10 Day Meditation

What's it like to wake up to a bell every day at 4:00 a.m., meditate for 10+ hours throughout the day, eat a rationed vegan breakfast and lunch, with no supper, and observe noble silence, with no talking, for 9 1/2 straight days? Oh, and there's also no reading, no writing, no exercise, etc.

And, more curiously, WHY would anyone choose to do it in the first place?! 

I'm always excited to share my friends' experiences in Korea, and this story, in particular, caught my attention. The writer, Tyler Priest, was a pastor in Alabama before he and his wife Helen moved to Gwangju last February. We met during the EPIK orientation, and I can't say enough good about these two. Read on to hear about the experience that left Tyler feeling "more peaceful and balanced and creative. Less anxious, less reactive, less selfish". I've embedded two YouTube videos about the documentary he references, but the following is otherwise his. 

Thanks, Tyler, for allowing me to pass along your story. 

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Here are some of my partially digested, rambling reflections from the most difficult and most rewarding experience of my life thus far.

Before the course 

I’ve long been interested in meditation, but until recently I had always felt like the ability to meditate properly was just out of reach. It was either too foreign or abstract for me to understand, or just too frustrating for my wandering mind to grasp. After watching a documentary called Dhamma Brothers back in 2009 (http://www.dhammabrothers.com/) , I became interested in Vipassana meditation. But it remained merely at the level of curiosity. It was an unlikely proposal that I could take off 10 days from my work with a church to go to a “Buddhist” meditation course (I later learned that Vipassana meditation, while practiced within Buddhism, is not particularly Buddhist or in any way sectarian, but universal). And my vacation days were already maxed out. So I never pursued it.

The Dhamma Brothers Trailer

The Dhamma Brothers- 2012 Update

But then I came to Korea a year ago, and I met a fellow intake teacher named Tim W who was not only a practicing meditator, he was practically giving his life to it. He had not only undergone a handful of 10 day courses himself, but he had volunteered in the States and in India facilitating several courses as a “server.” He continues to be a serious meditator. And he tuned me in to the Vipassana center located in Korea. When I realized that a 10-day course would mesh perfectly with my school’s winter break, I jumped on it.

Before that, I read and re-read William Hart’s The Art of Living, which is a great introductory book to the technique, the theory and practice of Vipassana (a Pali word that simply means insight--attaining wisdom from seeing reality as reality is). It is based on the 10-day course lectures given by S.N. Goenka, a charming, saintly Burmese man who experienced the wonders of Vipassana. As a byproduct, the technique cured his chronic headaches, and he went on to devote his life to sharing Vipassana with the world. By the way, at the course, via video recordings, S.N. Goenka gives over 10 hours worth of some of the best sermons/lectures I’ve ever heard. He is a great teacher of beautiful truths. And he’s largely responsible for the spread of Vipassana throughout the world.

Before the course I had also begun to meditate on my own, based upon my readings in The Art of Living. I also had in depth conversations with Tim about the course, about how Vipassana works, about the anxieties I had, about how uncomfortable it was for me to sit cross-legged for more than a few minutes. And he gave me a lot of good, nuanced advice. He warned me it would be very difficult, but that I could do it.  So I signed up and went for it.

The course

There’s something about putting yourself in a situation where you are simultaneously being faced with hardships, and being trained in an ancient, tried and true technique in how to mentally deal with those hardships. It’s being in a place that makes you crave and become averse, while teaching you to remain balanced in the face of those cravings and aversions. Like a crucible, it’s a painful but brilliantly transformative place to be stuck in for 10 days. It’s the perfect training for life itself. Vipassana meditation truly teaches you an “Art of Living.”

I went on a rollercoaster ride through heaven, hell, and several levels of purgatory in those 10 days. It was baptism by fire. I had to wrestle with myself more than I ever have. I found out what my mind was made of. It was weak, it was stubborn, it was bit childish and terrifyingly crazy. It’s like an untrained wild animal being corralled for the first time. But slowly, patiently, and gently, the technique started to train this savage thing I refer to as my mind.

I won’t go into that great of detail about the technique, or how Siddhartha Gautama discovered it and shared it with India, and later, the world. Other sources like the aforementioned book will do that much better. I’ll simply share some of what I experienced, what I realized, and how I believe it is altering my future trajectory.

The Vipassana technique

But first, here are a few things I will say about the Vipassana technique. It is the purest for of Siddhartha Gautama’s meditation teachings maintained for 2500 years, with no religion, doctrine or dogma attached. It’s not premised on belief, but experience that leads to belief.  

