Anicha

When Chepe, the coordinator of the Managua group, first told me about a silent meditation retreat, I was instantly intrigued to know more. You probably know I'm not one to talk a whole lot anyway, and I contemplated whether 10 days in silence might not do me more bad than good. But in the end, my curiosity outweighed my concerns, and so it is that I spent 10 days at La Casa de Retiro Las Teresianas in El Crucero, Nicaragua.

I got to El Crucero a little earlier than expected, and so I was one of the first people there for registration. After you fill out your information sheet, your connection to the outside world is taken away - cell phones, beepers, cameras, books, journals; anything that could potentially distract the mind is checked at the door. And with good reason, too. It's hard enough to concentrate for 11 hours of meditation without there being additional distractions.

After everyone got registered, we had dinner together. There was some small talk. Hi, how ya doin? Where you from? That kind of thing. But not a whole lot beyond that. Maybe this 10 days in silence wouldn't be so hard for any of us after all!

In the meeting that followed dinner, everything we already knew was re-explained to us one more time. We were to spend the next 10 days on the premises of the meditation center. We were not to engage in any conversation with any other participant. We were to maintain full physical separation from the opposite sex outside of the meditation hall. We were to leave behind any other spiritual/religious/meditation practices in order to give a fair chance to the Vipassana technique. And finally, in order to engage in Vipassana meditation, one must vow to follow a life of Sila (moral living) that includes the following five precepts:

1. No killing any living being
2. No stealing
3. No sexual misconduct
4. No lying
5. No ingestion of intoxicants

I know the no lying seems kind of easy - like, how do I lie to someone if I can't talk to them? Right...but these are five precepts that are also applied to life outside of the 10-day course.

After the meeting, we had our first group meditation session. The course is recorded on CD by what I would call the "guru" of Vipassana meditation, S.N. Goenka. The guy's been practicing the Vipassana technique for like upwards of 50 years now. He started in the '60s, eventually becoming an assistant professor, which meant he could lead these meditation courses. Well, his first students were his parents, late in the '60s. His parents like it so much and told enough friends that Goenka had to do another course for their friends. And then the friends told friends and it just kept snowballing until Goenka was travelling all over the place giving these courses until he first made a recording of them in the early '80s. Needless to say, dude knows what he's doing.

So the first meditation session was kind of an introduction to the course with some chanting in Pali and a "good night, get some rest before you get woken up early tomorrow morning." Since I was attending the course here in the Nica, we had the original recording of Goenka plus a Spanish translation throughout the course.

Our schedule for the 10 days (with slight changes on the 4th and 9th day) was as follows:

4:00am Wake-up call (DING rang the bell repeatedly until everyone showed signs of life)
4:30am -6:30am Meditation in your room or in the meditation hall
6:30am-8:00am Breakfast and break
8:00am-9:00am Group meditation in the meditation hall
9:00am-11:00am Meditation in your room or in the meditation hall
11:00am-1:00pm Lunch and break
1:00pm-2:30pm Meditation in your room or in the meditation hall
2:30pm-3:30pm Group meditation in the meditation hall
3:30pm-5:00pm Meditation in your room or in the meditation hall
5:00pm-6:00pm "Dinner" and break
6:00pm-7:00pm Group meditation in the meditation hall
7:00pm-8:15pm Discourses from Goenka
8:15pm-9:00pm Instuctions for the following day's meditation and brief meditation session
9:30pm Lights out

I say "dinner" because it was probably about a hundred calories worth of some mixture of fruit slices and a cup of tea. Vipassana meditation is apparently best done on about a 75% full stomach, so they make sure you don't eat too much.

The discourses every night were great. Goenka touches on the history of the Vipassana meditation, tells some stories to help understand the driving forces behind Vipassana and addresses the intricacies of the technique. During the course, we could sign up for question times with the assistant professor (who is physically present at the meditation center and meditates along with the participants), but I found that if I was patient enough, all of my questions would get answered. The one time I did sign up for a question time, my question would have gotten answered the next night during the discourse. Goenka's pretty hilarious, too, so it was easy to listen to his talks.

The first full day of meditation, we started learning the Anapana technique, which is simply being aware of one's breathing. The first day was dedicated to increasing awareness of our inhaling and exhaling. The second day, we focused on feeling the sensation of the breath either at the entrance of our nostrils or on the skin between the upper lip and the nose. On the third day, we focused our attention on any sensation (itching, warmth, moisture, vibrations) that came up on that skin between the upper lip and the nose.

