the revelations made apparent to me through my days of silence and hours of meditation is what changed my perspective on reality as we see it, as we experience it, as we interact with it.
I will structure this article in 3 parts.
One is ‘Set and Setting’, to describe what Vipassana is, the goal of the practice, the intricacies of the schedule of the 10 days, and the setting and surroundings I created to experience this practice. This may help anyone who may be interested in trying it out.
Two is ‘Experiential Analysis’ (Sankhyā, as said in Sanskrit), my progressive experience through the days, including to deal with the discipline, internal and external conflicts, and bedazzling realisations I had along the way.
Three (and my favourite) is ‘Wisdom and Philosophical Discourse’ (Yoga, as said in Sanskrit), the wisdom gained out of One and Two put together in one unit, a single quanta of the entire experience and the learnings out of it — the grand revelation of the universe as the ‘Self’ showed the true architecture of the world to me, the self, through the faculties of my own mind and body, and the interaction of the ‘Self’ with the world around me.
Set and Setting
Vipassana is a very specific technique of meditation, that was originally formulated (rather discovered, like a mathematical theorem) by Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha, 2500 years ago. He tried multiple forms of Yoga and meditation in his 35 years, and finally used this technique as a path to attain enlightenment. Since then, it has been passed down the generations by word of mouth. In most parts of the world it spread to, it was modified from its original form to appeal to the masses, filled with certain dogma and rituals in some cases. However, a group of monks in the deep parts of Myanmar (Burmā) managed to preserve the original technique in its pure form over the millennia. A few decades ago, Dhamma foundation, founded by S.N. Goenka, started to spread this beautiful practice to different parts of the world.
The idea is simple, like most great ones. It is a surgery of the self, by the Self. The mind is the patient, and the surgeon. The objective is to remove deep rooted complexes and convolutions (Aham), habits of craving, clinging and aversion (Rāga and Dvesha), a small step on the long path to ultimately experience true Nirvanic bliss (Moksha).
In the process, the deep subconscious is brought to the surface. Biases are recognised. As a metaphor, it is not merely to cut the trunk of a diseased tree, but to remove the roots from the ground within, so they don’t grow back ever again.
Mention of this technique has been since the Bhagvada Gita, an ancient Indian scripture.
Normally, Vipassana is practiced (at least your first time) in special retreats around the world, where you live for 10 days, free of cost (on the charity of others), are served your 2 meals a days, and meditate in individual meditation cells. This is what I have read online and learnt from friends with direct experience.
Not in my case. While originally planned to do with an experienced friend in the secluded wilderness of a forest cottage among Autumn leaves, this plan did not come to fruition. In any case, I decided that since I had created the time for this, by clearing my schedule for the next 2 weeks, and also prepared my body athletically (heavy detox, exercise and limited diet in the prior days) and mind scientifically and philosophically (regular breathing exercises, endurance training, reading the right literature), I would do the entire exercise in the middle of Berlin, in the idyllic Arkonakiez of Prenzlauerberg, where I live. A meditation centre may be more silent and lack external conflicts of daily life, but in hindsight I am glad to have done my practice in an urban setting — a little more chaotic than in an utopian setting of a retreat. Anyhow, I wish to experience a retreat someday too.
Schedule, Meals, Urban Challenges of Meditation
The meditation centres follow the daily timetable as below:
However, since I was doing the entire exercise alone, without any teachers or co-meditators, I slightly tweaked the timetable without deviating from the core essence of it.
Meals were a major challenge, since it is recommended not to lose your meditative state of awareness (dhyān), even during meal breaks and walks. However, being the meditator and the cook, I had to make sure I could feed myself with food that could be prepared with mere muscle memory, without having to put my mind on the act itself.
So, I bought all the low-effort, high nutrition items I could source from my supermarket (Edeka) for the 2 daily meals.
Breakfast: Muesli with honey, milk, seeds, bananas + Spoonful of Spirulina (highly nutritional algae)+ 2 slices of toast with butter and cheese + 1 cup of ginger tea (decaf) + 1 glass fruit juice.
