Vipassana 4.0. - A journey of discovery within (part 1)
How does one feel going off the grid for 10 days, completely disconnecting with the outside world, meditating most of the time? And why would you consider doing something like this? What benefits can you expect?
I’ve just finished my 4th Vipassana meditation course and like to take you with me on this journey of discovery within.
Vipassana?
If you haven’t heard of Vipassana, it’s the meditation technique Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) used to become enlightened (a stage where your mind is free from any impurities). The technique survived 2500 years and has been spreading like a wildfire since S.N. Goenka started teaching it in the ‘90s, going from Myanmar to India to the world.
The technique and supporting theory is taught in a 10-day course. It is a serious time investment and commitment but has the advantage that you have a high chance to properly experience the benefits of meditation.
Among meditators, it’s known as one of the most intense and difficult courses. You get up at 4am and basically are on your meditation pillow from 4.30am until 9pm, with breakfast at 6.30am, lunch at 11am and tea at 5pm. You are not allowed to speak or interact, nor to read, write, have your phone or pc with you, etc. You only have your mind to occupy yourself with.
This means that if you don’t like your own company, you will suffer. Or if you are like most people deeply addicted to distractions and being busy, you will also suffer. And even if you are OK with silence and no distractions, you’ll probably suffer as well. In the words of Goenka: it’s a deep surgical operation of the mind. Without anesthesia (no alcohol or drugs allowed in the center 😉), this might hurt.
As I see it, the course brings suffering (big or small) to learn how to deal with it positively or gracefully. You need to experience it to learn how to bend it into something neutral or maybe even positive.
The daily timetable
The 3 foundations that you work on
High-level, you work on 3 elements throughout these 10 days:
Morality: you put in practice moral behavior (no lying, no stealing, no killing, …).
Mastery over the mind: you learn how to get more grip on your monkey mind and calm it.
Wisdom or insight: on an experiential level, you start understanding the universal laws of nature (impermanence, quantum physics, …)
Why would you do it?
Commitment to peace, quiet, and self-exploration
The course is quite strict and requires discipline. It’s the reason most of us would not consider it (next to the time investment), but it’s also exactly what most of us need to really disconnect, to really go within, and to really experience connection to ourselves again. We live in such a fast-paced environment where superficial pleasure can be found at any time, which is making us loose our skill of perseverance, of dealing with difficulty, of real commitment to something in the long term.
For most of us, our lifestyles don’t allow real peace and quiet. There’s always something to distract us. I could decide to go a week into nature disconnecting and meditating without any distraction but the chance that I would fall back on my addictions (cellphone, series, certain foods and drinks, etc), is unfortunately high.
10 days Vipassana will simply not allow you to fall back into these old patterns, which is very helpful to really disconnect. You have no other choice which makes the letting go of old addictions also not so difficult: you know that you cannot be on your phone so you won’t be mentally occupied with contemplating checking it or not. You simply can not. The decision has been made.
So doing this course really helps you to really commit for 10 days to self-exploration. It guarantees that you will not fall into the trap of addictive distraction patterns of your every-day life.
Big investment, big reward
Unlike in the financial world, in personal development the investment always pays off.
Of what I’ve experienced so far on my quest to understand how I can live my life to the fullest, Vipassana has been the hardest and biggest investment I’ve done up until now (each time), but also the one that reaps the most fruits because you have to dig deep. You will be confronted with your limits but it’s on those edges and in this case sometimes far over that edge, that the biggest insights and learnings await. Not that you have to force yourself or hurt yourself in the process to unacceptable levels, but to explore your inner world and especially your mind, there isn’t a more powerful way in my opinion than to radically break with your rat race patterns and create the possibility to really turn inward.
That’s why I recommend everyone to do at least one of these courses. It’s a very powerful way to kickstart or accelerate your personal growth and get a glimpse of the essence.
What benefits or outcomes can you expect?
Understand the fundamental elements of unhappiness to come out of it
After these 10 days, you will have a better understanding of the root causes of unhappiness: craving and aversion.
These are the two main reasons for imbalances in your mind which lead to stress, frustration, depression, unhappiness, sadness, anger, hatred, ill will, animosity, bitterness, etc. At the core, experiencing one of these two is an indication that you are not OK with what is and therefore leads to imbalance in the mind. You want something you don’t have (craving) or you don’t want something you have (aversion).
The craving part is a big part of the rat race. We always seem to want more. We are rarely satisfied. We generate craving after craving.
The aversion part is recognizable for a lot of people in negative emotions. We try to avoid them, push them down, or distract ourselves from them.
Understanding that these 2 (craving & aversion) direct our lives in a big way (mostly unconsciously) is a great first step towards more peace of mind and more happiness.
How do you overcome this in practice? Read it in the next article and get the tools to become happier.
And/or check out this article my 2018 experience in Dutch: Hoe meditatie mijn leven heeft doen schitteren).
If you’d like to understand more about meditation or Vipassana, feel free to reach out. I’ve consolidated some more resources here: articles on meditation and mindfulness (the first 7 are related to Vipassana). And as always I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this article in the comment section.
To a life in which we experience more peace of mind.
To a life fully lived 🥂.
#becurious #becourageous #beyourbest
