In honor of the recent passing of the great Vipassana Meditation teacher, S.N. Goenka, I wanted to share my experience of the 10-day Vipassana meditation course I took in October of 2010 in Northfolk, CA. He has setup these wonderful meditation centers all over the world all run by donation.
It is a silent meditation course. Once you check in, all forms of communication with the outside world are removed. You are not allowed to talk to anyone or make eye contacts during the 10 days. Exercise and even journaling is not allowed. Of course no drugs, alcohol, cigarettes are allowed. They also serve some delicious vegetarian meals. So no meat, snacks or junk food during the entire course. There are few breaks (which I spent taking nice nature walks) and meal times, other than that you are sitting for meditation. Each sitting is about 2hrs totally approx. 10 hrs. per day. Some of them can be done on your bed.
I felt like I arrived at the Dharma institute in Lost, the TV show. The most surreal part of the experience was that the number of the bungalow I was assigned to was my birth month and my bed was my birth date. We get to meet the other students on the last day when we break the silence. That is when I found out that the girl to my left had the same name as my boyfriend’s sister and the girl to my right was from the town that my boyfriend is from. Coincidence? This affirmed that there are no coincidences.
The funniest part was that one of the girls was drinking water out of the water bottle that had the Dharma logo from Lost, which I noticed on day 3. I wanted to laugh so hard which I did for a second, and share it but couldn’t talk to anyone. I had to wait until day 10 to find out that the girl didn’t even know what the logo represented. Some guys she carpooled with gave them to her.
The meditation technique is from India and it is what Buddha practiced to reach enlightenment. I can’t get into the details of it, as it has to be experienced and too long to explain as it is built upon each day over the 10 days. But the premise is to stay seated while being present and still with the body and breath. The goal is to realize that everything passes and not to have attachments or aversions thus finding inner peace. That is why you can’t move to scratch or change the position of the legs when it falls asleep.
Each day was very different. Some days the time flew by, other days it felt so long. I’m also not used to waking up so early and going to bed so early so that was a hard adjustment. Being silent and in that environment felt very much at home for me. I think I was a monk in my past life. Some people have major break through and emotional releases. My experience was pretty steady. I wasn’t trying to force anything to happen either. It is amazing and almost magical when you sit still long enough the pins and needles go away on its own. Even itchiness goes away without scratching. I did come out of it feeling very light. One of the most puzzling part was that even though I didn’t exercise or practice yoga for 10 days, I felt so flexible and strong when I got back and went to a yoga class. It shows the power of meditation in removing tension in the body. Before I left for the course, I was in the middle of designing a website and ran into some coding issues that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work. All the answers just flowed through me once I got back from the course and tackled it without much hair pulling. I felt like I was being guided by something outside of me. That was truly magical. I don’t know when I’ll be called back to do another sitting but I am so grateful for having this experience.
The experience is different from everyone and each time for a same person is very different as well. So I was just sharing the simplified version of my experience without getting too much into the details of the do’s don’ts and the technique. If you’d like more info, visit the website:
http://www.manda.dhamma.org
If you have done the course or do one, I’d love to hear about your experience. R.I.P. S.N. Goenka. May all being be happy….
