VIPASSANA: Through pain and discomfort to peace

FROM PAIN TO PEACE: A Vipassana meditator’s experience doing a 10-day retreat

Last updated: January 27th, 2019

In 2009 I completed a 10-day Vipassana meditation course in Nepal. Also known as insight meditation or “clear seeing,” Vipassana originates in India from the teachings of the Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. Over the years it has been diluted and modified in other parts of the world, but has  been practiced in its pure form in Myanmar. The Myanmar version as taught by S.N. Goenka, which is the style I practiced, has spread globally in recent years thanks to the positive results reported from the practice and its easy accessibility. It’s open to people of all races and religions and provided on a donation basis.

The practice

Don’t mistake Vipassana for an easy course where you’ll be chanting blissful mantras or visualizing a white light enveloping your body. In fact, the mixing of any other style of meditation with this form of Vipassana is strictly forbidden as it will dilute or even eliminate the benefits. The point of this meditation is not to escape your pains and elicit temporary blissful feelings, but to accept them with equanimity.

The meditation centres on experiencing reasonable pain and learning to be detached from it, eventually transcending the pain and developing a high level of awareness. Once you’ve signed up for and get started with the meditation practice, you have to complete the full course. It’s incredibly hard to leave the course no matter how much begging you do (many people want to leave after a few days!). The teachers want you to experience the benefits and this requires sticking with it for the full 10 days.

You’re asked not to torture yourself if you’re in a lot of pain, and to keep things reasonable. It’s a scientific method that encourages you to be aware of your physical cravings (for a more comfortable position) and aversions (pain, itchiness, numbness, irritations with those around you) and to be completely detached on an emotional level. By working on transcending these fleeting sensations, mastery over your mind will be transferred to the rest of your life and you’ll reduce your cravings and aversions.

And it worked for me. OK, not a miracle cure for everything, but some things definitely improved. With continued practice who knows how much one can grow.

Days 1-3  Anapana breathing (focusing on the air going in and out your nostrils, experiencing all the finer sensations)
Day 4-10  Vipassana (doing a body scan starting with your head all the way down to your toes, feeling as many sensations as possible on every part of your body. Students first start with a surface scan and more advanced students also work on feeling sensations on the inside of the body)

Schedule

4 a.m. – Wake up bell
4:30 – 6:30 a.m. – Meditation
6:30 – 8 a.m. – Breakfast and rest (most of us would crawl back into bed)
8 – 9 a.m. – Meditation (from day 5 you’re asked to try not to move your arms, legs or open your eyes for a full hour, this is when the true Vipassana starts and you work hard to transcend pain)
9 a.m 11 a.m. – Meditation
11 a.m. – 1 p.m. – Lunch and rest (again, crawl back to bed—usually in agonizing pain)
1 p.m.  2:30 p.m. – Meditation
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. – Meditation (no moving for an hour)
3:30  5 p.m. – Meditation
5 – 6 p.m. – Light snack/dinner
6  7 p.m. – Meditation (no moving for an hour)
7  8:30 p.m. – Daily discourse (S.N Goenka’s teachings are by video in which he relates spiritual principles through teachings and oftentimes comical stories)
8:30  9 p.m. – Meditation
9:30 p.m.Sleep, lights out

Noble silence

To help focus on your inner experience, you’re asked not to speak to anyone for the entire retreat, not to look at anyone and not to use gestures to communicate. If you have any concerns, there are plenty of volunteers ready to assist. Most of us cracked by Day 9 and started secretly talking. We missed sharing our feelings, having them validated, assessing whether our pain/reactions were normal. Noble silence was quite nice on some days because I don’t think I felt like talking to anyone anyway. I was extremely moody!

Food

Incredibly good vegetarian food… and not because we were hungry (two real meals a day with only a light snack in the evening). Most of us had constipation during the course due to the lack of movement. We would go for small walks from time to time, but generally we did one of three things: sleep, meditate or eat.

