7 takeaways after a 10 days Vipassana retreat

I recently completed a 10 days Vipassana retreat in Brookton, WA, Australia. My goal here is not to talk about the schedule or the rules of this silent, non religious retreat. These are indeed already very well described in the dhamma website or in some great blog articles. I will not discuss the technique either: I am very much a student when it comes to meditation. It is safer to be in the hands of the amazing teachers and volunteers who make these retreats possible. My goal is rather to write down what I learnt or realised dedicating ten full days of my life, meditating in complete silence.

This article was not reviewed or supported by the Vipassana foundation. It does not intend to be THE truth, only my truth upon leaving the meditation centre.

1. Automatic, uncontrolled reactions

When starting meditation, most people directly face the same kind of struggles. We make the conscious choice of observing our breath and only our breath. Yet after a few seconds, our attention is far gone, wandering in thoughts and it can take more than five minutes to remember our primary intention.

The more I meditated, the more I realised that I had so little control over my thoughts. Then it did not take too long before noticing my thoughts were not the only ones concerned: my emotions and therefore well being were too. Examples like the following are countless:

We wake up on a really beautiful day, amazing sunshine, we are really relaxed and peaceful. We decide with strong intention to remain into this state of mind as much as possible during the day. But something (which is after all really common) happens: someone overtakes us while we are queuing to order at the nearest café. And it is enough to get us out of nerves. Where did the vow of staying relaxed go?

Lots of meditation books describe our mind originally as a monkey. Similarly, during this retreat I felt that my mind was like a wild horse I am riding: going everywhere it and itself only decides. But even worse, it could feel sometimes the horse chooses a really wrong way, a way that leaves me in a miserable state, a way I did not originally agree with and yet I would try everything I could to justify this choice. For instance, in the case of someone not queuing properly at the café, I would justify my ‘legitimate anger’ with someone else’s behaviour.

2. Mind training

But there is a good news: we can actually train this horse if we want to. And to me that’s what meditation is all about: mind training. Of course there is a dimension of relaxation when meditating but if it was only about that, we could call it Sophrology.

Many people, when I mention meditation, tell me they find training there mind unnatural. Even if we agreed, what’s natural is not always good: diseases are natural. That does not prevent us from trying to find medicines to eradicate them.

Some could also feel meditating does not make sense because ‘they are who they are’: their wild horse should be loved for what it is. They believe training will make them a different person whilst they are attached to who they are right now. Sadly, this inherently prevent any kind of enhancements from happening. And really few people can argue there is absolutely nothing they could improve in the way they interact with the world or within themselves. Moreover, if a practice enables having more control over our emotions rather than reacting in an automated, uncontrolled way, does that really make us a different person, or is it the opposite: does that make us who we truly are? Plus, if it increases our well being, our balance, why not giving it a try?

The goal of this mind training is essentially twofolds: increasing our Awareness and our Equanimity. And after ten days I noticed a real difference: my Awareness (attention) significantly increased. For instance, I usually on really rare occasions remember my dreams. When doing the retreat, I was able to remember them all, on each and every single day. And for the first time I was able to notice I was dreaming while doing so!

Our practice was also really much dedicated to feeling sensations which constantly happen in our body. After a couple of days, I was able to focus on any part of my body, visualising it, truly feeling what was happening at this specific location. This blew my mind: it felt like a 6th sense to me!

3. Pain vs Suffering

The other area which we tried to train was, as I said, Equanimity (mind balance). For 10 days, we sat from 5 to 10 hours a day, meditating. This was on average performed by chunks of one hour. During an hour, we were sitting without moving legs, hands or eyes.

At the very beginning I felt miserable after 20, 25 minutes. I had so much pain on my back, it was clearly impossible to carry on. We were reminded the universal law of Nature, Anicca, “everything constantly changes”. I was really doubtful at first:

“Is this law an invention to cope with the present, difficult reality?”

“I know how to change this situation: uncross my legs and then I’ll be alright again”.

To help us, we were told another time to increase our awareness, to observe the pain as it is. (Vipassana means seeing things as they are.)

At first, I felt like my pain was covering most of the right side of my back. But after a couple of days, I was able to truly observe the pain: when I tried to draw its outlines like a painter, I realised that it was much narrower than what I felt initially. And after a couple of seconds only, drawing it, the pain actually dissolved completely for 30 sec, 1 min or more. It then re-appeared in an area which was not exactly the same as before. This timeframe, in between, was actually some space where I was left, absolutely pain free. I physically realised the difference between Pain and Suffering. Before training my suffering was greatly stronger than what the actual pain was: this difference was due to my anxious craving to get rid of the pain. And this craving, contrary to the pain, never stopped until I changed my posture.

