My 10 days of Vipassana: A silver bullet with (a silencer) to put you out of your misery..

So says, late Mr. S. K. Goenka, who brought this meditation technique to India from then Burma when he landed here in 1969. And what are the underlying assumptions behind this confidence? Just another Dharmguru spieling his wares smoothly or is there some substance to it? Let’s examine the underlying assumptions behind the same. According to Goenka, the root of Vipassana lies in Buddha’s basic premise that the world is full of misery and the cause of our misery is our unquenchable desires and cravings. And the only way out of this misery is to remain unattached with the world around us. So far so good. We had all read this in our classrooms. He then goes on to explain that intuitively or through hearing various sages before and after Buddha, or through readingreams of pages, we have all come to the same conclusion. However, he then outlines Buddha’s third source of knowledge bhavna maya pann or ‘experiential knowledge’, which he privileges over other forms of knowledge. And here comes Vipassana. Vipassana is the experiential way of training your mind to experience not just this truth about the impermanence of all the things around us, but also training ourselves to remain merely ‘an observer’, ‘a seer’, which allows you not only to be aware of this fundamental truth but internalise the same and by observing them as a ‘third party’ as it were, to be in a state of nirvana, so to speak. And our body becomes the reference point of the same. Not only that, according to Buddha, the Enlightened one, there is no organised concept of either past or future. Human beings live and shift from moment to moment and by being aware of that world in the moment, we also become the observer of the state of play.

So now, this is the interesting twist in the tale. While the predominant view about the Buddhist philosophy is that while it may talk of individual nirvana, it was only by working in relation to the external world, being true to the role of a sadgrihasth or a monk, performing a social role that you live a ‘good life’, to be able to achieve your salvation. And here Mr. Goenka, shifts the narrative completely to individual salvation, even when he continues to qualify them during his recorded daily dose of one and a half-hour long discourses by emphasising the social connect of five sheelas (for the householders), almost giving it a colour of the Protestant ethic, which could be presented to the entire world in a repackaged format. Many other contemporary versions of Buddhism (including Soka Gakkai, which relies on chanting a single line), have managed to do it successfully in an increasingly changing world, which is trying to come to terms with finance capitalism and increasing mental anxieties together.

However, the intent of telling this tale was not so much to go into the intricacies of underlying philosophical assumptions behind this very intense and physical act, which one undergoes over ten days, but to actually tell more of a holistic story about what you undergo, when you undergo this exercise of meditation, when you are cut off from the world, with your mobile seized (along with books, any reading, writing material or any other technological gizmo) and locked inside a trunk on the very first day of your arrival, told severely to not just keep a complete arya maun (noble silence) for the next ten odd days, (barring speaking to your assistant teacher in a low voice during a designated period to clear your doubts), but also to keep your eyes lowered, the reminder of which is plastered all around on the walls of your living quarters or pasted on small placards in the wild patches all over. So what happened during those ten days with me? Here it goes. First of all, the impressions of the ever wanderingmind begin to come in patches, not as a lucid linear memory tale along the timeline. And one undergoes several conflicting emotions even when your time is either spent sitting on the floor for about 12 hours daily, or catching up on the lost sleep or running between your shared bathrooms, loos, dining hall. So the below impressions are also captured in the same patchy style. One would certainly beg the reader’s indulgence if only one was not so nirvikaar from all this by now.

Here are some sketchy impressions of the first few days:

1st Day: you remember your son very fondly, miss him, his unadulterated ‘LOLs’ and jokes, mostly at your own expense.

2nd Day: things begin to unravel so quickly that you begin to miss your partner, all her evil side begins to convert into great virtues. You think of all the sacrifices she has made for youand you make a promise to yourself to correct things once you are back.

