32 ~ Vipassana Experience: 10 days of silence and meditation. Part 1.

Day 0.

The malai kofta, those delicious Indian fried balls that had poisoned my friends in Varanasi, started having a delayed effect on me and decided to explode just a few hours before the retreat. I thought I was dying. I had never seen so much water come out of one orifice for such a long time. Where had all that been stored? My body was expelling streams and streams of green liquid while I vomited water like a waterfall at the same time.I didn't think that was physically possible, but apparently, it was. Was I turning into the Incredible Hulk? That too was Indian magic.

I couldn't sleep the whole night, desperately evacuating almost everything my body contained. Between that and praying to all the Hindu gods I had recently learned about, hoping it wasn't something more serious.

The retreat was starting in just a few hours, and canceling it wasn't an option. I had come here specifically for this, and I was still a stubborn person. At the ashram where I was staying, there was an Ayurvedic clinic. They gave me some natural remedies and also some antibiotics. That’s how I arrived at the Vipassana retreat – pretty dehydrated and feeling like death. In my personal philosophy, I thought this could only be a good omen. When things are going terribly wrong, the only way is up. It's a matter of homeostasis.

I took a tuk-tuk that brought me to the Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of the village. An even more rural and even humble part of Bodh Gaya. The retreat site was an open space with dry fields all around, like the rest of Bodh Gaya. The air was very, very still, like living in a bubble in the middle of a semi-arid landscape.

We registered. They separated us into women and men. They asked us to lock away everything that might distract us from the practice we were about to undertake: phones, electronic devices, books, notebooks, food, and anything with even a hint of religious connotation. We would be isolated – or rather, connected only with ourselves. What a pleasure!

My mother still didn't know I was alone in India, so I had to keep things a bit disguised. Around that time, I had decided to tell her that I had moved to the countryside, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, so I could at least make the occasional video call without the Asian and natural backdrops raising too many suspicions. I told her I was going on a retreat and would be out of contact for 10 days... not too far from the truth. So those days would be a double relief for me: 10 days without having to lie or pretend to live in another reality, something I had been doing for the past 2 months. At least a bit of relief.

The female monk in charge of registration made me take off all my rings – literally 8 of them, almost covering my entire hand. She also made me remove my stone pendant. I didn't understand why until about 3 minutes later. After that, I felt naked for a moment. I looked at my hands and didn't recognize them. I couldn't see my old "self" from just a few seconds ago. I was no longer her – now I was no one. I no longer identified with my hands; now they could be anyone's. I think that was part of the process.

Vipassana is a Buddhist silent meditation retreat that lasts 10 days – precisely the meditation that the Buddha taught and through which he reached enlightenment. Among its rules, it is forbidden to speak, use your phone, read, write, or engage in any practice that might distract you from the retreat's purpose: to meditate and fully surrender to the techniques of meditation.

They gave each of us a room, like a small one-bedroom cottage with a bathroom and, in my case, a tiny garden. We had a little time to settle in. The only thing I could do was collapse onto the bed – which wasn't a real bed but a concrete platform with an almost nonexistent, rock-hard mattress.I was still very weak. I threw myself onto the "bed" and passed out for a few minutes. That would be the pattern for all my free moments for the next three days.

Despite feeling physically like I had hepatitis, I was still calm, secure, and at peace.

As I write this, I still remember every moment, every slow, silent walk in that garden, staring at nothing with a profound sense of peace, purity, and love. Without a doubt, one of the most peaceful moments of my life.

Day 1.

My bathroom had an inhuman stench – all the result of my body's ongoing purification and detox. The liquid my body was expelling hadn’t improved in color or quantity. For those who have never experienced Asian food poisoning, it’s terrible. You lose so much water that you need to drink electrolytes to keep your natural balance and avoid fainting. At least I wasn't vomiting anymore.

The little house was a very humble room with a few concrete shelves, just like the bed. The bathroom didn’t have a shower, just a small plastic bucket to scoop up the cold water that would pour over your body in the Indian style. As is customary here, there was also a tiny plastic stool to sit on while bathing.

It was winter, and there was no hot water, so showers were going to be short, purely for hygiene, and only during the day. That was fine. It was still more than we needed at that moment, and that’s what we came here to do – to live simply and focus on what really mattered.