Vipassana is not merely a meditation technique, but one that is couched in a way of life. The code of conduct during the course is a holistic one, and a reasonable one—touching every part of life, from diet to sex to relationships. For instance, the beginning of the code of conduct states “I will not kill another being.” Easy enough, right? Well this, of course, went beyond the act of murder. It applied to our vegetarian meals, and even the flies and gnats  and ladybugs at the course site. I kid you not, after trying to shoo one away from my lunch, I actually pet the wings of this house fly in the dining hall. It had been allowed to stick around for a while. There is a regard for all beings. And that kind of conduct facilitates deeper meditation.

The 10 day course, which is designed as a mini-monastic experience, leads the meditator through a gradual progression of steps that train the mind to focus on the sensations within the body (sensations which I had never felt before the course, but have been there all along—my senses were too dull to realize them). You begin by focusing on natural breathing—not controlled breathing—but breathing as it already is. And you simply remain aware of your breath. Then you focus on the actual sensations of that breath—the places you feel it around your nostrils. Your mind begins to sharpen. Then after some time, you narrow that field of natural breath sensation to the area of the upper lip. Then you begin to move that narrow field of sensation away from breathing to focus to other parts of the body and you begin to “feel” your body. Then you go deeper and deeper with these sensations, and you allow negative sensations to arise, and you observe them with detached balance and equanimity, and this slowly begins to destroys the roots of deep-seated aversions. You allow positive sensations to arise, and again you observe them with detached balance and equanimity, and this slowly destroys the roots of deep-seated cravings. You continue and continue to do this, going deeper, going further, learning more and more about yourself and this wonderful technique. And it slowly destroys the cause of suffering: craving and aversion. (By the way, Vipassana has helped addicts of all kinds to come out of their addictions. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re all addicts with just different kinds of addictions.)

Vipassana teaches through this experience that everything is changing, arising and passing away. So nothing is worth clinging to, or avoiding. It just is, and eventually it all goes away. My pain, my frustration, my discontent no longer has to be mine. I can just look at it, sort of smile at it but refuse to claim it, and it goes away. Once during a 1 hour meditation block, a running injury in my knee was on fire. I viewed it objectively, it was as if the pain was melted into mere vibrations and evaporated into thin air within a minute.

It’s nothing weird. It’s not even religious or metaphysical, although Buddhism (apart from Siddhartha Gautama’s desire) was a product of adherents to this amazing technique. Beautiful in simplicity, Vipassana all takes place within the framework of the body. It is all based on what the meditator has experienced. It’s nothing outside. It’s all happening inside. It’s not theory driven—it’s practice driven. It’s not belief based or metaphysical, but actual hard reality based. It’s scientific, in a sense.

My experience

My current status could easily be written off as merely a sort of church camp high, but I don’t think that’s the case. One, although it can be an emotional rollercoaster of an experience, I slowly learned to view my emotional reactions objectively. So on this side of the 10 day course, I’m not overflowing with excitement. I’m equanimous and peaceful, and there is a gulf between those two. Two, I was given an invaluable tool—the method of Vipassana—that I can take with me anywhere and practice anytime. The challenge is for “old students” (those who have completed a 10-day course) to practice one hour in the mornings and one hour in the evenings for every day for the first year. That's a bit ambitious for me, I think, so I’m starting somewhere around 30-35 minutes twice a day, which is doubling where I had left off before the course. I’ll slowly try to progress from there.

I’ll add that I did experience some pretty intense, vivid and surreal phenomena during the course. In particular, during perhaps the deepest of my meditation, I had a suspended womb-like experience, in which I was free-floating in warmth, my center of gravity askew to the left, my mind in a trance with the sensation of moving back and forth like, as one friend put it, a teacup ride. It was the best thing I think I’ve ever “felt”.  But that by-product is not the point of Vipassana. I learned the hard way that focusing on these positive sensations can lead to craving, which can derail the progress I had made, and send me in the opposite direction. So I had to learn to let go of that experience, and not attempt to summon it or recreate it again, and just get back to work.

Insights

  

Here are a few insights I experienced (some of which may be redundant from above).