3rd day: you have decided to run away after toying with the idea for the past three days. You think of various scenarios: what if you slipped out unnoticed in the evening? What if you defiantly walked out on them? Would they have the courage to stop you, even when they said on the first evening that no one will be allowed to leave? Things certainly don't get better with you realising that the ‘old man’ anticipating these very train of thoughts has been making fun of you in his evening discourses, recorded thirty years ago. Finally you want to take the final step and at that moment you realise, just like the olden days when the demon used to hide his ‘soul’ into a parrot and hide it in a different place, your mobile has been tucked away separately inside a locked trunk. You finally resign to your fate.

4th day: so far you have spent the first half of the day finishing all your half-written stories inside your mind, or even half-imagined ones, giving them distinct shape, aural, visual, character etc. And then comes the second half and the story takes a turn towards a roller coaster drive guided through the recorded voice of Goenka ji through the clouds.

The location of the centre was on the outskirts of the town, in the midst of fields with swaying crops of maize and rice, at the centre of which stood a beautiful, large meditation hall built in Burmese pagoda style (a combination of a tower in eastern pagoda style and old Sanchi stupa at the top), with separate residential quarters for the male and female trainers as well as participants. The daily routine began at 4 a.m. in the morning and went on till 9:30 p.m. with two hours, three hours, five hours and three hours (the last one including a long discourse in both Hindi and English recordings of Mr. Goenka) meditation sessions guided through Geonka’s voice, each session ending with his self-constructed prayers (the most awaited thing over those ten days), with the assistant teacher (male) primarily working as the DJ, manipulating light and sound for most of the time.

A glimpse into the residential quarters: while the residential quarters consisted of twin sharing rooms built in rows facing each other just like the army barracks, I was lucky enough to get a single room only to realise later, at the cost of an attached bathroom, which was available to those who were sharing the rooms. This meant getting up at 4 a.m. with the first morning bell, running towards the common latrines and bathrooms only to find them already occupied, waiting for your turn to get over with things, wash, brush, shave and being two minutes before 4.30 a.m. call inside the meditation hall. Post-breakfast, which happened at 6.30 a.m. you were busy catching up on your incomplete sleep after completing your other chores (in case you hadn’t achieved that during the 4-4:30 a.m. slot) and then there was a lunch break from 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. The evening break came at 5 p.m. for a light snack and a brief walk in the designated area trying to avoid each others’ eyes and feet, for it was also written sternly all around, ‘please walk alone’.

A sneak look around the residential quarters would have told you a few more things about not just the centre but of India today as well. For example, you could safely conclude that we may not be master manufacturers of the computer chip, but India still makes as many varieties of male underwear of various shapes and sizes and colours, that couldn't be beaten by China for the next few decades. It was soothing to see any time of day, dozens of underwear of all hues flying like country flags at the UNO headquarters, each representing a different nationality, all living in peaceful coexistence.  

A surprising thing to immediately notice was the predominance of young ones among the meditating crowd. Out of the 50 plus participants, about 40 were between 20-30 years of age, some of them even younger. The same was true for the women (out of about 12 women, the majority were young). Many of the participants were repeaters (almost in a sado-masochistic fashion), one of them doing this for the ninth time. The entire management was run by volunteers (again mostly young), even as most of them came from the neighbouring Deoria, Basti, Gorakhpur, or a couple of them from Bhagalpur, Buxar etc, mostly from the rural, rur-ban backgrounds. Just a couple of them, barring me, came from far off, one from as far as Berlin, who actually stayed back to give his services for the next batch. One thing was clear, the quest for mental peace is not the preserve of the overfed, under exercised, urban, metropolitan middle classes anymore, but for the lower middle classes from the small towns and rural backgrounds as well, even as many of them are either studying subjects like agriculture, veterinary sciences or preparing for ‘competitions’. Vipassana seems to have become one major source of processing their anxieties into an ostensibly productive outlook.

