Cultivating Inner Health and Strength — My Experience with Vipassana Meditation
Half a year ago, thanks to my startup cofounder Iuliu’s recommendation, I got into and started practicing the Vipassana meditation taught by Mr. Goenka. Last week, I completed my third Vipassana meditation training retreat. This time, as a kitchen and translation volunteer, I was lucky to bring my father to come for his first Vipassana training. It was joyful to see him resolve many confusions and gain happiness through this method. Looking at myself, Vipassana also brought me an unprecedented sense of tranquility, clarity, acuity, and happiness within.
In this ten-day meditation retreat, we experienced a life akin to that of monks — waking up at 4:30 am, meditating silently for over ten hours a day, giving up all electronic devices, refraining from speaking, and disconnecting from the internet. The only communication allowed was a brief one-on-one Q&A with the teacher each day and learning the Vipassana meditation technique.
Vipassana meditation originates from an ancient Buddhist tradition, aiming to achieve liberation from mental suffering and mind purification through insight into the body-mind process. Other meditation types, such as focused meditation and mindfulness meditation can have other goals. Vipassana emphasizes the direct experience of the three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, non-self) by observing bodily sensations to understand mental states and cognitive processes.
Mr. Goenka’s Dhamma.org Vipassana centers have established over 380 branches worldwide in the past 50+ years, starting from Myanmar and India, and are rapidly expanding. All services are free of charge, and supported by donations from old students. The main mission of these centers is to offer students courses ranging from 10 to 60 days on orthodox Vipassana meditation techniques.
Many of us have been going to the gym to learn various exercises and develop the habit of cultivating physical health and strength. However, as a brain worker, after learning Vipassana, I realized that we, or at least I, seemed to have largely neglected the cultivation of inner health and strength. What are inner health and strength? They manifest in certain qualities. Vipassana meditation is like a fitness methodology for the mind, with different “exercises” to help us observe the truth within our body and mind, and the truth about how the world works, as well as better control the qualities of our thoughts and bodies.
One of the qualities Vipassana helps us cultivate is perseverance. We practice making strong determination to sit still during an hour of meditation, while also performing different training on our mind. I still find these challenging, often experiencing leg pain and sweating profusely, but my willpower has significantly increased.
One of the most important exercises we learned in the course is Anapana, or an exercise for observing our breathing. It helps us enhance our ability to stabilize the mind and increase sensitivity. Through it, I gradually discovered the relationship between the strength and regularity of breath and different emotional states. We observe even the subtlest sensations, which allows us to detect significant signs from minor ones. Initially, it was difficult to observe the breath, but after a few days of practice, I was able to feel it. As the days of the course passed, we expanded from observing the breath to observing the rest of the body. For example, initially, I felt leg pain, but later I could dissect the pain into different types of subtler sensations; and I also gradually gained the skill to be able to dissect my emotions by observing my breadth and my “inner biochemical reactions”, and knowing which emotion I can focus on detaching.
The second most important practices in Vipassana is to not generate habitual emotional reactions that cause us pain when we receive sensations. We learned and came to realize that pain is not given by the outside world but created within us. In the Vipassana camp, I learned and gradually felt in subsequent practice that the so-called experience of pain can be roughly divided into two steps: first, the uncontrollable sensory level sensations, followed instantly by painful emotional reactions generated automatically by our subconscious. Then the next exercise we learned is to purify our mind by deliberately training our subconscious mind to not generate these habitual emotional reactions in that instant, both during meditation and also during the day-to-day work and life. After 10 days of practice, I gradually started to generate less habitual emotional reactions, reducing my anxious mood when viewing the world, and instead, looked at it more objectively and peacefully without prejudice.
As we purify our minds, our thinking grows sharper and more effective. At the beginning of the retreat, my mind was overwhelmed with unnecessary emotions and thoughts, similar to a polluted sea. Vipassana is teaching me to avoid creating more irrelevant thoughts from existing ones and to not react emotionally to various sensations automatically. With a purer mind, my heart feels like a clear lake. In this state, when I consider life’s problems, I see their context more clearly and think about them more straightforwardly and naturally.
