Nirvana On A Chair

I first heard of Vipassana 15 years back when Kiran Bedi had come to P&G as a guest speaker and spoke about the transformation amongst the inmates in Tihar Jail. However, the word or concept had never registered. Over the last few years, in an increasing attempt to understand and make sense of who I am and the world around me (no doubt due to the clichéd mid-life crisis) I realized constant intellectual analysis or introspection did not lead to any kind of resolution but only led to more questions. Books have always been my answer to everything, and I possibly own an enviable collection of self-help, popular science and spiritual books, and have read countless books on meditation and mindfulness and listen to multiple podcasts – but it only describes someone else’s experience of wisdom. You can read all the books you want about swimming and might know all about the Archimedes principle but unless you get into the water, how will you experience the water and how will you actually swim? I learnt one thing though - from the Buddha to Ramana Maharishi to Swami Vivekananda to the Sadhguru to Sam Harris – the modus operandi was similar. They took off to some lonely spot to be by themselves, to sit still, to look within and to realize the ultimate truth. And that I decided is what I had to do.

As I started looking out for meditation courses and retreats, I kept coming across various individuals who had recently completed Vipassana or been practicing it for years and the signs seemed to be getting stronger. What clinched the deal was the fact that most meditation courses are sold as commercial “packages” priced steeply, while Vipassana was “free” – both the lodging/ food as well as the classes. You could donate based on your means and your inclination at the end of the course for future students but you essentially did the course on someone else’s generosity. The concept appealed to me. It somehow seemed very liberal and egalitarian – anyone from anywhere could access it – all you needed was the will.

Vipassana essentially means “insight” and is a meditation technique which is the exact form in which the Buddha is supposed to have taught it, and after having been preserved for 2500 years has now come to India from Burma through Shri S N Goenka. Vipassana is possibly the earliest “self-help” course ever taught with the premise that it will lead one to “experience” wisdom. What intrigued me was the fact that the intellect played no role in your ability to experience this wisdom, neither did education or language. When I arrived at the Chennai centre in Dec 2019, there were about 65 women from all parts of India and about 8 of them from across the world. What struck me was the diversity – there were some who got in cartons of mineral water bottles with them and other meditation paraphernalia (believe me, there are such things) and there were others who quite clearly were from very poor families and probably faced basic survival issues and had not even gone to school let alone college. There were mostly Hindus, but also Christians and also Muslim women.

By the time the course was over, after having been through the ten days together, there was really nothing much which separated us.

There are many posts on Vipassana out there which focus on the mechanics of the ten days, I wanted to focus this post more on the understanding of the concept, which is as rational as it can get. So here goes.

The Logic

The minute we are born into this world we get caught up in the worldly game of the senses – the five physical senses of sight, smell, taste, sound, touch together with the mind help us make sense of the world. When there is contact with any of these senses, there is consciousness within us and recognition that something is happening. How we react to these senses is termed sa?khāra. Very early in life we learn to recognize pleasant and unpleasant sensations and form our own response to them which is either one of “craving” or one of “aversion”. Think about it, anything we do is to increase our feeling of pleasant sensations and to avoid unpleasant sensations. A six-month old baby realizes that a full stomach feels pleasant and a full diaper feels unpleasant and even without language is able to demand attention. Soon this extends to grades, to the kind of job we want, to the people we want to be with, to money, to status in society, to fame and nothing is ever enough. Diminishing returns sets in pretty quickly – imagine your joy when/ if you bought your first car to your first BMW to your tenth BMW – it’s not really a linear upward trend, right? The only thing which continues to grow is the craving. We also have a strong sense of aversion to anything which makes us look bad or feel bad or which puts us in an insecure situation – loss of a job or loss of youth may be big events in life, but we also have aversions to certain situations, certain foods, certain TV channels, certain politicians or actors and so on. Every time we react, we form and deepen the sa?khāras and eventually we manage to justify it to ourselves on how “we are like this only”.

The problem arises because our happiness/ unhappiness seems to be closely linked to all this – if we get something we want, we are happy. If don’t get what we want, we are unhappy.

