My 10-day Vipassana Silent Retreat Experience

Work diligently. Diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently. And you’re bound to be successful. Bound to be successful.

S. N. Goenka

I was always interested in meditation and other eastern practices such as yoga and Qi Gong. I attended the odd meditation class and dabbled with meditation apps such as Headspace and Waking Up. I first heard of Vipassana silent retreats in Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The very successful author does up to 60 days of Vipassana meditation retreats per year and meditates two hours each day. Although it piqued my interest at the time, it did not seem realistic for me to drop everything to go on a silent retreat and to start meditating two hours every day. Like everyone else, I was “too busy”.

I was completing teacher’s college in Ottawa while tutoring up to 15 hours per week. It wasn’t until I ran into an acquaintance at the university pub that I started to seriously consider attending a retreat. She mentioned that she attended a 10-day Vipassana retreat like the ones Harari goes to. She said that there are Vipassana centers all around the world but she went to the Montebello location which was approximately an hour’s drive from my apartment in Ottawa. The abstract possibility of attending such a retreat instantly became real. After a few months of research and pondering, I signed up to attend a 10-day course in Montebello at the end of August 2019.

I was a bit nervous going into it since I had no idea what to expect. My parents were worried as well. They had no way to reach me during the course since we had to give up our phones upon our arrival at the center. My grandma feared that I was joining a cult and said she was going to pray for me. The fact that this retreat was free (donation-based) was also a bit suspicious. Nothing good is free. There had to be a catch. I kept it low-key but the typical response to telling someone that I was voluntarily attending such a retreat was: WHY!?!?!?

Code of Discipline

The Code of Discipline did not reassure my family (nor did it reassure me). The Eight Precepts do make it seem like a cult.

1. to abstain from killing any being;
2. to abstain from stealing;
3. to abstain from all sexual activity;
4. to abstain from telling lies;
5. to abstain from all intoxicants.
6. to abstain from eating after midday;
7. to abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decorations;
8. to abstain from using high or luxurious beds.

Note that the last three precepts are reserved for old students who have already completed at least one ten-day course.

Other key rules include:

• All students must observe Noble Silence from the beginning of the course until the morning of the last full day. Noble Silence means silence of body, speech, and mind. Any form of communication with fellow students, whether by gestures, sign language, written notes, etc., is prohibited.
• Complete segregation of men and women is to be maintained.
• You can’t do exercise other than walking.
• You can’t wear shorts or wear anything tight.
• You can’t bring books and anything to write with.

The rules and environment at the centers were designed to limit all forms of distractions.

Daily Schedule

As you can see, we had to wake up at 4 AM daily to start the day off with a two-hour meditation. This part was brutal. A Gong woke us up since we weren’t allowed to have alarms. The meditations were guided by audio recordings of S. N. Goenka although there was a teacher physically present at the front of the meditation hall. The morning meditations always started with some Goenka chanting. It caught me off guard on the first day, but I was used to chanting in yoga classes and whatnot. Little did I know that the chanting would last approximately 30 minutes. I couldn’t think of a better way to start my days… It grew on me though. By the end of the course, I was looking forward to Goenka’s chanting since it was something other than pure silence.

Task	Time Allocated (hours)
Rest & Chores	2.5
Meals	3
Meditation	10.75
Discourse	1.25
TOTAL	17.5

We were kept on a tight schedule. On the go for 17.5 hours and sleeping for the remaining 6.5 hours. On the surface, this might seem like not enough sleep. One thing you realize is that deep states of meditation are not much different from sleep. My dreams and sleep experience were dramatically altered during the course.

We were formally meditating upwards of ten hours per day and expected to meditate while going through the rest of our days. Needless to say, this was a slight upgrade from the 10-minute guided meditations I was used to. There were three one-hour-long “sittings of strong determination” where we were strongly encouraged not to move.

My favourite parts of the day were the meals and the discourse. Simple vegetarian meals were prepared by volunteers (often old students). The food was delicious for the most part. The meals offered a distraction. It made food feel like superstimulus. The discourses were essentially one-hour solo podcast episodes of Goenka telling stories and teaching the theory behind the practice. The discourses fed the intellectual part of my brain which was fasting for the rest of the day. They were also quite entertaining given his sense of humour and charisma.

The Theory

Every sensation shares the same characteristic: it arises and passes away, arises and passes away. It is this arising and passing that we have to experience through practice, not just accept as truth because Buddha said so, not just accept because intellectually it seems logical enough to us. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux, and learn not to react to it.