After realising this, I was able to remain without moving during a full hour. Again it blew my mind. This was clearly not achieved thanks to a physical adaptation to the exercise: this massive improvement (from 25 min to a full hour) suddenly happened within the same day. It was the result of something else: mind training.

I then thought of the Shaolin Monks who endure some pain which are unimaginable to us. The field they practice is similar to the one I discovered here, but obviously they take it to a far deeper level.

4. Education

After experiencing this myself, within the framework of my own body, I was really perplexed. How come am I discovering this vast field of mind training only just now at 30 years old? How could have I gone through my entire childhood, at school, High School or University without training my mind a single time? Without even knowing training it was a possibility?

I realised that aside from arts, we use our brains at school only like computers: either for storing information (like storing dates in History) or processing information (like doing some arithmetical operations in Mathematics). But never do we train our Human specificities, what makes us different from machines: thoughts, feelings. Never do we train the mind. That’s a pity. Everyone has a mind, everyone can work with it. We utterly should try to bring this field to school, at least as an option.

5. Desires, Craving and Aversion

There were also a couple of ideas in the Buddhist philosophy that I have always been struggling with in the past and which became clearer after this retreat. One of them is the notion of Desire.

I thought it was advised not to have or to refrain desires whilst I am totally against this idea. Desires, to me, are just the driving forces which make things happen. They relentlessly let us achieve new, unbelievable things. Without them we would be passive beings, observing a life that we don’t grasp.

But during the retreat, Craving or Aversion were described as The source of misery. Not desires. Between desiring something and craving for it there’s is a huge difference I didn’t see before: mind balance or Equanimity. One can desire achieving something without feeling miserable if the expected results are not obtained.

6. Enlightenment, Liberation

Another idea I always struggled with was Enlightenment or Liberation. I am very much a down to Earth scientist. I don’t really believe in supernatural things. I also don’t believe in the purity of Enlightenment: someone being able to be fully aware, fully equanimous at all times, always behaving with Compassion and Love. But I certainly believe in working to enhance these capabilities. To me the Path, enhancing those capabilities (called Dhamma) is the goal: each challenging moment where you manage to stay aware and equanimous is a real liberation.

7. Practice and Theory

Finally, let’s face it, meditation at first is complicated for the very reasons it is a new, entire field, never practiced before. As everything else, when the practice becomes stronger it starts to be easier. But before that, one should be really cautious about avoiding distractions. One of the distraction that I seemingly noticed happening for me is to focus on Theory rather than Practice. Reading lots of books, watching many discourses about meditation rather than actually meditating. Sadly when doing so, we are not training our minds. We can read many times that Love is better than Anger for our well being, it does not get rid of our bad habits, our automatic reactions.

One of the story we have been told very much relate to this:

An old Captain and a rather young Professor were cruising on a ship in the middle of the oceans. One day the Professor asked the Captain:

‘Captain, have you ever studied Geology?’
‘Oh no, I didn’t really study Sir, what is it?’ said the Captain.
‘Well, Geology is the science of the Earth, if you didn’t study it, you missed a quarter of your life!’ said proudly the Professor.

A couple of days later, the Professor came again to the Captain asking:

- Captain have you already studied Oceanology?
- Oh no Sir, I have only been navigating my whole life. I don’t know Oceanology. What is it?
- Well, Oceanology is the science of the Ocean. If you didn’t study it, you missed another quarter of your life.

Another day on the ship and again the Professor came and asked:

- Captain have you already studied Meteorology?
- Oh no sir, I also haven’t studied Meteorology. What is it?
- Well, Meteorology is the science of the Weather, of the Winds, very much needed for a Captain I would say. If you didn’t study it, you missed another quarter of your life.
Couple of days later, the Captain this time came to the Professor:

- Professor, Professor, have you ever studied Swimology?
- Euh no, I have never heard of that, what is it?
- Well, can you swim?
- Ha, no I have never had time to learn actually!
- Well, Professor, I am afraid you just lost your entire life. This ship is sinking and the only way to save you is to swim to this nearest Island.

The message here is obvious: Theory is good but it is not everything. At times we just need to go out there and experience. This 10 days retreat was very much the time for me to experience what Meditation, mind training, practically is. And I would recommend it to anyone.