How to survive 10 days of silence with no computer, phone, book or pen

Start another Internet company…?

A few years ago, I decided to try a rather serious meditation course. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life: no talking, no eye contact, 2 veggie meals a day, wake up at 4am to meditate, the works…

My goals in giving meditation a try were:

a) Gain more control over mind

With more time on my hands after selling my last company, I found that voice one has in one’s head becoming increasingly unruly, constantly running off down a dozen different trails.

b) My knees

Recently, my knees had been troubling me on flights. Once, I was stuck in the middle row of an Iberia economy seat (think sardines) and my leg was completely immobilized. After a while my knee started to ache and because I could do absolutely nothing to stretch it out and relieve the pain, I started to get an anxiety attack. Such an experience while stuck on plane is no joke, made even more frustrating since it was not unbearable pain by any means. The problem was mental. As much as I fly, I needed to find a structured approach to calm myself in such moments.

c) Temper, temper

I had been surprised during recent team sports I play at sudden uncontrolled flashes of anger and emotion. And even if the occasions weren’t so many, I tended to brood endlessly over them afterwards.

So, I decided meditation was the answer. Ideally, I was looking for something nice and mellow, with people in flowing white robes, and Ibiza chill out music playing: meditation with mojitos. By coincidence, a friend and business colleague I had lunch with mentioned his experiences with Vipassana mediation, so I gave it a try. Below is my summary of what happened.

1) WTF?!?

It was hard, much more than I had anticipated, both mentally and physically. The whole time the teacher is harping on the importance of hard work, discipline and strong determination. Whatever happened to hippie camps and mojitos?

2) Who are all these people?

It was also packed! There are Vipassana centers all over the world, with large new ones under construction. They book up early and have waiting lists of new and returning students. For something I didn’t even know existed a few months prior, I was quite surprised. The courses, room and board are all free. The whole thing survives off donations from people who finish a course and want to give something back in gratitude.

3) The monastic life

When you arrive at camp you have to give up your cell phone and car keys. Men and women are separated and there is no talking (except with the teacher as noon), Internet, phones, books, pen and paper, eye contact, sensual pursuits (still not sure exactly what they meant by that), the works. Basically, you’re a monk.

You wake up at 4am to meditate for 2 hours. Each day has over 10 hours of meditation. Half way through the course things change and, from then on, for 3 of those hours you must remain motionless. The food is all veg and alcohol is verboten. Breakfast is at 6.30, lunch at 11. At 5pm new students get 2 pieces of fruit for dinner, returning students get nothing but love.

In the evening there is a video lecture by Goenka, the head teacher of the Vipassana technique (now passed away). The guy was amazing on many levels and I consider myself fortunate to have had the experience to hear him speak. Even more, after over 10 hours of meditation, these one hour videos are like tickets to a Michael Jackson concert.

Needless to say, it’s a huge shock to the system, and the mind immediately finds about two hundred reasons why you need to get the hell out of there stat. The program frequently loses people after day 2 and day 6. We certainly had our own share flee. I envied them while staring at the wall calendar trying to meditate it into a time warp engine. There is no question that these were absolutely the longest 10 (actually 11) days of my life.

4) How did it feel?

Day 0: Who are these people?

Day 1–3: Worst. Idea. Ever.

Day 4 morning: Please put the bullet in my head now.

Day 4 afternoon: Ecstasy. Somebody must have put something in my tofu.

Day 5: Uh oh, I feel trouble coming…

Day 6: All hell breaks loose. Trial by fire begins.

Day 7–9: Ok, I get it now; very smart, very useful in my life. But can I leave?

Day 10: Actually, can I stay a bit longer? This is wonderful.

Day 11 morning: Tearful departures.

5) Why the rollercoaster?

The first 3 days are spent sitting in a meditation hall (depending on where you go; some centers in Asia have individual cells) thinking about the air that comes through your nose. Seriously? None of those fancy breathing techniques with the Ibiza music. You breathe normally and focus your mind on that air.

On Day 1 your mind is having none of it and is off trying to calculate the rate at which the sun will go supernovae and blow this place to bits, and if Barca (my soccer team) won last night. That, of course, is the point. You realize that “monkey mind” voice in your head that helps you decide so many things “instinctively” is really just all over the place, not so trustworthy, and you’d better tame it or go nuts.

By day 2 you start to realize funny things though. All this focus is steadily sharpening your mind and things that were once invisible start to become apparent. Nothing earth shattering by far, but little things that make you wonder. Things like, hey, I don’t actually breathe through both nostrils all the time, and it kind of randomly changes. Or, wait a minute, I can actually feel the air changing temperature as it passes through the nostril.

