[Red Liner]

I finally mustered the courage. And I am glad I did.

Surrounded by lush jungles, mornings were spectacular at this retreat centre.

I slowly make my way back after the late evening meditation, legs still numb from hours of sitting. A full moon lights a path to my one room residence at the far end of the grounds adjoining a forest. Piercing cries of peacocks echo through the silent evening mist — alarming and comforting all at once.

I lift my eyes up for a brief moment to find a figure in the distance waving out to me. First I brush it away as my imagination. Next I wonder if I am hallucinating. And lastly I fear it is an apparition.

It is none of them. Instead it is my next door neighbour. I march up to him quickly, keeping my eyes down to not attract attention. He leads me on, a few strides ahead. I step into his room to find another figure inside, sitting on the lone single bed. I hear the door close behind me.

Thank god! It’s finally a relief to speak to someone!
Still dazed, I don’t offer a word in response.
How is everything going? the other asks me.
This time I decide it would be rude not to say a word. I’m good, I answer.

The look on both their faces meant that my answer must have sounded both incredulous and infuriating.

We are having nothing but crazy thoughts man. It’s driving us nuts!
What? Like sexually disturbing thoughts? I ask. Considering we were in the midst of a very strict meditation retreat, I assumed that sexual thoughts were probably affecting all us men equally.

No, we’re having nightmares actually.
The both of you? They nod in unison. What kind of nightmares? I continue, knowing fully well I was breaking every single code of the retreat which could get all of us thrown out. But it was a risk I was willing to take to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Have you seen the movie Kantara?
I nod even though I hadn’t. Kantara is an Indian movie from the horror genre.

Well, all those figures with dreadful faces keep appearing!
When asleep?
Not just when asleep, even when we’re trying to meditate! We’re not sure what to do.

I was nobody to give counsel. I tell them to speak to the retreat leader.

But we already have, and we’ve been told it will go away. We thought this meditation retreat was all about finding happiness and peace. But we’ve got nothing but horror!

[Red Liner]

A man stands in front of a milling crowd of over a hundred people, seated in a room meant only for fifty.

I repeat again, there will be no talking, no eye contact, and no access to mobile phones for the next ten days!
There are a few nervous murmurs amongst the crowd. The man continues nonplussed.

And there will be no dinner.
Now it is dead silence.

We had all just finished registering for this retreat, effectively handing over the next ten days of our lives to the people running the retreat center. From here on, it is their rules, whims, and fancies.

A loud gong the next morning almost flings me out of my bed. I look at my watch in despair.

04.00 AM.

Everyone reluctantly troops into the meditation hall by 04.30 hours. The last stragglers are brought in minutes later by the retreat assistants with the help of little bells — no talking, remember?

The entire hall falls into an eerie quiet as everyone finds their pose and adjusts their cushions for the last time. For the next two hours, movement on your mat is strictly frowned upon. And the less you open your eyes the better.

This is how our days would start. This is also how our day will go by. And this is finally how our day will end. Eyes closed. Legs folded in. Hands in supplication. Counting our breaths. Counting the seconds, the minutes, the days. Confronted only by our thoughts. Facing only who we are.

This is meditation. This is Vipassana.

[Red Liner]

The course timetable for the next ten days. Tell me the number of times you read the words meditation and hall on the poster.

I stare at the chart on the board and count the number of sitting hours to be sure. Eleven hours to be exact. Eleven hours of doing nothing. And our rest hours are filled with equal silence.

Suddenly, everything became entertainment. Everything became a distraction.
I walk out of the hall one day in the midst of a five minute break we are allowed between every other hour to stretch our legs. I spend all that time watching an ant go about its life under the shade of a little plant. A single lonely ant journeying through its work day. And here I am enraptured and captivated by the excitement of what that ant was doing.

Meanwhile, I find others caught up similarly. One man is staring at two birds frolicking in the garden. Another at the sky. And almost everyone reads every word thrice on this lonely poster outside the hall.

Because there is nothing else to read. Nothing else to see. Nothing else to do. And so everything became entertainment. We are beginning to find joy in the moment. The colours more vivid. The sounds more lucid. Our movements more deliberate.

As the days pass, I see all my worries fading away into the distant past. And so it seems for everyone else. All of us are cut off from our jobs, our families, our loved ones, our friends and our enemies. All the things and activities that made each of us feel wanted, loved or important are no longer available to us. Even if there is an emergency at home or office, there is little I can do sitting here to help.

How is the world moving on without me? How dare it move on without me?

