Vipassana en Cochabamba

Close your eyes, and focus on the sensation in your nostrils as your breath passes back and forth.  Good, now see how long you can stay focused before your mind wanders.  When your mind wanders, lovingly, equanimously, bring it back to your breath.  Good.  Now, continue for an hour.  Next, continue for 11 hours a day, for ten days.  Without speaking, without making eye contact, without eating dinner.  This is, more or less, our experience with Vipassana Meditation.  After 30 hours of bus rides to arrive in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and our immediate separation upon arrival at the meditation center, left us alone and daunted, as well as excited and curious. 

The schedule starts at 4:30 am, and proceeds until 9 pm, with a few hours of respite and otherwise continuous, seated meditation.  The course is overseen by a female and male teacher (to assist in maintaining complete separation of the sexes), but the teacher is G.N. Goenka, who delivers one hour of compelling discourse each day (on tape), and many chants throughout the meditation.  The basic theory is consistent with more general Buddhist theology – basically (I’m paraphrasing) – that our lives consist of unnecessary suffering.  All this suffering is caused by the habit patters of the mind, which teach us to desire things which we find pleasant, or avoid things we find unpleasant.  This leads to craving in the first instance, and aversion in the latter.  These processes are connected through impulses which occur in the brain, causing physiological changes which make us ‘react’ to given situations. However, upon introspection one finds that all sensations, in fact everything in life is impermanent (Goenka calls this the Law of Nature).  Thus, reacting to these sensations is sure to lead to misery, because instead of accepting things for the way they are, living in the present, the mind is programmed to live in the future or the past – consistently remembering past pleasures or aversions, or imagining future ones.  In this way, we miss living in the present.  Honestly – think about how often your mind is thinking about something other than the present… Almost always, right?

Goenkaji- the only voice we heard for 10 days, and my does he chant beautifully.

 So, the idea of meditation is to remove oneself from these patterns by eliminating craving and aversion.  This becomes a practical challenge when facing the (sometimes excruciating) pain of sitting 11 hours a day, and when facing the craving of hunger after abstaining from dinner, not to mention the craving of conversation, physical contact, etc. 

Vipassana is unique as a technique because it focuses not only on the breath when meditating (this is the first three days), but also on the bodily sensations – which are felt through a method called ‘sweeping’ which involves locating sensations throughout the body.  This process is challenging, because one must remain equanimous (level-minded) by recognizing that when there is a sensation of pain or pleasant tingling in any given place in the body, the sensations are essentially the same, as they are impermanent.  Thus, one shouldn’t desire pleasant sensations, as this creates craving, nor avoid painful ones, as this creates aversion.  Through countless hours of meditation, one begins to notice more and more bodily sensations, even when not meditating.  Thus, one is able to eventually feel the physiological effects generated through sensation, and slowly eliminate these ‘reactions’ through this physical process. 

Vipassana meditators and Buddhists alike will hopefully forgive my rather crude explanation of the technique – if you desire more detailed information, check out http://www.dhamma.org/en/vipassana.shtml.

As far as personal experience, I can say that it was the most physically painful 10 days of my life.  Sitting for so long in meditation pose lead to cramps, knots, and all kinds of pains.  Supposedly, these pains are reflections of sankaras (mental impurities) being released from the body.  At some sittings, I was able to establish what Goenka called a “free flow” throughout the body.  The theory is that all the body is just collections of atoms which, if one is sensitive enough, can be felt moving and constantly changing.  Thus, one reaches a point when the pain ‘dissolves’, as the mind is sensitive enough to feel the more discrete sensations which combine to create the ‘gross sensation’ of the pain.  This was quite difficult, because of course I was yearning for the free flow, as it means the pain has gone away, and despite how many times Goenka assured us that it was ‘equal’ to the painful state, my mind certainly had this ‘free flow’ as a goal.  So, while trying to remain equanimous and tell myself the pain was the same as the ‘free flow’, I found the pain remained.  Once I finally let go, surrendering to the idea that the pain would not leave (until the end of the meditation session – three of which per day required no movement) then the pain would start to absolve, at which point my mind would become pleased with progress, and the pain would return.  In this pattern, I faced my aversion to pain (mostly by enduring pain), but also reached very deep states of meditation which allowed me to face many internal demons (sankaras) and develop more self-awareness.

Clearly unequanimous were my feelings of the Vipassana meditation – after a particularly painful meditation, I began wondering how my knees would survive another 8 days.  Several hours later, after a really successful session, I found myself considering moving to a Monastery, or never eating meat or raising my voice again.  Claire had a different experience – she found that as her physical pain dissolved (sometime around day 5), she had much more trouble staying focused, and this mental acuteness became her biggest challenge.  Of course, I found this out afterward, as we could not talk (although we did sneak some eye contact, as the administrators (or fate) put us right next to each other in the 70+ person meditation hall).

On day 9, we were allowed to speak but not have contact.  Claire was crying and we chatted, and I was still trying to get used to the sound of my own voice in my head.  She described what had been the hardest 10 days of her life, spent in what she felt bordered somewhere between a prison and a mental institution (most people walked around the yard with their heads bowed in silence for much of the free time during the retreat, and I later learned that some of the women took to waving their arms and ‘flying’ like birds, or crawling across the ground).  Claire felt indoctrinated by the absoluteness of Goenka’s discourses, which claimed that Vipassana or such a physical sensation meditation technique was the only way to reach enlightenment.  I guess I was so enthralled by the idea, and so agree with the methodology, that it bothered me less.

Day 10 came, and we were able to hug.  It’s amazing how good that felt. We made many friends among the people with whom we had shared the past 10 days, but with whom we had not spoken.  It’s amazing how much you can learn from someone just from the energy they omit. Typical conversations on day 10 involved deep questions about the meditation, life and liberation, plans, finding out where we were headed, inviting us to stay if we passed through, and – oh, by the way – what’s your name?  It was as though such formalities didn’t matter, after passing through such a soul-searching and difficult test together (albeit completely isolated from one another) we were all brothers and sisters, united through the trial by fire of Vipassana.  While it was one of the most difficult challenges many of us had ever faced, it was worth the effort, and all of us gained self-awareness through the course. In the end, Claire and I both came away with a stronger sense of ourselves, our challenges and capabilities, and a greater appreciation for one another.

Lessons in "metta" the philosophy and practice of unconditional and eternal love to wrap up the course and the practice.