Then it starts to get strange as you start to feel weird sensations on your nose. They can vary from heat, tingling, dripping, vibrations, contractions, etc. But you start to control them just by thinking about different parts of your nose. Anyway, firm nose control is great and all, but Day 4 is approaching and Goenka promises something different.

On the morning of Day 4 you are told to make your focus even narrower, on the small space above your upper lip… But then later that afternoon they let you go crazy and focus all over your body. The sensation I received upon doing so is one I’ll never forget. After all that time, your mind has finally become sharp enough to detect the constant subtle sensations occurring all over the body. These are the sensations generated by the myriad processes happening that allow us to live — from the subatomic (supposedly; he’s a big believer in wavelets), to the organic, to the more macro biological functions, to that aching pain in your leg — that we just never pay attention to.

My own sensations were such strong vibrations coursing through whatever internal or external body part I focused on, that I was sure when I opened my eyes everyone would be staring at me, jaws agape, as waves of light and Monty Python music emanated from my body…! Unfortunately, nobody paid me a bit of attention.

6) So it’s all about the vibrations?

No. It’s exactly not about the vibrations. And Goenka warns you many times not to become one of the sensation freaks they see who keep repeating the course because their minds have opened up to this new world of feeling. It is important not to like the sensations and not to dislike them. Just observe them, as they are, with equanimity. You force yourself to realize that everything in life constantly changes, comes and goes, just like these crazy sensations. Getting attached to them is silly because they will soon be gone and that will generate disappointment, misery or craving. Maintain equanimity.

Once you learn the full meditation technique and start applying it properly, all kinds deep, emotional things start coming to the surface. I had been warned about this by several people and, frankly, did not believe them. Actually, I just didn’t really think there was anything that needed to come up. But there was. Plenty.

The point is that the technique gives you a practical way to address all of the buried crap that starts to surface. By “address” I mean an ability to handle these issues, observe them, and watch them weaken. I felt real knots in my gut unfold and vanish as issues from my past surprisingly resurfaced, making me realize that I had never fully dealt with them.

7) But how does the technique accomplish this?

I’ll give my short bullet point summary in a separate post. The truth is that I’m still trying to get my head around all that I felt and was told. To keep learning, I’ll repeat the course like many others, but probably in Burma and Thailand. There was a lot of information given to us, and even that amount only scratches the surface it seems. Plus, as odd as it may seem, you don’t have that much time for reflection as you are entirely focused on putting the core part, the meditation technique, into practice and being buffeted by what occurs to you personally.

The constant refrain of the course is practice, focus only on what is real, see life as it really is, be skeptical and experience it for yourself, don’t just believe what a teacher tells you.

8) What happened on Day 6?

I had an issue with one of the other students that sounds completely silly now but at the time was dramatic. The room that I was in was tiny but held 10 other guys in bunk beds (another reason I’ll do the next one in Asia). The people next to and below me were gold medalist snorers while others carried the torch in farting. I had no earplugs and the guy next to me prevented me from sleeping.

This really pissed me off because the dreams that you have at Vipassana are amazing! It’s like they are in HD. I’d never seen anything like it. Also, the guy was a talker who kept trying to interact despite the rules against (which are very important, because they keep overcrowded people from saying dumb things, which I surely would have done, thereby creating anger — exactly what the technique is supposed to prevent).

By Day 6, I was imagining all kinds of crazy things about the guy, I was furious, had internalized my anger, was losing even more sleep and starting to skip meditation sessions just to nap, and eventually went into the hallway to sleep. And then Goenka’s lecture from the night before hit me. The talk was on why people are miserable. The point was that pain, tragedy and misery will always exist. That’s just how life is so face it and don’t try to pretend otherwise.

If some asshole pisses you off, even if you could snap your fingers and make him disappear, what’s to prevent the next jerk from taking his place? So don’t let them get to you. Use the technique you’ve just learned to maintain your equanimity. If you slip up and let them get to you, fine, it’s going to happen. But then use the technique to observe your sensations calmly, with equanimity, and let it go.

In short, the snorer was not the problem (especially as he was asleep and oblivious to the whole ordeal). I was. I finally put 2 and 2 together and had no more problems sleeping. And, of course, the guy turns out to be super nice! Like I said, it sounds silly now, but it was my little trial to apply the technique to one small thing. For others, the issue will be something else, like physical pain, or the lack of food.

Whatever it is, once you understand how to practice correctly, then the floodgates open, and all the real problems that have and keep making you miserable start to rise to the surface. But, by then, you know how to handle them.