Lunch: Here, I had planned items that could be prepared in under 10 minutes. 1 big batch of chili sin carne (with rice) prepared beforehand fed me for the first 4 days. Thereafter, I had either pasta with pesto, or soups with rice. Each lunch session ended with a cup to tea (decaf) to wash down the food.
Tea: Turmeric (Cucumar/Haldi) tea (decaf) with honey, and 2 tiny apples.
Dinner: Dreams
Urban Challenges included most things that are displeasing even under normal circumstances, like neighbours dancing upstairs, heavy smoking next door, kids being loud, construction work in the adjacent buildings, and the sound and smell of car and tram traffic in the neighbourhood. Wherever there was interaction with people involved, and they found out what I was undertaking, they were much softer in our indirect contact, accommodating for a successful meditation for me. The urban setting eventually let me see the humanity is everyone.
At first I cursed myself for having committed to doing such an intense activity in such a chaotic setting. But then, as the days progressed, the mind tamed itself, and the faculty of focus improved, I realised the hidden boon that it was. To overpower any disturbance on the outside and to find the peace within was the purpose of my meditation after all. Also, to accept that all these events out of my control is part of the beauty of reality. More on the ‘find the peace within’ in part 2 of the article.
Some neighbours and acquaintances encountered me on my daily walks and greeted me with a friendly ‘hello’, or asked how my day was going, or other neighbourhood-ly ice-breakers. I didn’t want to be rude, but also not break my vow of silence. So I prepared a note that I always carried with me when I left the house, and presented it to anyone in this situation. Funnily, some of them would whisper ‘sorry’ to me after reading this. Hey lovely people, no apologies needed.
Lastly, since I was not in a meditation centre, and no guides or group to learn from or meditate with, I had prepared a downloaded playlist on my Youtube Premium account, with 1 discourse for each day, and the one guided meditation which I must have heard over 30 time over this time period (I know the entire 1-hour audio by heart now)
Experiential Analysis (Sankhyā)
As I mentioned before, I really had no idea what I was getting into before I started. I knew the logistics that needed to be taken care of, and a basic outline of the apparent ‘curriculum’. So meals and meditation spots had been prepared. But most other ideas (the ‘I don’t speak’ note, essence of Vipassana, inner truths about me) revealed themselves over the days. Either through trial and error, through resolutions of my meditations (Pain and pleasure are not real, just a state of mind), and through the daily 1-hour discourse, where the voice of Mr. Goenka would reveal more about the practice, with some theory, and some stories from his personal experience, and from the life of Buddha — stories about conflict, harmonious resolutions, equanimity to pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and the theory of non-attachment.
Being a universal theory that is as true as the law of nature, each discourse always reminds the listener — listen to what I have to say, but don’t believe it with blind devotion, pass it through the test of logic, and truly believe it only when you experience it yourself.
As a skeptic to most esoteric practices, this openness reinforced my conviction to continue each day, wake up full of energy at 4am every day. I snoozed my alarm just once, on Day 2, but never again.
The first 3 days is the practice of Ānāpānā — to focus the entire mind on the entrance of your nostrils, to observe respiration. This is primarily to strengthen the concentration capacity of the mind, and to be in the true present, not drift into memories of the past, or imaginings of the future.
Déscartes said “I think, there I am”.
Well, “I breathe, therefore I am”.
That is the one truth beyond all illusions, all ‘Māyā’ of the world. So for 3 days, almost 14-hours a day, I merely observed my breath. Not control it, not influence it, merely observe it. Noticed if my left or right nostril is dominant (with patterns during times of the day), how the air coming out is warmer than the one going in, and the sensation when the exhaled air touched the area above the upper lip.
Really, my mind, a wild horse, which is always eager to run its own course, to the past or future, was being tamed. The reins of present were being put on it.
Of course, this wild horse, the mind, which has been getting its way all its life, takes time to train. When thoughts would drift from the present to good and bad ideas of the past and future, I would consciously pull focus back to my breath, and notice a change in its natural rhythm based on apparent emotions of those drifted thoughts.
