10-Day Vipassana Experience: Is Vipassana the antidote to a painful life?

Everyone is destined to experience the beauty of life, but also its inevitable dark side: disillusionment, aging, illness, loneliness, loss, meaninglessness, painful choices and death.

—— "A Gift for Psychotherapists" by Owen Yalom

The beginning of the story

More than two thousand years ago, there was a young man who was born into a noble family. When he was young, he tasted all kinds of beautiful experiences in the world, but felt that this was not the happy life he wanted: "Everyone loves him, and he makes everyone happy, but he cannot make himself happy. ” He gave up everything he owned and embarked on the path of a wandering ascetic, just to find an answer to the loss in his heart.

Later, he experienced spiritual practice and returned to the secular world. He went back and forth between entering and leaving the world, and took many detours. Finally, I felt the great joy rising in my heart by a river, and felt that everything in the world was new. Later generations called that moment "enlightenment."

The young man was Siddhartha who later became the Buddha.

Throughout his life, he has spent many years exploring himself, and has been able to gain insight into his own reality and experience the freedom of freedom from pain. This method is Vipassana.

Pain is inevitable and endless. People are like the punished Sisyphus, pushing heavy boulders up the mountain day after day. At all times and in all over the world, many people have been thinking about the same question: Where should we go in the face of such a life?

At a certain time in my life, out of curiosity about this issue, I took 10 days to attend a Vipassana training camp. There, I practiced this simple and profound method and felt the traces it passed through me and left in my life.

The Vipassana camp I participated in at that time was introduced to China by Goenka from India. There are such Vipassana centers all over the country. You only need to sign up and apply on their website to participate. They have no religious affiliation. Color is just a way to spread insight. This course is also free, and the food and accommodation are provided by the Vipassana Center. You can donate some fees as you like after the course, but it is not mandatory.

The Vipassana center I signed up for is located in a separate courtyard of a temple. After several twists and turns, I arrived at the passenger transport center closest to the temple, where I met two friends who were also going to participate in Vipassana, so I went there. We shared a ride together. In the taxi, we chatted and learned that one of the eldest brothers had participated many times, while the other eldest sister and I were participating for the first time. My eldest sister and I expressed our worries about the upcoming journey: "Can you persevere?"

The driver's uncle said: "What the hell, I've already been in jail."

No way. Needless to say, this divine comfort greatly increased my inner uneasiness.

The challenge of lack of information

The temple is in a quiet mountain. After getting off the car, I saw the registration point of the Vipassana Center. People were completing the reporting process in an orderly manner according to the instructions. After four o'clock that day, I officially handed over all my communication tools and books, entered the long corridor, and came to my room, a simple and clean two-person room. My roommate hadn't arrived yet, so I packed up my belongings. out. Without my mobile phone, I couldn't communicate, and I could only determine the time through the few clocks in the corridor. I deeply felt that I had no one to rely on.

I don’t know how much time has passed, but I have read the guidelines, rules, regulations and even timetables that can be read in the room and corridor n times. When there was nothing left to read, I began to have a desire, and a voice in my heart shouted: God, give me some fresh information.

I am like the person Zweig was imprisoned in solitary confinement in "The Story of Chess". "I am eager to see some printed things, see some written words, and want to see some written words on the wall." I swallowed the schedule in one gulp and engraved it in my mind, greedily grabbing every little spot and carefully observing every wrinkle on these coats.

”

I don’t know how much time passed, but my roommate pushed open the door and came in. I was so happy that I quickly started chatting with him: “Why did you arrive so late?”, “Did you report it?”, “It was a lot of trouble on the road. Yeah, me too, luckily I met my classmates.", "I asked the teacher if I have dinner tonight.", "The hot water will be picked up over there in the corridor"...

After my roommate arrived, let's take some time. It became less difficult, and soon it was dinner time. After dinner, the course officially started. Only then did I realize that the real challenge had just begun...

The regulations clearly stated: From the beginning of the course to the morning of the tenth day, all students must observe "sacred silence" - yes Refers to the silence of body, speech and thoughts. Any form of communication between students, including gestures, sign language, writing notes, etc., is not allowed. The reason given is that it is more conducive to focusing on yourself.