10 days without worrying about anything other than meditating. 10 days we were gifting ourselves – and being karmically gifted – to focus on just one thing: taking care of ourselves and our inner world, leaving the reality of the outside world behind. True vacations from real life. No cooking, no work, no grocery shopping, no socializing, no explaining ourselves, no worrying about the usual mundane problems. Sounds beautiful, right? It was.

My little house faced a garden, and during the day, the sun would hit the steps. An Indian woman would walk past each room at 4 a.m., ringing a bell like a morning alarm. That meant the activities were about to begin and it was time to get up.

The activities were always the same: meditate, meditate, and more meditation. We had 30 minutes to wake up, get ready, and head to the gompa, the main hall, for the first meditation.

It was still night, and it was quite cold. We only had one blanket on top of a thin mattress – thin enough to feel the texture of the concrete beneath. I was still very weak. I dressed as best as I could, wrapping myself in scarves and blankets in the Indian style. I crossed the dry, barren field and headed to the great hall.

The first meditation of the day started at 4:30 a.m. and lasted until 6:30. Two straight hours without a break. Everyone had an assigned cushion on the floor with their name on it, which they were expected to use throughout the retreat. That was to be our meditation space. I sat down cross-legged.

A monk sat at the front, shrouded in the dim winter morning light, but he wasn't the one speaking. A voice over the speakers gave very brief instructions on how to meditate and what to do.

"Observe your breath as it is, without trying to change it. Focus your attention on your nostrils and try to feel every tiny sensation in every part of them. Every tiny sensation. Be awake."

Awake in the sense of being attentive, not just "not asleep," though given the hour, that too might have been the case. But no, it meant aware, conscious.

The instructions were simple and, essentially, always the same. “Alright... so where's the magic?” I thought. “Breathe, feel the breath, breathe again... Got it... okay...”When do we become super meditators? When does the light descend, or do we start feeling supernatural things?

Those are the questions people always ask after these retreats – as if after 10 days of just meditating and not speaking to anyone, you automatically become that. In the modern world we live in, for many, just being able to disconnect from their phone for 10 days and not talk to a single person is almost supernatural in itself. Maybe it is. I had already been isolated enough in my own world, so this felt somewhat normal to me.

Even so, my mind started to fidget. It was searching for answers, for something "truly significant" to show me a new path, but I didn't have the strength to even question anything. Maybe that helped. So I just sat there and followed the instructions.

All we were going to do for the next 10 days, 10 hours a day, was meditate. Yes, just as you read. 10 days, 10 hours a day, meditating.

4:00 a.m. Wake up

4:30-6:30 a.m. Group meditation in the hall

6:30-8:00 a.m. Breakfast and rest

8:00-9:00 a.m. Group meditation in the hall

9:00-11:00 a.m. Meditation in the hall or in the room as instructed

11:00-12:00 p.m. Lunch

12:00-1:00 p.m. Rest and questions for the monk

1:00-2:30 p.m. Meditation in the hall or in the room

2:30-3:30 p.m. Group meditation in the hall

3:30-5:00 p.m. Meditation in the hall or in the room as instructed

5:00-6:00 p.m. Tea break and rest

6:00-7:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall

7:00-8:15 p.m. Teacher's discourse – conceptualization of the Vipassana technique

8:15-9:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall

9:00-9:30 p.m. Questions in the hall

9:30 p.m. Bedtime – lights off

Supreme. There was no dinner.

After the two hours of morning meditation, we had breakfast and a bit of personal time. That was followed by three straight hours of group meditation. Sometimes, we meditated individually in small cells located in the monastery’s basement – tiny, isolated cubicles about 1 meter by 1 meter, designed for full-focus meditation.

After lunch, we had some personal time before another long meditation block. This was the intensive part, the challenge: four consecutive hours, divided into three segments with only five-minute breaks in between – just enough time to walk back to your room, refresh your chakras if you were aware enough for that, refill your water bottle, or try to stretch out your body, which was devastated from sitting for so long in the same position on the floor.

Four hours on a cushion forces you to confront your physical state, unless you're a yogi or an Indian born accustomed to sitting this way for everything. In my case, like many others there, I was neither, so just sitting for two hours on that cushion was a complete test of physics. Without realizing it, this would become the great tool for all the lessons that would come later: What to do with discomfort?

Perhaps the question of our lives? We were about to test the answer on ourselves, in the most fundamental way: within our own bodies.

