My 10-Day Vipassana Retreat: Reclaiming Control of My Mind

I wanted to quit. I was fighting a war to control my mind and I was losing.

I was less than 24 hours into my ten day Vipassana meditation course in Nepal and I wanted to leave. This was one of the hardest challenges I ever experienced in my life. For ten days I gave up all my electronics. For ten days I gave up all reading materials. For ten days I gave up all writing materials. And for ten days I gave up all speaking. Total silence. A Noble Silence. “How the hell could I survive this?” I thought only a few hours in on my first day.

But first, what is Vipassana?

Vipassana roughly translates to “to see things as they are.” It’s an ancient Indian meditation technique that was first taught by the Buddha himself some 2,500 years ago. The goal is to liberate the mind from misery by observing bodily sensations. It sounds simple but the practice demands patience, persistence, hard work, understanding and, above all, equanimity. There were also deeper truths that I would soon uncover but I didn’t know any of this when I first arrived at the course. I hadn’t even meditated for more than five minutes in my entire life.

I joined the course on a warm, sunny day in Pokhara, Nepal. Tucked into the lush jungle hills that surrounded several lakes, this peaceful environment would become my battleground for the next ten days. In the distance the towering, snowcapped Annapurna mountains watched over us like white giants.

I walked up to the front gates and dropped my bags off beside a dated, two-story office building with peeled paint. I saw the sign for registration and strolled over to a wooden picnic table under the shade of a large metal awning. An old man sat at the table, watching me, with brilliant blue eyes that shimmered with an otherworldly glow. As I sat down he asked for my passport and registration packet. As he examined my papers my mind began to wander.

“Are you prepared to give up speaking and all sources of entertainment for ten days?” he inquired.

I didn’t want to come across as arrogant so I replied with, “We shall see.”

“This course will change your life.” His eyes twinkled. “If you are prepared, then sign here.” He pointed at the registration paper between us.

I signed it. I then stowed all my electronics, books, and papers into a lockbox in the front office and proceeded to my residential quarters located nearly one hundred steps down from the main office building.

It was an open-air jungle compound built along a series of 108 uneven terraced steps. I counted them all on the second day because I was so bored. At the top tier of the stairs was the main office building and the dining hall. Then the steps proceeded down, first passing the assistant teacher’s quarters. The student and bathroom facilities were on the lower tiers. The meditation hall sat on the middle tier and was about 50 feet from the main stairs. My quarters, a mere metal-roofed shack that housed me and three other students, sat near the bottom. The final 18 steps led into the jungle and abruptly ended at the top of a steep, densely vegetated jungle ravine.

I dropped my bags on my bed, so rock-hard that it would make Fred Flintstone envious, and proceeded back up the stairs to wait for the course orientation. Later that evening, 34 students and I filed into the main office building to receive our instructions for the course. We had to make several pledges before we began.

We vowed to abstain from killing, sexual activity, lying, stealing, and from consuming intoxicants. That also meant no eating meat so for a carnivore like me this was an added challenge.

Men and women were also separated and there would be no contact between us until after the course. Our daily schedule was as follows:

4:00AM: Wakeup

4:30AM – 6:30AM: Meditation

6:30AM – 8:00AM: Breakfast and rest

8:00AM – 9:00AM: Group Meditation

9:00AM – 11:00AM: Meditation in the hall or in residential quarters (as directed by the teacher)

11:00AM – 1:00PM: Lunch and rest

12:00PM – 1:00PM: Optional question and answer with teacher

1:00PM – 2:15PM: Meditation

2:30PM – 3:30PM: Group Meditation

3:30PM – 5:00PM: Meditation in the hall or residential quarters (as directed by the teacher)

5:00PM – 6:00PM: Tea break

6:00PM – 7:00PM: Group Meditation

7:00PM – 8:15PM: Discourse

8:30PM – 9:00PM: Meditation

9:00PM – 9:30PM: Optional question and answer with teacher

9:30PM: Lights out

We also adhered to a strict code of silence. No talking to anyone unless it was to the teacher during Q&A or to management about a health issue. When this schedule was explained to me, the first seeds of doubt were planted. By the end of that first night I was considering quitting in the morning. “Just what had I gotten myself into?” I thought. But had I known the suffering I was to experience the next day, I would have immediately left. The war for control of my mind began.

