everyone i know has been asking me “how was it? how are you?” and it’s hard to put my experience into words. at least, a few words. i have many.
day 0: we arrive around 4 pm in the pouring rain. after finding my bed, an adorable cot in “dormitory” for 4 women, i join the ladies gathering in the dining hall, drinking tea and chatting. i’m quickly drawn to a few young friendly faces, with whom i become fast friends. turns out i sleep next to one of them for the duration of the course. it becomes a huge support to know them, even just a little, before beginning Noble Silence. we’re given the option to back out of the course several times as we get oriented to the retreat… no one does.
the silence begins. each evening we view a discourse, a dhamma talk by s.n. goenka. he is stately and hilarious at the same time. this recording is from 1991, so everyone i know that has been on a goenka retreat has seen these same videos. tidbits like this get me through the course.
day 1: most of my thoughts are along the lines of “what did i just agree to?!?” this is a particularly frustrating day as i try to acclimate to silence and many hours of meditation. i visit the assistant teacher and ask her for advice on my issue of falling asleep while trying to meditate. drowsiness is one of the 5 hindrances, which are barriers to meditation that the body/mind come up with in resistance. so i spent more time forgiving myself for falling asleep, and took to walking. there was a small walking area, with a lower, flatter loop, and then a loop up a hill into the forest. it was a rather lovely area, with a wide range of distractions: a stream, all sorts of plants dying as winter set it, an array of logs, rocks, and even a bench placed just so to watch the sun rise. during the evening discourse, goenka acknowledged that this was a particularly hard day, this first day, and tears rolled down my eyes. yes, i can receive empathy even from a dvd. or maybe that’s his power, that we all sense that he is actually there speaking to us.
day 2: i realized that 4 am was not a time i was going to wake up, and re-set my alarm daily to get up at 5. we’re watching our breath at our nostrils as we meditate. we’re looking for sensations there, and ignoring (in a kind, gentle way) any other distractions. any thoughts that come up, they “arise to pass away”. which was kind of a relief, because that mindset enabled me to really practice letting the thoughts go, whether they were easy simple thoughts, or complicated “what ifs” that we’re all prone to.
day 3: so many cushions to choose from but i still can’t sit still. at the beginning and end of every group meditation (and there are 3 per day), we listen to chanting and instruction from s.n. goenka, a recording. the chanting is meant to align the space for us to have the be successful in our endeavors. goenka encourages us, and his words are often a little bit funny to me. he repeats himself, which of course turns out to be a useful tool, as i find myself repeating him in my mind “patiently and persistently, patiently and persistently.” he often encouraged us to “work ardently and diligently,” to be “very vigilant, very vigilant.” and i can hear the closing pali chant in my head, basically the equivalent of “may all beings be happy”, which he would say 3 times, and we would repeat the one word that meant “true, we agree” 3 times to him. to him on a tv screen. yes.
day 4: on this day we learn the actual technique of vipassana, which means “to observe”. until now we’ve been observing the sensation of our breath at our nostrils, and any other sensations there. now we begin to study our bodies, observing sensations throughout, traversing out body with our awareness, methodically, part by part. we are looking for sensations, but not hoping for them with craving, nor developing aversion to the ones we deem negative. also known as equanimity, it’s is what i’m really cultivating all this time: the ability to observe what happens within my body upon being triggered, while knowing that thoughts and sensations will arise and pass away. one of the discourses includes a long talk on the law of nature, which is impermanence. even western science has acknowledged that everything is made up of sub-atomic particles that are constantly changing. even though we often cannot sense this constant change, we can learn to know it deeply, and embody it, by practicing vipassana.
day 5: 5 down, 5 to go. i’m in this fierce countdown… really it’s just craving. i started walking more to get some cardiovascular activity (as i am accustomed to on a daily basis as a cyclist in nyc). for the first few days i had a fair amount of pain through my shoulders, and it seemed to be alleviated by some activity. not only do i walk, i wave my arms about, some semblance of aerobics! fortunately i don’t bother worrying about what anyone else might think, as they can’t say it to me or even look at me strangely! just to be clear, Noble Silence involves no talking, no eye contact, no gestures. we speak to the course manager, who is akin to a camp counselor or den mother, and we speak to the assistant teacher when we have a question about the technique or our experience. interviews, as they’re called, with the teacher, are available daily, and i go almost every day with one question or another.
