How Vipassana changed the way I experience life
- Oct 12, 2022
- 5 min read
Vipassana, to be concise, is Gautam Buddha's original path to attaining peace. It provides a point of view of life that one might not understand before doing their basic 10-day program.
The Experiment
From the evening of Day 0 till the morning of Day 10, you are supposed to keep Noble Silence. You are not supposed to talk or look into the eyes of another meditator. From 4:00 AM to 9:30 PM in the evening, you’ll only be meditating, sitting upright, trying to have no moment whatsoever. You will have no way of communicating with anybody; no news from the outside world will come to you. You'll only have yourself and some voice instructions. Your task for the first few days will be to concentrate solely on breathing, observing its incoming and outgoing. After you have mastered focusing on the breath, you’ll have to observe different random sensations in your body that come and go.
The Theory
Imagine your brain as a machine that is supposed to run for as long as you live. Now what happens is that everything you go through in your life has an impact on this machine. Every trauma, heartache, burnout, disappointment, shame damages something inside this machine. Vipassana, in theory, repairs all these damages, making it like it was before those uneventful things that happened in your life. Fair warning, this repair process is slow but awfully rewarding. Emotionally, it’s like being born as a kid again. The only downside is that kids tend to make a lot of mistakes.
The Noble Eightfold Path consists of three steps: Sīla (moral conduct), Samādhi (concentration), and paññā (wisdom). Sīla can be interpreted as paying attention to our lives in such a way that we live them wisely, free of remorse and blame. Many people who are committed to the way of awakening take on the precepts as a way to help guide them as they set out on their journey. The precepts are simple.
Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t abuse sex. Don’t lie.
Don’t take anything that will dull or fog up your mind.
Samādhi is all about your ability to focus and have a stable, calm mind, and paññā , in general, is the wisdom you have. These 3 words are much more intertwined and related than you can imagine. It teaches you how, ideally, there should be no cravings and aversions to anything in life. To remove yourself from you and just observe everything that is happening in your life, Cravings when they are not satisfied invite misery, and aversions in your life themselves make you miserable. It teaches you how to separate feelings of cravings and aversions and how to have an equanimous mind. Free from all bondage of the mind.
The effect
During the 10-day program
The first 2 days were mostly physically painful. While attempting to concentrate, my thoughts were racing in every direction possible, from random objects flying to impossible imaginary scenarios. I never thought, at that point, that thoughtlessness would ever come. My worst point came somewhere on the 3rd day. Physical pain was unbearable, but like all moments, that moment also passed and strength came to sit more and more. Then came the 4th day, the day of the actual Vipassana. The discovery of it kept me in awe. After that, thoughts became less frequent, and suddenly I started seeing patterns in my own thought process. Thoughts become less random as they become more intense and realistic. Thoughts travelled far and wide into the past and future as the days passed. Thoughtlessness came and went, but the important thing was that it came. But I couldn't have predicted what was about to come, and it was not easy to go through what came after that. My mind began to break down as my body became stronger against the pain of sitting for long periods of time, bringing to life all my worst fears and insecurities. I felt myself breaking down more and more as the days went by. The fifth day was the worst. I missed everyone back home a lot, felt down and low, kept meditating and trying not to think at all. I wanted it to end. I came to reality with my own self, saw myself with absolute clarity, and honestly, I didn’t like what I saw. I think that was one of the lowest points of my life, but like all moments, that moment also went. But something had happened that day. On the 6th day, my entire life flashed before me, and I kind of started accepting myself for who I am. On the 7th day, from the morning itself, the day started to look upwards. I came to a point of peace with myself. I was proud of who I was and loved everything around me. In the evening of the 7th day, I reached a point where all the good hormones were flooding my body at the same time. I'm not kidding when I say I felt genuine euphoria for a straight half hour. One of the best moments of my life. Things started to normalize after that day. I started loving myself the way I hadn’t loved before. I appreciated and cherished my own company more than anything. I felt like living that way for the rest of my life. I was not looking forward to returning to civilization, to the world of phones, socializing, and reality. The 8th and 9th days were more of a sort of recovery from deep surgery, which my mind had just gone through. On the tenth day, after the morning session, you are allowed to talk to everybody and share experiences. To my surprise, everybody had different experiences, but nobody who completed 10 days had a bad experience.
Immediate (1–7 Days)
I felt like a new baby. My old vibe was gone. It felt like it was born anew. I was more centered, silent, and composed than before. Everything I heard and saw had a profound effect on me. If someone said something bad, I felt awful. It was emotions flowing everywhere inside. I felt so volatile. I preferred silence and stayed away from social chaos, even though I am a socialite. I started to understand life on another level. I saw my consciousness more transparently than ever, my inner voice louder than ever.
Short-term (1 week to 3 months)
I am able to comprehend all my emotions with more clarity and it has given me the ability to assess situations better, react more understandably and in a neutral way while dealing with them. I can feel the presence of every hormone in the body more profoundly and the reasoning behind its presence. Moreover, it gives me a perspective on anyone around me as well. You gain depth inside yourself, and you gain depth inside other people as well. Again, other meditators I have talked to have experienced different things as well.
Long-term (3 months or more)
As for me, I have just started on this journey, and it is going to take years and years to see the benefits of it. Some of the benefits are perceptible in the short term only. This technique has the potential to cure you mentally, physically, and spiritually. It is a way of life that can do wonders if done properly. It will be a solution to all your problems and a way to be in control of yourself in any given situation.
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