My Tryst With Silence During Vipassana
Deafening noise. That’s what I heard when I first set out to practice silence. There was nowhere I could escape to. The din was in my head.
Practicing silence can indeed get maddeningly noisy initially. It tears apart and rips all that you are not, to shreds; it tosses you around in the darkness, mocks at who you think you are by showing you all the stories you have told yourself, about yourself.
It’s what I went through when I attended the 10-day residential Vipassana meditation course as taught by the late S.N. Goenka at Dhamma Paphulla.
A write-up, no matter how long, cannot do justice to an intense and immersive experience like Vipassana. I can offer you a glimpse (and that’s barely skimming the surface) of what I experienced during the 10 days when I practised Vipassana for the first time.
I’ll be taking you through:
- Vipassana- Awareness & Compassionate Acceptance (A Very Short Introduction)
- Crossing The Body Barrier
- Into the Rabbit Hole
- The Unpeeling
- The Raucous, Mad Tea-Party
- From Madness to Awareness
- The Sound of Silence
- It’s All About the Journey
My decision to attend the 10-day Vipassana meditation programme was instantaneous when my Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer, Fr. Richard McHugh, one day, while explaining a technique to me suddenly with a piercing look, in his deep booming voice said, “Go for Vipassana. You’ll experience yourself in a way you never have before, and I sense it’s what you’re after — knowing yourself.” Something about his ‘command’ felt different. It felt like a command from within.
“Yes,” I replied more to myself than to him, for intrigued, and awed, I sensed there was something precious to be discovered here. That evening I booked my dates online for the residential Vipassana meditation program.
After the NLP training ended, I packed my bags and left for the Vipassana centre.
I felt oddly excited like someone about to embark on a treasure hunt. Little did I know of the raging storm and the various faces of fear I would be encountering before reaching anywhere near the treasure!
Vipassana- Awareness & Compassionate Acceptance
The 10 days of the residential, deeply immersive Vipassana program requires that we:
- Cut off all communication whatsoever with the outside world. For that, we had to hand over our gadgets (phones, tablets) for safekeeping at the cloakroom in the admin office.
- Observe complete silence during the 10 days even while being with our roommates in the living quarters, except during the one-hour question and answer session with the teacher every day.
- Abstain from: drinking alcohol or smoking, having sex (genders are anyways segregated and allotted completely separate areas to reside), eating post 17:00 hours, stealing, lying, killing any form of life (well, the mosquitos were a challenge for me!), and wearing revealing outfits.
The wake-up gong would sound at 4:00 a.m. every morning, and after freshening up, everyone would assemble at the meditation hall by 4:30 a.m. to start meditating.
On the first morning, we were told that the program would not be easy but is not impossible either.
And that the keys to remain steadfast during the journey are:
- to be aware of the sensations in the body that come up
- to allow compassionately whatever feelings, emotions, and memories attached to the sensations to come up
- as observers observe with equanimity, without reacting no matter what comes up
I will not dwell here on what the technique entails, or the philosophy behind the method as these have been covered beautifully by Troy Erstling (What I Wish I Knew Before Vipassana) and Steve Schlafman (10 Days of Silence for a Lifetime of Wisdom).
Rather, I’ll dive straight into what Vipassana did for me.
Crossing The Body Barrier
The first two days my body was acting as a barrier for my mind by continually protesting.
Be it the sudden unbearable itches that would start from my nose and spread to that difficult spot behind the knee, or the pains that were threatening to disable my body due to the long hours of sitting in the lotus position, and then, of course, the master of all distractions, sleep.
Through it all, my mind fought valiantly (while cussing me throughout of course) with every ounce of willpower to keep my hands from lashing out and scratching the agonizing itches, or to stop my legs from stretching out with a kick and taking the person sitting in front by surprise.
It, however, faltered when sleep threatened to overpower me. As yawns of epic proportions escaped my mouth, I struggled to stay awake with my eyes shut.
And so I yawned, sighed, shuffled, inwardly seethed, got tired, and gave up, and shuffled, seethed, got tired, and gave up, and shuffled, seethed, got tired, and …
After the second day of struggling by nightfall, I stumbled out from the meditation hall like someone who lost her mental bearings in a battlefield. I was frustrated. A part of my mind questioned the sanity of my decision to attend Vipassana and screamed to go back.
Another part faintly asked, “What if I continue? What happens then?” After a few seconds, it repeated. And again. Louder this time.
It was a rule to not speak with your roommate once you were back in the living quarters. Well, I had no strength left to speak. And my exhausted mind soon gave in to sleep but not before it became ‘curiouser’.
Into the Rabbit Hole
The third-day early morning at 4:00 a.m., curiosity won.
I went and sat in the hall determined to break through.
After some time I suddenly realized I could observe the itch without the need to scratch. I could watch the pain undisturbed because the first two days of practice showed me this too shall pass. It did.
The bodily protests did not matter anymore.
Now memories came visiting one after the other with emotions and sensations tagging along. I felt myself smile at some memories, as tears rolled down at others. Gradually, the emotions threatened to overwhelm me. And just when I felt I couldn’t take the barrage of memories and emotions anymore…“Let it happen…let it all come up…just observe…don't hold on…everything passes, nothing remains constant.”, the instructor’s gentle voice cut through softly.
Deep longings emerged accompanied by fears, interspersed with sudden bouts of immense sorrow and sometimes joy. One after the other the memories kept popping up like bubbles in a glass of soda, some leaving behind lingering sensations in my body in their aftermath. And those too passed… as insights flashed.
