Stiff Knees are a Small Price to Pay for Self-purification: My first 10-day Silent Vipassana Meditation Course

Setting the Stage:

Awake@Intel Mindfulness Course & My Dad’s Death

My meditation practice began 2 months after my dad passed away in the fall of 2015 when I took a course at Intel entitled “Awake@Intel.” I had signed up for the course prior to my dad passing- he had himself experimented with various types of meditation off and on since his initial cancer diagnosis in spring of 2007 as had my mother and sister. The Awake course has a very scientific approach to meditation and mindfulness, apt for a company full of engineers, which made it very approachable for me. I learned incredibly functional tools to manage my emotions, and these enabled me to both deeply experience the feelings of my grief and separate them from the feelings of stagnation in my job role at Intel—I proceeded to move from a Quality and Reliability role in the Client Computing Group (PCs) to a Technical Program Manager role in the Data Center Group (servers). I had a revelation on the last day of the course based on a comment a classmate made that the depression that I had struggled with in college was connected to not having a feeling of belonging in many of the groups I actively participated in. Fast forward 2.5 years, and just one month prior to this retreat, I started my new role as an Inclusion Program Manager in Intel’s Global Diversity and Inclusion office.

Meditation Practice & Signing Up

Prior to this course, I had continued meditating between 10 and 30 minutes a day on most weekdays for almost three years as well as other ad-hoc practice like a short meditation at my desk or a walking meditation around the campus. I experimented with different apps and meditation timers and also attended a weekend Sudarshan Kriya class that taught “a simple yet powerful rhythmic breathing technique that de-stresses, and cleanses at the cellular level, and effectively draws you into a deep state of meditation.” I kept to this technique for about a month and then went back to experimenting with the apps - mostly just spending time with a timer focused on my breath, noticing thoughts, and re-focusing on my breath in a continuous cycle. Some days were clearer than others, and sometimes I went a few days or a week without meditating and noticed a very clear correlation with an increased amount of reactivity to things that happened around me. This is what kept me practicing regularly, and I determined after conversations with a number of other meditators that the logical next step was attending a silent retreat- one of at least 5 days in length, to get to a deeper state of meditation. It was described to me best in an analogy of brushing your teeth with daily meditation to cleanse the mind and going to the dentist for a deep cleaning being the silent retreat for a deep mind cleanse. I have a few friends whom had excellent experiences attending a local 10-day silent retreat only two hours north of me. The course was also offered for free - in fact you could not even donate money to the organization until the end of your 10-day course.

Vipassana is explained as “a way of self-transformation through self-observation,” which sounded like just what I was looking for, so I made it my #1 self-care goal for 2018 and committed half of my vacation time to sign up for a course in June. Little did I know that this would fall just one month after a huge career transition. Leading up to the course, I was mostly just excited to truly disconnect from society and the flurry of thoughts in my head for 10 days - you were not allowed to use cell phones, read books, or even write in journals- ten days of pure self-reflection and a calm, relaxed mind, or so I thought…

Arriving:

Upon arriving at the Northwest Vipassana Center on the afternoon of June 13^th, I was asked to write down a summary of my life story for the teachers, assigned a room with a roommate (with whom I wouldn’t be able to speak for most of the course), and given the daily timetable of the course, which starts with a 4am wake-up bell and ends with 9:30pm lights out. Bells/gongs are used throughout the course to indicate transitions between meditation and food/rest periods. Each day officially consists of 10 hours and 45 minutes of meditation- 7 of which are listed as either in the meditation hall or in your room. There would also be breakfast at 6:30am and lunch at 11am, but only a tea break in the evening at 5pm with fruit. Returning participants (referred to as “old students”) were not allowed to eat at all after 12pm. Each day after lunch was an opportunity for a brief interview with the assistant teacher of your gender, and at 7pm each night was a discourse, also called a dhamma talk. We also had to sign a contract that we would in fact commit to stay for all 10 days of the course, which I did without hesitating.

I had arrived on the early side of the 2-hr window, and I knew nobody there, so I proceeded to bring my luggage to my room - 18B, an auspicious sign as 18, “chai,” means “life” in Hebrew. In Jewish communities, donations are often made in increments of 18. In the room, each person’s bed and shelving is closed in with a curtain, so it’s mostly just the bathroom you are sharing. I unpacked my stuff and then walked around the gorgeous property of the center, which is full of walking paths and wildlife - more on this later. The men and women are segregated for the entire course, but I was unknowingly able to walk around on the men’s side before the course had officially started.

