GRATITUDE to VIPASSANA

I came to know about Vipassana and its great teacher S N Goenka when I was reading Yual Noah Harari's books and?interviews where he mentioned the impact it had on his focus and concentration without which he could not have written Sapiens covering the complexities of thousands of years of history. He continues to practice two hours every day and spends ten days at the Vipassana center every year. The Vipassana practice was started in India by Gautama Buddha two thousand five hundred years ago and expanded to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, SriLanka and many other South East Asian countries but its original form was preserved only in Burma while every other country including India lost it. It was brought back from Burma to India by the great teacher SN Goenka who also expanded it to many countries worldwide with a very unique scale model driven by the sheer value the participants get out of it and their volunteering & donations.?

The pandemic made it tough for me to go for the face to face ten day residential course. But when I saw the online Vipassana offered by YogiLab delivered by David Hans-Barker & team, I took the 'baby step' of participating in it before I can go for the 'normal step' of face to face Vipassana course. I am sharing my understanding and experience as my answers to some key questions here.

Why Vipassana Meditation?

The biggest thing about Vipassana is its experiential aspect linked to reality as it is (the name means that). While there are many theories and intellectual offerings available from different countries, religions and sects, Vipassana takes the route where one has to practice and experience it oneself without the need to just believe in others even if it is the Buddha or your Vipassana teacher.?You experience it before making it as your life's path. If you like action and experience based techniques, Vipassana is something which you will like!?

How does Vipassana Meditation work?

The cause for our feelings of misery, sorrow, sufferings in life is our craving, clinging and attachments. We crave for things we like and we have aversion towards things which we don't like with a focus towards the I, My & Mine, linked very strongly to our ego. Everything in this world is experienced by us with our body & mind through our five senses (see, hear, smell, taste and touch) and the thoughts in our mind which translates into variety of sensations in our body. Vipassana helps us to increase the awareness of sensations in our body at very subtle levels and practice observing them without reacting to it or keep an equanimous approach to treating the sensations, be it pain or pleasure. Continued practice of Vipassana builds a new habit pattern of inbuilt heightened awareness combined with equanimity which makes us capable of going through the ups and downs of our lives without the craving & aversion and come out of the resulting sorrows and miseries. As by-products, one also gets relief from past traumas, pains and also increased focus, concentration of mind thanks to all the sharpening of mind that happens as part of Vipassana. When we are relieved from all our past cravings and we do not create any new cravings, we reach the level of enlightenment which may take longer time to reach.

What is Vipassana Meditation?

There are four techniques as part of overall Vipassana Meditation. The first one is called "Anapana" which helps to sharpen the mind by way of observing the breath and bring it to focus on a small area of the body (below nostrils). Once this technique is experienced, you go to the next technique of Vipassana where you scan the body slowly in a particular sequence using your sharpened mind (from Anapana) to feel for sensations without reacting to it. The sensation could be pain resulting from your continued sitting at the gross level or the ability to feel the difference between the part of the body covered with your dress and the other part not covered or just few hairs on your head moving due to some mini goosebumps in that area at a subtle level. This gets repeated continuously to increase the awareness of more subtle sensations and the ability to keep equanimity in not reacting to any sensation. The third one is the single stream meditation where you practice keeping your mouth slightly open with the focus on exploring any internal sensations within your body. The fourth one is to meditate for spreading love and compassion to everyone else after creating a reference using the most loved person in your life. It can also be a kind of closure you can do with people who you want to ask for forgiveness or you want to forgive. Around seventy percent of time is spent in the second technique and the rest of time in the other three.

What was my experience?

I followed all the precepts with just a couple of exceptions on "No Lies" (one lie when I had to cover up the delivery of the gift for my wife's upcoming birthday as something that came for me with the good intention of keeping the surprise element intact) and "No killing" (one small spider which I was trying to move out of the window which got crushed accidentally). No internet/social media was a new experience time traveling me back to the life of nineties without internet. As per the suggestion by YogiLab team, I informed all the social media groups where I am active to let them know about my being offline for ten days which helped except for one of my friends who did not notice my information and worried about my well being. Luckily he called me on the ninth day and I could return his call on the tenth day when you are allowed to talk. I chose the least strenuous schedule (among the three available options) but was able to follow the mid level schedule by taking up additional meditations during the day roughly getting to nine hours average per day of meditations and listening to discourses. My day started at 330AM and ended at 9PM for these ten days. I included the sessions of the great teacher S N Goenka as part of my daily schedule in addition to the sessions by David, whose sessions are multi faceted covering aspects of different practices all over the world, art, poetry & the wide variety of authors.?Sessions of SN Goenka gave a good balance of understanding the concepts of Dhamma and also the simple stories narrated by him are fabulous. As for as special experiences go, I had couple of them. On the third day of introduction of Vipassana technique, I had an experience of losing my body or feeling it at a great distance far away with only feel of the breath which was very strange. And, on the eight day, I felt one sensation on my head developing into different levels of intensity before bursting & vanishing at its peak. I intend to continue the practice and see where my baby step takes me further in making it as part of my life as ? could clearly signs of positive changes even during these ten days of practice.

My sincere GRATITUDE to GAUTAMA BUDDHA for discovering the technique and teaching the world, all the people in Burma involved in retaining the pristine form of the technique for two thousand five hundred years, S N GOENKA and the Vipassana organization to bring it back to India and spreading it again in the world and YOGILAB team & DAVID HANS-BARKER for leveraging the use of technology for spreading of the Vipassana technique keeping the tradition of running the online training based on the Dhamma Donation model and help me to take my baby step of understanding and practicing it! Links for Vipassana organization and the online option from YogiLab are here below for you to check out if interested.

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

https://www.vipassanaonline.com/vipassana-online