[Red Liner]

The breaks in between every meditation session is all the time we have to rest. Everyone is making a beeline to their rooms and so am I. I have clothes to wash and my back to rest. Sitting for this many hours in one position is taking a toll on my body.

It is day three and I am wincing in pain. I decide to change posture and stretch my back out. One of the rules in the hall is no stretching since any such visual demonstration is likely to disturb other meditators. An assistant comes up to me and asks me if everything is alright. I nod no and ask to speak to the teacher.

Do you have any problems?
Yes, I have a medical condition with my knees. I have been taking some treatment for it.
Surgery?
Not yet and I hope never. But I will need a meditation chair or you will see me leaving paraplegic.
I see. We noticed that you gave your best on the floor without complaint for three days. Alright, I’ll arrange a chair for you. But please do try to sit cross legged for as long as you can without the back support.

I thank the kind teacher and take the meditation chair, gathering much jealousy from the ones I leave behind on the floor.

Some Vipassana centres have the luxury of meditation chairs with a backrest for participants. Not so in my second retreat where I had to sit the floor like everyone else.

The pain from having sat three days in a row has still not subsided. In bed, my body feels like its on fire. Everyday the sermon that blares on the speakers repeats “impermanence! impermanence! Everything is impermanent!”. But this pain doesn’t feel all that impermanent. In fact it feels very real.

I stare at the walls of my room. It is a simple, and spartan twenty square foot space with a built in bed and a bathroom. About the size of a prison cell, but the door to the outside world is under my control. In this room is everything I need to live for the next ten days. Two sets of meditation clothing, a single set of night clothes, toiletries and not much else.

At first this might seem very little, but as the days went by each of us realised that this is all we needed to live. A roof over our heads, a bed to sleep on, food to eat, and clothes to be comfortable in. If we could get by for ten days, do we need so much more in reality? A walk in closet full of clothes. Three cars. A lavish 4 bedroom house with multiple big screen televisions. Did we need all this? How am I alive and seemingly content without any of these things now?

Is this what being content looks like? You tell me.

In my second back to back ten day retreat, I am offered no meditation chair and I have to sit on the floor like the others for the full ten days. The first few days are intense. But soon, the body begins to learn to adjust. On the fourth day, I sense a shooting pain in my right knee. My immediate reaction is to stretch my legs out. This time I decide to sit still and just observe the pain. I see the pain flowing towards me like a wave, and after a few seconds it ebbs away back into the ocean.

And finally it disappears.

[Red Liner]

The final days of the retreat are upon us now. Faces are far more relaxed, a far cry from the days earlier when everyone seemed far more tensed and knotted up. Smiles are more frequent and longer, and eventually on the last day when speaking restrictions are lifted it is bonhomie.

I hear a tap on the window of the neighbouring room and I stop to peek. The man inside introduces himself, and after a few minutes of banter I ask what he does for a living.

I am a grocery delivery employee.

On day one when we arrived at the retreat, we were all told to dispense off with our expensive watches, jewellery, and any other outward embellishments. Expensive clothing was of no point here, simple loose clothing was de rigueur. And since silence was enforced almost immediately there were no introductions at all.

The only other living being I could interact with on the sly without the fear of being admonished by the rather strict retreat volunteers. We remain good friends to this day. And I mean the cat.

And so, through the entire ten day period everyone sat as equals. Everyone got the same rooms, the same food, and the same level of attention from the retreat leader. The man next to me could have been a multimillionaire, or could have been unemployed. There was no way of knowing. And it didn’t matter. And then came the realisation.

It never matters.

[Red Liner]

I walked out of the Vipassana center this morning. Twenty days of two consecutive isolation retreats. I have been told most people struggle to complete one, and almost 98% do not return for a second. And here I was, having done two intensive retreats back to back.

As I return to the world outside on my motorcycle, I wonder what it would be like to do this for a whole year. Would one get enlightened? or would one go mad?

or both?

Kat Ramana is an adventurer and explorer first.

His earliest memories of a true travel adventure was sailing around the world with his dad, a year’s journey on the great seas when he was all but five. In 2015, he walked over seven thousand kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, exploring India’s diverse cultures and ethnicities. His love of the great snow capped mountains have taken him tramping from India to Tibet and his search for authentic stories has seen him living in the distant North East for months at a time. His way of understanding cultural nuances is by meeting people, listening to their stories and living with them.

[Red Liner]

Some assorted pictures and commentary from the retreat.

The day prior to the last, a big rush ensued at the counter to collect mobile phones. I refused to switch mine back on until the morning I had to leave. Even then, it was only for reluctant directions back to the urban sprawl.

