THROUGH BREATH, WE LEARN
In the midst of a beautiful monsoon in
Central India, Nanditta Chibber Chauhan
check into her fourth stint at a reclusive
Vipassana retreat…
Nanditta Chibber Chauhan
I am making those last phone calls to say goodbye to
family and friends. While there is a bit of anxiousness,
it’s for a good purpose. I am checking myself into a
deep meditation retreat – Vipassana. The anxiousness
is because I will have to go mobile phone-less! In this digital
age, the phone has become an extension of our bodies. So it
is the thought of dislodging it from my personal space for 10
whole days that is causing anxiety. There will be absolute
silence — maun vrat – no talking, no reading and if possible
not even looking at anyone. Just a retreat into one’s own
personal sanctuary, to delve deep into the layers of one’s
consciousness by observing breath and body, only possible
when one is totally cut off from the world.
When I first checked into a Vipassana meditation retreat
a decade ago, I went more out of curiosity rather than belief.
My Aunt and my brother introduced me to it and the omnist
in me seemed to resonate with Vipassana’s philosophy – that
breath is universal and non-sectarian. That the moment you
attach a word, a chant or a visual imagery to any meditation
technique, it immediately becomes sectarian. I was drawn to
this idea but I didn’t know how it really worked. It is only
when I spent 11 hours every day for 10 days, meditating
on a floor cushion (without back support) from 4:30 am till
9 at night that I realised how hard it is to work on yourself
to refine the mind and the body, change ingrained patterns,
elevate awareness and equanimity, and
learn the law of impermanence. All this,
you learn just by observing yourself.
Those 10 days transformed me in ways
I had not expected
So here I was again, in the midst
of a beautiful monsoon in central
India, checking into my fourth stint at
this reclusive retreat on the outskirts
of Bhopal.
Vipassana is an ancient meditation
technique. As old as the enlightened Buddha. His visual imagery across the world for two millennia
is deeply meditative. The widely known story is that the young
prince Siddhartha Gautama in the fifth century BCE from the
kingdom of Kapilavastu nestled on the borderlands of current
India and Nepal left home distraught and disillusioned at the
age of 29 to seek a solution to the problem of human suffering.
He meditated, sitting motionless for 49 days under a Pipal
tree, and finally was awakened with the answer at the age of
thirty five. What is not known is that the technique that lead
Gautama to the moment of Bodhi or awakening. Vipassana –
which in the ancient Pali language translates as “to see” or “to
see things as they really are”, and not how we want them to
be—has been interpreted as that technique. Its crux is about
living life with a high level of awareness
and equanimity according to the laws of
Dhamma or Dharma, which originally
did not connotate to just moral duty or
religion as is understood now, but in its
pure form means to adhere to the laws
of nature and the law of impermanence.
Buddha believed his non-sectarian
doctrine combining philosophy,
ideology and a practical spiritual method
of mental training and discipline could
free anyone from the pain and sufferings of life. He travelled across the
length and breadth of North India
teaching Vipassana compassionately
to anyone and everyone, even the
naysayers, for the next 45 years
choosing Prakrit – the language of the
common people.
It is only when I spent 11
hours every day for 10
days meditating on a floor
cushion that I realised
how hard it is to work on
your body and mind and
change ingrained patterns
In his book, The Golden Road,
William Dalrymple deeply explores
the birth of Buddhism in the fifth
century BCE and how it gains
prominence in the 2nd century BCE
when Emperor Ashoka, after the
gruesome Kalinga War, becomes its
biggest patron. Buddhism travels lands and seas as the
Emperor sends missionaries with relics in all directions
of his kingdom (which was most of the Indian
sub-continent) and beyond it: “east to Burma and
Suvarnabhumi, the Lands of Gold dotting the oceans of
South-east Asia” where it flourished, north to the steppe
nomads in Central Asia, north-west to the Greek states,
and the North African coast of the Mediterranean.