And here comes a couple of important concepts/ insights from the Buddha – one of anicca or impermanence – Nothing in this world or our lives is constant or unchanging. There is bound to be constant flux year to year, month to month, week to week, minute to minute. Imagine the guy who went into a Vipassana camp just before demonetization and came out to find none of the money he holds has any value! Now given that things around us over which we have no control happen all the time, reacting to each change with a sa?khāra becomes very tiring for oneself as well as for others. (Climate change – oh my god! No Uber available – life sucks! Paav bhaji – yummy! Bit a chilli – yikes! Promotion – whoopee! 2% hike – shucks, and so on). By the time you are all caught up with your string of emotions, it’s time to react to a new sensation. More often than not, the negative emotions persist, be it anger or grief or hatred or anxiety – remember how some people seem to worry that there is nothing to worry about? But did you notice how almost all these feelings are closely mirrored in your physical self? Your breathing becomes faster, your stomach feels queasy, you have a headache? Or on the flip side, your senses are tingling with adrenalin, your heart is racing, you are blushing and your face feels hot?

A related concept is that of anattā or non-self. For each of us “I” is the most important person in the world. I dare you to keep track of your thoughts over just one hour and count how many times you are thinking of “I”. Even when you think of someone/ something else it is with relation to the “I” – so its about “my” or “mine”. “I don’t think so”, “I want this”, “In my opinion”, “my kids”, “my family”, “my community”, “my country”. We tend to form strong attachment towards ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our people, our belongings, our career, our religion (!) – and in a world which is constantly changing and evolving and nothing lasts for long – this only causes more suffering.

The Buddha was a very scientific and rational human being – he observed this phenomenon of suffering (dukkha) very keenly and decided the only way to break this chain from birth to contact of the senses to consciousness to reaction to suffering, is at the reaction stage since nothing outside of us is really in our control. We don’t really have a say in whether we want to be born or not, or where we want to be born and we don’t have control in all the things which happen around us all the time. But hey, we do have control over how we react or respond to things.

And thus comes the fundamental concept of Vipassana – awareness of the physical sensations in us (since this is fundamental truth which is not subjective) and responding to these sensations – good or bad – with equanimity.

I am a big fan of “meta” in general, and the Buddha seems to have nailed it with Vipassana – awareness happens by zooming out and objectively observing what is happening to you. So it’s no more “I feel bad” or “I feel awesome” but “Oh, this is what is happening to me” and being able to examine that feeling in an objective, scientific, rational manner without reacting immediately. This paradigm shift is truly a revelation. Does that mean we don’t react to injustice or unfairness or wrongs or even the good things in life? Not at all – it just means you “respond” and “act” with full awareness and hence your response is probably that much more relevant and effective.

But hey, what is life but the fun of drama – the highs and lows of emotion? The fights, the passion, the excitement, the grief? Isn’t that what makes us human? Sure, if that’s our only definition of being human! I would like to believe the ability to zoom out and observe ourselves at a meta level is probably what makes us more human. And who doesn’t want to be happy all the time? And if by avoiding the constant highs and lows we are able to maintain a serene and sublime joy, sign me up I say!

The Practice

That brings me back to the actual course, and the “how” of it. The Vipassana course is almost the equivalent of “meditation for dummies” – that’s how water-tight and actionable it is. The three basic steps to this are as follows:

Sīla or “moral conduct” is the first basic requirement of learning Vipassana. It is defined as a seemingly simple five-step code of conduct:

• Do not kill (this also includes someone else killing on your behalf so no meat and possibly no killing mosquitoes and what not)
• Do not steal
• Do not indulge in sexual misconduct
• Do not tell lies
• Do not be under the influence of alcohol/drugs

The ingenious creators of the Vipassana course (possibly Buddha himself) realized that the only way they are going to get people to do this at least for the ten days they are trying to learn the technique is to place them in pseudo imprisonment and avoid any avenues for breaking any of the precepts. Hence the ten days course is a residential course where they serve simple vegetarian food (definition of this can vary widely across centres and across the world as I found out later), where they take away all worldly belongings to keep in a safe (no temptation to steal if you had any such inclinations), males and females being fully segregated for the ten days (not even a glimpse of the other gender making any misconduct impossible), no access to cigarettes/alcohol/ drugs which are taken away along with your valuables and finally just make them shut up for ten days (because that is probably the only way you can stop people from uttering lies/ hurtful things knowingly or unknowingly).

