It is April of 2015, in the days leading up to a 2,650-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, when something called Vipassana is brought to my attention by my college fraternity brother and soon-to-be hiking partner, Bradley. He begins to explain these ten-day meditation retreats.
My eyebrow raises. I think of meditation as a task better fit for the long-haired hippie-types, but hearing from Bradley about his recent meditative experience intrigues me. Like him, I am looking for answers to my life—searching for who I am—and this retreat left a strong impression on him. It means a lot to me because Bradley’s tried every last substance and practice in the way of “awakening”: fasting, magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, water-enemas, poison dart frogs—the list goes on. But his recent visit to a meditation center sounds different. It sounds like it has potential. And the more he discusses it, the more questions I have. It puts me on the edge of my seat.
“The courses are like training grounds for people like us,” he says, “people seeking answers to what’s happening inside of us.”
“How much do they cost?” I ask. As a poor college grad, the price tag is supremely critical to my life’s general decision-making process.
“It’s free, man. Well, donation-based. You give what you can, no expectations. And the cool part is, you can only donate after you finish all ten days of the course. Talk about trust. In fact, the whole thing runs off donations and volunteers — that’s it.”
I nod. I’m surprised such a large organization runs solely on donations and volunteers, especially if retreat-goers are a fraction as budget-conscious as I am…
“They’re growing, too,” says Bradley. “New centers are cropping up all over the world. You know what? I’ll check if there are any courses in Canada around the time we might finish the trail. Imagine how nice would it be to sit for ten days after all that walking.”
Hell, I’m not even sure if I’ll make it from the Mexican/US border to the Canadian one. But if I do make it, I’d be homeless by that point, so all the better if this place could put me up for ten days before I would need to re-enter the real world. So, I say yes, let’s do it.
With that, he searches his phone and finds a retreat center in British Columbia, Canada with a start date of October 17th — right around the time we expect to complete our six-month hike.
With potential housing, food, and a place to rest our legs within our grasp, Bradley and I pull the trigger and apply to what will be my first ten-day, intensive, silent meditation retreat. We are accepted shortly thereafter. Apart from trying to avoid the embarrassment that would come if I failed to finish the trail after telling all my friends about it, I now had another motivating factor to push me to the northern border.
THE TRAIL
We are halfway through Washington when we realize it’s likely we’ll miss the retreat by a remarkably narrow margin.
The realization of our failure to attend crushes our expectations and confidence. Tensions run high in the trail’s final miles — not only because we’ll miss the retreat but because finishing the trail isn’t yet guaranteed. Our emotions peak beneath a canopy of towering pines high in the mountains of the Washington Cascades.
I sob, face buried in my hands.
“I just want to be happy,” I say to him. “Whatever that means. And if we can’t be happy here — in the middle of all this — then where? And if not now, then when?”
He pauses, gazes up at me, and says, “I just need to meditate.”
In that moment, I understand how important meditation is to Bradley’s well-being. The idea of learning meditation sinks fully into my mind.
We finish the trail on exactly the same day as when the retreat begins. Even though we’ll miss it, I know I will one day find another retreat and experience this meditation thing for myself.
POST-TRAIL
Bradley and I finish the trail and go our separate ways, each of us returning home to our parents’ houses for the winter holidays to rest and figure out what’s next in life.
I soon begin to feel like I am right back where I started before walking the trail. After hiking 2,650 miles on an epic pilgrimage, communing with nature, summiting mountains, and connecting with so many beautiful people — why am I still unhappy? I try to reach out with my hand to hold the memories tight, but like dreams after a long night’s sleep, my achievements fade from my desperate grasp.
As I lay in bed watching the ceiling fan spin shadows against the walls of my bedroom, I decide I need some real, solid answers to this happiness thing.
I snag my phone and Google the word Bradley kept mentioning to me on our hike…
Vipassana.
It’s a Pali word meaning “to see clearly.”
I could use some of that right now, I thought.
The website turns up and there happens to be a retreat center just twenty minutes outside my house in Dallas.
My heart flutters. There’s a saying on the trail that “there’s no preparing for a thru-hike.” No matter how much you train for the journey, the trail is a challenge of its own accord, impossible to simulate until the day when it’s just you, your shoes, and the seemingly endless miles of that dusty ground unfolding before you.
I feel the same feelings about this retreat. Ten days of silence—while a far shorter time than the six months I had just spent on the trail—feels like I’m stepping into the unknown. For whatever reason, I feel as if it will be the most intense experience yet of my short twenty-four years spent on this planet.
But, at this point, I have nothing to lose. Instead of wasting away at my parents’ house, it’s time to figure out what’s really happening inside myself and get a slice of this happiness stuff, once and for all.
Then and there, on this cold winter night in December, I apply (once again) for my first ten-day, silent meditation retreat.
As I click ‘submit,’ I think, Hey — maybe this isn’t so bad, actually. Maybe I don’t meet their qualifications and they won’t accept me after all. Maybe the course will be all filled up, and I can just forget this whole situation ever occurred.
I receive an email no more than a day later regarding the upcoming course in January.
Finally, it sinks in.
I’ve been accepted. And this time, I’m actually going.
THE RETREAT
The day of the retreat arrives sooner than I can believe. I drive thirty minutes along the highway to the rural town of Kaufman with only a backpack in the trunk and high aspirations in mind.
As I exit onto a dirt road, I envision myself floating like one of those fat, golden Buddha trinkets in the china shop windows. Enlightenment is coming my way, and it has never felt so good!
Needless to say, I have no idea what I am getting into. All I know is that I’m a student of the mind for ten days, and I’m on a mission to figure out my life. Come to think of it, I am actually quite nervous. My palms sweat and slide along the steering wheel. I mutter some prayers for my survival as I arrive at a sign for the Southwest Vipassana Meditation Center, entering the premises through a wide open gate and parking in the grass lot nearby.
A Sign of Things to Come.
I exit the car, breathe deep and hoist my backpack onto my shoulders. It’s quiet, far from the city. The only sounds are that of the cows on the far side of the wire and the crisp whistling of the winter wind.
I stop and survey the scene. The grounds seem expansive in size, about thirty-four acres in total. The campus is filled with various distant residences surrounded by a wired fence extending out into the distance.
It’s name is Dhamma Siri, meaning Prosperity of Dhamma, Dhamma referring to the meditative path as a whole or as the Laws of Nature. Away from the city, it’s a haven.
I head down the gravel road, passing along the wire where beyond it lay nothing but fields, cattle and haystacks, before coming to the nearest outcropping of buildings.