Fascinating how fictitious ideas of the mind can have real physical effects, on something as real as the breath. Simple observation can give us the objective truth about what is happening inside — joy, sorrow, aversion, cravings, insecurities.
In the first days, many thoughts of past remorse popped up in my head, made me cry too. I noticed how my breathing rhythm changed, and thereafter the tears were reduced to a mere physical phenomenon, nothing else. Same happened with other emotions too. Suddenly emotions were not able to overpower me.
Sitting for hours, holding the same posture, can be ‘painful’. Over the days, my body got used to it, got increasingly flexible, and built an endurance to this pain. A knee-ache or numb foot, that I couldn’t stand for 10 seconds, suddenly I could sit through it for 10–20–30 minutes.
Soon enough, I also noticed how pain is temporary, transient, impermanent, like a bubble on water that may emerge, may grow, but with eventually burst. The same is with pleasure. The same is with every feeling and emotion we experience, physical or mental.
By the third day, the discourse instructed me to go one step further and start observing tiny sensations on my upper lip, when the breath touches it. On a gross level, there is the feeling of air touching skin. On finer inspection, there is the feeling of heat, the feeling of tingling, the feeling of prickling, the feeling of my moustache growing.
To zoom in even more, I see my existence as a quantum phenomenon for the first time. On the minutest level, there is the feeling of all the atoms of my skin vibrating. On the minutest level, there is no pain or pleasure. Only vibrations.
The Technique of Vipassana was finally revealed to me in the discourse by the fourth day. The exercise of Ānāpānā has to be expanded to the entire body. Observing my respiration, and the sensations on the area between my nostrils and upper lip for 3 continuous days had done 2 things:
- Train my mind to be in the present, and not drift into the Māyā (illusion)of past and future
- Develop a new faculty of the mind. Like a new sense organ presenting itself, my mind is now able to perceive minute sensations on the skin.
Like a colourblind person seeing colour for the first time, I could look at the spectrum of sensations beyond just dark and light. Instead of ‘pain in my knee’, I could say ‘feeling a high pressure on the left corner under my knee-cap’.
With the technique of Vipassana, one has to basically make a loop of the entire body, on small skin area at a time. One has to ignore every other thought, every other sensation, and focus the entire mental energy on observing what is happening at that one specific area of the skin. Am I feeling warm, cold, numbness, tingling, prickling, perspiration, or a new sensation for which I don’t have a word as yet?
There were new sensations, for which I didn’t have words in my large enough vocabulary, simply because I had never sensed them before. Like a new colour you never saw before, and hence cannot describe. Approximate proxies and descriptions, but no exact word.
For the first couple of days, this was a very exhausting exercise, very draining and tiring too. Occasionally, I had the feeling of butterflies in my stomach, not the nice ones, but ones that make you feel breathless, make you want to scream. This is exactly the point of Vipassana — to sense displeasing feelings, and not to be averse to them, not to run from them, but to simply acknowledge them, to observe them, and to realise their transient nature. At first, I would try to hold off for a couple of minutes, and then open my eyes and change my posture out of a feeling of claustrophobia.
But over time, these ‘bad’ sensations befriended me. I greeted them every time they visited my body, and through it, my mind. And soon enough, they would go away.
The same with pleasurable sensations of ecstatic tingling. At the beginning, when they would arise I would seek pleasure in them, hope for them to stay on for longer, and not be replaced by pain. But over time, I realised they are as impermanent. As I progressed, and got better in the practice of Vipassana, I was soon able to go beyond the apparent level of sensations, good/bad, pain/pleasure, aversion/craving.
I was able to sense my body at the minute level of tiny vibrations, just the cognition of existence, indifferent to any feelings and reactions.
This feeling, I had been told about in the discourse, after being educated on the idea that our body is simply a bunch of atoms that are holding themselves together, sticking together because they share a common frequency, and hence resonate together. My intermediate level of general physics, and introductory knowledge of quantum physics also qualified this idea, and I was able to observe it without a bias of skepticism. On this realisation, and having directly experienced the vibrations myself, I also started viewing external reality differently. Observing the trees on my post-meal walks would give a new perspective on their existence.
