Vipassana and the power of nothing

What is an extrovert’s worst nightmare? Marooned on an island with nobody to talk to? Or stuck with plenty of people around and not being allowed to talk? The latter, most definitely.

When I told people that I wanted to try vipassana, they were sceptical. I was sceptical and scared too. Vipassana is a vow of silence that one undertakes as a free course for 10 to 30 days.

I am 36, and describe myself as a millennial with multiple interests. I write poetry, play the guitar, ride a bike, paint, and dabble in theatre. I can talk to strangers for hours.

Life was fine until my mother’s sudden death in 2017. She was the most happy-go-lucky and affectionate person I knew. Her death plunged my father into depression, and he wanted to close the family’s food business. Something told me we shouldn’t let it go. I quit my job at an e-commerce firm and took over the business.

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Life presents strange epiphanies, and mine came a few weeks after my mother’s funeral when my sister’s friend came home. Beena di was around 47. Her thoughts on grief and how to deal with it were practical and clear-headed. She was not always this calm. She was known to have a temper. Vipassana was the reason for Beena di’s transformation, my sister told me.

I knew a bit about vipassana. A senior leader from my previous job could not stop raving about it. I had read multiple blogs on the subject. I even knew the correct pronunciation — it’s not vipaaa-sana, but vi-pashh-ana (in Pali) or vi-pashyana (in Sanskrit).

Vipassana was on my bucket list but I always found excuses to avoid it — I can’t survive without talking to people; I can’t live without eating meat; I can’t switch my phone off; my business will suffer in my absence; how will I live without my cats? I tried guided meditation at home instead, but my mind started revolting in 15 minutes.

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Batman feared bats until he was thrown into a pit of bats and became Batman. My Batman moment came last July. I signed up for a 10-day
vipassana course at Dhamma Paphulla off Tumakuru Road in Bengaluru, 42 km from my home in Whitefield.

Two months prior to the course, I started preparing. I would switch off my phone or Internet for a few hours every day. I started delegating at work.

No eye contact

When D-Day came, I reached the centre at 2 pm. The sprawling campus looked like a jungle resort, lush with flowers in bloom, and peacocks and monkeys sauntering about. There were separate paths for students and teachers, dotted with signboards, requesting members to maintain silence.

At the registration counter, I met many first-timers. They were mostly between 30 and 45 years of age, and were here to take a break from their fast-paced lives. They had known bosses or colleagues who had tried vipassana. A few were old students — some were doing it a fifth time. I
spotted Beena di’s husband. Small world, I thought!

The course takes 70 to 80 people at a time. The centre sees more male participants than female, that’s why it had single rooms for men and twin-sharing for women, in separate blocks.

No symbolism

Vipassana appealed to me as it was not tied to any religion. The course did not allow any display of religious symbols. Though the practice follows Buddha’s eight-fold path, there were no statues or rituals awaiting us. Chanting is not allowed either.

We had just retired to our allotted rooms when a volunteer came and asked us to submit our valuables and communication devices. All contact with outside life was officially cut.

A tubelight, a fan, a cement slab to keep my belongings on, and another slab with a mattress on top... that was my room for the next 10 days. It was small and white but thankfully, airy.

At 4:30 pm, we gathered for an orientation session. We saw a video in which the late S N Goenka, the foremost teacher of vipassana in our times, explains what it is all about. A new technique was slotted each day, along with 10-plus hours of meditation, designed to push our mental endurance.

Next, the code of conduct was read out — no talking, no reading, no writing, no listening to music, no self-pleasure. Making eye contact was also forbidden because eyes can communicate, and distract. When a person walked past, we were asked to look down. Just when I thought I had heard the strangest instructions, they trumped it with ‘No dinner for 10 days’. The rest of the meals comprised idli, sambhar, ragi mudde, rasam and rice. The food was frugal but immensely satisfying, especially the rasam.

What happens if you flout the rules? Volunteer assistants, or dhamma sevaks/servers as they are called, keep an eye on you all the time and caution gently if you violate the restrictions.

The day ended with a brief meditation session. I was pleased with myself that I had not yawned even once. However, when bedtime came at 9 pm, I struggled. Without my phone, and not even a book at hand, I tossed and turned till I heard a loud gong. It was 4 am already. Time to wake up and assemble. Volunteers scrambled around to wake each other up. As we filed into the meditation room, I felt my heart pounding. Would I be able to do this?

Breathing lessons

To sit in one place, doing nothing as a mosquito buzzed in the ear was tough but soon I found some distraction in my thoughts. Are people out there missing me? Now they will know my value, won’t they? After the course, I should feast on biryani. Naseeruddin Shah is amazing. I should watch more of his plays. When will I start my cat shelter? How much money would that need? I will need a lot of people to run it...

WAIT! I am supposed to be observing my breath. “In tomorrow’s class, you will not fight to centre your mind, you will let it wander. Acknowledging that the mind has wandered, you will bring it back to your breath with a smile,” Goenkaji addressed us through the video.

The next day, I did not fight my monkey mind. I let it be. I yearned to read a book, check my phone, and browse Internet endlessly. The day ended with another discourse.

“How will I pass the days here?” I asked myself as I lay in bed that night. We were allowed to speak to ourselves in our room. It wasn’t uncommon to hear participants chant or sing in their bathrooms. One day, a spider crawling up the wall broke my chain of thought. In the outside world, I would not have bothered with it — its eight legs, its fangs, its hairy body. But here I was, calling out: “Hey cutie!” It scurried away the moment I tried to touch it.

Sensations watched

On Day 3, we moved from practising breathwork to observing sensations. We had to focus on our nose, imagine a triangle above it and observe any sensations inside. Focusing on a small area helped improve concentration.