Sitting position

Chairs were available for people who could not sit cross legged. I sat in a carefully engineered cross-legged position with five small pillows strategically placed around my hips, knees and ankles. Whenever I could, I would alternate kneeling, half kneeling and probably about 27 other positions I discovered during my hours of meditating to relieve the pain. This isn’t recommended as you’re bound to get pain in a new position within 10 minutes, so it’s best to stick with one position, sit through the pain and then it will disappear by the fifth or sixth day.

Teachings

HOW TO BECOME MISERABLE:

Aversions

Any trigger outside of yourself that makes you angry, upset, fearful—what someone said, what someone did. The aversions experienced during meditation might be feeling angry with the person next to you for sneezing, finding a certain smell irritating or finding your discomfort bothering you.

My aversions: I try not to be ethnocentric, yet it took me time to get used to the Nepali style of openly coughing, sneezing, burping, spitting very often and very loudly (most people clear their throats as if to expel stomach bile incredibly loudly, and not just by the grannies either, lots of young people cleanse their system by spitting in this audible way). The meditation hall smelled like garbage on the hot days as the there was a garbage deposit area nearby.

Cravings

The things that we need, that control us, that we obsess over, that we must have or we don’t have peace of mind.

My cravings: Chocolate, Vancouver, family, success in career, control over my environment (I had none externally, all I could do was work on controlling what was going on inside)

Delusions

Perceiving others as we think they are and not as they really are, perceiving life as we think it is, but not as it really is, projecting our own issues onto the way we see others.

My delusions: Sometimes I would get a bit paranoid about some of the girls we were sharing dorms with. They did not have the friendliest faces/glares/mannerisms, and I thought they were staring me down in an impolite way, so I would stare back! This fed my delusion by creating a negative reaction in them, which maybe did not even exist in the first place.

HOW TO BECOME LIBERATED:

Equanimity

Despite all the pain, itchiness and discomfort felt while sitting like a Buddha statue, you don’t let your emotions/mind react and fall out of balance, you are detached from what is happening. You scan your body, recognize a painful spot or itchy patch and move on to the next part of your body. Your mind should stay balanced.

My equanimity: I typically have a high pain tolerance in the short term, but with long-term pain, I break down and cry for my mommy…  I was able to establish good equanimity for about 20 minutes at a time, but rarely for a full hour.

Impermanence of EVERYthing

By keeping the same posture and sitting with the discomfort, you realize that after a few minutes most of these pains go away. Sure they come back, but then they go away again. Most things rise and fall with their own rhythm. Same with the annoying coughs, spitting, sneezing we heard during the meditation. Everything changes with time and so doesn’t require such a strong reaction from our part, just observation and awareness.

My impermanence: I’ve known impermanence prior to Vipassana, yet I never truly experienced it as readily as I did by having to bear through pain and aversions (I could not escape!) and watch them melt away too.

Day by day replay… my thoughts and feelings

Day 0: I’m so psyched to be here, I’m not expecting any huge revelations, but small ones surely. I can’t wait for noble silence to start! I wonder what this place will look like when that happens? How will I manage not to look anyone in the eye? The evening meal of bananas will leave me starving overnight, oy!

Day 1: Not as bad as I thought, the two-hour sessions feel like an eternity, but I think I can get through this, nine days of this… oy! All this coughing/spitting/sneezing is a bit annoying. Why is everyone here so sick. I’ll stop bringing my watch to meditation hall, it’s stretching everything out even more.

Days 2-3: I’m having the most vivid dreams of my life, my mind is so still that I can remember all the details, but the dreams are so frightening for some reason… I can’t wait for this pain to go away, my back is killing me, I’m an occupational therapist for gods sake, I promote stretching, ergonomic positions and pain management. This goes against everything I’ve been taught on what is good for the body. Gosh, I hope the pain goes away by tomorrow, I can’t wait to crawl into bed. I wish I could use my Tiger Balm/pain meds, but as they said I fear that will make the pain dull and then I won’t be able to transcend it properly, wow some people here look a bit agitated, glad I’m OK on that front. (Agitation came later!)

