The vipassana experience

Ten days of isolation in the English countryside — phone locked away, speaking to the other meditators forbidden. Hour after hour sitting cross-legged observing my breath, leading to deeper concentration than I've ever experienced and vivid patterns spawning unasked in the darkness of my closed eyes. A steady stream of realisations about myself and how my brain works — every anxiety, fear, desire and fantasy revealing itself shamelessly. And somehow at the end, after the internal expedition that was often challenging and painful, a wholehearted sense of “this was the most fucking awesome thing I've done”.

The idea of doing a Vipassana retreat, ten days of silence and guided meditation, has been on the back of my mind for years. My Dad exposed me to yoga and meditation (the good-old Indian kind, not the re-branded Western versions) at a very young age, and I've always enjoyed journeying into my mind — through experiences, substances and people. I love this kind of thing so much that I've unironically flirted with the idea of becoming a renunciated monk — much to my poor mother's worry.

The real impetus, however, came a few months ago, sitting outdoors having naans and curry, chatting with my friend Om — this brilliant physics PhD studying string theory and gravity and what not. Having recently returned from his retreat, he said, “Ujjawal, knowing what I know about you, you HAVE to try Vipassana”.

His words reached me like those of a divine messenger — I signed up that very day. When you've internally become ready for something, when life has ripened just the right bits in you, it doesn't take much to set you off. As time went by the date approached with a tingling apprehension, I'd respond with the same “A bit excited, a bit nervous” to anyone asking me how I felt.

On the bus to the meditation centre in the middle of nowhere in Herefordshire, I noticed myself becoming quieter, focussed inwards, desire to socialise diminishing. Upon reaching, the liberating feeling of being cut-off from the world had begun to set in. These ten days were for nothing but sitting with myself — no friends, no family, no work, no conversations, no music, no writing, nothing.

The first few days were hard. Meditating for ten hours a day isn't for the faint hearted, and each time I woke up to the four am gongs I wondered why in the world I was putting myself through it. The food was light, simple and vegan — dinner was a couple fruits and some tea (I admit I cheated by drinking a cup of coconut milk instead). For the first few days, the focus was on observing your breath and all the sensations in and around your nose — not necessarily the most scintillating objects of attention. It wasn't easy to focus, thoughts from day-to-day life annoyingly kept disturbing me. Even though the meditation was guided and I was allowed to briefly ask questions to the assistant teacher, I always felt slightly confused about whether I was really doing the right thing. My back hurt from sitting cross legged on the floor and my legs hurt even more — I almost fainted one session trying to bear the pain like a naive soldier.

What got rid of any (reasonable) desires to quit were the first deep meditational experiences. These happen when you keep trying to focus, adamantly returning to your breath each time a thought steals you away. In, out. In out. A thought steals you away. Like a sentry you notice this and pull yourself back to the in, out, in, out. You do this for hours and hours, trying to be as disciplined and unrelenting as your willpower allows. Slowly, as though your mind realises it's got no other option, thoughts begin reducing in intensity and frequency. Somehow the darkness gets darker and you begin losing all sense of your surroundings and even of yourself, your body. Pleasant, vibratory, gushing, almost addictive sensations arise all over your body, and you learn not to be distracted by these even. Your focus is deep now and maintaining it feels like holding your balance over a wave you're surfing — a slight misstep and you're going to fall over. All that you can see now, all that's on the picture screen of your mind (apart from the occasional thought) is the feeling of your breath. It's like nothing exists in the universe but the feeling of your breath and your determination to return to it — it's intense, intimate, almost erotic.