The third day’s meditation in a way brought me some peace since I realized I was able to ‘dive within.’
The Unpeeling
On the fourth day, I sat down in the lotus position expecting to ‘go within’ quickly now.
Instead, disturbing thoughts crossed my mind. I reminded myself of the additional instructions given for the fourth day’s meditation and told myself ‘be still, be aware, and observe.’ It did not help.
I had entered into chaos. Or was I always there, unaware?
My mind, highly agitated now, became immensely active and more furiously than ever questioned the whole process of Vipassana. “Why am I not able to be like yesterday?!” it fumed. “This is not good enough! Yesterday was good!” it screamed. “You call this silence? You call this meditation?” it jeered.
I became restless.
The entire day passed with me fighting the mind, and I felt lost since to my mind the whole day had gone waste because it “wasn’t like yesterday.”
In the evening a video of the series of discourses on the Vipassana technique given by S.N. Goenka was played. In it, he explained how attachment to feelings, sensations, and expectations can disturb the mind.
The penny dropped.
Sometimes, I may feel good while meditating, sometimes I may not. The key is to not hold on to the ‘feeling good or bad,’ which is when attachment forms.
Meditation is not an attachment to a specific state. It cannot be defined to be a particular state, that too of the mind.
It is being. That’s it.
And so, the next day I sat without expectations. My immediate awareness was that the mind had stopped arguing. I was open and allowing.
Now the chaos took over.
First loneliness appeared as I saw everything that I once held dear, walk out on me — the labels I labelled myself with, my assumptions of who I thought I was, other’s assumptions of who they thought I was…layers were falling away.
The silence took away everything from me, till I felt I have nothing and I am nothing.
I did not know who I was or what I was. I did not recognize myself anymore. What I considered to be my ‘reality’ became questionable.
For the first time I saw how often for this ‘reality’, I prostituted my own soul to earn that living that I did not believe in, form relationships because society dictated it has to be so within a specific time frame, compromised my integrity so that I may be accepted by the crowd I sought to follow…
Oh yes, it all did bother me in the beginning. There were nudges from the still small voice within, each time I went against my heart, but I had brushed them aside, albeit guiltily. I chose to follow the crowd.
Now, when I finally decided to observe, become aware of and listen to the silence, I heard loud, raucous voices clamouring, simultaneously, for my attention…What I truly wanted or perhaps even the answer to ‘Who Am I?’ lay buried underneath them.
The Raucous, Mad Tea-Party
The clamouring continued throughout the sixth and seventh days along with images running riot across the screen of my mind.
The voices were those that I had first allowed into the seat of my soul, to keep me company, because, I felt I would be alone.
And I feared loneliness.
For in loneliness one cannot be sure one exists.
Thanks to the fear I forgot that I cannot have company in my soul. I cannot have other people present their voices in my soul.
As the voices entered, the boundaries between them and my soul blurred and vanished. The voices became the masters and drowned my soul with their fears, threats, and judgements. They began to guide (or misguide?) my life. Now, this sudden practice of silence, awareness, and meditation was terrifying them. I could sense their fear that if I listen to the silence, they will be silenced. And so in a panic, they were screaming, injecting me with fears, threatening me, so that I continue with my unaware, mechanical, comfort-zone existence.
The voices were afraid that they may cease to exist and so will the ego.
For, identities cease to exist in spiritual silence.
I let the images run and the voices clamour, simply observing all the while. I did not succumb to the whims of my mind to follow any single image/voice trail like a dog that uncontrollably and excitedly follows a trail of scent.
From Madness to Awareness
As I steadfastly allowed myself to honour what was arising at the moment and experience all the unresolved feelings the voices were bringing up, to the fullest — worthlessness, pain, vulnerability, weakness, frustration, terror, anger, loneliness, helplessness — it suddenly dawned on me, that it was I who was judging the voices all this while.
In fact, I was so busy judging them, that I never understood them.
It was I, all along, who crafted the stories, believed the stories to be true and then projected those stories onto them — the voices… the ‘others’.
This awareness opened the door to compassion. I saw myself and ‘the others’ in a compassionate light.
I let the light shine.
Day eight was over.
The Sound of Silence
On the ninth day, the voices were calmer and the feelings much less intense as they came and went. They simply arose, peaked, and vanished.
The surge of compassion and acceptance continued till the voices finally melted away just as shadows disappear when the light shines.
Only a piercing stillness and silence remained. And the very potent awareness of my presence in that all-enveloping silence.
The peace is indescribable. I was finally home.
Not for long though and the ninth day was over.
It’s All About the Journey
On the tenth day as I sat down for meditation, my body easily got into the flow, but my mind was a bit disturbed. And my heart, a little heavy.
“I like the peace here,” my mind whispered. I observed.
“I don’t want to leave,” it persisted. I observed.
“Will I disappear into the ‘reality’ of everyday life again…get caught up and forget it all?”, it whispered.
I observed and felt a little uneasy now.
A voice popped up like a bubble in a glass of soda again. I recognized it immediately.
“Don’t get attached,” it whispered.
It was S.N. Goenka’s.
I observed and let my tears flow in peace.
Another voice chimed in. My mother’s.
“Before enlightenment chop wood, after enlightenment chop wood,” she said showing an image of a younger me sitting next to her as she narrated a story ending with that sentence.
“It’s not enlightenment yet,” my ever-active mind quipped.
“Before awareness chop wood, after awareness chop wood is more like it.” the mind corrected or thought it did.
I gave a meditative sigh.
Well, Buddha was never a destination, but a journey…