As a reward for our hard work came the evening tea. Eating always felt like a cherished moment, especially under those conditions. And then, after another hour of meditation, came the discourse session, where Mr. Goenka, a Buddhist teacher originally from Burma who took it upon himself to spread the Vipassana technique worldwide, explained what this was all about. That part was one of my favorites. It was then that we could slowly start to understand why we were doing what we were doing in each meditation.

Goenka passed away in 2013, so what we watched was something like a videotape that must have been at least 20 years old. It was a vintage recording where he appeared sitting, always with his wife by his side, who did nothing more than sit there during the entire hour-long talk. That was yet another hour of sitting on the floor. Being in India, eating Indian food, surrounded by Hindus, listening to an unknown language, and trying to study meditation in a kind of monastery felt like living in a movie.

And as if that weren't enough, guess what came next? Exactly! Another meditation block, and then, at 9:30 p.m., it was time for bed, ready to start the same routine the next day – waking up while still greeting the moon at 4 a.m.

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Let’s get a bit more serious. What is Vipassana?

Vipassana is one of the oldest Buddhist meditation techniques in India, and it means “seeing things as they really are.”

It was taught by the Buddha and then passed down orally from masters to disciples for many years. At one point in history, around 1969 in the country of Burma (now Myanmar), Mr. Goenka was chosen by his teacher to spread this technique around the world, as a way to preserve and expand the Buddha's teachings. That’s how this retreat began, initially spreading within India under his organization and then expanding worldwide.

Today, it has become a well-known, non-profit global organization, transcending borders with the sole purpose of transmitting the Vipassana meditation technique, which belongs to the Theravada Buddhist tradition.

The teaching format Goenka proposes is a 10-day residential retreat of silence and disconnection from the world. It is free, based on donations, so that this technique – which aims to liberate individuals from suffering – can truly be accessible to everyone. It is available in nearly every country in the world: in Argentina, throughout Latin America, in many European countries, and, of course, in Asia.

If I had to highlight some key concepts, they might be awareness and observation of one’s own bodily sensations, the central notion of impermanence in our emotions and essentially in everything that exists, the nature of suffering – in and of oneself – and the cultivation of equanimity as the remedy for that suffering, meaning the acceptance of pleasure and pain in equal measure, as two ever-changing states that make up all of existence. Without preferences, expectations, or attachments.

That’s why these 10 days of practice have a purpose and a justification: to experience all of the above within your own body, because Buddhism is experiential, and the only way to understand it is to test it and validate it through your own experience. That’s what makes it interesting and valuable – no one imposes anything on you, and you don’t have to blindly believe in anything. It’s just a technique, stripped of any religious character, and it’s essential that you experience it for yourself, and from that, make your own choices.

With much love, I encourage you to visit their website to explore it in detail and with precision..

https://www.dhamma.org/

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is fundamentally an experiential piece, written with both love and a good dose of humor.

To truly convey what it was, I’d like to say that it was an incredibly beautiful experience – one of the most peaceful of my life – and perhaps something everyone should try at least once. It’s not just about meditation or Buddhism, but about a profound understanding of reality, the world, suffering, and, above all, ourselves – our emotions and the nature of our minds.

How to regulate them and ourselves, to grasp the roots of all suffering and, at the very least, be a bit more awake, so that we can suffer a little less in our daily lives. It’s a philosophy of life that transcends the meditation cushion and extends to how we view our everyday lives. At the very least, it’s a truly fascinating perspective to explore.

As many of us mistakenly believe due to a lack of understanding, Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a truly open spiritual tradition that can adapt to all minds and even to all personal religions. Mainly because it’s a practice – something you live, something to apply.

From all my humility, my advice – as always – is to have your own experience. It’s not something you can fully grasp by reading, just like life itself. You have to live it. And truly, I recommend you do.

Opening our consciousness, even just a little more, is the greatest honor we can offer ourselves as human beings – for our own benefit and for the benefit of the world.

“Today, I am fortunate to have awakened. I am alive. I have the precious gift of human life. I will not waste it. I will use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart toward others, to achieve my enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I will have kind thoughts toward others. I will not get angry or think badly of others. I will benefit others as much as I can.”

Morning Tibetan Prayer, Dalai Lama. Mahayana Buddhist tradition.

Thank you for your time, it is the most valuable thing we have.

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