We awoke at 4:00AM on the first full day to prayer chimes played on loudspeakers outside our shack. These chimes were played to initiate transitions in the schedule. We shuffled to the bathroom with bleary eyes to brush our teeth and splash cold water on our faces. Next we shambled up the stairs in the early morning darkness to the meditation hall. Before entering we removed our shoes. As we entered the hall we were assigned seats. These cushions would be our second homes for the rest of the course. We spent more than 100 hours on those cushions during the course.

We sat in rows of four with four potted plants splitting the room in half between males and females. Each gender walked into the hall from their own side. At the front were two large chairs covered with white cloth. One of these chairs faced the male side and the other faced the female side. In between was a TV, perched on a plastic table, that had a white cloth draped over it. We watched our nightly discourses on that TV.

Our assistant teacher, an older Nepalese man, sat on the chair that faced the male side. Beside him, on a stand, was a speaker, radio, and microphone with a small touchpad control console. He gave his instructions by speaking into the microphone or he would turn the radio on and play pre-recorded meditation instructions or Hindi mantras.

These pre-recorded instructions, mantras and the discourses were voiced by the late prominent Vipassana teacher, S.N. Goenka. He was instrumental in bringing the technique over from his native land of Burma, which had preserved the technique for centuries after Buddha’s death, and reintroducing the technique to India. Soon the demand for it became so great that he began to spread it to the rest of the world. Today there are Vipassana centers on every continent except Antarctica. It’s even taught in prisons. And the courses are free to attend because they are financed by previous student donations. Throughout his video lectures and voice recordings he regularly calls Vipassana the Art of Living.

The first instructions given to us were to focus on our respiration and direct our attention to the triangle area between our nostrils and upper lip. We were directed to cross our legs, keep our backs straight, close our eyes, and simply meditate. If we had to stretch our legs they needed to be moved off to the side because pointing our legs at the assistant teacher was considered disrespectful.

We focused on that area, on our breathing, for three full days. From sunrise to sundown. It was there, around 9:30AM on the first morning of the course that the madness began.

When the mind is bored, it wanders. It needs and wants external stimuli to excite itself. One can see this habit play out every day. When someone experiences a single ounce of boredom, they instinctively pull out their phone. Others start idle conversations to avoid awkward silences. Some people read books, journal, play video games, exercise or start cleaning their homes. I had none of those. Every trace of external stimulation, even talking, was forbidden. So if the mind has no external source of entertainment, it goes within itself. Old memories, desires, and fears rose to the surface. At first, it was a trickle, but after enough boredom this trickle became a tremendous tsunami.

I found myself utterly overwhelmed with a mass of negativity streaming from the deepest part of my subconscious. All the fears, worries, hopes, desires, and regrets that I kept buried within me for more than 30 years poured from the darkest depths of my soul. Here’s a sample of this torrent of pure mental madness that engulfed me as I meditated:

“I’m thinking of pizza. I’m craving it right now. I’m hungry and I cannot eat for another 3 hours. I can’t wait to get a beer when this is over. Wait, when is this over? Damn, I have nine and a half more days? This is insane. I’m insane for doing this.”

“My butt hurts. My legs hurt. I need to stretch my legs. Damn, my mind wandered again. I need to focus on my respiration.“

“I miss my family. I haven’t seen them in a few months. Why am I here suffering and not spending time with them; they won’t be around forever. My father and mother are getting older. How much more time will I have with them before they pass away? I should be home spending time with them instead of being selfish and gallivanting around the world by myself. Remember the time you missed Uncle Richard’s funeral? Why couldn’t I attend his funeral? I feel so bad. I feel so guilty. But I was working on an important military assignment and I couldn’t leave. That’s bullshit, you could have left but you didn’t. You’re selfish. I’m sorry. I’m sorry Uncle Richard. I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your funeral and pay my respects. You were an amazing man. You did so much for me. You were so generous, kind and thoughtful. I’m a terrible nephew.“

“My butt hurts. My legs hurt. My back hurts. I need to stretch my legs. Wait, did the guy next to me just fart? Damn, my mind wandered again. I need to focus on my respiration.”