I saw how everything is connected. Even between the tree and me, the empty space is filled with air atoms. Some of them touching my skin, which I feel, and some of them touching the trunk of the tree. Everything is one, just resonating at different frequencies.
By the 5th day, as this sense got stronger, I got yet another sense organ. The ear of the mind. For some time, I had been hearing a faint high pitched sound, like the one you would hear in the background if you switch on an old-school CRT television, or the sound of the rail tracks when a high-speed train is approaching from kilometres away. But this one was at an exponentially higher frequency. My ears couldn’t hear it, since they are limited to the upper limit of 20000 Hz, but bypassing that sense door, this sound rings directly in the mind. As a scientifically curious individual, I needed to do some hypothesis testing. I first started by closing my ears with my fingers, still hear it. Then I moved away from all electronic devices, still hear it. Then I observed at different times of the day, still hear it. The only time it went away was when I distracted myself.
It is like the sound unique to every tuning fork — in this case I am the tuning fork. This is what it means to be ‘wired’.
The ‘sound of silence’ (notice the oxymoron) had revealed itself to me. At the beginning, this was faint, and easily went away with urban noise and disturbance. It would be hard to retain this when I went for walks, when the construction drill was being used, when the church bells rang, and especially when the nearby tram tracks made their high pitched noise (which is the closest frequency from the external world I heard, still exponentially lower). I realised the higher the external frequency, the easier for me to lose this sense. Then I started training my mind during walks, to be aware of this sound from a meditation session, and go out with this state of awareness, trying not to be distracted by external stimulus. Every time it was fading away, I would pause, stand still, practice Ānāpānā for a couple of minutes, and get it back. I would sit on a bench in the park and try to keep my mental ears on this sound from within, not be distracted by the noise from outside.
It is the sound of silence within me, inner silence, not the sound of silence around me.
The practice of Vipassana got a whole lot easier with this new sense organ. Keeping focus is much easier. Acknowledging the loss of focus is much easier. And I quite like this sound, so I preferred to stay in focus as long as possible than lose it. As they say, you either use it or lose it.
The vibes were always there. I just wasn’t listening
Throughout the discourse, they repeatedly mentioned that the 6th Day is extremely hard, it is when most people want to leave the practice, break the vow of silence, have self doubts. I was not sure this would apply to me since I had managed to overpower my bodily pains, started feeling minute sensations, and got this sense of hearing the cosmic sound within me — the sound of existence. However, as a limitation of urban meditation, since I was living at home (with cooperative housemates who were informed of my protocol to be overridden only in exceptional cases), I was informed through a written note that my beloved dog, my best friend who I raised as a puppy in my family home in Agra, India, had passed away. I was quite devastated for losing my friend, for not being there for my family in tough times, and also about imagining the pain and sorrow my parents and little sister must be going through, who have to cremate him and live in the space with his memories.
I almost broke my vow of silence, but I didn’t.
I started observing my respiration, how my breath got shorter and more erratic — that is the breathing pattern of grief, of heartbreak. Well, objectively I knew it. I managed to pull myself back into the here and now, where I was breathing, where my inner bell was ringing. But every now and then I would be transported to past memories of me and the goldador, and a decade of brotherly mischief and love. Then I was transported to the memory of the guided meditation, where it is repeatedly mentioned — Be perfectly equanimous. Don’t cling to pleasure, don’t be averse to displeasure. Be perfectly equanimous. This is where my principle of non-attachment was put to an extreme test. This is where my attitude of gratitude was tested. I sent a written note back home (through my housemate who clicked a photo and whatsapped it to them — since I was off the grid and my phone too):
“Nothing is permanent. So, don’t be sad that he is no more. Be grateful that we were fortunate to experience his pure existence, if only for a brief moment”.
By consoling them, really I had consoled myself. Since my family knew the tough path I am on, I assumed they will find strength in my silence, and so I continued with the rest of my days, making peace with my loss. Nothing is permanent, except love, which will be there forever.