The first room I enter is a narrow hallway filled with shoe cubbies, benches and signage instructing me to remove my shoes. It’s a shoe room—something I have never seen before in my life. I have seen sun rooms, ballrooms and even a cloak room. But never a shoe room. For some reason, it quickly becomes a favorite room of mine and I am happy to oblige. I slip my sneakers into one of the cubbies, ditch my backpack and slide past the door in my woollen socks.
The place inside is carpeted and dead silent. Four other people are hunched over tables at opposite ends of the room in what seems like a desperate attempt to avoid each other. I walk up to the woman in charge of check-in and tell her I’m here for the meditation course.
She smiles. “Yes, you are — new or old student?”
“New.”
She hands me a green booklet and some paperwork and tells me to read and fill it out, and that she’ll assign me a room number when I’m done.
I thank her, take a seat at one of the tables, and begin scanning the literature.
The green booklet is small, containing the course schedule and guidelines — rules I have already read on the website. But as I review them, it dawns on me what exactly I’ve gotten myself into…
The rules roughly read as follows:
Students are to work for ten days, from morning to evening, 4 AM to 10 PM.
Entertainment is not permitted — no technology, phones, music, reading or writing during the course.
Students must abstain from intoxicants, killing other beings, and sexual misconduct.
Students must remain segregated from the opposite sex.
Students should suspend rites, rituals and practices of yoga and exercise. There is a small nature path within the center boundaries for walking.
Old students are not permitted to eat dinner, only tea. New students may eat fruits for dinner.
Students must take a vow of Noble silence: silence of body, speech and mind. Any form of communication with fellow students is prohibited. This means no talking, no gestures, no eye-contact. Only during scheduled afternoon interviews may you speak with the teacher. If you have any emergencies or needs, there is a male and female manager at your service.
Finally, students promise that they will not leave the center until the course is complete.
Thank you, and wishing you a fruitful course.
Upon reading this, my vision of blossoming into a tranquil, fattened Buddha shatters before my eyes. I am stuck in prison for the next ten days. Knowing it’s too late to back out now, I fill out the remaining forms.
The woman at the table smiles again and assigns me room 204, which is in the two-storied dormitory further on down the paved path. The building has community bathrooms and showers shared between the new students, she says.
“Have a wonderful course, and please return to this room in thirty minutes for the opening introduction.” She pauses so I thank her and begin to walk away. “Oh, and I almost forgot! We’re now collecting valuables — phone, wallet, keys.”
I stop short. “Of course,” I say.
There is a strong surge of desire moving from my brain to my thumbs to scroll through the phone one last time, just to make sure there is nothing important I might have missed.
Existing without a phone is something I’m used to. Hiking in the wilderness required days and weeks without cell service. On the trail, this didn’t bother me at all. I found many other things to occupy my mind: people to talk to, nature to behold, mountains to climb. But here, there are no sights, no climbing, and no speaking. Just me and my mind.
The energy passes through my fingertips and I surrender my belongings, watching as phone, keys and wallet become locked inside a large blue chest. At once, I am stripped of all distractions and any potential escapes. Nevertheless, I am vaguely confident that I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
I stumble outside in a daze and follow the meandering paved pathway toward my freshly assigned dormitory. I then follow directions to my room — down the hallway and to the right.
Room 204. It’s a small room with nothing but four white walls, a large window to a sunlit courtyard, a bed, a stool with an alarm clock, and empty shelves. Thankfully, I am also accustomed to simplicity.
I empty my backpack, shelve the contents, throw my sleeping bag over the bed, and sheath the pillow with a white linen cover from the hallway closet. After some time between sitting on the bed, staring outside into the small courtyard, and trying to figure out how the alarm clock works, I realize there is nothing at all to do in this room.
My Simple Room.
The community center is my only option.
Some sixty guys and sixty gals in total are now gathered here in conversation. I find an empty seat at one of the tables near the front and wait for further instructions.
Amid the noise, a bald man turns to me. “Is this your first course?” he asks.
I nod. “You?”
“Third,” he says.
A hundred questions swirl in my mind. I haven’t yet spoken to anyone who has been to so many courses!
Before I can even start, an older Indian man at the front of the crowd strikes a small bell with a mallet.
BONGGG.
My conversation will have to wait ten days.
He welcomes us and reviews what we should expect for the next ten days. It’s everything mentioned in the guidelines booklet.
He introduces the male and female managers.
“Should you have any questions or emergencies, you may ask them at any time.”
The managers stand, wave, and announce their room numbers. The male is a young Nepali man named Anup staying in room seventeen.
“There is also one male and one female Assistant Teacher who presides over this course. If you have any questions relating to the meditation technique, please reserve them for the AT’s.”
I press my lips together. The idea of meeting with an Assistant Teacher intrigues me, but not enough to take action. I am too stubborn to ask any questions. I’ve always liked to figure things out on my own. Plus, I have no idea what to ask them, anyway.
The old Indian man says it’s now time for the first sitting in the main hall.
“The separation of males and females begins now,” he says. “As you walk about the course, you will see signage designating the boundaries. If you have any last questions, ask them now.”
Everyone looks around with nothing to say.
“In that case, please mindfully make your way to the Dhamma hall. Noble silence begins when you enter the hall. Enjoy, and I hope you have a fruitful course.”
He places his hands together and bows. Apparently, it’s our signal. Everyone rises from their seats to squeeze out the door and crowd the shoe room. I consider picking up my conversation with the bald man beside me but quickly decide it’s pointless. I’ve surrendered to the experience, slowly sinking in, and at the same time, I’m still wondering what the heck I’ve gotten myself into.
Marching down the winding concrete path leading to the Dhamma hall, women take one path and men go another. Everyone makes small talk for the last time, but I’m silent, ready to begin.
I reach the large building in the middle of campus where our manager, Anup, greets me with a smile and holds the door open.
Sixty male students pile into a larger transitional shoe room and wait shoulder-to-shoulder before the wide double doors of the hall.
The room is noiseless, filled with anxiety and impatience. The men around me are diverse in skin color, age, and culture. It seems these courses attract youth in search of answers, adults seeking meaning, and the elderly seeking solace. Whatever our reasons for coming here, we’ve all arrived at the same place at the same time. We wade together in the shallows of the shoe room soon to be thrown into the deep-end of the pool that lies on the other side of these doors.
Anup peers inside the hall, nods and clears his throat. “If I call your name, please enter.”
The room drains slowly into the hall. I am one of the last to hear my name called. I think it’s because I’m one of the youngest attendees, as the others waiting beside me seem similar in age or younger than me. I slide into the open door of the hall.
