Ten Days of Vipassana Meditation in the Berkshire Mountains

by Viviane Chao ('02) and Elizabeth Beauvais ('02)

Vipassana is one of India's most ancient meditation techniques, which was rediscovered by Gautama the Buddha more than 2500 years ago. Vipassana means seeing things as they really are. It is the process of self-purification by self-observation.  One begins by observing the natural breath to concentrate the mind. With sharpened awareness, the meditator proceeds to observe the changing nature of mind and body, and experiences the universal truths of impermanence, suffering and egolessness.  Vipassana can be practiced freely by everyone, at any time, in any place, without conflict due to community, belief system, or religion.  Students introduced to Vipassana for the first time must complete a ten day course, and during that time, must vow not to talk, not to read or write or exercise, and must abstain from all intoxicants, sexual activity, killing any being or stealing.  We both attended a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat on separate occasions in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts.  Though everyone's experience is different and often complex, the following is a brief daily journal of our respective meditation journeys.

DAY ONE Viviane:  A muted gong ripples through my dreams, and someone flips on the harsh, overhead light of the dorm. I lie in bed, trying to gather my wits together for this silent journey of self-awareness that I have chosen.  After a mental pep rally, I wrap myself up in a blanket and walk valiantly to the meditation hall.  As soon as the Pali chants begin, I close my eyes, concentrate on the breath passing through my nose, and then promptly fall asleep.  Sigh.  Two hours later I awake to the sound of the gong signaling 6:30am breakfast time.  Hot oatmeal, stewed fruits, yogurt, and granola await, and I consume everything twice for fear of being hungry later (we're not supposed to eat past noon).

Elizabeth:  Gong sounds at 4:30 am and I stumble through the dark and the early cricket song to the meditation hall for the first sitting.  S.N. Goenka and our instructors explain how we will concentrate on the breath through the nose.  Don't judge it, don't try to alter the breath, just observe it.  After an hour of this, after which time I’ve mentally reviewed my classes for the fall, and recollected how my 3^rd grade friend, Leigh Ann Pennywell, pushed me off the see-saw – all in attempts to focus on my boring breath – I get a funny "Oh-no-I’ve-joined an-ashram-cult-thing" feeling.  All these people sitting in the dark in rows.  This Burmese guru on audio tape.  Still, I persevere.  At lunch, I decide this is the hardest thing I have ever voluntarily done.  Everyone is silent, eyes lowered and absorbed in themselves; there is no stimulus, I am the only variable in my small world.  At five, when we get fruit and tea, I also decide that this is the longest day I can remember.  I take a walk around the apple trees and try to calculate how early I can go to bed.

DAY TWO

V:  Today is the second day of Anapana-sati, awareness of respiration.  I struggle to become aware of every inhalation and exhalation, of every sensation passing through my nostrils, and nothing else.  It is impossible to remain in the present, and my mind quickly tumbles back to the multimedia slide show of "Viviane, This is Your Life!"  I find myself recalling every conversation, argument, crying fit, and joyous moment I've ever experienced, from puking up chocolate cake on my white dress at Gabriel’s birthday party in kindergarten, to dodging traffic in Beijing, attending relatives' funerals, and whining as only an eight year old can whine because my next door neighbor wouldn't trade me her strawberry scratch n' sniff sticker for my root beer one.   

As the hours in the meditation hall drag by, I dabble in a little astral projection and take a look at myself.  Here I am, listening to Pali chants and fidgeting with the cushions I’ve propped up around me for a long sit in a dark room with a hundred people I do not know.  These are people who sneeze, snort, fart, and wheeze for hours on end.  Suddenly, I feel ridiculous.  I cannot possibly stay quiet for another day; I want to scream, "AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!" laugh maniacally, and run out of the meditation hall back into the world of noise, traffic, and TV shows.  E:  More breath work today. I realize with some shock that I am the single most annoying and exhaustive person I know.  I'm the guy I try to get away from at parties.  I make stupid puns, sing little songs, get angry easy – by the afternoon sitting I had told myself the same story eleven times.  My mind is like a child in a supermarket, yanking on his Mom's skirt, droning,

"Mom…Mom…Mom…Mom…Mom…" My mind in meditation is a live centipede, thumb-tacked to the wall, all 100 legs wiggling like mad.  My mind is an extended metaphor, leaping from one moss-glazed lily pad to another as if some opiate, insane frog.  My mind is terrified that I am trying not to pay it attention (Look at me! Love me!), to see through its hurly burly game, and in retribution it wears me out and I take a lot of naps.  Between naps, I refer to my mind in the 2^nd person and worry about developing a split personality.

DAY THREE

V:  I wake up this morning, amazed that I got through yesterday at all.  Surprisingly, a new calmness has come over me.  I am diligent today, and try to practice Anapana at all moments.  When I brush my teeth, I am aware of the chalky taste in my mouth.  When I lay down to rest, I am aware that I am lying down.  When a mosquito lands on my hand to have lunch, I do not react, do not create a liking or disliking toward it.  Moments of quiet develop, and it is beautiful.  During rest time in the afternoon, I do some laundry and hang it out to sun dry on the line. 