Vipassana has taught me that pain often stems from our habitual reactions, not from external sources. This understanding is making me more tolerant towards others. I’m beginning to see that my love for others is sometimes based on my desire for them to fulfill my needs. Consequently, the more I rely on people, the more they risk becoming the ones I resent; and where I hate others is often where I cannot change myself. Vipassana taught me at the sensational level that changing others won’t ease our pain. The real solution lies in becoming more tolerant of others and changing our hearts.
How do we change our hearts? The next step in Vipassana involves understanding and observing the attachments that block our hearts. For instance, during observation, other students and I noticed the emerging process of thoughts. We realized that related and unexpected thoughts appear spontaneously. I felt that the generation of these thoughts is almost not controlled by myself, as if they are sensations I receive. I believe “I think, therefore I am,” but then where is the “I”? At my 3rd retreat, I started to be able to observe that both our bodies and the world around us seem composed of vibrations. I believe these are the raw signals sent to our brains by our nervous system, not fully interpreted. Similarly, I observed that these vibrations, like all thoughts, constantly appear and disappear quickly. If the signals that define my existence keep rising and passing away, does “I” exist continuously? Or, if my existence is just in these fleeting moments, what is there to hold onto? Gradually, as we experientially understand that there’s nothing to cling to, letting go of attachments becomes easier.
Letting go of attachments doesn’t mean not caring or being passive. Another “exercise” I experienced in Vipassana is about developing a healthy way to experience happiness. Previously, I believed happiness came from satisfying my desires, whether they were basic physiological or emotional needs or career aspirations. After studying Vipassana, I learned that many of these desires are inherently healthy. However, when we become attached to these desires, we experience craving when they are unmet and anger when they are lost. Therefore, the ability to attain happiness involves maintaining our healthy desires while training ourselves not to become attached to them. As we gradually practice letting go of unhealthy attachments, our hearts become filled with healthy aspirations. Then, our happiness shifts from being externally conditional to an internal, unconditional state. We will still maintain healthy desires but without the pain of unfulfilled expectations.
The happiness that fills the heart is not only about our healthy desires; another joy that Vipassana brings me is unconditional love for the world. During meditation, we practiced feeling the love from teachers and volunteers flowing through our bodies. We also generated the desire to spread this beautiful experience and love to friends and family. At the same time, by feeling the constant rising and ceasing vibrations of all things, we recognize that we and the world are constantly changing and dying. This equal heart allows us to realize that we are no different from all beings, thus generating love for the entire world and all beings.
I once read “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” by Henry David Thoreau on my dad’s bookshelf, where Thoreau described his experience living in a cabin by the lake with these words: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” I’ve always longed for such a feeling. Finally, after experiencing ten days in the meditation camp in the woods, I believe that I found my “Walden”. During daily meditation, I gradually reconnect with this feeling. In these deliberately reserved times and spaces of meditation, I make a conscious effort to disconnect from the complexities and entangled emotions of life. For instance, each morning, I reflect on the previous day and my innermost attachments while observing my feelings at both the breathing and emotional levels. By controlling my breath and emotions, I reduce my unhealthy attachments, allowing me to move forward with less burden.
In the six months since I started practicing Vipassana meditation, it has largely resolved my long-standing fear of death and given me a clearer understanding of my life’s purpose. It has also enabled me to identify and significantly overcome key obstacles in my interpersonal relationships. Moreover, it helped me make the decision to leave my job to take on greater challenges in full-time entrepreneurship. And I have committed to cultivating and safeguarding a pure heart within myself.
I’m fortunate to have found the right “gym” and “coach” for my mind. Although I am still stumbling, I am becoming more and more regularly engaging in daily meditation and inner cultivation, practicing the health and strength of the heart.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So, where is your first step in exercising your mind?
You can go to https://www.dhamma.org and follow my screenshots to find a Vipassana retreat near you: https://scribehow.com/shared/Searching_finding_and_applying_for_the_10_day_English_Vipassana_Meditation_course_on_dhammaorg_website__mOwyde0gTSqdLlsFvwdtOg