Vipsassana part 1 - confusion

I arrive alone at the Vipassana meditation centre in the middle of nowhere, about 8km from Chengannur in Southern India. I notice an austere silence pervades the entire compound; a somber mood seems to have descended like a dark cloud suffocating a soulless landscape. And yet I realize very quickly that the 10 days in silence I am about to embark on hasn’t even started! Is this a bad sign, do I start making meaning or listening to my intuition?

I have a chat with a couple of apparently normal people – a young Israeli called Jonathan who has recently come out of the army, and his sister Rena – both full of energy and smiles; and Flo, a young German with dreads who I later discover loves his house music. Then I meet Victor the relaxed yoga Instructor from Miami. He’s as calm as a cool evening breeze, wearing a flag-like tattoo on his forearm in blue, orange and green which symbolizes Conscious… Everyday… Living; and I chat to a very tall Indian called Mohit who runs a psychedelic trance events company in London and seems to live and love life to the full. It emerges that there are about 50 people in total from all over the world who have converged to experience the delights of spending 10 days in silent meditation. They come from France, New Zealand, Scotland, Peru and Australia to name a few, and about half of all delegates are Indians, many of whom do not speak English… not that we’re going to be speaking for the next 10 days anyway!

I trundle my way to my living quarters which are based in an oblong bulding made from standard-grey breeze blocks. A corrugated iron roof raised about 3 feet above the building protects us from what, I am not sure; it is placed on thin steel girders allowing insects, the occasional breeze and the thin rays of evening sunlight to visit their indulgent delights upon us. The breeze blocks have set within them the odd grimy frosted glass window. The building is perched upon a red brick floor, no carpet to be seen anywhere. Down the far end of the building are 4 very basic dirty toilettes with shower heads coming out of the walls. In the middle are 3 mismatching sinks, two small shaving mirrors on the wall and a small bin beneath.

Back in the main room there are 7 beds on either side of the dormitory, each adorned with a mattress which at its thickest is at least 1.5 centimeters of pure luxurious cotton wool. When I lie on the ‘mattress’ it compresses to at best, I would guess about 3mm of comfy padding! This luxury is placed directly on a hard wooden frame bed about 5’11 in length and covered by a rancid smelling old mosquito net. This is my home for the next 10 days. I make my way to the toilette and find a large spider, about the size of my palm in diameter, watching me intently before scurrying behind the loo. It’s not tarantula but a much faster and leaner cousin. Still considerably larger than any spider you would see in the UK.

That night I dream of two Indian wild dogs – one on each of my hands, dragging me down the road with their teeth digging in to my flesh. And then suddenly I am held by a baboon, likewise biting me, but this time on my forearm. Neither the dogs nor the baboon drew blood but they had a firm grip which I could not break free from. I thought that there must be some significance about the dream but was not quite sure what it was when I woke. I thought after a while that perhaps the dogs each pulling on one hand in different directions might signify the struggle I was to face – being pulled in different directions.

I woke at 4am the next day to what would become a very familiar bell - our first mediation session of the ‘day’. Only unlike Pavlov’s dogs, the bell had the opposite reaction for most of us – no excitement, no drooling! Wearily I go to the meditation hall for the first time where there are about 50 people preparing to meditate in near darkness on small blue mats – girls on the right and boys together on the left of the dark dingy room. Throughout the 10 days, boys and girl were kept separate wherever possible – while eating, living and meditating.

During the first day of my 10 days in silence I was subjected to over 10 hours of meditation - sitting still, silent, just observing my breath. I sat there watching my mind wonder from thought to thought desperately trying to make sense of things, trying to latch onto something and then something else; always in need of something to think about like a drug addict searching for its next fix. Its actually quite disturbing realizing how untamed and out of control our brains really are. Fortunately I discover after the course that I was not alone in having a wild and untamed mind when left to focus soley on the breath. When we just sit and observe the very essence of life, our breath, our brains are not content with just being but instead go on a relentless search for more, and more… and more! Rather like life, I believe that two things chasrataterise humans – we are all driven by a need to be loved… and a search for more!

All we were instructed to do was nothing other than observe our breath, which sounds simple to me. But you will find that if you try to concentrate on just your breath with your eyes closed for any length of time, your attention will very quickly be drawn into the future or the past – typically to painful or pleasurable past memories or created imaginations. Our task for the first three days was simply to observe our breath and nothing else. Whenever we became aware of our mind wondering, we were to bring it back to the breath – the sensations of the air moving in and out of our nostrils, and nothing else.

Very soon I became aware of my many patterns of thinking and behaviour, but most significantly I became aware of my back muscles seizing up. I crushed two vertebrae in my spine 12 years ago in a motorcycle accident and have suffered recurring problems, primarily muscle tension, ever since. It gets worse when I do not exercise or stretch regularly. My back muscles started to spasm by the end of day 1 having sat for over 10 hours without moving much. Although we had breaks between the 10 hours it began to take its toll, more physically than mentally or emotionally. Had I known we would be sitting in meditation for so long I am not sure I would have gone on the course. In retrospect I am very glad I did not know how tough the journey would be – I doubt I would have even started. That makes me think about some of the parallels with life; setting up as business; starting a relationship or writing a book, which I have now committed to doing. If we knew how hard the journey would be in advance would we even begin it?

As day 1 came to a close and I begun to realize the full enormity of what I had let myself in for; that I had embarked on a journey of pain and spiritual discovery - Buddha’s path to enlightenment and liberation! I began to wonder if I had made the right uninformed decision to come on a Vipassana meditation. Knowing I had another 90 hours of sitting in painful silence I questioned my commitment and both my mental and physical strength to see it through. The road ahead was gong to be long, painful and slow-going.

To be Continued….