10 Days on a Cushion: My Vipassana Meditation Retreat

Late last August, I went to a Vipassana meditation retreat for 10 days (for info on Vipassana meditation, see www.dhamma.org). During nine of those days, no talking/communicating was allowed (this included everything from sign language to eye contact), and I tried to meditate for 10 hours and 45 minutes/day. You might think just sitting for that long, even with a meditational focus, would get monotonous after awhile, but your brain is more inventive than you'd think. I experienced moments of great peace and moments of "What am I ~doing~ here?" It was really interesting what I learned about myself (I certainly hadn't known, for instance, that left to its own devices my brain is tuned to a country-music station).

The way in which the Vipassana meditation course was run was also interesting. Meditators were strictly separated by gender, for instance; we sat together in the same meditation hall but on opposite sides. That was pretty much the only place we'd theoretically see each other (although technically, "seeing" was irrelevant because we weren't supposed to be looking at anyone anyway); the sleeping quarters, dining areas, and outdoor walking courses were all sex-segregated.

A standard day was like this:

4 AM: Wake-up bell
...followed immediately but a mad scramble for the showers. Seriously, it was the fastest anyone moved throughout the whole day. There were about 6 ladies' showers, 25 women, and 30 minutes in order to do all of your business before the herd migrated to the meditation hall or back to private quarters for meditation. (While the first morning meditation technically wasn't optional-- actually, none of the meditation sessions were optional-- for the first few days many newbie Vipassana meditators, unaccustomed to the schedule, took advantage of the "You can meditate in your room" rule by going back to bed. A couple of days in, though, someone started coming by to check on us and mildly scold the people who were snoring). While I rarely wear make-up and am usually fast in the morning, the use of make-up was banned during the course... perhaps in part to keep people moving in the morning and on-schedule.

4:30-6:30 AM: Meditation in the meditation hall or hostel-dorm-style room
I found the beginning 45 minutes of this first meditation of the day relatively easy; freshly-showered (I managed to beat the crowd every day), coolish morning temperatures, and my body a naturally early riser, I was ready. Meditation? Let's go! ....after about an hour, though, my body started to complain. I hadn't had breakfast yet. Where was my tea? (^^) Also, despite it being the height of summer, it was just getting bright outside around 5 AM. My body rebelled: what was I doing up, awake, at daybreak? Clearly I'd misjudged the time somehow and still had a few hours left to sleep. So it was a real struggle for the latter half of the meditation to just stay awake, much less concentrate on meditating.

6:30-8:30 AM: Breakfast
What a welcome sound, the bell signaling breakfast! Due to the plan of the course (as will be seen later in this schedule-with-commentary), very little is eaten after mid-day, so everyone was always very ready for the dinging of the breakfast bell.

All of the meals were very simple. Mostly Japanese-style in content, we got rice for breakfast plus a soup and a few side dishes, almost always including some left-overs from the night before. I was impressed that the meditation center offered both white and brown rice (which is readily available in stores but rarely served in restaurants). Early on during the course, we were cautioned to eat 'just enough,' because over-eating would make us sleepy and less alert, therefore less able to meditate effectively. I tried to follow this policy during breakfast.

After breakfast, there was usually at least a little time before the next session to stretch or take a small walk around. The walking/exercise area outside was pretty small; think a backyard, not a running-track sized area. It was pretty, though, and very quiet--the center I went to is about 1 1/2 hours outside of Kyoto and pretty rural.

8-9 AM: Group meditation in hall
Oh my butt protests just thinking about this, the first formal group meditation of the day. Earlier in the course, there was more instruction during this session (from cassette tapes made by S.N. Goenka, the person who has spread this style of Vipassana meditation around the world in the last few decades). As the course progressed, however, this meditation session became one of the three "meditations of great strength" during the day; we were asked to try not to move, at all, during these 3 one-hour meditations. No scratching itchy noses, no shifting position, nothing. If you leg fell asleep during the first 5 minutes, it was going to be like that for the next 55. Of course, you could move if you wanted to. They didn't put restraints on us or anything, and everyone's eyes were closed, so I supposed if you did it quietly then no one would know... but once you sat completely still through one session of great strength, it was kind of a personal challenge to keep up with your own record.