S. N. Goenka

Vipassana is often translated as insight meditation. Awareness and Equanimity are two key concepts of this technique. Equanimity can be difficult to wrap your head around. The more Goenka talked about it, the less I understood what it meant. I think this might have been done intentionally. The meaning of equanimity might have to be discovered at the experiential level instead of at the intellectual level.

Impermanence (anicca) is another concept that is preached. It can be learned with awareness and can inform equanimity. I knew this concept was internalized when I stubbed and ripped open my toe on the tenth day and the first thought that came to mind was F!@%#$^$#^@^!!! and the second word was aniccaaaaaaaa.

Real wisdom is recognizing and accepting that every experience is impermanent. With this insight you will not be overwhelmed by ups and downs. And when you are able to maintain an inner balance, you can choose to act in ways that will create happiness for you and for others. Living each moment happily with an equanimous mind, you will surely progress toward the ultimate goal of liberation from all suffering.

S. N. Goenka

My experience

The first day was not bad since everything was novel. I was determined to attend all meditation and fully surrender myself to the retreat. It’s only ten days of doing nothing. I’ve persevered through some difficult things before. How hard can this be?

This novelty wore off very quickly given that the next three days were spent simply observing my breath coming in and out of my nose. Day 2 was already challenging. My initial determination to attend and give my all to every meditation seemed like a joke by Day 3. I was in survival mode pacing myself in an attempt to last the ten days. It didn’t help that Goenka always started his discourses with “Day x is done. Only (10-x) days left to work.” Hearing that there are 7 full days of torture was enough to make a few quit.

The Vipassana technique was introduced on Day 4. We could now focus on other parts of the body than the triangular area under the nostrils and above the upper lip. What a thrill! It doesn’t take much to be excited when you are so dopamine-deprived. We were instructed to do a slow body scan. The part of your body that you are paying attention to starts to vibrate or tingle after three days of concentration practice. It is a similar sensation to shivers and goosebumps or the tingling you experience when your foot “falls asleep” except that it is more subtle and pleasant. This body scan technique renewed my enthusiasm, and I went to bed on Day 4 determined to finish the retreat strong.

I almost left the retreat the next day. This was anicca at work. Motivation is impermanent. Dread is also impermanent. Day 6 is known to be a tough day. Many people quit on Day 6. I enjoyed the body scan technique but found it difficult to maintain this attitude and focus for the full day. The body scan started out by focusing on discrete parts of the body but we were eventually encouraged to scan our body in a continuous motion. This made the process more enjoyable but also more frustrating at times when the sensations were absent. Equanimity was not my strong suit (still working on it).

Day 7 through Day 9 were spent practicing this continuous body scan. It was sometimes referred to as “free-flow”. When performed properly, it was supposed to feel like a bucket of water was poured on your head and the water flowed to your feet. Then we would make the water (awareness and accompanying sensations) flow from our feet back to our head to repeat this cycle. I thought of this technique as some kind of awareness scan (like an MRI or X-Ray) that you could feel as the scan is moving.

The last few days of the retreat were roller coaster rides, to say the least. I remember being angry in the morning session for no apparent reason and in a state of bliss later that same day. Again, not very equanimous. I was still trying to cling to the pleasant sensations and avoid the bad ones.

The sensations induced (or noticed) by the “free-flow” technique became extremely intense at times and were generally very pleasant sensations. I experienced some states of being that I previously thought were impossible to experience by simply sitting still and paying attention. I could now understand why people talk about Qi, chakras, meridians, and vibrations. They definitely felt real from a subjective point of view but whether the claims made by the mystics are true is a different question. The skeptic and rational part of me kept wondering if we could measure this flow of sensations and visualize it on a screen. There is almost certainly something that is happening at the physical level. Or is it only the mind noticing and creating subtle sensations that are always present? Regardless, I feel like this change in the subjective state could be captured somehow.

Do we need to be able to measure and quantify something for it to be real? What do we mean by real anyway?

Day 10. The final day is here. We were told that we would be able to talk to each other on the last day. It was true but what they forgot to mention was that we still have to meditate in silence most of the day. All I wanted to do was talk to folks about their experience and mine. I was sick and tired of meditating. I knew the right thing to do was to finish strong, but I didn’t have it in me. Frustration and resentment were the dominating emotions during the sittings. It wasn’t compatible with the loving-kindness meditation we were taught on the last day. It is impossible to send your love vibrations throughout the universe when you’re about to burst in flames from anger. I had positive experiences with Metta meditation in the past, however. I was simply fed up.

