Note: This has been incomplete and I don’t think I can complete and describe as the experience feels long time ago now - Nish from [[January 1st, 2025]]
[August 3, 2024. Thinking about the Vipassana Retreat I did from July 17, 2024, to July 28th, 2024. It was transformative.]
“Transformative”. Yes, that’s what I reply to whenever someone asks me “How was it?”.
I have never felt such a strong transformative system I went through for 10, to 11 days. When I came out of the Vipassana retreat on the 11th day and back to interacting with the outside world, I found something very calm about myself and the level of awareness in my body started to get short-circuited. Sitting for 11 hours a day meditating, you are forced to face all your insides and outsides to the level you can’t imagine it’d lead to. I surely have felt that the intense 10 days of the retreat fundamentally transformed how I see myself, how I feel myself, how I observe my reaction, and how I see and observe the outside world. I do feel that I am a bit calmer than the pre-Vipassana Nish and that I am starting to be more in-align-not-affected to all these thoughts coming in and out; and that I am more aware of my environment and my body. I didn’t know I was physically capable of feeling so much sensation in my body; spots that felt untouched and blind on my body have started to surface giving me some sensations. Other times, I feel I have now somewhat gained the ability to fix my migraine (more on that later), feel more awareness on my arms and legs and just staring at the abyss feels like staring back into my body.
Prelude (Day 0)
There I was in Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah where my cousin’s (sister’s) husband would drop me at the Intermountain Vipassana Center, Idaho Falls on July 17, 2024, around 5:30 pm. I was excited to face the retreat but never had expectations. I didn’t expect much except I knew it was going to be tough facing my inner world. I knew my mind would wander a lot, that a lot of transient thoughts would come, rise, and go (later on, I’d come to know about feeling these at the physical body level, how my physical body would react to all the things I, “I” as in Nish would react to the world and the sensation and start to become more equanimous to these sensations). On day 0 (July 17), after saying goodbye to my brother-in-law and his mom, and also talking for a bit to The Octopus Lady and saying goodbye to her and asking her to take care of herself (I know how much tendency she has to get into spirals, especially on Friday night, and that’s why I had one email scheduled to her to be sent on Friday that week and it went well : ) ), and switching off my phone and putting on the locker, I was off the grid. The environment was eerie at that time, with the wind blowing outside the center, different kinds of interesting people talking, some lying aloof feeling something, some getting anxious and such. For some reason, I was a bit calm, and excited but didn’t have expectations. One of the students (say A) said I looked a bit calm and I surely felt that way.
Once we had dinner around 6ish pm, and had an introductory lecture session on the logistics (we were handed a paper with a daily schedule for meditation, group sitting, breaks, breakfast, lunch, etc.). The session was full of sound and until later that evening I didn’t know Vipassana would mean following 5 rules, out of which was “Noble Silence” which meant no one was allowed to talk with anyone, not interact with anyone and not even eye contact; the purpose of this I realized later on Day 3 when I started to feel everything in my head and realized that Noble Silence helps in not being affected by external interaction (the world) and that way you’d be observing just yourself without any hindrance.
After the session, we headed back to our living quarters. I got a decent quarter, window-side room, sharing meditator (K). It’s funny how we only had literally 10 minutes or so to figure out our washroom schedule (who goes first in the morning, etc.), and then Noble Silence was enforced. The first group sitting that night felt very very very jittery in my mind.
Day 1
On day 1, it was very difficult to wake up at 4 am and do the meditation from 4:30 to 6:30 am. For some reason, the anxiety attack woke me up that morning early and I was on time in the hall where we got instruction for this meditation technique called “Anapana”. Anapana is focusing your entire attention on your breath and just focusing on your nostrils as air comes in and out of your nose. Later in the course (before day 4), you’d start experiencing some sensation in that region, between the upper lip and below the nostril or inside the nostril. Anapana sets everything about your awareness in motion, to make your mind sharper to focus on a specific region of your body (starting with the nostril region). Later, after Day 3, from Day 4, actual Vipassana meditation starts where you are required to focus your awareness fully on your body, scanning from the top of your head to the feet. The purpose of Anapana is to establish your awareness of your breath, making you more aware of your present.
… …
Day 3+
After day 3, the real Vipassana starts where you are guided to put your whole attention to scan your whole body for any sensation that can arise…
Since, for straight 3 days you are used to focusing your entire attention near your nostril, Anapana really helps to sharpen you mind’s focus while scanning.
There are so many moments I felt I was in a flow-state; the sensation I felt all over my body made me feel like I am free-falling in air.
Schedule
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 4:00 AM | Wake-up bell |
| 4:30 AM - 6:30 AM | Meditation in the hall or in your room |
| 6:30 AM - 8:00 AM | Breakfast and break |
| 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM | Group meditation in the hall |
| 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Meditation in the hall or in your room |
| 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Lunch break |
| 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Rest and interviews with the teacher (as needed) |
| 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM | Meditation in the hall or in your room |
| 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM | Group meditation in the hall |
| 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Meditation in the hall or in your room |
| 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM | Tea break |
| 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM | Group meditation in the hall |
| 7:00 PM - 8:15 PM | Teacher’s discourse in the hall |
| 8:15 PM - 9:00 PM | Group meditation in the hall |
| 9:00 PM - 9:30 PM | Question time with the teacher |
| 9:30 PM | Rest |
| 10:00 PM | Lights out |
Hindsight (Nish from January 5th, 2025)
Looking at this schedule, I can definitely see how it has transformed my understanding of myself, the way I feel and sense my own body and sensations and how much calmer my mind has become comparatively.
During Vipassana, 6th or 7th day was very difficult for me, because I literally sensed my Sinuses moving from one nostril to another, could feel the pulsation of my skull, and more importantly I realized and sensed how tensed up my whole mouth and jaw and skull has been because of stress accumulated through my life and Vipassana helped me just get relief of that and ultimately my migraine has more or less vanished from my life. Of course, the goal is to not expect or have these in mind. For me, it helped me gain so much in lfe.
The difficult part might have arisen from having Noble Silence where you are not allowed to talk and speak for 10 days and it probably loosened my jaw muscles. And since I had my wisdowm teeth removed many months before, there was less musclular tension to hold my jaw muscle together. This caused so much difficulty in sleeping where my jaw used to slide sideway when I am sleeping sideway. But hey, I made it out and realized that my migraine is partially gone.
I try at least doing 30 to 40 minutes of sit per day these days. Although the sensations aren’t pronounced like it used to be (temporal attenuation?), but I can still feel some bits here and there, sometimes achieving the flow state where I partially disintegrate (Bhanga).
Anicca! Anicca! Anicca!
Glossary
- Anicca: Impermanence
- mettā: A buddhist concept of love and kindness
- Saṅkhāra: (let me try to explain this briefly) mental formations or volitional formations, often referreing to the conditioned processes or mental activities that form habits, mental models, intentions and responses
- Bhaṅga: Disintegration, dissolutation -> An experiential realization of impermanence (anicca) through dissolution