A personal account of a ten-day vipassana meditation retreat
The Voodoo Bone Lady's prediction

The Voodoo Bone Lady of New Orleans had predicted that August 8 would be my lucky day this year. I burned the date into my brain and waited to see what luck would bring me.

As it turns out, August 8 was the sixth day of a 10-day vipassana meditation course that I just completed last weekend. S.N. Goenka, teacher and originator of the course, states that the sixth day is a test day: If a meditator can sit through the sixth day, then he or she will usually be able to complete the entire length of the course.

And so, that's how my "lucky day" came to be the day I figured out how to endure long periods of intense pain.

A monk for 10 days

Let me explain. The meditation retreat was nothing like a holiday or vacation. It was more like like a bootcamp. To stay at the retreat, I had to give up:

• all of my personal items (cell phone, keys, wallet, etc.)
  
• the freedom to move around at will (the course boundaries delimited an area perhaps 100 m in diameter)
  
• the freedom to set my own schedule
  
• the freedom to choose my own food
  
• any kind of social contact with the other meditators (including speech, eye contact and gestures)
  
• physical contact with anybody
  
• any kind of contact with the outside world
  
• reading and writing (except for administrative purposes)
  
• killing (which would be easy, if it weren't for the fact that meat is made of killed animals)
  
• telling lies (which is easy when you can't speak)
  
• stealing
  
• proximity to women (who were kept segregated from the men)
  
• all sexual activity
  
• intoxicants
  
• all other spiritual or healing practices
  
• playing or listening to music

Of these sacrifices, I thought that information withdrawal would agitate me the most. I've used e-mail since 1994 and I've kept some kind of blog since 1998. Since those early days, I had never been away from the Internet for more than three days at a time. Yet it rarely bothered me that I knew nothing about what was going on in the outside world. Sometimes I wondered how many hundred e-mails were piling up in my inbox, or if Cindy was taking good care of my cats, or if World War III had started in the Middle East. But my strongest desires were much more basic.

First, my carnivore instincts rebelled against the limited, vegetarian menu that was served at mealtimes. I needed animal protein, something with muscle fibres for my teeth to sink into. I craved a big, greasy bucket of KFC chicken, or filet mignon cooked bloody rare. For one full hour on the fourth day, the only thing I could think of was crawfish dipped in melted butter.

Second, my libido shot through the roof. A feminine cough from the other side of the meditation hall captivated me with the mental image of a woman's neck. Then I started noticing how much certain tree trunks looked like smooth, slim thighs protruding from the ground. Everything turned me on.

Life at the retreat

The retreat is situated on a 141-acre wooded lot that used to belong to the Boy Scouts, but only a small portion of the property is used for the meditation course. It's approximately 1.5 hours north of Toronto, near Cookstown. Nighttime in the countryside became very cold, even in August, and I quickly became accustomed to the sweet, chemical fragrance of insect repellant.

Every morning, the wakeup gong sounded at 4 a.m. We ate breakfast at 6:30 a.m. and lunch at 11 a.m., but we didn't get dinner because we weren't allowed to eat after noon. Bedtime was at 9:30 p.m.

We spent over 10 hours meditating every day.

The teachings of S.N. Goenka

S.N. Goenka was a Burmese industrialist when he learned vipassana meditation—the technique that Gautama Buddha used to attain enlightenment—from a teacher in Burma (Myanmar). Since becoming a master of the practice, Goenka has been spreading vipassana throughout the world; there are now more than 50 permanent vipassana centres throughout the world. Each centre is supported completely by volunteers and student donations.

Every 10-day vipassana course in the world is taught by a series of audiotapes of Goenka giving instructions and chanting. Every evening, there is a videotaped discourse by Goenka. Although there are Assistant Teachers available to answer student questions, their primary job is to press "play" on the tape player.

Goenka teaches four practices in sequence:

Sila, the moral code (no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying or inbibing of intoxicants)
Samadhi, or concentration meditation
Panna, or insight meditation
Metta, or loving-kindness

We spent the first four days practicing samadhi by becoming aware of our breath, which sharpened our minds and concentration enough to progress to the field of panna.

We started vipassana, the technique used for panna, at the end of the fourth day. The nutshell explanation of vipassana meditation is that it involves being aware of, yet not reacting to, bodily sensations, whether pleasant or unpleasant. My understanding of the technique is that is that it severs stimulus-response conditioning at a deep, unconscious level.

The last day, we learned metta, or compassion and goodwill to all living beings.

Goenka claims that the technique is nonsectarian, scientific and universal, but he makes many unverifiable statements, like that some sort of life continues after death through a continual process of reincarnation. He's also quite dogmatic about the idea that vipassana meditation is the One True Way to experiencing Reality As It Is. The entire experience of the 10-day course invites numerous comparisons with cult brainwashing, but I'd stop short of calling it a cult, because it's not commercial or abusive.

Pain tolerance as a path to spiritual enlightenment

This brings us to pain. Let me describe what it's like to sit through one hour of vipassana meditation. Three times daily, I had a "Sitting of Strong Determination," which meant that I was instructed not to open my eyes or move my arms or legs during the hour. Sitting cross-legged for more than 20 minutes, when I wasn't used to it, hurt like hell. After 30 minutes, I thought my legs had turned gangrenous and would soon fall off. At first I thought that there were something wrong with my posture, but then Goenka and the Assistant Teacher explained that meditators are expected to feel pain. So I endured it.

After one day of torture, I learned how to dissociate myself from the pain. This means I learned how to observe the pain objectively rather than feeling it directly. In Goenka's words, I was "aware but equanimous to the bodily sensations."

I think the reason I made it to that stage, rather than asking for a chair or leaving the course like many students did, was that I knew from my work with hypnosis that trance states can easily produce kinesthetic dissociation, even anaesthesia, spontaneously. And I knew that pain is a component of many spiritual practices—never mind the fact that many people who cut themselves or modify their bodies describe pain as a spiritual experience.

So I think that the greatest benefit I received from the meditation retreat was that I learned how to endure pain. But after this breakthrough on day six, I felt that my progressed plateaued. Sure, I was a zombie by day nine like everybody else, but I don't think I made any major breakthroughs. I guess my path to enlightenment will take a while longer than this.