Written in December 2024.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent ten full days following a strict discipline to learn and practise a meditation technique called Vipassana.
Vipassana means “seeing things as they really are”. It’s done by focusing on observing your thoughts and body sensations without reacting to them, instead creating equanimity.
I spent 11 nights and 10 full days living in silence and following an intense daily schedule of meditation at the Dhamma Medini meditation centre in Kaukapakapa, Auckland. You’re meant to meditate for 10 hours a day, starting with a 4 am wake-up from a gong bell banging outside your door… I slept in until 6:15 and definitely did not meditate for the prescribed 10 hours a day.
It was all very controlled. We were unable to talk, communicate, make eye contact, use our phones/technology, read or write – essentially, nothing that could distract us from focusing inwards on the inner experience. We were also served our last meal at 11 a.m. to limit distraction and create more focus and self-discipline.
My view every meal/tea break
This was the most difficult thing I have ever chosen to do; it was both mentally and physically challenging on so many levels. At the extreme, it at times felt like torture.
I fought myself every day wanting to leave.
I planned my escape (hard when my phone and keys were locked up).
I created false narratives.
I quietly practised yoga for at least an hour every day when I was meant to be meditating.
I internally screamed into the silence.
I sat through the discomfort.
I sat through the pain.
I sat through the knife of my mind, ripping my body into threads.
I sat through the match of my mind, setting my body on fire.
When you’re in this situation, the conditioned mind will do anything to get you out; it will create external pain and plead with the body to signal danger. Instead, we were instructed to practice non-attachment and non-reaction by observing the sensations to realise impermanence.
Plants, trees, flowers, and moss became much more detailed
The course’s external discipline felt as if it were there to stop you from leaving; if you did leave the meditation hall during mandatory sits, someone would follow you out just to bring you back in again. After the first day, we were told that we couldn’t leave since we had committed to the 10 days (I later found out that people did leave). And the experience was described as being in a mind prison, doing brain surgery on ourselves, and we will be alone in the process.
This was the hardest part. Feeling trapped inside a meditation prison. Inside some kind of solitary confinement.
room 22 / my room
I didn’t enjoy the experience, and I also got a lot out of it. It’s so hard to put into words. It’s like a lotus growing in mud; sometimes you just have to deal with the mud if you want that lotus sort of vibe.
I learnt that the mind really does create different sensations in the body, and it’s impermanent, changeable, but as soon as you attach a sense of relief to a pain being gone, it returns as quickly as it left. The mind-body connection is always in motion.
I learnt that it is very possible to achieve a state of near-constant calm, but I haven’t come close to it in the real world. Meditating for 10 hours a day without real-world stressors is incomparable to 1 hour with stressors and stimulation. The course allows you to truly disconnect from the outside world and distractions, which makes it easier to see things as they are and observe rather than react. I learnt the art of slowing down and how beneficial that can be… how much in life is missed because our attention is elsewhere. Each day, I walked the 660 steps through the forest (my salvation) at least 7 times, and I felt myself getting slower and slower until I could notice the minuscule patterns that traced the leaves.
Without constant external stimulation, your senses sharpen, your imagination and creativity enhance, and true calm can be felt.
I acknowledge that every individual who takes part in a 10-day Vipassana course will have a different experience from mine. It was fascinating talking to others on the last day after the course ended – learning about their different experiences and challenges, and also discovering that no one else had the urge to leave every day, as I did.
The course truly dropped me into experiencing two opposing truths at the same time: that a difficult experience can still hold value.
Just as a single moment or situation can hold both expansion and contraction, ease and discomfort, lightness and heaviness.
There isn’t always just this or that.
Sometimes there is only what is.
And that is the human experience.
Photos taken the morning we got our phones back, before entering the real world again.
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