But even among them, there were different types. One gentleman, evidently a retired sarkari afsar given his penchant for safari suits, had brought his butler along a la Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, who on the first day during the introduction session was doing all the running around. They must have been given some personal counselling soon after, as from the very next day that great chemistry between the two was missing. The two were not only separated by quite a few yards between their rooms, but the afsar sahib was soon seen hanging his own under clothes for drying. Another senior citizen, very clearly coming from the countryside, given his chaste Bhojpuri (which we came to hear on the last day) and attire looked like a poor version of Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was seated next to me during the meditation sessions. With only one functional eye, he would go to sleep instantly, hands folded inside his lap and knees up in the air. He would wake up only when the bell rang, be itr after an hour or after 5 hours. Among the young ones, a 20 something chap got desperate enough on the evening of the fifth day to come and sit next to me outside, during a brief break. Upon my encouraging smile, he whispered something to me, which I couldn’t understand clearly due to another conference going on among the four dogs in the vicinity. After 3 failed attempts, he fell silent and looked miserable. We waited for the dogs to get over with their discussions, as we could neither shout at them or even throw a stone at them (having undertaken the vow of 5 sheelas for the duration of the course which prohibited us from either hurting or speaking rudely to anyone). One of them seemed very agitated while the other three were trying to calm him down. Eventually, looking at our discomfort they decided to shift the place of shastrath and when things finally became quiet enough, the boy this time finally asked in a choked voice, ‘mobile kab milega?’ Upon my answer (this time the miserable whisper was mine), that it was to be after another five days, his face fell. Feeling guilty, I tried to reassure him that we had just another five days to go. Evidently that wasn’t sufficient enough inspiration for others as that very day, two other gentlemen were gone.

This instruction to keep ‘noble silence’ was literally etched on the walls all around, nazar neechi rakhein, was another popular instruction for the rule makers. I was reminded of an Utpal Dutt movie, where he keeps telling a character: ‘munhband’ (mouth shut). Here it was: ‘eyes down’! One side effect of this phenomenon was that instead of connecting people’s faces with their names, you began to connect them with their sandal brands, or mostly chappals. ‘Here goes Mr. Sparx, once again flying away in the opposite direction to the Dhamma Hall (meditation hall). And here comes, the Crocker Spaniel strutting as the greatest meditator of all time’ (which he was, given his erect posture for 12 hours daily, without flinching).

Living in these conditions, rekindled the memories of my hostel days of school and university, especially because of two factors. One, the presence of bell in everything, beaten loudest by one overzealous Fascisti swayam sevak (who kept a hawk eye on your conduct 24*7), and second, because of shared bathrooms and toilets and of course the mess/dining hall. But unlike the previous hostels, there was water in the flush (phew!) and no one eyed each other’s plates comparing his chicken leg piece size, as there was no chicken to be had in the first place and food was plentiful.

It was the mad scramble at 4 a.m. every morning  forbathrooms and toilets that sent a frisson of a different kind. The very first day rush resulted in me capturing a bathroom only to find the bucket and mug missing. Obviously, I had to put my head directly under the tap and finish with the ceremonies. I wised up soon and chose the next slot right after breakfast to finish the unfinished business of the mornings.  Even when this routine kept you on tenterhooks all the time, it simply meant that you had to sit for meditation for 2 hours, then 3 hours, then 5 and then 3 hours respectively. Of these, there were three specific hours when you were required not to shift position or open your hands. As a result, on the very third day, after a lot of thinking, I approached the senior acharya and explained to him that I had a chronic case of cervical spondylitis. Even before I could finish the sentence, cutting me mid-way acharya ji responded calmly saying, ‘you see, mind always attacks the weakest link. Now it is upto you to decide’. I came back resigned to my fate. But he was right, at least in this respect. Within two days of persistence, my backache was largely gone, so much so that I could actually sit through those 12 hours each day.