Just before the 6pm dinner, I sat with some of the other women and had some conversations about what brought them there. Some had done it before and spoke highly of the benefits and how calm and joyous they always feel at the end. Others were also new and had been wanting to come for many years, but 10 days can be quite a time commitment.

After dinner, a tape recording was played introducing the course by S.N. Goenka, principal Vipassana instructor. The entire course was taught by a series of audio and video recordings of him from a course recorded in 1991 - he passed away in 2013. In this recording, he emphasized the necessity to stay for all 10 days and that you should leave now if you were not committed to that self-determination.

Noble Silence, which involves no communication at all with other students, not even eye contact or gestures, began when we were each assigned our meditation mat in the Dhamma meditation hall at 8pm. My roommate only arrived shortly before this, so she and I just barely got to know each other before we navigated living together for 10 days without communicating.

There is a course manager for each gender who is only to be spoken to about any material needs throughout the course and is also responsible for silently ensuring all students are present at the group sittings and discourses and managing the teacher interviews - ours was named Alexa, and I would find out at the end of the course that she had only done one of these courses prior to serving in this capacity.

Days 1-3:

Day one was not so bad, but certainly sitting for 10+ hours of meditation was not something my body was used to. I am most commonly seen standing at my desk both at work and home. I spent a lot of time adjusting my position during meditation periods and stretching in between. My discomfort was enhanced by my knee surgery one year prior and my sprained ankle one month prior to the course.

The focus of the first three days is to “develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one's attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.” The technique is called “Anapana,” and I found myself fully understanding it and mostly struggling with just sitting for that many hours and staying focused. This was essentially how I had been meditating for years but with an intense focus on FEELING the flow of the breath.

In the first night’s discourse, Mr. Goenka spoke about getting to a place of liberation and happiness by rooting out the three causes of all unhappiness - craving, aversion, and ignorance. On day two, I was feeling a lot of sadness missing my father and thinking how interesting it would have been to attend a course like this with him. I scheduled an interview on day two to ask the female assistant teacher, Jane, about sadness - it seemed to me like there is a place for it as in the case of losing a loved one. In fact, I had spent the past three years using meditation to embrace feeling the sadness I was experiencing. For those who have seen it, I was picturing the sadness character in the animated movie “Inside Out.” Interviews are only meant to last 5 minutes, and Alexa rang a bell every minute after that to remind you to end your interview - this happened 3 times in my first interview. Jane asked if we really need more sadness in the world, to which I sheepishly responded “no…I guess not,” and she suggested that I could be joyous about him being there with me since he is a part of me. She emphasized the “joy of impermanence” and told me to just keep following the instructions, and I walked out saying “I guess I’ll think about that…” I proceeded to go for a long walk along the paths and repeat the phrase “joy of impermanence” over and over in my head.

Between not really connecting with that concept and struggling with both the physical pain and focus required to sit for that many hours meditating, I started to question this 10 days to which I had committed. I took a nap each day between breakfast and the group sitting at 8am, and on each of these occasions I had an extremely vivid dream involving some friends or family being at the meditation center talking to me. I was telling them to be quiet and stop bothering me and my roommate: “I’M TRYING TO WORK ON MYSELF!” I exclaimed with exasperation. During the sittings, I tried my hardest to get through them and focus, and during the rest periods I enjoyed wandering the trails and watching all of the wildlife or lying in the grass watching the clouds. All of this was fascinating to watch once my mind was in a calm, attentive state. I particularly enjoyed watching some of the deer who wander the property eating, staring at the ants feverishly working to increase the size of their already massive ant hill, watching bees pollinate flowers, and closely inspecting all the intricacies of the different flowers. This was the state of calm that I was looking for on a “retreat,” but as early as day 2, it became clear to me from the rigor and the discourses that these 10 days would be much harder work than the “retreat” I’d been picturing.

On day 3, I once again met with Jane to ask a minor clarifying point about the discourse the previous night. I had seen a number of people getting these “back jack” supports over the previous few days, so I brought this up with her since I was also experiencing pain in my back. I used the term “overwhelmingly distracting” to describe the pain, and she said that we want to pay attention to those feelings and that I had to tell her if it was merely distracting or actually painful. I had a realization in that moment that this entire process is about me knowing what’s going on with my body, and nobody else can tell me that. She invited me to come back after I had thought more about it in my sittings.

At points on both days 2 and 3, I cried thinking about how many more days I had ahead of me of this intense meditation schedule, but I signed a contract that I wouldn’t leave, so I kept pushing along trying to approach each day as a new day.