“I have a sexual craving. Why can’t I keep a woman in my life? Most of my friends have long-term girlfriends or are married. Some even have kids. Why am I still single? What is wrong with me? Why did you break up with that one woman eight years ago? She was perfect. You idiot. Now look where you are…single and alone. I need to be married soon so my aging father can hold his grandchild in his arms. Will that happen? What if it doesn’t happen? What the hell is wrong with me?“

“My butt hurts. My back hurts. My legs hurt. I need to stretch my legs. Why does that guy behind me keep coughing onto me? Doesn’t he know how unhealthy that is? Idiot. I don’t think I can keep doing this. Damn, my mind wandered again. I need to focus on my respiration.“

“Why am I here? Because I failed to achieve almost all my professional goals in the military. You weren’t good enough to be selected for special operation forces. You weren’t good enough to get THAT secret assignment. You are a terrible officer. There were so few people at my promotion ceremony. What does that say about the kind of man that I am? Why did I have all those awkward interactions with my previous bosses? I suck. Why didn’t I pursue my dreams of being a fighter pilot? Because I was scared I was going to fail. But I should have at least tried and not let my fears control me. It’s too late now. I pissed away my dreams. I’m an idiot. That’s why I’m stuck here.”

“My butt hurts. My back hurts. My legs hurt. I need to stretch my legs. I don’t think I can keep doing this. I want to quit. I’ll quit tomorrow. Damn, my mind wandered again. I need to focus on my respiration.“

This was just a sample flood of negative energy that poured through my entire mind. I was like a ship, navigating a terrible storm. Wave after wave of miserable thoughts and memories crashed into me. I tried to focus on a distant lighthouse: my breath. If I could do that, there was calm. But the second my mind wandered it was back into the maelstrom. I endured that insanity for the first full day and halfway into the second day. I was continuing to let my mind control me. I was just about to quit and surrender to it, but then something happened. I had a realization.

I was walking down the terraced steps during my lunch break on the second day. Birds chirped around me. The trees provided relief from the growing midday heat. The smell of fresh mountain air wafted in my nostrils. Butterflies flew in a dizzying waltz around me. As I paced along the steps the teachings from the discourse, coupled with my own reflections, began morphing into a series of deep realizations that shook the foundations of my being.

“Remember the law of impermanence,” S.N. Goenka’s deep, voice sagely floated into my mind.

Impermanence. It’s the constant coming and going of all things. Nothing truly lasts forever. There is a famous saying that one never walks into the same river twice. The water that flows around you isn’t the same water that flowed around you when you first entered the river. One can see this truth inside of themselves too. Within our bodies, our respiration is in constant flux. No breath is ever the same. One breath is deeper. The next is shallower. Another is more rapid. On all scales this law of impermanence holds true. Cells divide and then die. Empires rise and fall. Stars are born and then burn out. The tension between order and chaos creates this phenomenon.

The teacher’s lessons now streamed into my consciousness.

“When you feel a sensation, whether it’s a craving or aversion, view it objectively, view it with equanimity. Simply observe it.”

“The past is the past. The future hasn’t even come yet. Direct your attention to the present moment. Moment by moment.”

Then I remembered something I wrote in my own blog. Don’t live your life in fear.

I began to realize the deeper nature of my fears, regrets, hopes, dreams, and desires. These feelings all generated bodily sensations that I was only now becoming aware of. Similar to the sensations that I felt on my body during my meditations these feelings came and went. Unlike my fears and desires, I accepted these bodily sensations for what they were. They were sensations of warmth, cold, tingling, numbness, throbbing and pain. These feelings came in waves and then they would disappear. They were governed by the law of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever.

It was only when I dwelled on these sensations, whether I craved them or I felt aversion towards them, that they would creep back and torment me with greater intensity. “Cravings and fears are the primary sources of our misery,” the teacher’s wisdom wandered back into my head.

I ceased pacing. For the first since I started the course, I smiled.