The dining hall which provided participants with succour to survive the day (and night). You will notice no chair faces the other - to ensure no eye contact and strict silence.

A lavish choice of meditation accroutements await. But don't be fooled. Unless you have a medical condition, you are not allowed any of these luxuries. Instead, it is the bare cold floor, albeit laden with soft pillows to cushion the blow.

Vipassana follows the tradition of Theravada Buddhism of South East Asia, notably Burma or Myanmar. Hence most Vipassana centers pride themselves of a golden Pagoda, as the central motif of their vast grounds.

Vast grounds don't mean you are allowed to amble away anywhere and everywhere. Meditation breaks are 5 minutes, and strictly enforced. Vagabonds are chased after and brought back to the hall, albeit in a suffocatingly pleasing manner, difficult to say no to.

The Pagoda's unique feature are its meditation cells. This is no temple with an ornate Buddha inside.

Instead an austere, dark, and almost morgue like cell greets you. Here, meditators are encouraged to spend a majority of their sitting hours, alone and devoid of distraction. I preferred the warmth of the hall.

Residential quarters may vary depending on the retreat center you choose. This one, near Bangalore, had individual rooms and showers for every participant, considered an almost utopian luxury amongst Vipassana centers.

In keeping with the theme, no door faces the other. And no prizes for guessing why.

In spite of one's movements being tightly controlled, solitary nooks like this can be found. I spent many hours here, ruminating in the company of chirpy squirrels who raced each other up and down trees, and ravens whose shrill caws are distinctly admirable from the many other birds in the vicinity.

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[ninjatalli]

Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing. This has been on my mind for a while. A few questions. Some or all of them might seem stupid, but that's that.

1. How's the food?

2. Is one allowed to go to sleep while meditating (if one is able to nod off in whatever position)?

3. I'm guessing this is the place; do they allow shorter duration options or is 10 days the norm?

4. Why only 6.30 hours for sleep? Is that sufficient over the days?

[SS80]

Thanks for sharing
I tried this once about 10yrs back. It was at a Vipassana centre near Makali, Alur - outskirts of Bangalore. I could not take the emotional load it offered and stepped out after 3 days. After you go silent for a few days or even the same day, your brain sort of digs out all old disturbing memories and can be a hell lot of a load to handle. It was a 10days course.

[delusional_fool]

This brings backs the memories of my Vipassana experience that I tried nearly 4 years ago. For me it was an unique and special experience, it was a like a brain reset. I had my doubts if I will be able to survive 10 days in isolation and the first few days were especially hard. Below are some of the key things from my experience,

- It was pretty hard to sit in the floor motionless, legs started hurting just after 10 mins initially but by the end of 10 days was able to sit for long hours. I just wasn't sure if it stopped paining or I stopped bothering.

- I thought I can focus on anything if I wanted to but realised that wasn't the case just after 5 mins into the meditation. For the first few days, I would get easily distracted and got lost in my thoughts and had to re-focus every 5 or 10 mins. Mind would wander in to random things that you have never thought about before. But this again got better and by the end of the course, I was able to maintain focus for upto 30 mins.

- While deep on meditation, I felt lot of sensations and feelings that I've never felt before. It was strange, intense and felt good.

- Simple veg meals were served and food felt little bland initially but again by the end of 10 days, my taste buds somehow got enhanced and started to like it. Another thing is there is no dinner, it was like a forced intermittent fasting, for the first few days, my hunger affected my sleep.

- With only 6.30 hrs allocated for sleep and no dinner, I ended up taking quick 30 min naps in the day time during the break or sometimes would just skip the session for 30 mins.

- If you think the meditation sessions were challenging and intense, the rest breaks were even more intense atleast for me. With nothing else to do it initially felt peaceful, looking at trees, how leaves dances with the breeze, looking at ants, insects and birds. But soon, mind started to replay my entire life, right from childhood, all the pleasant and highly unpleasant ones, from memories I was fond of to memories that i thought don't even remember. It was a battle, made to make peace with some of the unpleasant memories and accept it but also triggered other ones. It felt like I re-lived my entire life again, the emotions it triggered were that real.

- There were many times I though I would just quit during the first 5 days but I resisted hard and somehow managed to stay. But something happened around day 5 and I no longer wanted to leave, I just wanted to be just done with the 10 days.

Aftermath,

- Every little things felt better for the first few days post Vipassana, food tasted really good, music felt awesome and my body also became physically more sensitive. But it lasted only for a few days and as I got back in to my usual life.