Throughout the whole few days, I was constantly challenged by this lack of information. Washing clothes, combing hair, brushing teeth, making the bed...these concrete and tangible things that can be done are particularly valuable. Often take a break from meditation to do these things.

The same is true for other people. There is a small phenomenon that can prove this: outside our meditation room, there is a small garden. I saw fellow practitioners using stones on the ground to make various shapes. , dismantle it and put it away again the next day, and so on...

Observe the Precepts

I learned some regulations during the Vipassana period from the Internet in advance. The first one to bear the brunt is the work and rest time: morning I have to get up at 4 o'clock, and I have to meditate for 12 hours every day.

At that time, I was worried that getting up early would be a huge challenge. Later I discovered that I was still too naive, and getting up early was not a challenge because I went to bed very early every day and there was still a lot of time to catch up on sleep (and there was nothing else to do). The real challenge comes from meditating for up to 12 hours a day, which is another story later.

After I started to get up early every day, my perception of time changed significantly. Especially on the first day, after meditating for 5 hours, eating 2 meals, and catching up on sleep once, I Found out it was only 11:40am. There is a feeling that I can never finish it. Compared with normal days, a day passes by in a blink of an eye, but here, one day feels like three days.

There are also some other important rules, such as not being able to go out during Vipassana, only vegetarian food, and not eating after lunch. In order to allow the new students to adapt, fruits are prepared for the new students as dinner, but this is not the first time to participate. For those who take the course, all they have for dinner is sugar water. The vegetarian food at the Vipassana Center is very rich, but it is very difficult for me to adapt to having only fruits for dinner. So every day when I go to bed, I start to feel greedy and hungry. I miss all kinds of delicious food, but I have no choice but to deal with this kind of food. Feelings of food cravings haunt you into sleep.

Sacred Silence

There is a sign saying "Sacred Silence" posted everywhere in the Vipassana venue, and no communication is allowed during the course.

So there is a brand new experience of interpersonal interaction. After the entire ten-day course, I didn’t even know who my roommate was, where he was from, and why he was here, as were the other students.

After trying to adapt to a life of no talking and no communication, I found that without conversation, the whole world became quiet, so quiet that I could only hear my own inner voice, so I became extremely sensitive to inner activities. , you will easily discover what thoughts arise in you and what inner dialogue occurs. The observation of external things is also much more detailed. Without chatting and reading, I can only spend a lot of time looking at the world, looking at the dirt on clothes, looking at the creases on schoolbags, looking at the branches and vines of small flowers growing on the grass. The clothes each classmate wears, the way they walk...

This experience of complete aphasia made me reflect on my usual habit of speaking. The convenience of language as a communication tool will be a big plus. This temptation makes us focus on words and lose a lot of other information. In short, language narrows experience. After being completely banned from speaking, it actually made me smarter and wiser.

In communication, there is often the presence of an "other", which causes us to focus part of our attention on others and relationships, presenting ourselves in a relationship, which also makes it difficult for us to enter a state of introspection.

Practicing Vipassana

The course of Vipassana is roughly as follows:

The first 3 days are a pilot course, observing the breathing and focusing on the nostrils , inside the nose, the triangular area above the upper lip, pay attention to the breath and feeling in this area.

On the 4th day, we began to enter formal Vipassana, that is, scanning body feelings. Move your attention, piece by piece, from the top of your head to your toes, becoming aware of any sensations that arise on the surface of your body. After doing it once, be aware of it in reverse order from your toes to the top of your head. Repeat this process again and again.

Gone.

Yes, you read that right, this is what is taught.

Fortunately, I have had some opportunities to participate in mindfulness training, and I have some experience with this practice method of observing the actual state of the body. Otherwise, I would definitely be confused. The purpose of the pilot course is to increase our awareness so that we can perceive subtle changes in the body's feelings. The true practice of Vipassana can be summed up in three words: observe as it really is. To expand it is to observe things as they are.

It sounds simple, but it is not.

To give a simple example, one day, you fell and your leg began to bleed. What was your subconscious reaction?