When I began to objectively observe these sensations, something incredible happened. I began to develop my equanimity by labeling these sensations for what they actually were – cravings or aversions – and those negative emotions began to fade away. It was as if my fears, regrets, doubts, and desires began detaching from me. One after the other, they would manifest themselves and with clear eyes – seeing them for what they actually were – they lost all power and disappeared.

I began to stop pitying myself. I stopped worrying about the future. I understood the past was the past and no amount of thinking about past wrongs would fix anything. I accepted my faults. I accepted that I’m an imperfect human being. Instead of self-pity I started developing self-compassion.

My survival mentality that I had when I entered the course was shattered. I could finish this course. My new goal for the rest of this course was to discipline my mind and convert it from my enemy into my ally. Suddenly the battle that I was on the verge of losing – for the control of my mind – was no longer lost. Armed with this lived wisdom, I began to fight back with renewed vigor.

It felt as though my mind became a shield that protected me instead of being a sword pointed at me. When the next horde of negative thoughts stormed into my mind, I labeled each one objectively, and then I felt them simply bounce off me instead of being plunged into me.

My heart became lighter. Sharpened by days of focusing on my respiration, I could sense it.

“You must work hard. You must work diligently and persistently. You are bound to be successful. Bound to be successful,” the teacher’s words again filtered into my mind. I walked back to the meditation hall eager to continue this great work of conquering my mind. I lost the battle on day one. I won the battles on day two and on day three.

Even though I had won these battles, the war for control of my mind raged. Skirmishes and engagements continued. Sometimes I fell back into self-pity and self-hate and my mind would win. But I remembered the lessons I had learned on that walk and I found myself clawing back lost territory and winning more victories over myself. The tide of war had turned in my favor.

But like a great opponent my mind marshalled additional forces to regain the initiative. It gathered my demons that lurked in darker recesses of my being and my skeletons in the closet that I buried long ago to launch a new offensive. Another great battle was brewing.

On day four, we received the actual teaching of Vipassana. It turns out, for the first three days, we were honing our minds to feel subtler sensations. Now, instead of focusing on our respiration, we began to focus on feeling sensations on our entire body. We would slowly and systematically scan our bodies from the top of our head to our toes for any sensation. Once we felt something, we would objectively observe it, before moving on to the next body part.

Then another challenge was introduced. For each group meditation session – for one hour – we couldn’t move our legs, arms or open our eyes. It was called Strong Determination and it was meant to challenge us mentally and physically.

The pain I felt during these one-hour sessions was some of the most intense pain I ever experienced in my life. My crossed legs consistently lost blood circulation and became numb. The pain would be so great that I had to break my concentration to stretch my legs and rub blood back into my lower legs and massage my knees. My right knee felt shooting pain so intense that I felt like someone was smashing it with a sledgehammer. As I tried to sit up straight, my back developed two knots that felt like fireballs. My butt became numb too and a fiery itching sensation developed.

We had three of these sessions each day and each time I would try to not move. In the beginning, my concentration times were 15 to 20 minutes long. But as I observed the pain – objectively labeling it as an aversion – and then directed my attention to other bodily sensations that weren’t experiencing pain, I noticed that the pain became less intense. I could sit for longer. Soon I was getting 30 minutes, then 35 minutes, then 41 minutes. Eventually, I got to 49 minutes. But the pain was so intense after 49 minutes that I could hardly walk afterwards.

I’ve had enough injuries in my life to know the difference between good pain and bad pain. There’s a time to push through the pain but there’s also a time when one needs to listen to their body because the pain is trying to prevent serious damage. I reasoned that if I continued this, I would have permanent damage in my right knee. I had previous injuries in my right ankle that developed into chronic pain. I did not want my right knee to share that same fate. So I stopped trying to attain 60 minutes of continuous meditation. And when I stopped, I started to hate myself again. The next battle had begun in earnest.

I began to get into my head again. “I wasn’t mentally strong enough to do this,” I thought. “Other meditators can do this for an hour, why can’t I? Because I’m weak and broken.” These sensations didn’t go away. The pain stayed with me. Was the law of impermanence finally shattered?