The remaining days flew like a breeze for me. Since I was experiencing reality at such a quantum level, time was of no essence. Each meditation session was essentially one moment for me, be it 1 hour long or 3 hours. I was also perfectly in sync with the Sun and the stars, having observed their movements to closely at my 4am wake up, my post breakfast walk, and the tea break in the evening. I had also dealt with a major loss with perfect equanimity, and I believe the Self was quite proud of what the self has achieved. I increased the time I spent outdoors while in meditation, trying to hone the new senses I had developed/discovered, and to keep my state of awareness in noise, wind, drizzle, cold, anything. The sound of silence in me got louder and louder, each sitting of Vipassana felt shorter and shorter.
On the last day, I had planned to break my silence to the sun. Having realised the Oneness of existence, I was eager to speak my first words to the ultimate source of energy of my life, of my consciousness, Suryā. I did my morning meditation, ate a light breakfast, and then started jogging to Humboldthain Park in Berlin, a spot with anti-missile bunkers from the World War era, the highest vantage point in this part of the metropolitan. I would be the first person in the city to be kissed my the sun that morning — I didn’t hope, I just knew. As I was jogging to the park, I saw the sky getting brighter, and had a sense of urgency to not miss the first glimpse of the sun. And so, after sitting in peaceful silence for 10 full days and more, I ran. With a perfectly detoxed body, a mind that is immune to the feeling of fatigue, and the sound of silence ringing in the peace of the pre-dawn morning, I ran. I never ran this fast in my life. I didn’t perfectly time myself, but I am confident of having done 5km in under 14–15 mins. Reaching the top of the bunker, I realised I still had some minutes, so I sat and did another round of Vipassana.
As the sun rose over the Horizon, I hummed “OM” and thus broke my silence of 11 days.
Wisdom and Philosophical Discourse (Yoga)
Yoga is not a sport, it is a way of life, a way of perception, to find unity, to witness The One in all the separate parts of existence. Using Vipassana as a medium of experience, I have gotten closer to the true understanding of the word ‘Yoga’ (‘a’ is silent).
‘The One’ is the phenomenon of Existence (Satt, as said in Sanskrit), that is in everything that ‘is’. Instead of saying “Vishesh is Existing”, it is more accurate to say “Existence is Vishesh-ing”, for I am just one form that existence takes, a temporary manifestation of the infinite being (Ananta). To see ourselves as limited beings, separated from each other in karma and yoga, is the start of our biased perception of reality.
To illustrate with an anecdote:
There is a white wall being viewed by 2 friends/acquaintances/co-existers, both wearing coloured glasses, but unaware of them. One says it is a yellow wall, and the other says it is a blue wall. Each of them look at the other and say they are wrong, and probably foolish for not knowing they are wearing green glasses and yet seeing a yellow/blue wall. The wall is still white, they are both still wrong, and everyone things its the other person’s fault, who can’t tell a yellow/blue wall because they are wearing green glasses.
For the most part of our lives, if not all, we perceive reality on an apparent level. Historically, this has worked well, throughout the process of evolution — as our reptilian brain created mental models of the world and jumped to conclusion in future events based on the past, and the ‘instinct’ inherited mental models that we use to perceive reality on a gross level, zoomed out.
This is the core perceptual process in a nutshell :
To Cognize is to have a certain stimulus enter our consciousness through one of the sense doors- Ears, Eyes, Nose, Skin, Mouth, Mind. While the first 5 are a gateway to external stimulus in the present only, the Mind gives stimulus of thoughts of past and future as well. Dreams and nightmares, all included. Thus, just the non-judging observation of the objective fact of an event — a happening of something in space and time, this is cognition. We humans have incredible, limitless sense doors, but use very little of them. With all the distractions of attachment, greed, lust, ignorance, we tend to spend less energy on this part and more in the latter ones.
To Recognize is to acknowledge the stimulus as good/bad, usually based on how the mind and body react to it and their sensitivity. A change in the breathing rhythm makes one experience this unbinding phenomenon for oneself.