E:  A tough day.  When did I ever fantasize about being a nun and living like a recluse?  My thoughts have ranged from peaceful highs to the bottoms – seven days and a lifetime to go.  Still, I am becoming quieter, finally.  There are moments when I am simply with my breath, present, alert and balanced – not judging or wishing for something, just there – in a brief harmony (trying not to develop an attachment to that feeling) in my own body.   These are brief moments, but they give me hope in all this time and effort I am expending here.  I have been watching the sunflowers beside the mess hall.  I greet them three or four times a day, like a safety blanket.  I told them today that they can't die while I'm here, although the odds are good they will – it’s late August, after all.  That's the counting-down game I'll play: Outlive the sunflowers at Buddha camp.

DAY FOUR

V:  After three days of quieting the mind, it is time for Vipassana meditation.  The teacher instructs us to move our concentration from the top of the head down to the toes.   When I practice Vipassana, my body disappears and I am left with only sensations.  My mind has stopped chattering for the most part, although on occasion an inner dialogue springs to life.  Now, when I walk, my body seems to float along, and I take in the flowers, the trees, and even the anthills.  As I knowingly squash some ants, I realize that it still didn't mean anything to me.  The only difference was that now, I carefully observe my actions.

E: Vipassana day.  We graduate from breath-work and move on to the Vipassana meditation technique, which is the careful and systematic observation of the body's sensations in order to notice how we are constantly changing and to train the mind not to react with aversion or craving.  As simple as this technique is, it is also powerful.  I have a visceral reaction to it: big releases of heat as in acupuncture, and the immediate relief from a slow burning migraine when I was focusing on my head, followed by an instant head cold – all in one hour.  Truly, this is mental de-tox.  I am beginning to see how I have reacted to so much – something unwanted that happened, something wanted that didn't happen – my roller-coaster mind all the while yanking me along, up and down, reacting to external forces I could not have controlled.  But I am scared of this awareness reality: is it so passive that I can't want or hope or plan?  What, then, if I have to come to the conclusion that I and everyone I love is ephemeral and temporary?  This meditation business means re-organizing too much.

The Doctor’s Prescription

 A man becomes sick and goes to the doctor for help.  The doctor examines him and then writes out a prescription for some medicine.  The man has great faith in the doctor.  He returns home and in his prayer room he puts a beautiful picture or statue of the doctor.  Then he sits down and pays respects to that picture or statue:  he bows three times, and offers flowers and incense.  And then he takes out the prescription that the doctor wrote for him, and solemnly recites it: "Two pills in the morning! Two pills in the afternoon!  Two pills in the evening!" All day, all life long he keeps reciting the prescription because he has great faith in the doctor, but still the prescription does not help him.

The man decides that he wants to know more about this prescription, and so he runs to the doctor and asks him, "Why did you prescribe this medicine?  How will it help me?" Being an intelligent person, the doctor explains, "Well, look, this is your disease, and this is the root cause of your disease.  If you take the medicine I have prescribed, it will eradicate the cause of your disease.  When the case is eradicated, the disease will automatically disappear."  The man thinks, "Ah, wonderful!  My doctor is so intelligent!  His prescriptions are so helpful!"  And he goes home and starts fighting with his neighbors and acquaintances, insisting, "My doctor is the best doctor!  All other doctors are useless!"  But what does he gain from such arguments?  All his life he may continue fighting, but still this does not help him at all.  If he takes the medicine, only then will the man be relieved of his misery, his disease.  Only then will the medicine help him.

Every liberated person is like a physician.  Out of compassion, he gives a prescription, advising people how to free themselves of suffering.  If people develop blind faith in that person, they turn the prescription into a scripture and start fighting with other sects, claiming that the teaching of the founder of their religion is superior.  But no one cares to practice the teaching, to take the medicine prescribed in order to eliminate the malady.

Having faith in the doctor is useful if it encourages the patient to follow his advice.  Understanding how the medicine works is beneficial if it encourages one to take the medicine.  But without actually taking the medicine, one cannot be cured of the disease.  You have to take the medicine yourself.

E: Pivot point.  Hump day.  Attempting to be present with yourself and your life sure does make for long, full days.  I am amazed how many things I try to escape from myself with: work, reading, television, other people – anything to get away from myself.  Impatience, impatience.  It's hard to keep counting down – harder still, to realize I am nearly always counting down, until the weekend, until graduation, until vacation, until I grow to be 5'8"…  I think I fell from the womb and began racing to my death.  But this self-realization doesn't bring me down, like it might have before, rather, it relieves me.  So, okay, I rush around a lot.  That’s a choice.  The practice of Vipassana means empowering yourself to expand your own life, to widen your world of reality, and recognize all the space and choices you have before you.

DAY SIX

V:  I have fallen into a routine now.  When the gong rings at 4:00am, I awake fully, dress, and begin the day’s meditation.  After breakfast, I nap until the next meditation session, which lasts until lunchtime at 11:00am.  I take my meal outside and enjoy the hot summer sun while I eat.  Afternoon meditation is done alone or in the hall.  In the evening, everyone returns to the hall for group meditation and Goenka-ji's discourse. The silence is blissful, and I feel like I could do this forever.