It didn’t help that the first few people I talked to about their experience said it was a breeze and entirely pleasant. This was not my experience. It helped when I talked to more people throughout the day who also struggled. I found that many of the returning students had more nuanced answers than it was all good or all bad.

Takeaways

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Lao Tzu

• Some ideas need calm water to float to the surface. I got the idea for the name of my company Duddhawork near the end of the retreat. It was inspired by something Goenka said about the importance of doing the work. I’ve been preaching a similar message regarding learning math and the importance of doing problems by yourself. I figured that the name and domain for “Do The Work” was surely taken so I tried to spell it differently. I considered naming it Buddhawork but figured that Duddhawork was more aligned with my message. The “patiently and persistently” found in the website’s header is inspired by Goenka’s quote at the top of this article. I didn’t have anything to write with to make sure I did not forget it, so I carved the name on my water bottle with a rock.
• Don’t expect to have breakthroughs. You will almost certainly gain smaller insights by paying attention. I realized that my breath is colder when I inhale than when I exhale. I noticed that my water bottle made cool patterns on the ground when the sun was out. I noticed that I could see a reflection of myself on the golden coat hanger every time I hung my coat. Smaller insights as the ones above can change your day-to-day experience.
• I ate vegetarian (mostly vegan) for ten days and survived! In fact, I felt really good in my body for the duration of the retreat. I was surprised because I have a hip condition that tends to make it painful to sit for prolonged periods of time. Sitting 12+ hours per day was a recipe for disaster. Oddly enough, my hips were fine. I think this might have something to do with low levels of stress and inflammation. Needless to say, I can’t attribute my subjective well-being during the retreat only to the diet component given that almost all other aspects of my life were also dramatically different from baseline. Still, the fact that I felt good and that the food was delicious planted some seeds to explore more dietary options.

• We are creatures of habits. I found myself visiting a tree every day and offering it rotting apples from another tree. I hypothesize that we instinctively come up with rituals as a way of coping. Another example of this type of behaviour was signing up to do chores. Cleaning the washrooms and other basic chores were done by volunteering students throughout the retreat. I didn’t volunteer to do chores the first few days. There was one person who volunteered often. I kept seeing their names on the list. I thought they were foolish at first. I signed up for my first chore around the fourth or fifth day. Partly because I felt a sense of responsibility to “do my part” but also because I was sick of doing nothing. Turns out that doing chores became a ritual. It gave me a sense of control in an environment that was designed to strip you from any type of distraction. It also spoke to the power of living in service to other people. Most of us (if not all) can gain more than we give by acting in service to others. In a way, doing things or others because it makes you feel go is selfish. However, it is as selfless as we get, and the Dalai Lama would say that we are being wise selfish instead of foolish selfish.

It is important that when pursuing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish”. Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Being wise selfish means being compassionate.

Dalai Lama

• Our brain automatically creates intricate stories of people based on little to no information. I created narratives for 20 or so attendants. It was my brain’s way of distracting itself. It’s only on the last day that you get to see how wrong you were. Talking to some of the folks revealed a totally different story. My brain updated people’s stories after the conversation with conflicting evidence. The posterior story might be a bit less wrong, but it is still infinitely far from this person’s reality. It is an impulse to judge people. One of my roommates, whom I had the pleasure to chat with before the course started, would sat like a statue for ten days. My story was that this guy was woken and that he was so much better than me at this Vipassana thing. I could barely get through the 3 sessions of strong determination. It seemed like Determination was his middle name! On the tenth day, he told me that he struggled the entirety of the course. He couldn’t experience the free-flow sensations because he was stuck in his head. All my stories were inaccurate like the one I had written about my roommate. I mean, how likely is it that the story in your head matches someone’s reality given that you had a five-minute interaction with them?

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor E. Frankl

• We don’t want external things. We only want the internal reactions that come with the external thing. You don’t want to eat ice cream. You want the physical sensations that come with satisfying the craving. Andrew Huberman talks about the neurochemistry of this in episode 12 of the Huberman Lab podcast. Incredibly, Buddha and others were able to intuitively come to the same conclusions that much of the current research points to.
• Pain is not equal to suffering. Pain is the feeling of unpleasant physical sensations (or emotions). Suffering is the story you form about physical sensations. It’s the optional struggle, self-pity, denial, worry, and regret (the list goes on) that tend to accompany the pain. According to Buddha and the Four Noble Truths, craving and aversion cause suffering. The Eightfold Path is the way to reduce suffering (and maybe even irradicate it). Equanimity and impermanence are potent tools to try to shrink your suffering to match your painful sensations.
• It was interesting to experience the sensations that came with doing the body scan. It is one of the things that stuck with me from the retreat. It is deeply empowering to know at the experiential level that we have cleansing sensations available to us at all times if we only stopped and paid attention. I suspect these sensations to be at the root of most spiritual experiences.