The crazy thing is that you learn that these profound-feeling states of mind aren't even the main goal of the meditation. They're one step on the path, as the teacher, or rather recordings of him (he's dead now), advise you. In fact, there are many other interesting distractions on the path — for some people it's a bright light, or a voice, for some it's fractal patterns (that's the one my string theorist friend Om experienced the most). It sounds crazy, but it's true! Your mind can conjure up all sorts of things — as people who've tried psychedelics are well aware. What came up for me, perhaps because I'd been thinking about learning graphic design recently, were new, unique, bizarre, beautiful pieces of art — things I'd expect to see in a modern art gallery. Each piece was different from the other and they'd just casually pop into my mind without any effort or intention. They were all incredibly vivid — I could clearly see the shapes, the patterns, the textures, the exact hues. They were beautiful, ephemeral, wonderful things that stopped visiting me after a couple days.

By day four or five you start feeling like a serious meditator. All but a few of the distractions of your everyday life have quietened and you're taught the core method of vipassana — which is essentially a really deep body scan — a method that has been taught and used for millennia, from the time of the Buddha (or so they claim). You develop a sensitivity for internal sensations that you typically can't observe because your mind isn't sensitive enough. You tune into a whole world of experience within your body — tingles, warmths, pains, discomforts — arising, falling, sticking, fading. Sometimes at the end of a meditation, your entire body tingles — the feeling lasts for an hour or so.

This is also a time when a lot of feelings begin to surface — all of the stuff you'd repressed and pushed away at various points of your life — all that's lying there in your subconscious secretly causing havoc and occasionally emerging in your weakest moments. For some, like me, this part feels like a gentle and steady release, uncomfortable yet manageable. For some, it can be intense and powerful — I met someone who said (you're allowed to speak with others at the end of the course) he had to be taken crying to the assistant teacher's room at one am to be reassured and pacified. I also saw an English forty-ish year old man in a state of conspicuous shock telling the assistant teacher how a vivid childhood memory appeared out of nowhere during a meditation and blew him away.

No matter how intense or gentle the experience, you certainly come out lighter from it, and much more self-aware. For example, my sisters and friends know that I've got an obsessive desire to self-improve. I used to be proud of this but started realising recently that it was turning into a problem. It's so bad that I find it hard to lie in bed on a weekend morning without feeling like I'm doing something wrong — and I'll often feel uncomfortable at the end of a rest day thinking that I hadn't achieved anything. The root of all of this, as I began to realise, was a subtle uncomfortable physical anxiety that arose whenever I felt stagnant — and my mind would automatically respond to this by trying to do something “productive”. Now, I've learnt to be congizant of this feeling, accept it, understand its impermanence and just let it be — I can't express how liberating that feels!

I also noticed a whole host of anxieties associated with learning experiences. I feel physically disturbed, uncomfortable when I can't understand something or when I feel like I've understood something incorrectly or when an argument clashes with something else I believe. I also feel anxious when I observe someone else doing better than me or when I'm disappointing a teacher figure by not doing well enough. I'm sure these anxieties have made me a good learner but I'm realising now that they've also been making me miserable at the same time. I enjoy hypothesising about the source of these tendencies — could be the competitive Indian education system, something inherited from a parent, or a desire to control things in my life by understanding them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, there was so much more that I let out, lots of them uncomfortable things — contempt, pride, fears, even supressed sexual feelings. The process of letting them arise and bubble away, though uncomfortable in the moment, was beautifully relieving, like a cathartic vomit of toxins. It helped me internalise that there is a whole inner world within you filled with characters and odd spirits. Sometimes they're bizarre, weird, dark, corrupt, but you learn to treat them not with fright or disgust, but with a gentle acceptance — ultimately, they're there and they're part of what makes up “you”, whether you like it or not.

I genuinely think the trajectory of my life has shifted because of the vipassana experience. London used to scare me, as I'd worry about gradually turning into a “city-zombie” — a cold, mean, bored, stressed out, work-obsessed character-less myth-believing version of myself. Now I'm more optimistic — I know no matter what, I've got a little secret power with me that I can't ever lose — a little fragment of ancient India that I can hold on to and carry around like a protective charm. Though whether I've truly rubbed off zombification from my destiny, only time will tell!