Probably: The thought of "really unlucky" appears in your heart, and you may already have some "irritable" emotions. Or, you didn't realize what thoughts were happening in your heart at all. You felt an unknown fire, and maybe you even cursed, "Who designed these stairs," and then started to go home and rummage through the cabinets to find band-aids.

But these reactions are all not true observation. Truthful observation is: you are aware of any feeling in your body, maybe it is pain, where is the pain and how big is the range? You just observe it instead of automatically The habitual reactions of "greed, anger, and delusion" arise.

You need to experience awareness and observe truthfully in practice day after day, practice it, and tame your manic mind that is prone to various habitual reactions.

Meditation Experience

In the Vipassana Center, the basic practice method is to sit cross-legged on a special meditation cushion and observe the breathing or body sensations. It is collectively called meditation. In fact, Vipassana pays more attention to this "observation". Maintaining awareness in daily life and observing one's own breathing or body feelings are also practices. However, the teacher will teach this at the beginning of the course. This kind of meditation posture makes people more focused on learning this method. Therefore, in the 10-day course, Vipassana will basically be conducted in the form of meditation. In this part, I used a simple diary (I secretly brought a pen and paper, don’t imitate me) to record my inner experience during these 10 days.

Day1: Single lotus, double lotus, no lotus, M-shaped sitting, curled up sitting...it is uncomfortable no matter how you sit. Sitting in any position for a long time will cause back pain, so I keep trying. Find a comfortable sitting position.

Day2: Sleepy... Start to enter the state of observing breathing, focus on the area below the nostrils and above the lips. When the breath comes, feel it, and when the breath goes out, feel it. This day I feel like I can see things much brighter.

Day3: I feel uncomfortable sitting no matter how hard I sit, and I start to become very irritable. The little beast in my heart seems to be uncontrollable, and I want to roar. I found that I was like a patient with depression. I felt heavy in the morning and light in the evening. When I got up in the morning, I felt depressed thinking that there was still another day. At night, thinking that the day was about to end, I felt happy.

Day4: I had several dreams in the morning, and started the day's meditation with a feeling of groggy. The three long hours in the afternoon were particularly painful, teaching new mindfulness techniques, from breathing meditation to body scanning exercises. What was playing was Goenka's tape. He read it very slowly and repeated some contents several times. I was extremely irritable, my legs and back continued to hurt, and a voice came out in my heart: The bad old man is very bad.

I secretly regretted it, why did I come here to suffer this?

Starting from this day, the one-hour meditation in the evening became immobility meditation, that is, it is best to remain in one posture for this hour. After persisting for 40 minutes, I couldn't stand it anymore. I felt like I was sweating all over my body. My right leg felt like it was filled with lead and was about to sink into the ground.

Day 5: The difficulty began to rise significantly. There was an hour of non-moving meditation in the morning, afternoon and evening. The pain in my back became more and more severe, but I was able to focus more on observing the physical sensations.

Day6: There is no special feeling. I saw that some people could no longer hold on and withdrew early.

Day7: A particularly intolerable day, not from pain, but from boredom. In addition to observing breathing every day, I also observe feelings. I really want to go home. All kinds of messy feelings and long-standing memories came up, as well as some panic and anxiety about what might happen in the outside world, and the uneasiness caused by losing contact.

Day8: During this day’s meditation, I had the experience of “pain dissolving”, all while observing my feelings with extreme concentration. For the first time, the pain all over my body disappeared, especially in my back, leaving only a clear and light feeling, which lasted for a few seconds, and then returned to normal.

Day9: The right leg was completely numb. During continuous observation, I found that the numbness was not only numb, but also hot, pulling, and squeezing, extending from the right foot to the calf. I observed it steadily and saw that it continued. Suddenly my right leg became lighter and I began to feel like it was being pulled upward. As if it was not my leg, I watched it all dissipate, the numbness disappeared, and other feelings also disappeared, turning into tiny particles, very light... This time it seemed to be longer than the day before, but it only happened on the right leg.

I don’t know if it’s because Vipassana is coming to an end, but the meditation in the past two days has not been so painful. In daily activities, I also find that my sensitivity to feelings has increased significantly. Very peaceful.