On a more positive note, by the end of day 3, I discovered that a bunch of the anger I was carrying around with me directed towards other people was really just internal - I was making myself miserable, not them. This was a big shift in perspective for me, and I felt just a little bit lighter.

I committed to trust that my hard work would bring the positive results the teachers were promoting despite my exhaustion.

Days 4-7

Day 4 was Vipassana day - we would finally learn this technique that had been talked up in the discourses the past few days. The theory is that “by the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.” The general idea is that observing these sensations with equanimity releases the old habits of reaction or impurities called “sankharas” from your mind, creating a more balanced response to the vicissitudes of life that are bound to come. He used many analogies to explain this in his talks. The one that connected with me most was the idea of a rope that you keep twisting and twisting - every day in our lives we are adding to the tension in the rope with our cravings and aversions we are developing, and practicing Vipassana is essentially letting go of the rope, which naturally takes out some of the tension.

When the technique was taught that afternoon, it made sense to me, but it didn’t coming to me easily and I was still sitting with a lot of knee and some back pain. I simultaneously struggled with constant thoughts alternating between wishing to go home and telling myself that I just need to focus and get through it. Since I wasn’t interacting with the other students, and they all looked so stoic, I made up stories in my head that I was the only one having these struggles.

On the morning of day 5, a sign was posted on the meditation hall explaining that the three group sits a day would be sittings of “Adhitthaña” or sittings of strong determination. The goal of these sittings is to sit an entire hour without changing positions at all. The sign was very clear to say that this is not intended as torture, and if you do need to adjust, you should try to adjust fewer times in the next Adhitthaña sitting. This made me feel even worse about how uncomfortable I was - it really seemed like it shouldn’t be this painful.

I’ve always identified myself as someone who could “get through” anything I try - you know, just “tough it out.” My husband had even used the term “relentless” to describe me in his wedding vows. I have an extremely high tolerance for pain, so I kept forcing myself through the meditations in lots of pain. My pretty extreme obliger/rule-follower tendency made me determined to actually sit through the entirety of each meditation period as it was scheduled.

On these days, I started to notice that sometimes people were walking around towards the end of the individual sessions, so I started giving myself some leniency and walking around myself or even napping sometimes. This helped me realize how much stock I put in the experience of others to dictate what my experience is: they didn’t look like they were struggling, so I shouldn’t be struggling; they were not sitting the entire 2-hour meditation period, so it’s okay for me to not sit the entire time.

On day 7, I was laying in the grass after lunch really dreading the upcoming afternoon of more meditation sessions, and I suddenly decided that I should just go talk to Jane about all of this struggle. I asked Alexa to add me to the end of the interview line and sat the in the lobby waiting while wiping off tears running down my face for about 20 minutes- I was thinking about what exactly to say to Jane. The discourse the previous night had warned about doubt about the technique and its ability to bring about mental purification, so I decided that was what I was experiencing and brought it to her with that lens. I teared up telling her that I just want to go home, and she asked if this was a common habit of mine - getting places and then wanting to run away. I said “no, quite the opposite - I always just push through things,” to which she responded “Ah-ha! THAT is the habit pattern of the mind we are trying to change!” She told me to just relax, notice that those thoughts are there, and continue to focus on the sensations through them. It sounded so simple, so I went into the following individual sitting time with a lot of self-determination. I sat in a kneeling position for an hour and ten minutes straight focusing hard on my practice without feeling compelled to get up. Once the pain got unbearable, I did get up and walk a bit with very stiff knees. In the following Adhitthaña sitting, I adjusted about 6 or 7 times, and when it finally ended, I couldn’t straighten my left leg for about 5 minutes. That night, I did start to feel some amount of joy coming over me, but I couldn’t quite place it.

As I walked that evening around many other stoic women, I marveled at being in the presence of all these women putting so much time and effort into self-purification.

Day 8

I went into day 8 with continued determination to focus really hard. After all, I only had a few days left to reap the benefits of the practice. The whole time I had been concocting this story in my mind about how I would come out of this and say “that was the most difficult and most rewarding thing I have ever done,” but I hadn’t yet realized this supposed reward of liberation from my misery.