• Everything is changing, arising and passing away. The sensations I experienced in my body testify to this. So for instance, I don’t have to “own” my pain. I simply observe it, and it will go away. As I mentioned earlier, on day 5, I was having a lot of sharp pain in my right knee from a running injury. I simply focused my attention on it without reacting in aversion. I observed it “objectively.” It felt like it was on fire, but I didn’t react. I sat there for about a minute. Then I started feeling rapid vibrations in my knee, and it was as if the pain was vaporized. It left and in its place was a pleasant tingling sensation. But this too, I did not become attached to. I did not “own” this pleasant sensation, because I knew that it too would soon be passing away. Ok, so now apply that experienced reality to all of life. When I’m in a difficult situation, I don’t let it get to me. I know it’s impermanent. It will soon be gone. When I have an appetite for something unhealthy, I don’t react to it. I simply let it be, knowing that “this too shall pass.” And it does. It always does without fail. The question is, do I have the patience and the equanimity to allow it to pass away?
• Vipassana is where my dreams come to die. What I mean by this, is that I am learning to detach myself from the ideal futures that I continue to imagine in my mind. This doesn’t mean that I will have no plan moving forward in life. It’s the realization that my dreams will never be fulfilled in the way that I dream them to be. Attaching myself to expectations, dreams, etc, will only leave me with disappointment and suffering. Even dreams themselves are always changing, arising and passing away. So why cling to a particular vision of my future that will never come to pass?
• This state of balance does not leave me like a zombie. Not reacting to anything, and maintaining balance and equanimity, does not leave void of either negative or positive energy and emotion. It actually leaves me with a deep blissful undercurrent. It’s neither high nor low, but it feels as if it’s the way it should feel. I hope that makes sense.
• Vipassana creates some beautiful harmonies with Christian spirituality. The similarities are greater than the differences. Too many to enumerate here. 
• The technique will not fail me. I can only fail the technique. “Success” is dependent upon my willingness to stay the course.
• There are apparent paradoxes that can only be experienced to be reconciled. I remember learning about Buddhism back in college. On the outside, I used to say, “If you’re not supposed to have desires, isn’t ‘not desiring to desire’ a desire in itself?” What I experienced was this. I have a craving for dark chocolate. I don’t have a craving to end my craving for dark chocolate. The first craving is obsessive. The second desire is a healthy, balanced one. There were other apparent contradictions that were reconciled during my meditation experience. I thought that waking up at 4:30 would make me continually drowsy such that I couldn’t meditate—the schedule was counterintuitive.  But by the end of the course, I was experiencing otherwise. I thought that fewer calories wouldn’t be enough to sustain me. I experienced otherwise. The course has a logic that I didn’t trust on the outside, but learned to trust through experience.
• You cannot fully learn this technique outside of a 10 day course. And for that matter, you can’t even fully learn it within a 10 day course. But the consensus within the Vipassana community is that the course experience is the surest and safest place to begin. All others proceed at their own risk. I started meditating before the course—but it was only “anapana” meditation (awareness of respiration), one of the basic first steps toward Vipassana meditation. And this is fine. It served me very well and put me in a good place to begin the course. I had already begun to experience the benefits of Vipassana.

My Benefits of Vipassana

Below are some of the immediate benefits I am experiencing right now. Now, the benefits will be as varied as there are practicers of this method. As much as I am able to continue in Vipassana, I expect this list to grow.

• I’m less anxious about life, and more hopeful about the future, but more aware of the present.  
• I feel like I can handle so much more stress than I could before the course. This is true for pain and discomfort as well.
• Little things going wrong do not affect me as they did. Instead of cursing under my breath (or out loud, depending on the context), I find myself laughing at my silly little predicaments with a much healthier perspective. I’m now laughing over spilled almond milk.
• I am more able to suspend my judgment and see things from more than one perspective.
• I’m certain I am becoming a better husband. Even though I haven’t seen Helen in almost 3 weeks (she’s back on Friday!) I can already feel so much more love and appreciation for her in my heart.
• I am more easily moved to feel what other people might be feeling and to act accordingly. I am sensing what I think might be called compassion. For my hard heart, that’s a big deal.
• I’m reading more, reading faster, working harder, sleeping a little less, and getting more done… At the same time, I’m living less hurried. My to-do list is not of almighty importance anymore.
• I am more present with people.
• My heart and mind is becoming less ugly. In Christian spirituality, as my mom reflected back to me, I am experiencing the fruits of the Spirit.
• I feel like I have turned an important corner in my spiritual development and maturity.
• Etcetera…

Sign up for the Course

If you are interested in taking a course and would like to learn more before jumping in, here’s what I would say:

• Explore the info and videos at Dhamma.org thoroughly.
• Read the book The Art of Living by William Hart: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Living-Vipassana-Meditation/dp/0060637242
• Based on the readings in the book, start practicing anapana meditation—awareness of respiration.
• This isn’t as important, but if you can find it, watch the documentary The Dhamma Brothers, about Vipassana meditation at an end of the line prison near Birmingham Alabama. Inspiring.
• If you’re still interested after all that, go for it. Look up the nearest course site on Dhamma.org and see what upcoming courses might match with your schedule. I’ve heard of weekend and 5 day courses offered instead of 10, but you won’t learn the whole Vipassana technique in less than 10 days. Ten days sounds like a lot, but honestly, it progressed in such a way that I think it would have been rushed if it fit into much less than that.

If you have questions or would like to talk more about Vipassana, I’d love that. Please let me know. I certainly don’t have all the answers, and can only testify to my own experiences, but I can point you to the right places.

“May you all experience this ultimate truth. May all people be free from misery. May they enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness.” --SN Goenka

Peace,

Tyler

thepriesthood@gmail.com