To Feel is actually the step to incite clinging or aversion to a stimulus that has been recognised. A temporary knee pain may give rise to a permanent subconscious feeling of aversion to a certain posture. However, not all pains are averse, and not all pleasures attractive. This bit is strengthened with the habit of instant gratification, changing your posture because of a slight pain in the knee. With instant gratification we tend to forget the concept of transience, and want to cling more and more.
To React is when we take action, in form of physical or mental action. A fight or flight response for aversive feelings, and craving feeling for pleasurable feelings. This is where the seed of Karma is sown, that binds us to the future, for all actions have consequences.
Due to our ego, our desires to cling, our attachments, our ‘Aham’, we continue to perceive in this inversely biased way, to react to reality rather than accept its true nature of transience. Rather than try to hold on, we should appreciate the moment for it is, impermanent yet marvellous. Rather than brood of losses, we must find strength in the learnings they give, and the green pastures that shall be.
We react too much and too soon. Thus, we sow seeds of Karma that we have to reap eventually, seeds that would not be needed if we just stay equanimous to a situation and let it pass, realising the impermanent transient nature that it is made of. My silence demonstrated how many conflicts resolved themselves without my involvement in them, because everything is impermanent, and we only have the illusion of control.
Each step of the perceptual process moves outward from the deep consciousness to the outer brain involved with muscle memory, well conditioned rather than truly experiencing each moment for what it is. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ are just interpretations from each vantage point in spacetime. The same phenomenon can be good for me and bad for you in a current time, or good for me today, but bad tomorrow.
Through enhanced focus on self presence, and heightened awareness of one’s own being, the energy is redistributed through the process. Vipassana helped me to experience this firsthand, to realise that a state of mind like this can exist, so that I can benchmark future perceptual behaviours against it.
With increased cognition, we are able to see things as they truly are, with all senses integrated, looking at the complete picture, fully aware of the biases of one’s own self, and limitations of the other person — without judgment on either side-accepting the inherent nature of things for as they are. Acknowledging the tricky nature of the mind that needs to be tamed, and hence observing without judgement.
The rest of the steps are given less importance, and hence the ultimate reactions to events are reduced. Each reaction created more bubbles in the water, starting a chain reaction. Our goal in Nirvana is for a calm and still water body, where we can see the reflection of the sky as it truly is. A mirror of reality without the distortion of illusions and biases.
To master the sense of cognition, to see things as they truly as, with no distortion whatsoever, and acting on them with perfect equanimity and stoicism, this is the goal of meditation, and the trait of a transformed humanity. Accepting the transient nature of life and physical phenomenon, and living as pure energy, ether that exists inside a glob of molecules we call our body, this is the path to a liberated perception.
Having described the process of Vipassana on an apparent level in part 2, let’s dive deeper on the intricacies of each step, and how it gets us closer to liberation from the suffering of life.
Let’s review the 3 steps of cognition, of existence:
Respiration is the one truth about our own existence. To observe the air moving in and out, through the left and/or right nostril, feeling the sensations on the upper lip as it interacts with the air. Matters of the body and mind are reflected in the natural rhythm of our breath. Simple observation helps us get the objective truth of what is happening within, caused by external stimuli, or thoughts from within the mind.
This is helpful to acknowledge and deal with strong emotions. Rather that acknowledge the abstract idea of anger or sorrow, where our mind is focused on the object that caused the emotion, we can look at the breath and acknowledge that we are feeling a certain emotion. This already helps in not jumping to the reaction stage, but just living in the true present. It also demonstrates the highly knotted interaction of mind and matter — how thoughts affect physical reality, and vice versa.
To watch the breath is to cognize our feelings and emotions, rather than to react to them. Thus we can master the mind, not be slaves to its reactions
Sensation is the apparent level of reality that most of us live in for most parts of our lives. To classify things as good or bad, pain and pleasure. Consequently, we generate feelings of clinging or aversion to each phenomenon. While the true nature of reality is impermanence (Anichyā), we cling (or avoid) sensations due to the ruse that it will last forever. This is the root cause of suffering, the ignorance of impermanence.