Doing this helped us to practice Samadhi (mastery of the mind). It's kind of like a warm-up to Vipassana. It starts sharpening your mind and getting it focused on being aware of sensations.

Then the fourth day was overwhelming, because we started the Vipassana technique which is to be aware of sensations on all parts of the body, kind of like how we were doing for the part between the lip and the nose. So you start with the top of the head, move down to the rest of the skull, the forehead, the nose...all the way down to the tips of your toes. Then you go back up to the top of the head. If you don't feel sensations on a part of your body, you're supposed to stay there about a minute and then move on if nothing crops up.

Of course, as we're learning the technique, there's a marching band going by outside - Drums, symbols, trumpets, bottle rockets...the whole deal! I was giggling to myself when I heard it. The first day of meditation, I had been frustrated by hearing cars and trucks pass by on the road outside and having all these distractions, but then I realized that I'm probably not gonna ever have a sound-proof meditation room to meditate in, so I'd better learn to ignore all the extra-curricular activity. And by the end of the course, I was barely even thinking about that stuff.

So from the fourth day on, we practiced the actual Vipassana technique. The three times a day when we had group meditations, we had Aditthana, sittings of strong determination. The idea was to not move your legs or hands or open your eyes for the full hour. I made it through most of them, but there were a number of times when I was apparently not determined enough. Back pain.

You might ask, what's the point of all this sitting and being aware. Well Vipassana meditation incorporates two main themes - the law of impermanence and equanimity. Anicha is a Pali word that must have been used hundreds of times between the meditation instructions, the discourses and the chantings. It means change or impermanence. Goenka would remind us time and again that any sensation we were experiencing had the same characteristic as the next sensation - that of arising and passing away. Nothing lasts forever. For that reason, we are to be equanimous toward these sensations, never becoming too attached to those sensations that we deem pleasurable or creating too much aversion to those sensations that we deem as not pleasurable.

The theory, then, is that by controlling our reactions to these physical sensations, we can then control our emotional reactions to circumstances in everyday life. All emotions have a physiological basis and we attach positive and negative labels to the circumstances in our life. In doing so, we essentially are living in misery all the time. It sounds like kind of a downer attitude, but only if you don't want to work out of your misery. See, for most people, we struggle to live positively in the present moment. We are either experiencing something we dislike and creating or multiplying an aversion to it, or we are longing for...craving for something we do like. Or maybe both at the same time. The Vipassana technique helps to liberate us from these cravings and aversions. Looking at all situations objectively and understanding their impermanence, we can avoid becoming too attached to or too spiteful toward any situation.

This, in turn, helps us to live in better relationships with other people. We begin to feel less entitlement to things or feelings or ways of living. We begin to appreciate the way in which people are different from us and understand why they do what they do. We begin to want all beings to experience the same sort of happiness and contentness with whatever we have in front of us at the time. And so we live more compassionately and more lovingly toward one another and toward our environment. This is called Dana, selfless love or selfless giving.

The final goal, so to speak, is Panna, wisdom or insight that purifies the mind. Actually, there are three levels of Panna. 1) suta-maya panna - wisdom gained by listening to others. 2) cinta-maya panna - intellectual or analytical understanding. 3) bhavana-maya panna - wisdom based on direct, personal experience. I experienced the first when I was told about the meditation course, the second when I read about Vipassana and received instructions for meditating, and I am now in the process of developing the third by experiencing the meditation itself. Purifying the mind through bhavana-maya panna can lead to full enlightenment for those who fully invest in the technique.

Eventually, the idea is that one becomes aware of all physiological sensations on the surface level and the interior of the body, looking at these sensations objectively and with an understanding that they all arise and pass away. If one can do this with their own body, it sharpens the mind to apply the same concept to their life, and thus one can live free from cravings and aversions, peacefully experiencing each moment as it arises. But you can't crave for the sensation - then you would just be creating a new misery for yourself!

By the end of the course, we had all become good friends without really talking with one another. I could barely talk when we first broke the silence, and other people had the same problem, too. One of the first topics of conversation was the tremor that we experienced on the ninth day. A few people made the comment that our meditation was getting to be a little too powerful if it was going to shake the ground underneath us.

It's a pretty amazing thing that these Vipassana courses can sustain themselves. New students are not required to pay anything and only at the end of the 10-day course can they make a donation that would be used for the next course in that country. All other expenses come from donations to the bigger Vipassana organization and, in greater part, from returning students. It's that Dana, the selfless giving, that allows the technique to continue to be passed around the world. Hopefully I'll be able to experience that giving back next year.