My Advice for Potential Students

• Talk to people before and after the course. Odds are that you’ll meet interesting people. I met a voluntarily homeless person, a Columbian chocolate producer, a few people who did the course and other extended retreats dozens of times, a refugee who became a mathematician at Concordia University, a lawyer who had interesting experiences dealing with narcissists, a Qi Gong practitioner, a few folks who had powerful psychedelic experiences, someone who was currently in a polyamorous relationship, and a Ph.D. in cognitive science who was studying meditation to name a few.
• Commute with someone else in the rideshare program. It’s a great way to give back and meet people. I had an extensive conversation with the cognitive science doctorate student from driving them after the retreat.
• Donate at the end of your retreat. I donated 150$ which amounted to 15$ per day. That is definitely less than what the food and building costs. I plan to donate more Once I am not a student, and funds are easier to come by. The budget for the center is publicly available and they’re always running on a deficit. It became clear that making money is not part of their business model.
• Bring pants. I went during the summer, and I missed the no-shorts memo. I ended up wearing the same pair of pants for ten days.

Parting Thoughts

Would I recommend anyone to attend a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat?

No. This is not something you sign up for just to say you did it. If you are interested and you think this is for you, then yes absolutely! It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done but I am happy I did it. It’s likely that I will attend other retreats. I learned many useful things that have carried over even two years later at the time of this writing.

I did the retreat in August 2019 right before starting my Master’s in statistics at Carleton University. I was not prepared for my master’s since I only did a three-year undergrad (typically 4 years) in mathematics (not statistics). The first semester was very challenging, to say the least. I had to learn all an undergraduate degree’s worth of statistics and learn how to program in a few months. The retreat helped me stay a tad more equanimous through those chaotic times. It served as a rite of passage that allowed me to enter a new chapter of my life psychologically.

The Vipassana technique strongly recommends that you meditate for at least two hours daily. One hour immediately after waking and an hour before bed. I was one of the only students who said they weren’t planning to meditate two hours daily after the retreat. Instead, I set a goal to meditate for at least 15 minutes daily for a year after my retreat. You can see the meditation contract I wrote to increase the odds that I actually follow through for the full year.

I do not practice meditation daily anymore, but I still go to it whenever I feel like it. I also recently completed the 60 days of 60 minutes of meditation Naval Ravikant challenge. There are other ways to get the stillness we are all searching for. Here are three alternatives that I practice on a regular basis. First, I much rather go for a long walk in silence than meditate for two hours daily. My work and hobbies already demand that I sit for a sizable portion of the day. Walking is a terrific way to limit my sedentary lifestyle and get similar cognitive benefits that meditation provides. Second, journaling is very useful for reducing mental chatter. The act of writing down your thoughts can also help you let go of stories that resurface. It can help to break the mental loops that Vipassana is also trying to address. Third, practicing gratitude can have potent effects on several aspects of your life. Every night before we eat dinner, we take a few seconds to reflect on our day and then we list a few things we are grateful for. The whole ritual takes about one minute but consistently has a positive effect on my mood and stress levels.

Know thyself.

Socrates

It would be interesting to get access to the meditation habits data of old students. I wonder how many students meditate for two hours daily. My hunch is that we would see strong habits after the retreat and a large dropout rate after a few weeks. I knew given my demanding lifestyle at the time that two hours was an ambitious goal and that I most likely be better off by setting the bar low and clearing it consistently.

It is important to understand that there is an opportunity cost to every habit we pick up. Meditating for 2 hours daily may or may not give you the most bang for your buck.

What is it that you are trying to get out of meditation anyways? What is your y-axis? How do you measure whether your habits are effective?

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Affiliate Links

1. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari
2. Atomic Habits – James Clear
3. The Molecule of More – Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long
4. Why Buddhism Is True – Robert Wright
5. Stillness Is the Key – Ryan Holiday
6. Invest Automatically – Wealthsimple Invest Robo-Advisor
7. Build your own portfolio – Wealthsimple Trade
8. Save money and make a little – EQ Bank High-Interest Savings Account