Even after the course had gotten going, there were still shorter meditation intro and ending tapes made by S.N. Goenka. He'd chant for a bit in some unknown language and then say a few lines of instructions, "Feel the sensations in your body," or something to that effect. There was more to it, of course, but I can't really give an explanation of the Vipassana meditation technique that would do it justice. It's a meditation style that you really need to experience over the 10-day introductory course. It built on itself, too; newbies spent the first 3 days on one kind of meditation, kind of like a proto-Vipassana meditation meant to sharpen our senses, and then we were ready for the Real Deal. I could type up what we were basically told to do or try to do-- which you can't find on the official Vipassana website-- but reading about it and doing it would be so different. So if you're interested, don't ask me about it. Find 10 days and a bus ticket to a center and go try it.

9-11 AM: Meditation in hall or your room

11-noon: Lunch
Yeah lunch!! ...our second (and final) substantial meal of the day. T-18 1/2 hours to the next real meal. I worried the first day or so about being hungry in the afternoon or ravenous the next morning before breakfast, but it was really okay. We were, after all, just sitting for more than 10 hours a day. I was hungry for breakfast but didn't feel deprived or like we were fasting.

Noon-1PM: Rest/optional question-time
i.e. collapse-on-your-bed-and-don't-move time. Kyoto's infamous summer heat really came out after lunch. Although I was sitting for most of the day (mostly in the thankfully semi-air-conditioned meditational hall), I was not going to go outside and exercise in the heat. Many people stretched during this break or did laundry (by hand; the center provided us with free laundry soap, buckets, and a covered area to hang stuff).

You could also go and ask the assistant teachers (who had studied with S.N. Goenka personally) questions during this time. That was interesting, though; you weren't allowed to ask any questions about the theory behind the practice (which was mostly eventually explained in the evening discourses, coming up later). You could only ask the assistant teachers questions about how to correctly do the practice of Vipassana meditation. You could talk to the teachers about problems you were having with meditating, too, like finding a more comfortable sitting position (a myth, really). There was a separate (volunteer) person in charge of handling problems anyone might have with the food/dorm/etc.

1-2:30 PM: Meditation in hall or your room
This was the same as the first morning session. I generally found meditating in the hall easier because it was air-conditioned and because it was easier to stay focused with other people around me.

2:30-3:30: Group meditation in hall
The second "meditation of great strength" of the day. Way more difficult than the first one because we only got a 5-minute break between the prior meditation session and it.

3:30-5: Meditation in hall or you room
While the morning was broken up by breakfast and lunch, the afternoon sort of slid into one long meditation session. During the 1 1/2-hour or 2-hour meditations, everyone would generally take a mini-bathroom/stretching break at some point. During these 'normal' meditations (--not-- the "meditations of great strength"), we were allowed to get up and stretch in place or leave for a quick brisk walk/bathroom/water break before coming back.

5-6 PM: Tea break
This was interesting. Our tea break happened at what would be a normal dinner-time, but it really was just tea and some fruit. For the newbie Vipassana meditators, anyway-- any returning student was only allowed liquids, no fruit (unless they had some kind of medical condition, of course). I forget if there was a study done or if it was just a trial-and-error thing that had been decided upon, but not eating a big dinner did make sense. It meant that we weren't comatose for the evening meditation sessions. And with the fruit (or returners with milk/honey in their tea), hopefully we'd get 'just enough' to make it through to breakfast the next morning without getting too hungry. I think it worked out fine; we were so sendentary that I didn't lose any weight or anything.

6-7 PM: Group meditation in hall
The third and last "meditation of great strength" of the day. Going into the home stretch! ...even though this was the last one and at the end of the day, it was never the most difficult for me. I really liked the evening discourse (coming up next!), and this was kind of like a long pause just before it.