The place is ominous and dimly lit. I step across the white carpet, following those in front of me to my assigned cushion. It is in the last row of the hall, closest to the door. As my younger companions follow suit, it dawns on me that, yes, because we are
all new students, we’ve been saved for last and stuck in the back row so as not to distract the other, more experienced meditators who I assume must have steadfast concentration abilities. Everyone’s facing the front of the hall.
I plop onto my small cushion atop a larger square one, and glance around the room.
The students before me also sit atop stacks of cushions and pillows. Some piles are so impressive that the men look like chickens nesting eggs. I am curious where I too might find the materials for such a comfortable roost. I guess it’ll have to wait until after this sitting.
A narrow aisle splits the room in two, dividing the parallel rows of male and female students and leading to a stage at the front of the hall — a raised dais boasting two throne-like seats.
The doors on either sides of the dais creak open. An old man and an old woman appear, take their seats, and wrap white shawls around their legs. The man fiddles with some audio contraption beside him, sets his spectacles down, and shuts his eyes.
It must be time to meditate. I close my eyes and straighten my back.
A booming groan fills the hall, and the kid next to me nearly bursts out laughing. Whoever is chanting through the hall’s speaker system sounds like they are either in desperate need of medical attention or in the clutches of mortal danger. I keep my eyes shut and bite my lip. The kid next to me manages to keep it together.
Five minutes later, the chanting stops, and the voice speaks. “You are here to practice Vipassana. You are here to learn the Eightfold Noble Path of the Buddha. It is now time to take refuge. Repeat after me…”
The hall proceeds to repeat various phrases like:
I will refrain from harming beings.
I will refrain from sexual misconduct.
I will refrain from speaking.
These are the precepts we’ve pledged ourselves to during our time spent here.
We then take refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha — teacher, teaching, and taught — before the room grows quiet once more.
“Good,” says the voice. “Now is the time to learn Anapana. Place your attention on the breath. The natural, normal breath. Do not try to change the breath. If it is shallow, it is shallow. If it is deep, it is deep. Just observe. Observe. Do nothing more. If you find the mind is wandering, bring your attention back to the breath.”
Well, that sounds easy enough.
I place my attention on the breath and soon begin to wonder if I’m doing it right. Is it okay to breathe deeply if I really need to breathe deeply? I remember the last time in my life when I couldn’t take a deep breath. It was one of the worst days of my young life. I nearly suffocated. Ten years old, trapped beneath a huge floaty in our local neighborhood pool. Everything was dark above me, and my ascension to the surface was like trying to bust through a manhole too heavy to lift. Just when it seemed like all was lost, the portal opened, and there was light. As the darkness shifted sideways, I swam up, gasping for air, frightened and thankful to be alive. I would later have recurring nightmares of being sealed shut into things, like the oven of an old witch living in a gingerbread house.
It is ten minutes later before I realize just how insane my mind really is. I had wandered years away from the hall, forgetting all about the breath. I slump my shoulders, realizing just what I’m up against here. This seemingly easy task is turning out to be much more difficult than I had first imagined.
I decide instead to give up for the time being and turn my attention outward just to see how everyone else in the room is fairing thus far. I slit open my left eye and peer out.
To my dismay, everyone in the hall are like stone statues. The rows of students before me are unmoved, perfectly still, and surely experiencing some type of serene bliss!
Then the questions start piling on. Am I really the only one struggling this much? How much longer do I have to do this for again? Why is sitting for this long so ridiculously uncomfortable? I shift about my seat uneasily as thoughts flood my mind.
An eternity passes. Maybe two. I’m not really sure. If time is a ribbon, it was snipped with scissors and has stopped here. All that matters is that this is likely the longest hour of my life.
Finally, the chanting starts up once again. The rows of students before me bow in unison.
The old man on stage speaks.“Noble silence has now begun,” he says. “Please, no talking until the course ends. Now, go and take rest. Take rest.”
The teachers stand from their thrones and depart through their secret passageways. The students stand, too. I breathe a sigh of relief. I guess that’s that for day zero.
The shoe room’s wall clock reads just nine-thirty. It’s still early for bed, but tomorrow’s schedule starts at four-thirty, so I need to get as much sleep as I possibly can.
The night is dark and cold, and dim bulbs alongside the paved path illuminate my steps, leading me back to the dorms. I don’t get more than a few paces out before I stop dead in my tracks and my jaw hangs loose. There is not a cloud in sight, and hundreds of stars dot the blackened canvas above. In the last three months, I‘ve become so accustomed to the empty city sky that I’ve forgotten about the night skies found only among forests, fields, and mountains. With the portal reopened, I feel my mind yanked back to those many nights spent on the Pacific Crest Trail gathered fireside with my trail friends. My last steps back to the dorm fall slowly onto the path as I remain in awe of the world around me. I reluctantly enter the dorm and make my way to the white walls of my room.
As I crawl inside my sleeping bag, a chorus of cicadas chirp their songs outside my window. It’s not so bad being here with nothing to do. Still, much like the earliest days on the trail, I wonder if I’ve made the right decision by coming here. I hope something comes from locking myself in this self-diagnosed insane asylum for the next ten days.
DAY ONE
I wake with a startle as the resounding sound of a bell pierces my ears. I groan and turn over. The clock reads four-oh-one AM. I can’t for the life of me remember the last time I had woken up so early, but I manage to roll out of bed anyway. Since there are really only three places for me to go: the dorm, the Dhamma hall, and the dining hall, and since the schedule says breakfast isn’t served until 6:30, I splash water on my face and head out to pick back up where I left off the night before.
It is pitch black outside. The hall is hardly any brighter. I find my seat, plop down, and do what we do here — observe the breath.
It is only moments after watching the inhales and exhales coming through my nostrils that I begin to drift. My body jerks itself upright and my eyes jolt open against their will.
I try to shake off my sleep, rub my eyes, take a deep breath, and begin again, but drowsiness has taken hold of me. The cycle of drifting and jolting awake repeats many times over. The only thing worse than being tired is…
I feel my gut churning from hunger. The noises are like tectonic shifts of an intestinal earthquake. It’s been twelve hours since my last meal, and I am ravished. At least the noises keep me awake. I forgo patting my stomach and continue sitting.
Time stands still, and I am almost certain the sit should have ended tens of minutes ago. Now that I think about it, it’s been so long since I first sat down, I have almost no concept of time. I wonder if the clock is broken. Is no one else going to say something? Should I get up and leave?
It’s right when I’m thinking these thoughts that some chanting begins. Wonderful news, because these chants seem to signal the beginning and ends of sits.