But I continued to practice. I continued to scan my body from head to toe, scanning for bodily sensations. When I felt one, I objectively observed and then moved on to the next body part. I experimented with different sitting positions to see which alleviated pain. I tried different positions for my feet to enhance blood circulation in my lower extremities which became numb during longer meditation sessions. Day after day I did this and I found my ability to sense and focus increased.

During one of my practice sessions I had another breakthrough. The pain was especially bad in my right knee on this occasion. “Right before you quit, just hang on for another few seconds,” I said to myself. The next urge to quit quickly came but unlike before I didn’t uncross my legs. I continued to meditate. After that peak of intensity, the pain miraculously dulled. My ability to sense was so sharp that I observed that it came in waves. I also reasoned that if I were seriously damaging my knee, then I would be feeling this pain all the time – including when I wasn’t meditating. When I got up and walked around after meditation I would find the pain subsiding. So if I could manage that pain during the peaks, by focusing on other parts of my body, I could persevere. Then a deeper truth arose within me.

When we experience tremendous pain in our lives, both physical and mental it comes in waves. An unexpected breakup, the death of a loved one, a broken bone, twisted ankle, the loss of a fortune or even something as mundane as a hangover. The intensity of the pain or sorrow fluctuates. It comes and goes. At times the pain is so great that we can hardly stand it. Other times, we feel the pain is manageable if only for a few minutes. If we’re attuned to our own feelings, we will feel this sensation. But eventually those feelings begin to fade and with enough time they lose their ferocity. Similar to an old wound the pain may return – like a dull throb or tingling – but it too fades back into oblivion. The law of impermanence remains.

Armed with another insight, I reorganized a defense against my mind’s latest assault. I resolved that this time, I would not quit. Two hours later, we started the next 60-minute Strong Determination meditation session. I sat on my pillow. I crossed my legs. I placed my arms on my knees. I straightened my back. I closed my eyes and steeled myself.

At first, the pain wasn’t there. It was peaceful. I could hear the birds chirping outside. The room felt cool. My body was relaxed as I moved my attention from head to toe and from toe to head. I sensed my respiration. In and out. In and out. “I got this,” I said to myself.

But soon the pain emerged. It started in my legs. A sharper pain appeared on my right knee. The knots in my back began to form. The pillow I sat on felt less comfortable.

Pain.

The pain became greater. I began to shake. I couldn’t hear the birds chirp anymore. I couldn’t feel my own breath anymore. I could sense people around me were stopping to uncross and stretch their legs. My legs started going numb.

Pain. Numbness.

My right knee was ready to explode. Sharp pain radiated from it. The numbness in my legs began to spread. My back was on fire. The pillow felt like it was made out of nails. Yet I hung on.

Pain. Numbness.

“Only a few more minutes,” I thought to myself. “Only a few more minutes before the radio comes to life and starts playing the teacher’s mantras.” The assistant teacher would turn on the radio for the last five minutes of every Strong Determination session to play recorded meditation chants in Hindi. “If I can just hang on to the point where I hear the mantras, I’ll make it. I’ll know that I only have a few more minutes left of this insanity.”

Pain. Numbness.

Then the most intense wave of pain arrived. It was as if my mind was pouring its entire force against me. The pores on my forehead opened, like rosebuds, as I began to sweat. My chest became so tight that I felt like I was suffocating. “Why does my chest feel so wound up?” I thought. “I can hardly breathe. Oh shit, take a breath!” I took a deep breath and exhaled. The pain in my entire body eased.

Pain. Numbness. Breathe.

For the next few minutes this pattern continued. When the pain became unbearable – I breathed – and the pain weakened. I started to believe in myself again. I was going to win and take back control of my mind. But it had one last card to play in this battle.

Pain. Numbness. Breathe.

Suddenly, my left foot became itchy. It felt like a mosquito bite. “Damn,” I thought. “Of all the times this could happen, it would happen now.” The urge to itch increased. Coupled with all the pain, I felt the urge to quit. Not even the focus on my respiration reduced the instinct to scratch my left foot. “But I’ve come so far now. This is the longest I’ve ever held this position. I can’t give up now.”