After doing 2 days retreat at Tushita Monastery, with some trepidation we signed up for 10 days Vipassana retreat. The course's description sounded very serious (and as we found out , accurate): waking up at 4:30am, meditating for 11 hours daily, complete silence.
Amazing that the retreat is completely free (to give one an experience of monastic life where one is living off the kindness of others), but people are encouraged to give donations if they feel any benefit.
The teaching is transmitted via video-recording of talks given by Goenka, a Burmese
businessman turned meditation master. He was a student of famous meditation master in Burma, U Ba Khin. Apparently, he came to India with a purpose to teach Vipassana to his ailing mother, but ended up teaching relatives, friends, friends of friends and so on for the next 30odd years as interest in Vipassana in India was
rapidly growing. The retreat is very ambitious-to give people a solid foundation of Vipassana practice, which I think they accomplish brilliantly. Although being charismatic and radiant, Goenka tested our nerves with his horrible chanting, which sounded like sounds of simultaneously constipated and hoarse elephant. His absolute confidence In the techniques and charisma were however contagious.
First 5 days we basically has to concentrate on sensation in the small area under the nose, above upper lip. Nothing new and exciting was happening and a few people dropped out.. In the evenings, Goenka would appear on the TV screen (there were Hebrew subtitles, so I had a chance to brush up my Hebrew as well-double bonus!), always with: " Now, you have completed day 1 (2,3,4,etc). Day 1 (2,3,.etc) is a very important day! There is 9,8,7 etc) days are left to go."
The rational behind the initial technique was to sensitize the mind to very subtle physical sensations. Why sensations? Goenka claims that Burmese have preserved in original purity the teachings of Buddha which had to do with obtaining freedom from craving and aversion by developing awareness of and equanimity towards pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the body. According to him, Buddha's original contribution was that our deep (unconscious, because it is untrained) does not directly respond to outside objects, but it responds with desire or aversion to sensations in the body (which arise in response to external stimuli) By becoming intimately aware of subtle sensations and refraining from attachment and aversion, one can achieve experiential equanimity.
On the 5th day, we were introduced to Vipassana proper: scanning sensations in the body from top of the head to toes and back to the top, touching with awareness every part of the body. After a few hours and days of this, I began to feel a very pleasant flow of subtle vibrations throughout the body. The assistant teacher interviewed each of us in regards to "getting the flow" and to my frustration I only "got it" on the 9th day, to learn that I should not attach to it, desire it etc..
Tye important part was top develop an experiential awareness of the changeable nature of sensations, be it pleasure or pain.
Did I say pain? On the 5th day we were asked not to move during our meditation fro one hour during the three one hour sittings., which is a perfect recipe to enjoy (or to not feel aversion) towards) pain in my knees. After trying to avoid it by sitting in the chair, leaning against the wall for two days, pain has just moved to other parts of the body (which were numerous), so I gave up and started learning or
re-learning sitting with pain. The promise was that by the end of the course all pain will be gone. Disbelieving but persistent, on the 9th day all pain "dissolved" into subtle vibrations, or sensations of heat, pressure, pulsations, tightening, opening...
It was amazing to experience the "fingers" of awareness reaching to previously numb parts of the body and how by applying awareness for extended period of time, certain muscles began to unwind, open, loosen...
I was struck by how much the therapy for psychological trauma that I along with my colleagues have studied with Pat Ogden, have borrowed from Vipassana.
Vipassana techniques is therapeutic, however therapeutics is only a small side effect of its overall spiritual goal. I mused of course about why in the West we are so afraid of bringing spirituality into psychotherapy....
Both Teodora and I were inspired at the end of the course to not only continue with the meditation techniques but to also donate our services during one of the next Vipassana courses in India.
It is funny that there is a Vipassana center North of Toronto, so in theory we did not have to travel all the way here to do this retreat...
yet, who had the time in Toronto? ;-)
At the end of the course we watched a movie about a pioneering effort in one of the largest and cruelest prison in India, where Vipassana technique was introduced.
it was very touching to watch footage of prisoners coming out of a volunteer Vipassana course and weeping in the arms of their jailer (also a Vipassana practitioner) The movie is called "doing time, doing Vipassana"