But this time, when it starts, it does not stop. It keeps going and going and going. This early morning sitting has no end in sight.
Just as I am about to lose it, a bell finally rings, and the students make their way out of the hall. I sigh and follow them to the outside world.
I blink hard as sunrise crawls across the horizon to drench the pasturelands in a soft, reddish glow. It feels like a new start to a new life. I pace the cold morning winds, excited to claim the breakfast my belly yearns for.
I push open the swinging door of the dining hall to a symphony of metal spoons clinking against porcelain bowls, socks shifting about the carpet, and the soft smacking of lips. I briefly survey the scene before looking back down again, peeking just long enough to discern where I should go. I skirt behind one of the two queues forming on either side of a long table.
I scoot forward in line and soon reach the huge serving dishes filled with various choices for a vegetarian breakfast. There’s oatmeal, prunes, an assortment of fruit, cereals, yogurt, bread and a toaster, peanut butter, jams, tahini, milk, and two milk alternatives. I scoop some hot, mushy oatmeal and half-melted prunes into a bowl, grab a banana, and make my way to one of the many foldout tables scattered about the dining hall.
I sit down. No one makes eye contact. Such behavior is avoided like the plague. Everyone is thoroughly and solemnly focused on their Cheerios and peeling their bananas. Their muted, stilted movements brought to mind vegetarian zombies or maybe depressed death-row inmates. It’s the price paid for mindfulness, which at the time does not seem like the most desirable of emotional states.
The food selection isn’t the most luxurious, but it is absolutely delicious. The warm oats and sweet, juicy prunes melt in my mouth and slide down my throat to warm my stomach from the inside out.
I’m halfway through devouring the contents of my bowl when I remember I’m supposed to be mindful. So I try my best. My chewing becomes so slow and there is so much space and time between each spoonful that I wonder if I’ll ever finish. I may be sitting here forever, craning oats into my mouth. My jaw, stomach, and right arm will remain fully functional while the rest of me slowly withers away. I set down my spoon, complete my chewing, and breathe for a moment.
Time is slow here. Very slow. The slowness of time makes me think. All my life I’ve moved from one place to the next without stopping, unaware of what it is like to arrive at a complete and utter stop. Someone has pulled the emergency brake on my life, and I am left staring out the windshield into this breakfast scene of vegetarian zombies.
And to think before today, I had been convinced that time was speeding up! Removed from my daily routine, time seems meaningless. Now, it was going nowhere. It was relative. Dependent upon my environment, my state of mind, what I was doing, and how I was thinking. Here, there is no time. There’s nowhere to be and nothing to do. There is only food, sleep, and hours and hours and hours of sitting.
I gulp down the last bites of my oatmeal and return to the queue for a bowl of almond milk and rice chex.
As I sit, my mind turns to all these strangers eating beside me. I realize how surprisingly easy it is for me to keep silent among them. I have no urgent need to speak with anyone. Nor do they, in the least bit, care to speak with me. It’s a huge relief not having to impress or convince anyone of anything. I think that’s why most people feel the need to talk. My fear of being unable to shut up for ten days dissolves along with the Chex in my almond milk, and I settle into this new state of being.
Breakfast is through, and it’s time to sit for an hour in the hall once again, followed by more sitting. My life is now sitting. Sitting on cushions to meditate. Sitting on plastic chairs to eat food. And again sitting on cushions to watch my breath and the time pass on by. It is nearly three more hours of meditation by the time eleven rolls around and lunch is served. It’s now obvious that food will be the highlight of my days spent here.
This time, there is a huge vat of white rice, bins of vegetable curry and potato soup, loaves of garlic bread, and tons of ingredients for mixing up a cucumber salad.
Just looking at the spread warms my heart. Since the food is all-you-can-eat and self-serve style, I load my plate to my heart’s content and begin the feast.
After downing my first plate, I recall that our dinner is fruits-only. This gives me pause. If that’s the case, I should double down on lunch in order to last me the night!
I do so and end up paying dearly for this decision. The hours of sitting to follow are painful. Based on the noises filling the hall, many of the students have made the same mistake.
There is burping, coughing, sneezing and flatulating, each sound amplified by the dead silence of the hall. It comes from all sides like the trenches of war. I make a mental note not to overeat again. The adjustment ends up as one of the best decisions I make for the entire course.
Meanwhile, I am so frustrated with myself that I am ready to give up at any moment. My mind wanders over and over again into childhood memories, anxieties, doubts, concerns, and thoughts of the past and future. Why can’t my mind just keep quiet?
“Start again,” echoes the voice of our faceless instructor from the speaker system. The words bring me out of thinking and back to the practice. This is our meditation, coming back to “now” over and over again.
I select an apple and two bananas and drink mint tea for dinner. It’s better than nothing. Some of the other students only have a cup of tea on the table before them. They must be old students, and I almost feel bad about the sounds made by the crunching of the apple between my teeth.
After one more evening sit, the schedule calls for what is the nightly discourse. For the next hour and a half, all the students pile into the hall, the lights dim, and a large projector screen descends from the ceiling. I guess it’s movie time.
It is here, at the end of a long day’s work, that I discover our faceless meditation instructor does indeed have a face.
His name is Goenka, an older, chubby Burmese man with a wrinkled face and a white shawl wrapped around his legs. Apparently he is dead, having passed three years ago, but his teachings live on through the audio recordings played to us during the day and these video recordings shown to us at night.
For the most part, Goenka seems like a normal guy and does not claim to be a guru of any sort. He grew up in a wealthy business family, but no amount of money could cure his life’s problems. Goenka somehow developed intense migraines which needed to be treated with morphine injections. The best doctors from all over the world couldn’t find a cause, and thus could not treat him. He got to a point where he then became addicted to morphine, “taking morphine for the sake of morphine.”
Feeling like he was left with no other options, a friend recommended he learn meditation. He met his teacher, a man by the name of U Ba Khin (Oo-Bah-Kin), who taught him Vipassana. Goenka’s practice eventually heals his migraines, allows him to ditch the morphine, and U Ba Kin asks him to spread the technique. What starts out as Goenka teaching the technique to his parents and a few friends eventually spreads into hundreds of centers across the world. The rest is history.
English isn’t Goenka’s first language, but this doesn’t bother me. I’m able to clearly make out what he’s saying.
Goenka starts his discourse by pointing out subtleties about my breath that make me look absent-minded for not having realized them earlier.
“Have you noticed,” he asks, “that the breath coming out of your nose is slightly warmer than the breath going in?”