Either we want more and more and more, in the bottomless pit of wants. Or we want to avoid, avoid, avoid
Vibration is the true reality of the universe, the fundamental level of existence of all matter and energy. The true meaning of E = mc2, that matter is a manifestation of energy, wavelets at a certain frequency (The ‘c’ constant is essentially a proxy for the time dimension, since wave forms can only exist through multiple units of time, or rather, are the building blocks of time itself).
The same is true for our personal existence. Through meditation and the enhanced sensory faculties, we can feel our existence at the subatomic level, to experience that we are just made up of atoms, of energy vibrating at the same frequency. While modern science came to this conclusion a few centuries ago, the Sanskrit concept of Kalāpās has existed for millennia.
Kalāpās are the smallest units of physical matter, said to be about 1 / 46,656th the size of a particle of dust from a wheel of chariot
On experiencing one’s body as a mass of vibrations, we realise how every moment is truly a new manifestation — surely influenced by the past (Newton’s physical laws), but a new season in itself. Karmic inertia is what can be overcome through meditation, to realise the freshness of every moment, full of possibilities. This paves way for a strengthened sense of equanimity, a stoic way of life. This experience makes us realise the following statement as true.
“I (Infinite Existence) is Vishesh-ing (taking limited form of the mind/body of Vishesh)”
The ‘sound of silence’ mentioned in part 2 makes more sense now. That is the sound of existence in the form of me. The one frequency that all ‘my’ atoms are resonating at, choosing to stay together when they could disperse at any point.
There are multiple reasons that I wasn’t so aware of my sound of existence before . Firstly, the noise of the chaos outside keeps bringing in constant stimulus, so the mind is not focused on its own being. Secondly, the internal chattering thoughts of the mind (wild horse needing to be tamed) again drifted the focus. Lastly, constant interaction and reaction to the world outside would create new karmic knots in the mind — hence taking focus away from the present reality of pure existence. The practice of Vipassana helps overcome all 3 of these challenges to develop the faculty of listening to the sound of my own awareness, by my own awareness.
On the realisation of impermanence of nature, of the indifference of every sensation, feeling and emotion can be liberating for someone spiritually inclined, or daunting for a nihilist. It comes as a superpower, the superpower of indifference, that can be used to avoid suffering for oneself, possibly at the cost of others. Hence, no Vipassana is complete without the 3 main tenets of Sìlā, Samādhi and Panyā.
Silā is the 5 precepts of purity and morality, as preached and practiced by the Buddha, the principles for a wholesome life. This is something that needs strict compliance during the 10 days of Vipassana, but should also be adopted as a way of life, for a transformed humanity. The basic idea is — if you stop doing unwholesome activities, everything else that is left is wholesome.
The 5 precepts are:
- Prohibition of Killing
- Prohibition of Falsehood (verbal or physical)
- Prohibition of Intoxication
- Prohibition of Adultery
- Prohibition of Theft
Samādhi is the concept of mastery over one’s mind. This is the whole idea about taming the wild beast that our mind is. The horse that needs to be reined, so that it can be used to ride the path of liberation, of a complete life filled with eternal bliss. Discipline is inculcated by long hours of meditation, limited food intake, ignoring cravings and aversions, and existing in equanimity, not giving in to the whims of the mind.
Panyā is the tenet of wisdom, to realise our oneness with all reality, and its transience, to perceive reality for what it really is, and to do action with true and wholesome intent. It is not ‘What’ that matter, the action itself. What matters more is the ‘Why’, the intent behind it, the driving force.
Actions must not be driven by craving or aversion, but by love, compassion, servitude. Perception must be observant, non-judgmental, non-attached. One must aim to purify and liberate one’s own mind through the practice of Vipassana.
In the battlefield of reality, the body is the chariot, the mind is the horse.
The Self is the rider.
From my personal experience, without attempting to taint the pure, secular practice of Vipassana to a specific religion or community — it is truly the wisdom of the Gita put to practice. I have read a lot of versions, interpretations and translations of the Gita in the past, and understood it at an intellectual level. But through this practice I have experienced the Truth firsthand, made it my own.
