Silence and equanimity: Vipassana meditation

The 10-day silent Vipassana meditation course I just attended was more physically challenging than I could have imagined. I had anticipated that it would be emotionally difficult. But people fixate on different things, and for me it was the worry about what sitting motionless for hours on end was doing to my body. Sitting for one hour straight without even twitching is core to the Vipassana technique. Meditators are supposed to be fully aware of the sensations—including intense pain—that develop in every part of the body, and to avoid reacting to these sensations. The goal is perfect “equanimity.”

The pagoda and a "pod" of rooms in which we lived.

Sitting still for 10.5 hours a day in meditation was a shock to my body. All students sit, legs crossed, on hard cushions on the ground in a meditation hall. I virtually never sit like this at home. My legs became so tight that I frequently found myself shuffling with bowed legs like an old lady. I could withstand the pain, which would usually begin about 15 minutes in to each hourlong session of stillness. I told myself that it couldn’t possibly be as painful as childbirth, which so many women withstand. But I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about the long-term dangers of cutting off circulation and damaging nerves. The one time I moved my legs during the hours of no movement was when my entire left leg went numb and I decided potential permanent damage from spending 45 more minutes like that just wasn’t worth it.

The Vipassana idea is that developing equanimity in the face of physical pain and objective awareness of the ever-changing nature of the world and our sensations will help meditators find inner peace in a world of misery. I hope that the technique will come in handy in working through everyday trials and tribulations, as well as any extreme hardship or sadness that might come my way. 

One of the unique aspects of the course is the silence. Along with about 130 other students, almost all of whom were Indian, I took a vow of “noble silence of body, speech, and mind.” Speaking, reading, writing, music, and all forms of communication with other students and with the outside world were prohibited for those 10 days. 

I loved the silence. After a whirlwind of finishing up work in California, moving to a busy new city, and getting to know so many new people, it was wonderful to be alone with my thoughts. Although most meditation sessions were in the main hall with all the other meditators, sometimes we got to meditate alone in small, dimly lit cells in the pagoda and listen to the bells on the roof tinkling. This was by no means a vacation, however. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to avoid eye contact—we weren’t allowed to look at others’ faces—and any type of gesture or demonstration of emotion. The 10 hours of sitting in pain, and perhaps even more the anticipation of pain, were intensely emotionally and physically draining. On the fourth day, discouraged that the pain of sitting through meditation was getting worse rather than subsiding and missing my friends and family like crazy, I lay in bed and tearfully considered going home.

Here are some details for those of you who are interested:

The walkways at the centre were beautiful.

The meditation centre itself was about two hours south of Delhi along potholed and flooded roads, a surprisingly clean walled campus among rice paddies and fields of what a friend (to my immense joy) told me was quinoa. Peacocks, chipmunks, geckoes, and tiny frogs were everywhere. A monkey family provided amusement throughout the course, but also evoked a chorus of muffled squeals of fear when the male charged at a group of us ladies with bared teeth. One of the older ladies growled back at him and brandished an umbrella, and we all hurried away unharmed.

It was fun to re-experience the constant battle against nature for clean space that becomes necessary in a tropical place. Cockroaches crawled up through the drains, ants of all sizes marched everywhere, and the mosquitoes were incessant. This was where the seemingly-straightforward prohibition on harming any creature became interesting. Since no slapping of mosquitoes was allowed, I learned to meditate peacefully on the sensation of a mosquito landing, injecting its proboscis, and causing a burning itch to rise over the course of minutes and eventually dissolve.

Locusts in the corner of a door

On the third night, a group of us ladies returned from nightly meditation to find the courtyard of the residence “pod” covered with locusts. As we carefully shuffled along the ground to avoid harming the creatures, they leapt powerfully from the ground to our hair and clothes, the doors of our rooms, and even inside to reach our beds. We would brush the locusts off only to have new ones take their place. I had to suppress a giggle at the involuntary shrieks coming from women who hadn’t opened their mouths throughout the course.

One of my favorite parts of the course was the 4:30am-6:30am morning meditation session in which we would sit in silence as the constant refrain of the night bugs faded and the different kinds of birds slowly awoke and began singing. Ramadan prayers would echo over the fields from the villages in the distance. In the evening, we listened to the birds fade out, the bugs began to shrill, and the last round of Ramadan prayers come to a close.

	New friends, including the other two foreigners (there were four foreigners total among about 130 students), after being allowed to speak on the last day.