I try it for myself. He’s right. The air going out is slightly warmer. My mind is blown. I hadn’t noticed this before, though I’ve been breathing out that nose my entire life. For whatever reason, this simple observation has a strong impact on me. I find myself moving to the edge of my cushion and sitting up a bit straighter.
The rest of the talk is on the reasons behind what we are here to learn and why we are doing what we are doing.
I start to understand that the teaching is actually much more than just a meditation technique. There are also certain ways to live that aid in one’s meditative path. Goenka calls Vipassana “the art of living.” But contrary to what I’m used to, what’s being sold is not another belief system. It’s a universal, psychological, scientific approach to understanding the mind. It feels refreshing and further sparks my intrigue.
All the while, Goenka is articulate, light-hearted, and wise. As he speaks on the importance of meditation, I realize I had never actually heard a teacher communicating so clearly the nature of the mind and how to go about working with it. It’s like he’s got my mind nailed down to a T, complete with examples of habit-patterns all too familiar—the reasons for suffering, the propensity of my suffering to spread to others, the tendency to blame it on others—and here he is, offering me a way out!
I can’t help but be floored throughout much of the discourse. His words make a lasting impression. To me, this is a revolutionary teaching, and I feel as if my whole life is changed. As the discourse ends, I’m dying to hear more, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.
That night, back in my bedroom, I bury my head in my pillow and weep. The tears soak my pillow, and I’m unable to wipe a smile from my face. I have finally found what I’ve been seeking. I’m here, and now it’s time to put in the work.
DAY TWO
My back is killing me from having to sit up straight for hours on end, and I can’t take it anymore. I ask the male manager, Anup, where I can find more cushions. He politely leads me to the cushion room where I snag some more pillows for my roost and also a kneeling bench, which I see used by some of the other kids around me.
The men’s nests before me have grown even larger and impressively excessive. Others have thrown in the towel and resorted to sitting in chairs. I can’t help but notice that some of the once occupied cushions are now empty. The herd has thinned and will continue to do so. I understand why. My back is sore and the pain is beginning to crop up in my knees, too.
I don’t know any of these hundred or so people surrounding me, but it does feel intimate to sit with others in silence. Each of us is trying our best to sit with whatever emotions emerge.
The value of sitting becomes clear. I keep wandering into thought, if only for a few moments. I then bring myself back to the breath, experiencing less self-abuse each time. I feel my mind becoming concentrated, and there is an emerging clarity in the connection between my physical sensations and my emotional reactions. Despite my pain and suffering, those few moments of concentration are pleasurable, enough to inspire me to press onward.
I’m convinced more and more that a teaching like this is what I’ve been seeking my whole life and never knew it. Why did I have to search? It is strange to me that this information is not well known. The teaching resonates with me so that I wish I had heard it much earlier in life. The course feels a little like a secret, and I am grateful to have found it.
DAY THREE
These days are the longest of my life, and the course may never come to an end. The finish line feels so out of reach, like I am stuck chasing the horizon.
When I am not sitting, I am either eating or sleeping. I‘ve also discovered the nature path at the edge of the male dormitory that runs through the nearby forest. It is beautiful. Where the woods begin, the trail meanders beneath a canopy of trees. I hear birds singing and the rustling of leaves as wild squirrels play. It’s a nice change of pace to get up from the cushion and trudge through the cool, shaded woods with dirt underfoot.
I stop at the spots where the trees open up to a fence and I can feel the sunlight against my skin. I lean up against the chest-high fence, bask in the warmth and ponder the pasture. Beyond the wire, the cows graze as far as the eye can see. It’s my only real entertainment.
For the rest of my stay, I find myself escaping to this place in the sunlight when I can sit no longer. This retreat is like a pressure cooker, everything distilled down and intensified. When storms come, they come on so strong. With nothing else to do, it’s obvious when my mind is agitated. It feels like a heavy cloud being pushed against the bristling headwinds of winter. Negative thoughts crash down upon me like bolts of lightning. I’m disappointed in my progress, then disappointed because I am disappointed. It is an endless cycle and I am inside a tornado. The path in the nearby woods helps me see it through. Every step brings me memories of the trail I had hiked just months ago, and the walking lightens the load weighing against my mind and I can feel the sunlight again. From this, I learn about the impermanent nature of all feelings. Eventually, they pass. Everything passes. No emotion is eternal.
It’s during an evening walk about the path that I begin to see how I’ve been primed for this retreat. I had grown so accustomed to my mind over the last six months while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail — observing its habit-patterns, becoming friendly with it — that I realize the trail was, in essence, a six-month walking meditation. Trekking had set a foundation for healing, understanding my mind, and hopefully, endurance, which I would need to get through this course.
The sun descends beyond the trees, and it’s time for the Goenka Show. The students spread out about the hall as Goenka delivers what is for me yet another captivating discourse. He’s turning out not only to be a wise guru, but a master storyteller with some jokes up his sleeve. He displays subtle grins and raises his eyebrow after punchlines, which are usually digs at traditional, fundamentalist religions.
“What are we doing?” he asks. “Have we gone mad?”
I chuckle alongside some of the students. Despite his jokes, Goenka’s compassion shines through. He has one of the warmest hearts of anyone I’ve ever seen or heard, living or dead.
After a long, difficult day of sitting, these talks give me just enough information to understand what’s going on and some much needed inspiration to continue onward. Tomorrow is the day we finally get to learn the instructions for Vipassana — the primary technique we will practice for the rest of the retreat — and I wonder what awaits me.
DAY FOUR — VIPASSANA DAY
The morning schedule is the same, and it turns out we won’t learn Vipassana until later that afternoon. I sit through the day’s meditations excited for what’s to come.
When it arrives, the instruction is nearly two hours straight of sitting, and Goenka walks us through the process step-by-step.
First, we are told to switch our attention from the breath to the sensations on the top of the head and then scan our body from head to toe.
It’s an ordeal of a process, and I feel I’m being initiated into some secret group by the seriousness of the instructions.
The body scan is said to confront the nature of reality, which is made up of three characteristics: impermanence (the arising and passing away of sensations on the body, and thus the nature of the body as a whole), unsatisfactoriness (a constant desire to change the body’s sensations), and self-lessness (if you go looking for a self, you will not find it). The more clear and steady one’s observation, the more wisdom may arise.
The instruction, much like the anapana technique, is easy to understand and difficult to execute. As I’m trying to follow his every word, it’s difficult to concentrate on my sensations. Pain rushes along my spine like a piercing inferno, which is something I’d rather not focus on. I find it impossible to stay still, aware and equanimous all at the same time.