By lunch time, my knees were absolutely killing me again, and after some pondering, I once again joined the end of the interview line to finally ask about my knee pain for the first time. Jane said that knee pain is natural and students are not expected to sit for the entire self-meditation periods without getting up. This was enlightening to me, my inner obliger thinking “but the schedule says to mediate 9 to 11- you’re allowed to take breaks?! Why didn’t you say so?!” She suggested I sit as long as I could, and then get up and walk around 5-10 mins and glance at the clock to see how long it was; next time, try to expand that time by 5 mins, and never to more than an hour. This was a HUGE revelation to me, and I immediately wished I had brought this up to her on day 3, 4, or 5.

Through that afternoon’s focused meditations I was actually able to reach a point where my knee pain went away during the meditation at times, which is after all the entire point of Vipassana - to notice everything as impermanent, arising and passing away, regardless of the sensation. I got up when I needed to walk and focused on sensation while walking (this was an added instruction for days 8 and 9). I reached the afternoon of day 8 and suddenly felt liberated from all of my sadness around my dad passing away- like a dark, heavy cloud had been lifted off of me. I used my sadness thinking about him as a check-in point throughout the week, latching on to what Jane had said on day one about just continuing to follow the instructions. Until this point, I really couldn’t connect with this concept that intensely focusing on sensations on your body with awareness and equanimity could somehow naturally release you from your misery. When I thought about my dad, I smiled and thought positively about how much he would have loved this scientific experience of meditation, and I just couldn’t get this beaming grin off my face. I spent the last three years carrying around this intense sadness with me: every time people talked about their fathers, I was sad mine wasn’t around; every time I thought about my own father and sharing what was going on in my life, a wave of sadness came over me; father’s day was always really hard. I had connected to this concept that I would just carry this sadness with me forever. As it turned out, father’s day fell on day 4 of this course, Vipassana day.

That evening before the final group sitting, despite being told not to journal while we were there, I rebelliously pulled out a journal and pen from my purse to write some notes down about the timeline of my experience. I realized that all of these things that I’ve viewed as positive aspects of who I am were actually holding me back from releasing my misery: pushing through things, a high pain tolerance, and being a rule-follower. This compilation of traits led me to spend days sitting in misery alone rather than being open with the teacher about my struggle.

I went for a walk later that night and cried tears of joy - it was incredible. This WAS the most rewarding thing I had ever done.

Days 9-10

The 9^th day I spent focused on self-care. I was so elated by my sadness lifting away that I really didn’t care so much to focus on the meditation any more. I knew if I had made it this far as miserable as I was for so many days, that the rest would be much easier being happy and seeing the benefit of the technique I had learned. I committed myself to focus in the group sittings, and in the individual sittings, I spent a lot of time out walking around feeling sensations that way. At times, I was the only one out walking around- what a rebel! I also essentially built up a chair for myself with cushions on my mediation mat so that my knees wouldn’t be bent so much, and I didn’t judge myself for adjusting them as much as I needed. As the breaking of noble silence approached, I started seeing some emotions again in others’ faces- mostly those of joy and peace.

On the morning of day 10, noble silence broke at 10am. Just before the breaking of noble silence, we learned the final component of the Vipassana practice, “the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.” In this meditation, you are asked to find whatever position you can that is comfortable - I laughed at this in my head as pretty much any position on the cushions hurt at this point. During this meditation, I literally felt love and kindness radiating out of me towards others - I was so grateful to be freed of so much misery in my life that I couldn’t help but wish that same liberation on all other beings in the world.

Once noble silence broke, I really didn’t know what to do at first. I still barely knew anyone here, but this huge thing had happened that I wanted to share. I had many conversations over the following 4.5 hours we had free to socialize that informed me of the extent to which others struggled similarly to me. I learned that many of the other meditators spent their individual meditation hours napping in their rooms; one lady who had taken the course twice before had spelled out “SOS” in the grass at one point in hopes an airplane would see it; and people shared many, many other struggles. It was incredible to see all of these faces that had been so stoic for so many days suddenly animated with smiles and laughter. It appeared that everyone achieved some positive results from the practice, though there were a handful of people who did leave mid-course, and naturally we all speculated on what happened to them. I am extremely grateful that the course included signing a contract that emphasized the need to stay. If there was a clearer, gracious option to leave, I potentially would have taken it early on and never realized the immense benefit I received from my hard work.

The biggest take away from it all: only I can experience what’s going on with me, and I need to just be in touch with that and listen to it rather than making my experience so dependent on external factors.

I intend to take a few days off from meditation to give my knees some recovery time, but I certainly plan to incorporate Vipassana in my daily practice now, and I suspect I will be back for more courses in the future.

Stiff knees are a small price to pay for self-purification.

Bhavatu sabba maṅgalam- May all beings be happy!