Different students felt different sensations — bitter cold, excruciating pain, and itchiness. Some cried, some complained of diarrhoea, some experienced heat coming out of their pores. I felt pain. The practice cleanses the body of its toxins, and there are many ways in which toxins are released, our teacher told us. Assistants helped in fine-tuning our technique, but they refrained from counselling.

On Day 4, we narrowed down our observations to the area just under our nostrils. A piercing headache prevented me from meditating. A teacher pointed out that I was trying to use my eyes physically to peer down and imagine the triangle when all I had to do was to imagine it in my ‘mind’s eye’. A round of guided meditation helped to control the constant fidgeting and muscle twitching. It felt like a small win.

I also found the answer to a question that had haunted me for a long time: ‘How do people keep their minds busy while meditating for 10 days? It’s a bit like an extreme sport, like running a 42 km marathon.’ Honestly, no thoughts ran through my mind when my focus was on body sensations. These sensations are fleeting, so don’t react, pause and let them pass — our teacher drove the larger goal of vipassana home.

Seven dropouts

Soon, Adhitthana meditation began to feel like a cakewalk. It involved sitting cross-legged with eyes closed for an hour. It was a rude shock when I realised that not everyone felt the same. By Day 4, seven students had quit. While I felt a sense of achievement at having made it this far, seeing others leaving was demoralising. Dropping out is routine, our teacher said in his discourse that evening and added: “If you are still here, you are doing well.”

On Day 6, we were taken to a pagoda (a tiered tower) and asked to meditate inside tiny cells. I am claustrophobic but when I got into the cell, strangely, time flew. Nothing bothered me — no regrets about the past, no anxieties about the future, no headache, no craving for mutton biryani. Was I getting into the vipassana groove?

Whenever I was gripped by a head-ache from lack of sleep, I was told to simply lie down and be aware of the sensations in my body. Voila! I would doze off in 30 seconds. With no TV to watch and nobody to talk to, eating became a mindful sensorial experience. Earlier, I could only tell textural differences in the vegetables, but now, I could tell the taste of capsicum, squash and carrot from one another.

Our noble silence officially ended on Day 10 but we were hesitant to speak. We double-checked, actually several times, if we were allowed to talk. Some couples were reuniting after 10 days. ‘How was your experience?’ Beena di’s husband was the first person to ask me. Then, one by one, I spoke to all the 45 men in my residential block.

Day 11: It was time to leave. Many of us decided to carpool to the city. I backed out at the last minute. I felt lost. I was not sure where I wanted to go. I donated
Rs 10,000 to the centre as I hung around. But in the end, I drove home in my car.

The thought of coming back to civilisation — to work, to crowds and to endless pings on the phone had me anxious initially. But the transition felt seamless. The distractions were back but I felt calmer, more focused, and may I say, more equipped to not let
them overwhelm me.

Today I practise vipassana for an hour every morning. I go to the factory with my father. I don’t give in to impulses or fits of anger. I try to stay in the moment and face my fears, even if it means being stuck in a lift. I consciously leave my phone behind. I thought I would want to gorge on biryani but I didn’t crave meat for almost a month.

Takeaways

Chances are we all have been told to respond, and not to react. But what is wrong with reacting? If you are feeling itchy, why can’t you just scratch and get done with it?

This is the vipassana take: Our subconscious mind reacts to a situation, good or bad, before we respond to it consciously. Our senses inform the subconscious by producing sensations in the body. So we are not responding to a situation but reacting to the sensations. With vipassana, the subconscious becomes a trained monkey — it doesn’t react to the sensations. It just stays a witness to the sensations.

Since my vipassana debut, I have discovered a world I didn’t know existed. At cafes, at business meetings, in parks, and among cat parents, I have discovered a legion of youngsters who have travelled long distances to learn vipassana. Some are in the process of accumulating leaves to take it up.

Many of us who did the course together have formed a WhatsApp group. We catch up for weekly sessions. College friends enquire about vipassana — some have sent Word Doc questionnaires. A few are already inclined to yoga and spirituality and want to take things up a notch. Their quest is to slow down and find focus.

What is vipassana?

It is a form of mental training through self-observation. It means ‘to see things as they really are’. An ancient Indian technique of meditation, Gautama Buddha is believed to have rediscovered it and propagated it as a non-sectarian remedy for universal ills. Dhamma organisation offers the course for free and all expenses are met by donations from participants who want to pay it forward. There are 177 vipassana centres in
India, and 238 globally.

What’s the appeal?

This too shall pass. Respond, don’t react. Face the situation. Restaurateur Nidhi Nahata had read self-help books and attended therapy workshops to embrace words of wisdom such as these but it wasn’t till she learnt the technique of vipassana that she was able to execute them in her life.

“I just began observing my breath as it is,” she explains how she started embracing sadness, anger, hate, vengeance, jealousy, stress, isolation, rejection, guilt, shame, loneliness, boredom and other unexpected emotions instead of just clinging to positive vibes.

Speaking anonymously, an investor says vipassana hasn’t made him “non-reactionary or a vegetable” but the incidence of unpleasant reactions has come down. “To meditate and feel the sensations in your body go from a state of bliss to pain and everything in between and knowing that you have no control over these sensations makes you mentally strong and helps you cope with the miseries of life. We feel miserable when we don’t get what we crave or when we can’t get rid of what we don’t want (like illness),” he explains.

It was amid the silence of the 10-day course when artist Suresh Kumar G found his calling — farming. “Non-commercial. Non-religious. No distractions. You can do it anywhere, anyhow as long as you focus on breath,” he says, explaining why he likes the practice.

Nidhi hosts shorter vipassana sessions at her plant-based cafe in Bengaluru. She says 45% of the participants at her centre are under 35, and 35% in the 35-55 age group, and IT professionals form a majority.

(As told to Shakti Swaminathan)