MIND. My 10-Day Silent Meditation Experience.
“So, exactly why did you want to do that?” This is the most frequently asked question when someone learns of my recent endeavor of 10 days of silence. The reasons are many, but the primary driving force being to try something I have never done before. Something difficult. And I tend to like difficult things, within reason. Ingrained in me from my father since childhood that “the best way is the hardest way” may not always be a mentality that is in my highest service, but I certainly appreciate the purist approach.
And pure this 10-day Vipassana meditation course was. The 60-or-so people who were allowed in for the course, with many others on a long waitlist, were stripped of phones, smart watches, books, journals, pens. And after the first night started the “Noble Silence” - no talking, hand gestures, eye contact with any other student.
The analyzer in me was thinking of it like a math equation:
(total silence) + (9-hours daily of meditation) - (usual distractions)
=
something I have never experienced before.
What that something was, I was here to find out. Epiphanies? Euphoria? Bliss? Peace? One person whom I had known to complete described it in one word: profound.
Well, that sounded intriguing to me. So I have had this 10-day course on my radar for the last eight or so years, and I have just been waiting for the opportunity to have enough time and be in the right frame of mind for such an endeavor. Being in a transition from my first place of clinical practice and deciding next steps for myself, including where to live, how to practice medicine, what further training to get, etc. made me feel like this would be a great time to sit with my thoughts and see what comes up. Hopefully receive some guidance and some aha-moments.
I scoff at myself a bit now looking back at my ignorant preconceived notions. The first three days were laughable observing my wild mind. Peace? Anything but. For nine-hours per day, the sixty of us sat in a large meditation hall and were instructed to observe our respiration and the sensation right below our nostrils. Well, my brain got tired of that within about 5-minutes. For those nine hours per day, I watched my mind go here, there and everywhere: singing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song (b-o-l-o-g-n-a-), thinking of Christmas gifts to buy, what I was going to do for my birthday six months from now, full emails composed in my mind for lecture propositions, whom I could contact for more learning opportunities while I am over in Europe … my mind was a darting Tasmanian devil. I will say I did have some good brain blasts and ideas during this wild ride, though. Perhaps it was the free space for my mind to run totally wild that allowed that.
And then there was the woman sitting directly behind me. Poor thing, she fell quite ill on the second day. I could hardly focus on my own breath when hers seemed to be like the mouth breathing of Darth Vader at my back. Coupled with. her continuous burping eruptions every couple of minutes (strange, but true), I could hardly focus on the area below my nostrils with my grossed-outness of what was going on behind me and the turmoil within me.
On the fourth day, we were taught the “Vipassana” technique, which is rooted in Buddhist philosophy. Over the course of each 2-hour meditation session, we were to move our attention from the top of the head to the tips of the toes and notice sensations. Whether it be gross (feeling of clothing on skin), cross (burning, pain), or pleasant (subtle vibrations): just observe. And see how it changes. The technique is based off of the fact that all sensations arise and pass away, just as all of our cells arise and pass away. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, the sensation will change. Approach all sensations with equanimity (noun): mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.
Let me tell you: sitting for an hour + in a cross-legged position becomes painful at minute thirty. For three of the nine hours of meditation per day, we had one-hour sits termed that of “strong determination:” do not move. No matter the sensation (ie, pain). Observe it. Notice how it changes. Keep scanning the entire body. And no moving whatsoever.
Prepping for each of those sessions felt like prepping for a big race - both mentally and physically. I would try every stretch beforehand. Give myself a grand pump-up talk - “You GOT this, Casey. You can do this!” - on the walk to the hall. And each sit was so painfully long. In the last 15-minutes, every minute felt like an hour. I would begin to overheat with the mental grit of staying in one place despite my body’s crying to shift. I thought surely, after I made it through one, I would have a breakthrough and not be in so much discomfort. No, not the case. The pain, the suffering, it continued. Yet the message remained the same: equanimity. Do not be adverse to the cross sensations. Do not be desirous of the pleasant. Treat each one the same, for it will all pass away eventually. Impermanence.
I also realized that the stretching and body position did not matter. Pain was a part of it. The main teacher, in fact. There was no key stretch that would solve my pain. It was coming, regardless.
On day six, I wondered myself, “Why am I doing this?” The teaching that life is suffering and to just be witness to it… this was not the clarity of mental capacity I was hoping for. It was stirring more crap up, actually. And I thought these 10-days were going to be time for processing all that had happened in the last couple of months, and all that lay ahead. Oh, how naively wrong I was.
Then, day day seven brought a shift. My mind seemed to have sharpened to be able to experience more subtle sensations aside from just the pain. And honestly, it was nice to have something other than the pain to feel. I found myself being able to sit for over an hour with a single-focused mind of just doing a complete body scan of every inch over and over again. I could now feel buzzing, or subtle vibrations, throughout most of my body. The Vipassana theory is that this vibratory state is being in touch with the constant arising and passing away of millions of atoms in your body - truly some quantum physics at work here. I found I could get to a state of “free flow” as they called it where I could shower myself from head to toe with this vibratory state. If I started this early enough in the hour-long sit of “strong determination,” I could skip the pain totally and be able to sit for even longer. “I made it!” I thought.
Wrong again. I spoke with the teacher, the only person were allowed to talk to for less than five minutes. He told me, “You are avoiding one sensation for the desire of another. This is not equanimity. You must continue to do the full body scan, and not just do the free flow.” I objected, “But I will be in pain that way.” Well, that was part of the point. Do not be averse to the pain, for it is an inevitable part of life.
Sigh. Back into the pain cave I go.
The 10-days felt mostly like a long, uphill bicycle climb. One pedal stroke at a time with the top never totally in sight. A slog. And, I tend to love those types of climbs. I think there is much to be learned at our limits. And it becomes more about mental aptitude than physical ability. Plus, physics tells us a downhill is bound to come after such an uphill.
While I did not have many downhill moments during the 10-days, I can tell you how special it was hearing laughter again for the first time on day ten. And while everyone was speaking in German and I understood nein, there’s no language barrier in understanding the sound of joy. To reconnect, share our experiences after this difficult journey; a sense of commiseration in a way, and also accomplishment in having completed such a unique and self-imposed suffer-rich task. “So much shit went down on my meditation mat,” one German man said to me afterwards. I think everyone felt that way.
I think that many seeds were planted in that uphill climb, and more downhill is yet to come to reap the reward. To have sharpened my mind to such an acute extent, and truly have some wonderful moments of brain blasts and clarity, was a gift.
I thought Vipassana for me would be a challenge of “doing nothing” - not even my usual escape routes for downshifting into perceived rest of reading, writing or walking. Just truly being. And that is true, it was that in some ways, but also very deep work that was certainly not nothing. It was amazing to watch the journey of mind over the 10-days: from an untrained animal running amok, to slowly one that could be broken, trained and sharpened as a precision tool.
Without practice, I will lose it, I know. The Vipassana suggestion is 1-hour twice daily with one 10-day course annually. Which is truly a commitment. But even if I can’t do full throttle, and only 30-minutes per day, I have experienced a greater potential within myself. And truly, distilled into one word, that is profound.