Sīla hence gets taken care of automatically and thus provides a basis for the development of the next step that of:

Samādhi or concentration of mind; For the first 3.5 days you learn to observe and be aware of your breath (anapana meditation) and learn to focus your attention on a tiny part of your face. Imagine focusing on your nose – even if you are really really bad at it, you are bound to become better after ten hours of becoming aware and being aware of your nose. Some people actually find this experience extraordinary in itself – for the first time in your life you are aware of the very basis of life – the breath. The same breath which we take so much for granted and don’t stop to notice unless we are feeling breathless. At the end of 3.5 days you are ready to move on to the actual Vipassana meditation and to work on:

Pa??ā — the wisdom of insight and purification of the mind. Wisdom can be gained in three ways – (i) sutta-maya-pa??ā  or “heard wisdom” – essentially this is the wisdom passed on by those who have experienced insight and we can take it on faith or belief or whatever the case may be. This is the basis of many of the organized religions of the world and we follow what out Gods/ Prophets/ Gurus have experienced and passed on (ii) cintā-maya-pa??ā or wisdom based on thinking or intellectual reasoning. This is possibly how most philosophies came about, by critical reasoning and what I had personally engaged in thus far. And (iii) bhavana-maya-pa??ā or “wisdom through direct experience”. Vipassana essentially says there is no replacement to your own original direct “experience” of wisdom. And the way to experience this is by just observing the physical sensations, being aware of them and not reacting to them, but responding to them with equanimity. Which essentially means you sit cross-legged for 10.5 hours a day for 10 days and observe yourself. Of course the predominant sensation in the beginning is one of pain, which again I think is part of the design of the course – it’s just a short-cut way for you to be aware of sensations, and what is more powerful than physical pain. At some point you start getting insight into the “physics” of atoms and what your body is made of through the observation of the “physical” sensations (this was my profound moment and I was very proud of myself for having discovered this connect, so bear with me please!).

Unfortunately, I have been troubled by knee pain for a few years now, and by Day 5, I went running to my teacher to eagerly proclaim my various aches and pains and she cut me short by saying “So what, go sit on a chair”. Things started suddenly looking up again with the pain dramatically reducing, though there was a niggling doubt which remained – if I don’t experience as much pain, will I achieve the experience which I am supposed to? On the last day we learn one more technique “metta meditation” – which is about generating a feeling of loving kindness and compassion to all living beings (which is very useful in these times, trust me!).

Finally coming to the ultimate experience – what is it supposed to be or feel like? And does everyone get there at the end of ten days? Most enlightened souls talk about the dissolution of self and the oneness they feel with the universe at the pivotal moment (also an effect which can be artificially produced through some psychedelic drugs apparently according to Sam Harris!), though I (and Harris too) highly recommend the meditation route since its more sustainable and within your control.

On the last day of the course I went to the teacher and asked her with some apprehension “Can one achieve Nirvana on a chair?” – and her answer was a simple “Yes”. And when I asked her how long does it take to get there (a few years may be??), and was it ok if it hasn’t happened in these ten days, she seemed highly amused and her answer was that it could even take “a few lifetimes perhaps” (!!). However, before you give up on it as a lost cause, the good news as Goenkaji nicely explains it, is that whether you believe in rebirths or afterlife or not, the benefits of Vipassana are immediate and very much in this lifetime. Like any skill, one only gets stronger in the Vipassana technique as one practices diligently and continuously (one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening ideally but anything is better than nothing!), but there is no denying the very real benefits of learning awareness and equanimity. And if you are interested in scientific measurement, you can actually track metrics like how often you lost your temper, how long you stayed angry, how many times you gave in to temptation, whether you reacted or responded in certain situations, and see progressive improvement in all of these.

So how did I survive the 10 days? The silence turned out to be the easiest part of it honestly (despite what my friends would have thought!). Even the getting up at 4 am and not having any dinner becomes easy. The sitting is definitely the most difficult, but hey you can always ask for a chair! And Goenkaji is this super jolly, joyous grandfather who will give you the step-by-step guidance and all the support you need, through simple and funny stories over videos shot thirty years back but still as relevant as they were 2500 years back.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and experience your inner wisdom!