Days 4-6: Getting over the hump, we’re getting there. Why is the pain still there? OK, it’s not as intense, but I thought it would be fully gone by now, man all these pillows under my knees are a bit embarrassing, but I don’t think I could sit here for 10 hours a day otherwise… oh man, my cravings for chocolate are amplified, this meditation is having the opposite effect, I feel like I’m failing… instead of letting go of my cravings, I want them even more! (Later on) wow, my first time not moving for one hour, wow what an accomplishment, I’m proud of that.

Day 7-8: I’m slowly starting to get this and see the benefits. I’m reacting less to others. I’m realizing I have control over my cravings… phew, I’m not so weak after all. Still, I can’t wait for this to be OVER.

Day 9: Get me out of here, I’m so tired of this. So bored of scanning my own body… gosh what will be the first thing I do on Day 11 when I’m set free? I just need to get through every hour and focus on right now or I’ll go crazy. Oh my mind is tired, I’ll let it wander where it likes for a little while. Later on I nearly lost my mind by letting it go wherever it liked for a few hours and got very paranoid.

Day 10: I lost some valuable time yesterday and got out of balance, but I’ll make the most out of it today. Oh it’s so good to talk, I have so much to say. I’m talking so slowly, carefully and truthfully… wow, it’s been a while.

Day 11: I’m a bit scared to leave this place and face the real world, but I’m also totally ready. I’m grateful for this experience even if I feel I didn’t perform as well as I would have liked. I hope I can keep up this practice, this is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s so much I need to work on… that I WANT to work on.

“May you all be happy and peaceful.”

To book a Vipassana course, visit http://www.dhamma.org

What was your experience with Vipassana? Are you sitting on the fence thinking about doing a course? If so, what’s holding you back? Post your thoughts on Vipassana below…

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by Shirin Kiani

  1. The description of your mental state gave me a laugh. I know what you mean though how people can get on your nerves in Vipassana, especially when people have different habits that you’re not used to.

    For me I found the physical act of sitting for so long difficult, but it’s amazing how the body-mind adjusts to the pain, and that’s the beauty of the practice. Sitting with impermanence!

    I was really amazed how many of my dreams I remembered and how vivid they were. I rarely remember my dreams so this was quite a shock.

  2. Good read. Hope what you got going through that pain & peace are putting to use in life. I hope you are sitting regularly. Here is something that will help you and through which you can help those who you always wanted to help get the same benefits that you already tasted.
    Vipassana Radio. Find out more about it on http://www.dhammavani.org Aur haan like Vipassana, It is free.

    1. phpoasis,

      When I did the 10-day course I found that when it finished my experiences were so clear that I could write quite a detailed account (journal style) from day 1 to day 10. This is quite unusual for me as I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast! Stilling the unsettled mind has that effect.

  3. Thanks for sharing your experience.. i am planning to go from feb 5th to feb 16th 2014 .. but i am yet to get confirmation.. they say there are huge number of applications and that it is not easy to get…

  4. Wow, thank you so much for writing and sharing your experience. I am going to embark on my first Vipassana retreat in a few months and am so excited and nervous.
    Your truthfulness is wonderful! I am wondering though, how have you fared since you completed the course?
    I guess I fear that all of the work done in the retreat will be undone over time by going back into society. Do you feel that the effects have been lasting changes to your life? I would love to talk more 🙂

    1. I didn’t write this article, but I’ve also done these same Vipassana courses. For me, the retreats have definitely had a lasting impact. I found a deeper connection with the truth, my self, a greater understanding of impermanence and I’ve become much more equanimous.

      It is true that living in mainstream society can have the effect of undoing what progress was made in the retreat, but with regular meditation and attending retreats regularly (they suggest annually) that does not have to be the case. Like any spiritual work, it’s an ongoing process. Any amount of work you can continue to do on your own will be worthwhile. Doing retreats alone is not enough, but they can be so powerful because you can dive so deeply into the truth when you meditate all day for 10 days.

  5. Heading for a 10 day vipassana course today.Even as an easterner, mortified of having to sit cross-legged in one place – a torture for me.Thanks for admitting to the ‘agonizing pain’ bit – I know it from previous puny sessions of shamatha.
    Fingers crossed… 🙂

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