day 6: turned out to be a rather hard day. goenka describes the retreat as a deep surgical operation that we do on our inner selves, and as we continue with the technique of vipassana, the “operation” gets more intense. we’ve started scanning our bodies not only part-by-part, small sections at a time methodically, observing “solidified, intense, gross sensation” and then sweeping over sections at a higher speed, with a “free flow of energy.” i cried on this day too, and schemed about escaping (impossible, as i had turned in my wallet and phone for safekeeping upon arrival- a good tactic to avoid potential runaways like me).
when i had trouble falling asleep at night, i would think of my friends who have done these retreats, imagine them all waving and smiling at me, and some of my other friends too. then i would fall asleep, comforted.
day 7: i’m starting to get the hang of sitting in meditation all day long. i swear my 3 roommates are not meditating all the time, i think they’re sleeping too, as they sit in chairs or bed with backs against the wall in our room. regardless, they are good role models and i am silently encouraged to sit with my back against the wall too. sometimes i fall asleep but it’s a little easier on my body than the more traditional posture i take in the meditation hall. i’ve found it most comfortable to kneel on a meditation stool, but my neck gets tired of holding my head up. we have been sitting for 3 hour-long sessions a day as a group, ideally without changing our posture, since day 4. sitting with my legs crossed turns out to be harder for some strange reason, despite the considerable flexibility of my hips and legs. without much else to do, i stretch constantly. we are asked not to do yoga, and i do anything that doesn’t overtly look like yoga, and some bits of yoga when no one else is around. i think it was this day when i rushed back to the room when i knew i’d have a moment alone and threw myself into downward facing dog. don’t tell!
day 8: my shoulders begin to hurt again, and it turns into a headache that won’t quit. part of the theory that we are working with is that pain comes up, and as you simply observe it, based on the law of nature, it will pass away. this was not passing away. it was feeling like what i usually consider to be my version of a migraine. so, i took two advil at breakfast, and put the hot water bottle on my shoulders at rest time after lunch. the assistant teacher deemed it all aversion, of course, which i knew i was in for anyway. i have a serious aversion to pain- could that be why i became a massage therapist? i got a little meta with this so i let it go for the time being. the advil did its job, allowing me to continue focusing on this process of meditation, which was all i really wanted to be able to do for my last few days.
day 9: we began practicing constant awareness. so we were paying attention, observing, no matter what we were doing. mostly i was constantly aware of the fact that there was ONE more day to go! it made that day considerably easier. i discovered the possibility of dipping apples on honey at tea break, which was highly entertaining, and i told myself it was fine to eat that much honey; i missed hanukkah! (for those who don’t know, it is jewish tradition to eat apples and honey at the jewish new year, for a “sweet” new year.)
i mistakenly and hilariously made eye contact with one of my new friends. she was always smiling and she saw me eating the apples and honey and i thought she was laughing at me and i laughed too… silently. we didn’t quite develop relationships with the other people on the retreat as much as we made up stories in our heads about them. at least some of us did that, to pass the time i suppose. none of my stories in my head about anyone were particularly interesting until i saw someone eating outside of the dining hall. forbidden! and we were eating in a half hour anyway! i just couldn’t figure out why she would do that, in front of me, no less, and harbored mild irritation about her, especially after she stole my meditation cushions in the hall that evening. i returned from a break to find my cushions missing, and the person sitting next to me simply pointed one finger at her…at that point i laughed a bunch, inside, and went and got something else to sit on. oy, the little things we go through!
day 10: i felt like an eruption of joy upon awakening due to the knowledge that we were going ot get to talk at 10am. granted, that was several hours away but it arrived. and did it! i was like a volcano of words, we all wanted to know everything about each other all at once. it was great! and actually, quite exhausting. i even took a nap mid day! the hour long sits went by quite quickly on this day. also very dramatic was the moment i found out we could get our cell phones, right after we were allowed to talk at 10am, but i held out until around 3! i was proud of myself, there was nothing i really needed my phone for that couldn’t wait, i decided.
day 11: departure! and i realize that here i didn’t even get into the way that spending this much time without our usual external stimulation allows our mental defilements work their way out of our systems. so you’ll have to go on the retreat and try it yourself. it’s an absolutely unique opportunity to retrain mental habits and neurological patterns that we sometimes are aware of but mostly we just maintain them, ingrain them, and react to them. and then one out of ten times i find my response to a trigger to be slightly more on the equanimous side of things… before leaving we are encouraged to sit an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, because with regular practice we are “bound to be successful, bound to be successful.” successful in becoming equanimous and happy in our lives. even a little bit helps. i’ve decided that most anyone I know would benefit from this course, as long as they have the willingness to participate. yes, it is hard and frustrating and seemingly endless and not very “fun”, but it is an incomparable opportunity for self-study. I wish this access to ways of greater happiness, ease, and peace for everyone!