E: There are longer stretches of quiet now within – it's a bit as if I reached up to the sky and tapped on it and felt that it was blue glass, only a small shell surrounded by a greater reality beyond.  So too can I occasionally feel the exterior of this cracked glass bowl of my head and experience things as they really are beyond.  For instance, I was walking around the small track in the clearing and imagining that the woman walking towards me might look at me and think I look absurd, wearing pants under my skirt to keep warm.  Already I begin to picture her sneer, and hear what she might be thinking.  Suddenly, (perhaps because I have been sowing seeds of guided meditation eleven hours a day), I become aware of the pulse beat in my thumb, the breeze touching the left side of my forehead.  I am reminded: things are as they are, as they really are… outside this cracked glass bowl.  Just me, wearing pants under my skirt, hair blowing in the breeze, woman walking towards me on the track, clouds stringing through the sky.  That's all.  This is reality.  This is all that's really happening. It is small, yes, but oh, liberating!

DAY SEVEN

V:  In the afternoon I see a big, orange cat roaming the grounds.  It’s too clean and too friendly to be a wild cat, and probably wandered away from its home up the road.  I have a definite weak spot for cats, and go over to say hello.  It immediately rolls over and demands a tummy rub.  As soon as I touch it, a wave of reactions sweep over me, and I realize that it is my first physical contact with any breathing thing since I arrived a week ago.  This furball is the cutest damn thing I've seen.    The cat starts motor-purring and its cuteness tortures me and challenges everything I am learning in Vipassana.  I want to take it into the meditation hall with me and just keep it in my lap to help while away the hours.  It's so easy to develop attachment, even to a big fluffy cat that I'll never see again. 

E:  As I meditate and try to remain balanced, in equilibrium, with whatever I am experiencing in terms of bodily sensations, memories and emotions arise.  The trick, they say, is to remain equanimous – don't give that feeling any more trump card than you would a tingling in your elbow.  I have had a tough time with this today.  It feels like ostrich-ing to ignore what I am thinking; slowly, though, I am seeing how attached I am to these feelings, even the albatross ones.  Remaining balanced, neither craving nor hating, is not to be passive, but to fully enjoy life.  It's a free fall feeling to see that I hang onto such hurts and grievances and then choose to let go.  In small rebellion I break one of my retreat commitments and kill a bug.  On purpose.  (The most incorrigible little spider!)  Later I make up a dirge to commemorate his life and this makes me feel better.

DAY EIGHT

V:  Two pillars of Vipassana: impermanence and equanimity.  

E:  I feel as though the spiritual police caught me not appreciating my life and, as punishment, I have been sent here to "do time" at soul work-camp, until I can learn to find joy in it.  I am so excited to get my life back – I feel like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol after the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come has left him, kissing the ground and throwing ten-pence to street urchins below to go fetch a fat goose for Bob Cratchet.  I imagine myself back in Somerville, leaning with exuberance over my balcony to toss coins at some young thug below, calling, "You, there, lad, go down to Latino Market on Broadway and fetch the biggest Labor Day watermelon you can find! Give it to mean old lady Minerva in the apartment below!"  There is so much joy in stilling myself and realizing how precious my life is.

DAY NINE

V:  Silent meditation ends tomorrow.  I guess they want to make sure we don't freak out when we return to the "real world" on day eleven.  I'm looking forward to this, since I've been living with these women for over a week, know their habits well, but have no idea who they are, why they came, and what this has meant to them. 

E:  I am still a chatterbox inside, but much less so.  Today I told the sunflowers by the mess hall that it was okay for them to die while I was there, whenever they felt like it.  I would understand; I had enjoyed getting to know them.  Luckily no one saw this exchange, which is more than I can say for my argument with the family of wasps the previous afternoon.

DAY TEN

V:  Oh joy!  Everyone is talking all at once, and no one can get her words out fast enough.  In ten minutes, I’ve met a mother and daughter who flew out from Michigan for this course, a young pregnant woman who came here with her husband, and a college student who just finished her ninth Vipassana sitting!  A group of us sit around under the shade of a tree, sharing our experiences and completely missing the 1:30 bell for meditation.  It feels great to connect to people again, and it occurs to me that I didn't even smile for the past ten days.  Tonight, we are giddy with the kindness of each other's company and stay up talking past lights-out.  

E: We are allowed to speak after the morning sitting, just as soon as we leave the meditation hall.  I sit in the darkness of the hall with a few others after the sitting, a bit hesitant to speak again.  It's not as though I'm afraid my voice won't work – I'm just not sure if I’ll ever get myself this quiet again.  I hear laughter erupting as women leave the meditation hall; they are not talking, really, only rejoicing as if they could not help it.  I resolve: I will take the quiet with me, the observation and balance, and listen to it in the world of the chat-rooms and neon.  As I get up from my meditation cushion one last time, I feel the joy of this gift of myself rise up in me – I sprint the last 20 feet to the door and the sunshine just as my laughter escapes.

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