This is a two-part Note. A bit longer than usual, but again, as I know this post is mostly going into the empty void of the algorithm, as only 6 or so of my readers will lose productive time out of their day :)
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This weekend I got out of a 10-day Vipassana course in the south of Germany, in a secluded and beautiful place, next to a small forest that had been covered with snow since the day of arrival. It kept snowing almost every day after…like the weather also decided to commit to the process.
Before I start: I am not going to explain Anapana breathing or the Vipassana method. There is more than enough literature out there. Also, I am not qualified to explain it without accidentally inventing new facts.
The aim here is to share my small and humble experience.
To give you a sense of my “experience level,” before this retreat I had meditated at most 30 minutes in one sitting, and probably less than 10 total combined hours in my entire life. If meditation were a sport, I was the guy who bought the bike and immediately signed up for the Tour de France.
Oh boy, did I not know what I was getting into…this was a hard experience…both physically and mentally.
Vipassana is like going into surgery, but instead of lying in a bed while a doctor operates on you, you are awake, with no anesthesia, doing the opening yourself doing the cutting and removing things you don’t remember signing up for.
That alone is intense.
I was surrounded with a group of around 150 brave men and women, from all walks of life and ages, who consciously decide to take 10 days out of their lives away from families, kids, spouses, partners, friends, work, and responsibilities to be secluded, silent, and undergoing that process.
The crux for me was to see how society has disconnected us so much from ourselves, that people seek one of these centers (over 270 centers around the world) to remove themselves from society and go through an internal seeking process.
Not to mention the countless other unfortunate ways people try to fill the same hole: drugs, addiction, gambling, and a thousand modern variations of “please make me feel something, but not that.”
Inside the retreat, you are not allowed to read, journal, write, or do anything that disrupts the real reason you are there: developing deep self-awareness and self-observation.
There are basic precepts, Sila, to follow. The schedule is strict and it is strict for a reason.
It starts at 4am and ends at 9pm. Seventeen hours a day. Ten hours of meditation in one-hour blocks. Two meals a day + fruit/tea in the evening. Vegetarian. Basic, but so good and savory it made me suspicious…are we sneakingly being indoctrinated via the food?
You share a room with someone. Humble amenities. Everything you need, nothing you do not. Shared bathrooms and showers. Essentials only.
Before the last meditation each day, there is a 1.5-hour discourse. A video projection of S. N. Goenka, a charismatic Burmese Vipassana teacher, guiding the course.
He also chants. Totally out of tune. The first time I heard it, my mind reacted like: “Sir. Respectfully. Who gave you the microphone.”
Then he would speak, and his words were so profound and insightful that they hit you in the best possible way. They penetrated, they resonated…deeply. And the examples he used, darn, those hit every time. Bravo
Time started to slow down. In the small breaks between meditation blocks, we walked into the little forest. It was cool to begin noticing things I had not noticed in years.
The wrinkles on tree bark. The structures of how snow particles attached themselves to leaves. The crunch of snow under my feet with every step. The sensitivity of my skin as cold air touched my face. I have to confess that I ended up hugging a few trees during those days, just standing there, hands wrapped around the trunk of a large pine tree.
It felt like rediscovering the small things we were curious about as kids, before we replaced curiosity with scrolling.
In all that silence, thank people looking down to avoid facial gestures the environment felt a bit too somber. So I took it upon myself to look for FUN moments, crack a smile when possible.
Cushion Engineering
To survive ten hours a day sitting still, people got creative with cushions. Some used none. Just sat on the mat like statues who do not have knees, or backs or necks (those were my main pain-points). Others used one cushion.
However…most of us built Tetris structures. Towers. Ramps. L-shapes. One guy’s setup looked like he was sitting on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but with better lumbar support.
I realized that this retreat was also a workshop for either amateur orthopedic design or structural/architectural engineering.
The Maths of Time
After 100 hours of meditation in 10 days, you understand time differently.
One hour starts to feel like middle school…eternal
If you have physical pain and a wild monkey mind at the same time, sixty minutes stretches into feeling something like five reincarnations long.
Messages in the Snow
Around day three, walking one of the forest trails, I noticed a message carved into the snow: “hello” with a little smiley face next to it. By the afternoon, someone had added “hi.”
Strip away phones, names, jobs, and social media bios and humans still can’t help it..we’re like, “I know I’m not supposed to talk… but just in case… hey.”
The next day, a new message appeared somewhere else: “hard, worth it?”
Now it was getting philosophical, felt like a connection to know someone else was struggling.
By that night, every message was erased..gone
Someone was not happy (or spiritually advanced). In my mind, it was a grumpy old man, who else would do that..
Then the snowmen started appearing, every time I saw one, I laughed and thought, this is it, its the loophole. We are desperate to express ourselves…the need to create cannot be repressed
The Great Hall Goes From Loud to Microscopic
The first days, during the one-hour sits in the grand hall, there was constant cushion movement. Stretching. Shifting. Mats making friction noise with the cushions, a lot of noise.
By day 7, the hall got so quiet you could hear every stomach growl from the other side of the room.
With that vegetarian diet, you could also hear an impressive amount of intestinal movement…of all types, and surprisingly a lot more rumbling coming from the ladies side of the hall.
Did I think about quitting? Ohh yeah!
Day 1 is like, “Oh nice, this is going to be great.” Curiosity supercharged
Day 2, you learn the rhythm, honeymoon phase continues
Day 3, I was like, “What the F*#& am I doing here”…(pardon the french), but that nice phrase popped up far too often
mind went full monkey..from branch to branch…
“You are losing two weeks of time to work on your new business”
“You are not being productive”
“This is nuts. Jump the fence”
I definitely thought about leaving starting the afternoon of day 3. But leaving that day made no sense, because getting home was a logistical masterpiece: five train transfers, one metro, one tram. I was like, “Fine. I will sleep tonight and leave tomorrow”
Day 4 arrived. Six hours of sleep and a 4am wake-up kick later, I forgot I wanted to leave and decided to give it one more day.
Pulling yourself out of the matrix for ten days forces a question you cannot dodge…is this worth doing?
I loved the fact that by pulling yourself out of the matrix and immersing yourself in ten days of silence, you are forced to feel.. it’s theoretical but also practical at the same time.
You are not just understanding things mentally, you are living the information…you are creating your own truth through experience.
You do not just hear the ideas and concepts, you live them. You test them in your own body, you create your own truth.
This is where Part I ends.
Part I ends here.
In Part II I’ll share the response to the most frequent questions I have been asked and answer the question behind the whole thing. Stay tuned!
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