- One of the key teachings was not to indulge and avoid cravings, be it anything - food, entertainment, sex, etc. Basically anything that overloads dopamine but I think it is almost impossible in this fast live that we live. Just after a few days, I went on a office trip, I ate a lot, drank, smoked and had a lot of fun, this 10 day dopamine fast made everything even better . But these are the very things I was supposed to avoid as it will lead to endless cycle.


Thanks for this thread, this made to to recollect all the old experience.
I failed to make meditation as part of my daily life and I've been thinking to go on another Vipassana session, may for a shorter duration.

[Red Liner]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing. This has been on my mind for a while. A few questions. Some or all of them might seem stupid, but that's that.

1. How's the food?

2. Is one allowed to go to sleep while meditating (if one is able to nod off in whatever position)?

3. I'm guessing this is the place; do they allow shorter duration options or is 10 days the norm?

4. Why only 6.30 hours for sleep? Is that sufficient over the days?

1. Food is vegetarian fare and excellent.

2. You can sleep, but no slouching or snoring. Or falling over the guy next to you. think the meditation might be easier

3. Yes, paphulla was my first. Mysore was my second. For anyone getting introduced to Vipassana, the 10 days is mandatory. After which you are welcome to 1 day or 3 day refresher courses.

4. If you are not used to sitting on the floor for 11 hours a day, six hours of sleep is not enough. Its one of the things you will have to battle through during the 10 days.

Originally Posted by SS80

Thanks for sharing
I tried this once about 10yrs back. It was at a Vipassana centre near Makali, Alur - outskirts of Bangalore. I could not take the emotional load it offered and stepped out after 3 days. After you go silent for a few days or even the same day, your brain sort of digs out all old disturbing memories and can be a hell lot of a load to handle. It was a 10days course.

I am sorry about what you had to go through. It can be mentally harrowing. I went through the same phase in the first 3 days both times.

[girishv]

Originally Posted by Red Liner

I finally mustered the courage. And I am glad I did.

Nice experience. Makes me take up the journey at least for getting away from the city.

Horror genre. No, it's a movie about a demigod and rituals from Konkan side. I heard from a friend from Nainital that these rituals are followed by parts of Kumaon in some form.

[alpha1]

So how is the night sleep during Vipasna sessions?
I ask this because you are in a completely different environment compared to the usual stuff.

What is the special emphasis on sitting cross legged for hours?

[sukiwa]

Originally Posted by Red Liner

I walked out of the Vipassana center this morning. Twenty days of two consecutive isolation retreats. I have been told most people struggle to complete one, and almost 98% do not return for a second. And here I was, having done two intensive retreats back to back.

Kudos to you and your perseverance.

Originally Posted by Red Liner

The first few days are intense. But soon, the body begins to learn to adjust. On the fourth day, I sense a shooting pain in my right knee. My immediate reaction is to stretch my legs out. This time I decide to sit still and just observe the pain. I see the pain flowing towards me like a wave, and after a few seconds it ebbs away back into the ocean.

And finally it disappears.

This has to be experienced and words aren't enough to explain.

This thread brought back memories from 2015. Some notes from my experience then.

• Food intake: It takes time for body to adjust to just needed food quantity. Eat whatever food that gets prepared with gratitude. First 2 days was tough due to lack of Dinner, relied on drinking more water to get sleepy.
• Meditation focus: First 3-4 days were very wondering. Focus was easier when I got to visit dedicated Pagoda meditation cell on 4th or 5th day. Later on, I was searching for that elixir. Energy at Pagoda cells is at different level, needs to be experienced first hand.
• Withdrawal Symptoms: I was told about tougher initial days, mind was making all kind of stories/reasons to quit.
• Accommodation: Place I visited in Markal near Alandi had very few single rooms. Most rooms were for 2,3 or 4 occupants. My roommate had habit of talking in sleep, bit scary on first night. Had to get used to it as couldn't talk with him either.
• Time: No wrist watch with anyone. Was relying on shadows in daytime and an airplane sound in evening to know approximate time.
• Talk after course completion: It was a revelation for me as to how much effort is needed to talk.
• WhatsApp chats: It doesn't deliver all group chat messages of 10-12 days backlog, kind of best effort delivery. In hindsight, it doesn't even matter. Best to clear chat history and start afresh.

Compared to 2015-16 levels, I am at 10-15% right now. My meditation is limited to 15-20 minutes these days and it is barely adequate. I should undergo another full-course soon. Perhaps I can plan it just before a job change.