Day10: Mobile phones were distributed, and the course on this day was much more relaxed. There was nothing special, just with the expectation of ending the course and returning to real life.

Is Vipassana the antidote to a painful life?

As mentioned earlier, Vipassana is an answer and practical plan on how to face the pain in life. After several days of practice and listening to the teacher’s explanations, I have a preliminary understanding of this issue:

Pain and joy are normal parts of life. People often have expectations and desires, but expectations are disappointed and desires are lost. Not getting it becomes suffering, expecting it to come true, and having desires become happiness.

In the face of suffering, people's common reactions are to reject, abandon, and want to escape. Just like when facing physical pain, the first reaction is to raise feelings of disgust and annoyance, and hope that it will disappear quickly. . The result is often that the pain of the original thing is added to the emotional torture, adding more pain to the pain. When it comes to happiness, people do the opposite, craving for nostalgia and wanting to be like this all the time. Just like the joyful experience of pain dissolving in the body, people who practice Vipassana will occasionally fall into a misunderstanding, that is, To pursue this experience of pain dissolution, you fall into another obsession.

The practice of Vipassana uses the body as a medium. By allowing everyone to observe the various feelings on the body truthfully, through day-to-day observation, we find that the real physical state is that there is both pain and joy. Pleasure, there are times when it is comfortable and times when it is uncomfortable, and most of the time it feels nothing special. And these experiences will arise and pass away, and the state of change is constant.

Vipassana practice does not encourage the pursuit of the feeling of "dissolution of pain" because that will also disappear. Whether feelings will appear, when they will appear, and how long they will appear cannot be predicted or controlled. All we can do is watch them come and go.

The attitude that Vipassana encourages is to treat pain and joy with equanimity, understand that pain and joy are impermanent experiences that change with time, and not be attached to joy, so you are not afraid of suffering. The practical way is: when the feeling comes, don’t judge, don’t welcome or resist, just observe; when the feeling goes away, don’t judge, don’t obsess or rejoice, just observe.

We are people who sit by the river and watch the water flow. We are people who stand on the mountains and watch the sunrise and sunset. All our body feelings are the flowing water and the setting sun. Regardless of the speed of the water flow or the brightness and darkness of the sun, observation is just observe.

As we continue to practice Vipassana, there may be a situation where pain no longer causes "habitual reactions" (resistance, disgust, wanting to escape, etc.) in our bodies and minds. It will no longer bring us so much pain, and gradually tend to a state of "peace". This is just a natural occurrence, not what the practice of Vipassana is pursuing. Of course, I have not experienced this natural occurrence, nor can it be achieved in a short-term course. It is the result of years of practice.

After ten days of Vipassana meditation, I returned to real life, and there were still various things that bothered and worried me. So back to the original question: Is Vipassana the antidote to a painful life?

I still can't give a definite answer. But I feel that the attitudes and practical methods it advocates are enlightening and helpful to us when we face the pain in life. For me, what it helps is:

1. When I want to be more focused or want to calm my floating mind, I know to come back to my breathing and my body feelings. Just fine.

2. Make me more sensitive and aware, whether it is physical sensations or inner experiences.

3. Let me realize the linkage between physical sensation and emotional experience. When I cannot describe the emotion, just observe the physical reaction, and there will be unexpected joy~

4. Practice Here's an effective way to deal with pain (including physical pain): observe it.

5. It made me discover that the state of change is constant, whether it is pain or happiness, it will pass. This gave me the courage to persist and the strength to face setbacks.

6. It made me realize that I am not suitable for the life of a spiritual practitioner. I still love the rich and colorful secular life very much!

Finally, let’s end this article with a limerick of my own making:

Meditation, meditation, you should be calm even when the weather is good, and you should be still when the weather is bad.

You need to be calm even if you feel comfortable, and you need to be calm even if you are uncomfortable.

You must be calm even when you are awake, and you must be calm even when you are not awake.

It can be extremely painful, anxious, and difficult.

It is also possible to have a moment of peace, the ultimate tranquility.

This is impermanence. Experience impermanence and cultivate permanence in impermanence.

It is a mind that is meditative at all times~