Food: This needs an entirely separate chapter. An experienced friend who had been through this journey earlier had told me, if nothing you will at least come back several kilos lighter. While I went ahead with this happy thought, I completely forgot that he was the type of Bengali, who doesn't understand any food outside the world of non-vegetarian things. Imagine, early in the morning at 6:30 a.m., having to choose from pasta/poha/idli/noodle for your main dish  along with other things like porridge, roasted grams, fruit, milk and tea (besides hot kaadha), even when you are still making sense of the world bleary eyed. Within four hours of the same at 11 a.m. you had to eat lunch which consisted of two kinds of veggies (never to be repeated over ten days’ time), dal or kadhi, salad, a sweet dish, rice and chapatis bathed liberally with ghee. Now imagine the situation of this daily  fluxbetween two extreme situations, between sitting over for meditation for twelve hours and then also gorging over this amazing food made typically in north Indian style, which I had not eaten since the days of my childhood. It was clearly a consciously designed ploy to test the resilience of the meditator to train one’s mind against any kind of craving or desire, for the craving leads to misery and that is what Buddha said and that is what we were trying to win over. The situation became so bad, so quickly that one day with a generous helping of one ladle of halwa, which clearly looked to be melting under the weight of ghee, it became nearly impossible to sit straight for 12 hours with that halwa sitting inside me unmoving. Naturally, I had to let go of the wonderful varieties of things on offer for the lunch that day, with great remorse. In all of this naturally, the usage of ghee was so generous which no butter could have clarified. I had to keep changing my diet plan on a daily basis- ‘No rice from today. Okay only two chapatis today. Okay just one. Okay, pulav is looking rather yum, so I will skip evening snacks today’ etc. Clearly, a significant part of my meditation hours were spent ruminating over such calculations, simply because I didn't want to go back with an even more bulging belly. The other side effect of the same was that the gorgeous meditation hall was all the time reverberating with different kinds of burps, loud and weak. This became my other distraction. Burps and their different types (about which Goenka ji referred in one of his discourses). While someone generated three loud burps in a row sitting right ahead of me on a regular basis, another gentleman continued to emanate on such a regular basis that it soon sounded like a Tanpura accompanist in a classical music concert.

I soon knew this demanded an aesthetic intervention. So one day, during the afternoon, when the hall was once again agog with burps and occasional sounds of snoring and coughs, I decided to act. Very quietly, I put my fingers together and clicked one of them. During the momentary silence it sounded like a missile passing. There was a full 30 second silence and then someone very weakly clicked his fingers. Even before that was over, a much louder clicking of fingers was heard from another corner. Soon, this group was giving  stiffcompetition to other hitherto dominant varieties of sounds. I smiled to myself and patted my back through closed eyes: ‘Boss, within this sect of Vipassana Margis, you have opened a new sub-sect of finger clickers’.    

All of this may be true, but each of these changing dimensions of a first timer were anticipated by the late, clever guru, who would actually mention the antics of the wandering minds in his evening discourses and no wonder, he had organised the sessions like this. Even with all these adventures or rather the lack of it, one gradually realised how the initial 10 out of 12 hours of wanderings were gradually reduced to 8 and then 6 and then 4 etc. One also realised how this resulted in actually becoming aware of not just your breathing pattern but all kinds of sensations happening around and on your body and how you were taken through a journey which proved to be extraordinary to say the least. While this piece is not intended to go into that detail, one can simply say that the journey of those ten days actually took you from a state of gradual self-awareness to samadhi and to then training yourself to be present in the moment, to use a much abused term by the current generation. And while I chose to sit through his English discourses (as they were shorter by 15 minutes and also designed to humour the English speaking audience) wondering why did all the gurus think that speaking to an English speaking audience demanded a display of humour Gandhi style, I also realised where it was taking me. To a journey not just within my own body as a site of action, but to a journey which I wanted to come back to again and again. While people continue to ask me, whether it was worth it and I continue to boast that I actually lost two and half kilos (all due to my efforts and not the training), a smaller voice continues to tell me from inside, even those lost kilos came from a changed state of mind and a laboratory like experiment, which may not be possible to continue in the real world, but one would like to continue coming back to this again and again, just to experience that ethereal feeling that one discovered on the 4th day afternoon. So thank you Guru Goenka!