But I take the task seriously and do my best to work with the sensations my body gives me. During some sits, I really push myself to my perceived edge, tolerating a great deal of pain. That night, I head to bed with what feels like deep and heavy sensations pressing against the back of my forehead. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and I wonder if everything’s okay. Part of me thinks my life will be this way forever — a buzzing flow of heavy sensations swirling inside my head.
At first, my eyes are wide open because I’m scared of what might happen if I fall asleep. The fear soon passes as I try to catch what little hours of sleep remain for the night and hope that everything is well by sunrise.
DAY FIVE
I wake in a sweat. Last night’s sleep brings me the craziest, most vivid dreams of my life. Some are lucid, too. Others are entire narratives like the ones in movies. I lived entire lives separate from my own during those few hours of sleep. The dreams are similar to the ones I dreamt on trail, but even more fantastic. I am flying around in the sky, fighting villains and embarking on missions in far away worlds.
These dreams continue even during rest periods where my naps are like full-on hibernations. I wake up groggy and confused, my pillow covered in slobber, and sleep in every corner of my eyes as if I had remained unmoved for centuries. My alarm sounds loudly, but I still have five more minutes of rest before I’m late to the hall. I squeeze out every second possible until the final bell, and it takes every ounce of my willpower to sit up and shuffle back to my meditation.
In one of my dreams during this course, I wake but am completely paralyzed. I literally can’t move a muscle. Every signal my brain sends to my limbs remains unanswered. A part of me enjoys the feeling, so I allow it to go on. I’ve never been awake while my body continues to sleep! Eventually I break the spell and return to my sitting in the Dhamma hall.
Then there is another dream that’s like I’m in the movie Inception. When I first realize I‘m dreaming, I toss myself out the window of my dorm room in order to wake up (which is now located on the fourth floor and not the first, for some reason). When I awake, I realize I am still dreaming! Leaping out the window has only gotten me to the next dream. Eventually, after tossing myself from the window three to four more times, I wake from my dream within a dream within a dream within a dream to the real world. The experience shakes me to my core, and I sit up in a sweat to glance at my hands, ensuring that I’m back in the actual, physical world. I am, and it’s time to sit once again.
DAY SIX
Today is like the others, except it feels like hundreds of knives are stabbing my lower back.
“The third day and the sixth day,” I recall Goenka saying, “are very difficult days. One feels like running away! But you must stay. You are strong, and these remaining days are so precious. Human life is so precious. Make use of it! Make use of the facilities, and come out of your negativities to experience real peace, real harmony, real happiness! Real happiness.”
So I don’t run away, and I stay. Weird experiences keep descending upon me.
While I’m seated on my cushion for what feels like an eternity, I feel myself slipping away from my body. My consciousness is suddenly floating above and behind what I know is my body. I look down, and there I am, sitting quietly on the cushion. I know that person is me, but somehow I am in two places at once. For now, I’m up here, though. The people of the hall sit quietly before me. I am stunned yet accepting of my circumstances and soon float back down, returning to my body. The whole experience doesn’t last long, perhaps thirty seconds or less. I find it difficult to place it within the boundaries of time.
The whole experience is both fascinating and familiar to me. It’s happened to me twice before — once while dehydrated and walking through the middle of the desert and another time while lying down in corpse pose after a long yoga session in a Fort Worth studio. But never had it happened to me so vividly as it had this time. I shrug my shoulders and continue sitting through the pain that now fills my body. Later in the day, I try to decipher what I learned from this experience but nothing seems insightful.
The astral projection feels years behind me, and I’ve forgotten all about it after four more hours of sitting. My frustration has returned. I escape outside and return to the walking path for a bit of fresh air.
I step into the sunlight and stop to watch the fields. As I stare, the world expands into a panoramic hyper-focus and a peaceful silence. I can see the tall grasses, each of them, individually and in unison, bending to the winds. I feel the same wind against my hair that the long grasses feel against their blades. I am rooted in the same earth upon which they stand. There is no separation between who I am and the field that holds my gaze. It’s all so simple and so complex and no words can describe this intense beauty. It’s alive, intelligent, and I, too, am part of it. I feel like I’m actually experiencing the present moment.
This thought itself—that I must be experiencing the present—breaks the spell. I think about how I stopped thinking for those few timeless moments, about how wonderful that was. I try focusing again on the grass, but it’s not the same as before. The mental chattering returns. I look down and continue my walk in the woods.
What I find most strange about this experience is the peace I experienced without anything changing externally. It was the same field it has always been. The same grasses, the same flowers, and the same wind. The only thing that changed was within me.
I stop again where there is sunlight. Perhaps it is possible to be happy without any external changes whatsoever. The thought shatters one of the greatest lies I tell myself, that “once such and such happens, then I‘ll be happy.” In that moment, it seemed that happiness — or whatever you want to call it — would not be found in any future moment, but here and now in the present. It’s available to me at anytime if I so choose it.
My insight on happiness feels like it’s a distant memory as I endure the day’s final sitting. I have never made it so long into a sitting without moving an inch. The pain builds slowly. I feel a burning sensation filling the bones of my toes and ankles and moving up my spine towards my skull. I begin to shake. It’s as if a thousand pounds are pressing down upon me and I’m about to burst. This might be the end of me. But I somehow manage to convince myself that I’m in uncharted territory. I keep going, reaffirming to myself that I will not budge — no matter what. The pain is unbearable, so with one last stand, I try surrendering myself to the pain, giving it full permission to take me over.
Suddenly, I drop into a deep state of concentration. The pain does not leave me — it is still there, right where I left it, pulsing and throbbing all over my body — but it is no longer having the same effect on me as it did moments before. I’m no longer resisting it or judging it, and because of this, it’s lost the essence of its strength. The gross pains turn to very light, subtle sensations. I move my attention randomly about the body, cross-checking, and where my attention lands, it is piercing me like a hot iron brand, but it feels neither pleasurable or painful. It’s just a strong sensation, and I observe it as if my entire body is now separate from my mind.
How can it be that before I was in so much pain, and now, even though the sensations are still there, suddenly so far removed from it?
The experience gives me some brief insight into the difference between pain and suffering. Apparently, I could still experience physical pain without all that added suffering layered on top. Suffering seemed to be a default habit-pattern of mine, an endless feedback loop from which one could actually escape. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot I could do to avoid my body’s physical sensations, but suffering—suffering could be tempered and, in some circumstances, avoided completely. Suffering was optional. And so long as I offered no mental reaction to the painful sensations, so long as I remained detached, witnessing these sensations as a curious observer might, the pain lost all power.