7-8:15 PM: Teacher's discourse
Aside from breakfast (with its wonderful whole-wheat toast! ...a rarity in Japan), this may have been my favorite part of the day. While the Japanese meditators listened to translated tapes in the meditation hall, the other female English-speakers and I (3 in total; one other JET and a girl studying abroad in Japan) got to sit in the womens' dining hall and watch a videotape of S.N. Goenka discuss the practice. He was rather amusing, especially in the first few days. He knew exactly what we were going through each day-- "Tonight, you might be wondering why you on earth you signed up for this," etc-- and jokingly warned us about how much harder Days 2 and 3 were going to be. Maybe it was just that his was one of the only voices we got to hear each day (the physically-present assistant teachers sometimes said a few things like, "Take a 10-minute break and come right back" ... otherwise, the compound was silent but for the bell and the birds at dawn). Maybe it was the thick India-Burmese accent. Maybe it was his occasional irregular choices of words. Maybe it was his slow, languid tone. Maybe it was the traditional folk stories he told, all ending with laughter and a lesson on compassion. Maybe it was all the compassion he himself exuded during the short periods he just sat there, on the TV screen, waiting for the next words to come, or chanting for us in an unknown but rhythmic language. I don't know why, but I completely loved him. I didn't always agree with what he was saying, especially as the course progressed and he talked about some slightly wacko theories about what was happening to us mentally/spiritually while we meditated (but who knows? maybe he was right). But I still loved him.

8:15-9 PM: Group meditation in hall
Final meditation of the day, for real. I was so tired by this point, lulled into sleepiness by the fuzzy light of the TV screen during the discourse, that it was usually all I could do to stay upright.

9-9:30 PM: Optional question-time
...almost everyone always skipped this and went straight to...

9:30 PM: Lights out
While the Japanese peeps who hadn't managed to snag a shower in the morning or mid-day rushed off in a herd for the bathroom (and the one small tub that had a sign-up sheet in 30-minute blocks), I always went straight to bed, as did most of my bunk-mates. The hallway lights were always left dimly on, but as soon as we got back to the room around 9:10, it was lights-out for us. I always went straight to sleep.

And thus things progressed for 9 days; on the 10th day, at some point they told us we could start talking again, sort of as a re-introduction to normal life... and my goodness, all the words I hadn't been using for over a week came tumbling out. I introduced myself to the bunk-mates that I'd been living with for 9 days and the female English speakers with whom I'd watched the evening discourses (even though the no-talking rule was dropped, we were still in gender segregation; I wasn't able to talk to any of the English-speaking guys until the local bus trip back). I looked into everyone's faces instead of at their shoes (my gaze kept low for the past 9 days in order to avoid accidental eye contact and also to not step on any feet).

Everyone was bubbling with joy, like we all had these bottled-up springs of it inside of us that had just been unplugged all at the same time.

And I found that I'd made friends, somehow, without language or interaction. During one of the morning-rushes for showers, the woman who chose the stall next to me (on an end near a wall) let out a small shriek just as I was setting my shower-stuff down. I glanced over, low, wondering if mainland Japan has poisonous snakes like Tsushima does, and there was a small frog jumping against the closed vents, trying to get out. My shower-stall neighbor was clearly terrified, so I grabbed my extra shirt, scooped the frog up mid-jump, and carried him out of the bathroom. I think my neighbor may have mini-bowed to me, but I was trying to not pay attention. Anyway, apparently this was witnessed by everyone in the bathroom (so much for trying to ignore the other meditators), and days later when we were finally able to speak, she and a few others who had been in the bathroom came over to thank me.

I also met a woman who was living in Fukuoka but moving to Florida to work at Disneyland. Nearly everyone else was from the Kyoto or Tokyo areas, making my chances of seeing them again soon quite slim. So I said hello and goodbye in almost-but-not-quite-the-same breath to these people with whom I'd been living for over a week. I also said farewells to the giant yellow and black spider who lived in a corner of the rafters of the laundry-drying area and the ants who had small anthills near the washers (strictly for use by kitchen staff only); they'd been my teeth-brushing companions when I took myself out of the steamy, crowded shower-room to stroll about in the breeze whilst brushing.

I don't have any pictures or anything because I handed over my valuables at the beginning of the course; we also weren't allowed to use cell phones, etc., or write (notes, journals, lists, anything) during the course. Yes, pencils and paper were contraband. It sounds strict and a bit weird, and I worried a bit going into it, but all of the rules are meant to do one thing: help meditators to focus on meditation-- which, after all, is why we were there.

I'm not planning any future 10-day retreats soon, and I haven't been good at all about meditating since the retreat, but I did really enjoy it and felt so peaceful afterwards. Definetely recommended for anyone with an interest in old-school Buddhist-ish meditation.