The rest of the hour flies by as the closing chant sounds, but I remain seated as long as I can until the discourse starts up. I for sure haven’t reached enlightenment, but I go to bed with what’s been an overwhelming day filled with some of the strangest and more insightful experiences of my life thus far.
DAY SEVEN
It’s almost as if Goenka heard about all my experiences the day before. Tonight’s discourse is about how the point of meditation is not to aim for certain experiences. Pleasurable and interesting experiences are each their own traps because the mind gets caught up in wanting to experience past moments again, to reproduce and feel those sensations, which can lead to attachment and further suffering.
Instead, the aim of meditative practice is to reverse the habit-pattern of the mind from reaction and attachment to observation and equanimity. There should be no preference of one sensation over another. He explains that instead of craving interesting experiences, I should see experiences for what they are — impermanent — and continue to live my life moment to moment, grateful for whatever arises.
Okay, this makes complete sense to me. I decide I probably shouldn’t put too much stock into some of my more interesting, non-insightful experiences and keep on chugging along, moment by moment, cultivating a healthier and healthier relationship with my mind.
These experiences, no matter how profound they seemed to me in those moments, were also impermanent. My mind soon returns to its regularly scheduled programming of chatter and noise. Even so, slowly but surely, I find there’s something profound to this practice. There is less and less time spent rolling in thought. The thoughts are still there, but at least I’m aware that I’m thinking, and from this place, I can choose to get off the bus.
This new awareness stops my train of thought, which would have otherwise gone on for who knows how long, and I’m able to return to the breath. It’s a place where I can now move forward in the best way I see fit.
DAY EIGHT
There’s one guy who won’t stop sneezing. I wonder if he’s going to leave the hall to sort himself out, but he doesn’t. He stays and keeps sneezing. His sneezes are like seismic blasts echoing through the hall, destroying my eardrums. To make things worse, it’s one of those unnecessarily dramatic sneezes, the kind where he adds some extra noise at the tail end of it for no reason at all.
I find the situation annoying, to say the least. Doesn’t he have some awareness? Doesn’t he know I’m trying to meditate here?
Then the sneezing stops, and deep concentration sets in. My mind is sharp, and my body is filled with light, tingling sensations. I get the feeling that there is nothing in the world that can disturb my focus.
In this new state of mind, the sneeze comes again. It’s huge and loud, but my body and mind are so still that I can feel the sneeze’s vibrations rush through my body from head to toe like a gust of wind. Even though the whole thing happens in a single second, it is so clear to me what has just happened; and the implications of this experience blows my mind.
I am able to divide the sneeze into three distinctly separate events, which occur in a very particular and important order. First, there was the sneeze (an external event). Next, the vibrations of the sneeze came into contact with my body, which I experienced as physical sensations (an internal event). Finally, there was my mind’s reaction to the internal vibrations (again, an internal event).
External sneeze. Internal vibrations. Internal mental reaction.
This is the order of events. My mind reacts to my internal sensations, not anything external!
I realize that sneezes don’t make me angry, but more directly, it’s how I react to my own body that determines my anger. It’s my reaction to physical sensations that my body feels from the sneeze. So many times I’ve blamed others for my grief and now it’s clear. This whole time, I’ve been unable to perceive the importance of internal sensations in the chain of events. The responsibility to act has always been on me.
The implications are vast, and my mind starts turning like newly-oiled cogs stuffed back into a rusty machine in an attempt to further process the experience.
The origin of my anger — or any emotion for that matter — does not originate from anything external but from reactions to the internal phenomena occurring within my own body and mind.
So, if nothing external causes me suffering, does that mean nothing outside of me can give me fulfillment, either?
Do I have to rely on cultivating my own happiness not from any external thing — possessions, experiences, or accomplishments — but from internal efforts alone?
It seems to be the case for me. In every moment, I must learn to create space to choose the actions I desire, to reprogram my mind and adjust my perception from negativity to something positive.
I continue meditating, but out of all my experiences so far — from crazy dreams to out of body experiences — this one has the biggest impact.
DAY NINE
Nothing too remarkable happens for me on these final days. I’m already looking forward to reading the messages on my phone, eager to reconnect with my friends and family back home.
Knowing my time is running short, I sit with a strong determination while counting down the hours until the day’s final bell. I will miss the silence, walking in the shadows of the woods, idling in the peaceful patches of sunlight. I will miss the moments of deep concentration that, at the time, only seem possible through formal retreat settings. And I will miss Goenka’s nightly discourses.
But I won’t miss all this for too long; I am already considering signing up to serve the next course as soon as this one is over. I don’t have anything else to do at the moment, and I finally feel like I’ve found something very special. I feel like giving my time will be worth more than any donation I’m able to make.
Nine days are up, and only one final day remains, one in which I can finally talk again.
DAY TEN (THE FINAL DAY)
After the initial morning sit, we are told to remain in the hall to learn a new technique. It is called Metta meditation, which means loving-kindness. This technique acts as a balm applied to a wound after a deep operation, says Goenka.
To practice this technique, we repeat various phrases quietly in our minds, like:
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be liberated.
With Goenka’s chanting resonating in the background, I feel a pleasant surge of sensations overtake my body. It seems a practice I could try a lot more of in my life.
Finally, we are dismissed from the hall and Noble Silence ends. Everyone stands from their cushions and walks outside to chat, but I sit for a few more precious moments, basking in the silence of the empty hall.
The sunrays make me squint. It’s brighter outside than I remember, looking up and around rather than at the ground. I converse with a circle of guys about what we’ve just experienced. We are all in a daze from ten days of silence, and it feels strange hearing the voices of others and using my own. Goenka says this is normal. It’s the reason for days ten and eleven, which act as a buffer for students to reintegrate before going back into society. It’s also a surprisingly funny time, meeting everyone I’ve secretly been judging the last ten days. Their personalities and voices are nothing like I imagined them to be. They’re all deeply interesting people with stories of their own about how they arrived here. Most everyone says they found the retreat to be a valuable experience, some benefiting more than others. There’s a common bond between us now. We’re all “survivors.”
After some chatting, I have a strong desire to find Anup, our male manager. I am so excited by what I have learned and experienced these last ten days that I want to share everything with him and pick his brain on what he’s experienced. Surely someone who has lived at a center and practiced for months has some insights that he can share with me.
Anup is busy vacuuming the dorm hallway, but I approach anyway and proceed to regurgitate the ups and downs of my course experience.
He smiles and says, “Storms will still come. This is guaranteed. You cannot avoid them. You will still have sadness. People get sick. They will die. But know this. Now, you have a tool to handle it. You can face them. The storms will not be so strong, and they will not last so long. Like this, shorter and shorter, you’ll find yourself farther from the storm. You no longer have to be caught in them. Storms will come, but now, you are strong enough to face them.”
I thank Anup and suggest we stay in contact. He’s off the grid, but to my delight, I run into him a few more times throughout my bi-yearly visits to the center that follow our first talk. I always remember Anup’s words and guidance during such a fragile moment as my first course here comes to an end.
EPILOGUE: HOW THIS UNFOLDS & WHERE I’M AT NOW
Directly after my first course ends, I sign up to volunteer for the next one, which is held three days later. I am hooked. But I am not yet ready to give my life entirely to the practice. I continue to pursue my mundane life, my writing, and enjoying my time in Austin, Texas. The practice bleeds into my life quickly. I meditate twice daily for an hour, sitting with almost religious regularity. I return to Vipassana centers two to three times each year to refresh my practice through 10-day courses, sitting and serving.
It would be two years before I fully understand the impact that attending my first course had on me.
I was walking with Bradley at the time, who had been serving full-time as center manager in Jesup, Georgia for the last two years. After sitting a retreat together, I found myself strangely unable to recall what my life was like before taking that first meditation course.
“I just don’t remember what life was like back then,” I say to him. “It’s weird. I mean, of course I remember the events and the people and the places, but I don’t remember how exactly I was experiencing them. Meditation’s such a big part of my life now, constantly bringing my attention back to the moment, that I don’t remember what my experience was like prior to the practice. It’s like, I’ve forgotten what it was like to be me.”
“I know what your life was like back then,” he says to me with a smile. “You were lost in thought.”
The words sink into me like murky tub water through a drain, and I can finally see to the bottom. Before learning meditation, I had been thinking my whole life without realizing that I was thinking in the first place. I hadn’t really observed my thoughts before. I didn’t know what thought was, how it came about or who made them. I didn’t understand that I wasn’t my thoughts, that I was separate from them. I believed I was the thought, the conjurer of them, the person controlling them. And so I felt responsible for my thoughts, resisting the negative ones and attaching to the positive ones.
Meditation allowed me to witness for myself the mechanisms of thought, how I have nothing to do with thoughts arising. They arise on their own. I see thoughts simply as prior programming, the echoes of stories already known set on repeat, playing again and again in my mind like a busted record. Meditation is the practice of stopping that pattern. I gained the ability to observe thought, create enough space between me and thoughts, and make a choice in the matter rather than blindly reacting to the noise. If only for this simple way of relating to thought, my life is changed because of Vipassana.
As I write this, it’s been three years since my first course, and I have new ideas on meditation courses and meditation as a whole. The courses were essential for my own path. They helped me establish discipline, instructed me on how to sit for long periods of time, gifted me with insightful and interesting experiences, connected me with friends and teachers, exposed me to the basics concepts of Buddhist teachings, and gave my life meaning. But attending such a course is not necessarily essential for your journey. These lessons can be learned in the day to day course of existing as a human being, and I find this to be the case with so many friends arriving at similar conclusions without ever attending a course themselves. The courses at a retreat center merely offer a distraction-free environment to dedicate space and time to uncover such experiences. To know if a course is right for you, you have to ask the question yourself.
If you do decide to attend a course, there are various spiritual pitfalls that I would like to caution against that I noticed myself falling into.
I began to think very highly of myself for attending many ten-day courses and looked down on those who hadn’t. Such a perspective hardened my ego, kept me from opening up to new ideas, and distracted me from understanding that what I saw in others only existed in myself. What the mind fears, it holds within it, and what it understands, it lets go. No ten-day courses are needed to exist in the here and now.
Additionally, the centers became a crutch for me. I found myself going back time and time again, looking to recharge on a bi-annual basis, when there were other gross needs in my life which needed to be addressed. I needed the courses at the time, and now look forward to solving some of my other needs. Listen to what you feel is best for you. Balance this with breaking patterns that may no longer serve you.
I also developed the great hindrance and dogma that this particular technique is the only path or the purest path toward spiritual liberation. I now feel differently. So long as one’s intention and aim is set for the best of all beings, there are infinite ways to walk that path. What’s most important is that you listen to yourself.
When I began to open up to new techniques and pay attention to more domains of my life, many things changed for me. I gradually began to feel as if the technique itself was a bit too rigid for my liking. I piled tension on top of my mind and shifted to sitting in open awareness. My practice is now more open and constantly changing, depending entirely on what I feel is best suited for me.
I soon found myself opening up to new techniques and new ways of thinking. Sam Harris’s Waking Up app offered me new, beneficial meditations. The Deconstructing Yourself Podcast gave me new ideas for other ways of practicing. A visit to a spiritual teacher in Nepal helped me confirm following my heart into new paths. Before I knew it, I was finding equal benefit from meditation as from reading, writing, communication, yoga, hiking, and moving the body have taken on greater importance in my recent development. Mindfulness can be imbued into anything.
My meditation practice is much more forgiving, too. I’m no longer so religious about sitting two hours each and every day. The frequency, duration, and techniques I use are not assigned but chosen. I do what I feel is best for myself. This feels lighter to me.
As of today, I can’t imagine attending another course, but I do know how valuable they can be for those who do attend them. I am always excited to hear when one of my friends is planning to attend. It is not for everyone, but such courses typically mark a large period of personal growth in their lives.
I see meditation as a vehicle for self-knowledge and learning about who, what, where, and why I am. It’s one perspective and one pathway toward truth. It’s universally accessible, and there’s no prerequisites. No beliefs, gear, or environment is needed to practice. You just sit down and observe what’s going on inside of you.
And that’s where I’ve found meditation remaining invaluable in my life — in figuring out what’s going on inside of me. Because the more I know about what’s going on inside, the more I’m able to relax into who I am in that moment, riding the waves of emotion instead of fighting against them.
I am still an imperfect human with a chattering mind. But now, I have tools. The storms don’t last so long and aren’t so strong. I’ve found myself stepping about a lifelong path that I can return to over and over and over again. It’s one we can all walk in every moment.
I hope you enjoyed the read. If you did, please consider sharing it with a close friend and also following the journey:
Wishing you well.
Love,
David
PS — thanks to my patrons who support my work.
PSS — you can purchase my hiking memoir, The Trail Provides, on Amazon and Audible today.
VIPASSANA CENTERS
If you’re interested in attending a Vipassana ten-day meditation retreat, there are centers all over the world. Check the schedule and see if there’s a ten-day course near you.