But like the cyclic nature of everything, in the
centuries that followed, the core philosophy ebbed. The
technique of Vipassana was almost lost but for a small
sect of monks in Burma who still practiced it and passed
it down dutifully. Vipassana miraculously survived and
2500 hundred years later, was brought back to modern
India by a merchant, Satya Narayan Goenka, born in
a privileged Indian merchant family in Myanmar
(Burma). Goenka chanced upon Vipassana as a last
resort to find some sort of relief from an acute and chronic
migraine problem where all medical interventions and
high dosages of morphine were failing. Desperate, he
decided to try Vipassana suggested by an acquaintance
on a lark. To his surprise, his migraine attacks became
few and far between. Curious he delved deeper into
the technique – its science and philosophy under the
guidance of his teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin.
Vipassana was almost
lost but for a small sect of
monks in Burma who still
practised it and passed it
down diligently for 2500
years. Satya Narayan
Goenka brought it back to
modern India
Through observing breath, Vipassana trains the
mind to investigate oneself — cravings and aversions
sensed by the mind and experienced by the body
through sensations. Like anger, an aversive feeling that
immediately makes the flow of breath fast and tense,heating up the body, or stress that gives that knotty feeling
within, or the craving for praise or pleasure which makes one
feel good at a bodily level as well.
They say the body remembers. It has a memory. It reacts in
sync with our emotions through sensations felt, from subtle to
gross ones, most of which we fail to notice or corelate, but the
body stores it in its tiny cells. Unaware, we react to everything
around us but the key lies in simply observing without an
association of craving or aversion, knowing it is just passing
by. As everything around us including our body, is always
changing or ‘becoming’, it trains the mind to understand and
practice equanimity and the nature of impermanence. To be
unfazed by nothing; knowing all along it is impermanent, like
our very existence.
Keeping the noble silence intact at the
Dhamma centres where a large number
of people come to meditate while making
sure they stay comfortably to only focus
on meditating has been masterfully
engineered. The SOPs (standard
operating processes) are worldwide.
Without speaking a word everything
is catered for. Even if you forget to bring something like an
alarm clock cell or toothpaste, all you need to do is write a
small note and it quietly appears. The surroundings are
designed to be sylvan. On arrival, one is briefed about the
rules, the mobile phone is submitted and the volunteers take
you to your room. A number is allotted to you which will
be tagged on a floor cushion in the meditation hall, a seat in
the dining area (with the dining crockery and cutlery), to the
meditation cell in the pagoda and even if you want laundry
service. The highly coordinated set-up leaves little room
for any verbal or written communication. The timetable for
meditation, rest and dining hours is fixed. The gongs signal
the start of each hour and thereon, there is only one work,
meditative self-observation through breath.
Usually a night owl, I am up and ready for the day to
head into the meditation hall at 4:30 am. The first three days,
I just observe my breath known as Aana-Paana breathing.
Goenka’s recorded voice booms in the mediation hours with
instructions in Hindi and English with sayings in Pali. Houron-hour. Left nostril or right? Or both? Heavy or subtle? I
try to observe, struggling as the mind wanders like a restless
monkey recalling fleeting moments of the past to imaginations
about the future. It is only the present that eludes. And then
one remembers and brings oneself back to work that is to just
observe breath and be aware.
On day four, the whole technique of Vipassana is
initiated – that is to scan the body again and again and observe bodily sensations – tingling,
prickling, crawling, itching, warmth,
chills, fatigue, pain, pressure, aches,
numbness and even anything that
can’t be described –while trying to
be equanimous by neither liking
or disliking it. One realises that
eventually every sensation arises and
fades away sooner or later. For the
next six days, one does this hour-onhour and keeps getting better and
more patient with oneself.
Every evening after the last mediation hour, the
recorded video sermons by Goenka are jovial, realistic
and in sync with the struggles of learning this technique. It
can be tiresome to keep doing the same thing, which it is.
The urge to exit is highest on the second, fourth and sixth
day. But he gently nudges one to keep working on oneself.
Explaining every stage one encounters on this reclusive
journey – the pit falls and the right steps peppering it
with lively stories from Buddha’s time and his personal
encounters with people from all over the world.
Being a recluse isn’t the
idea of a retreat one
jumps at but its mental,
physical and spiritual
benefits outweigh the
hardship in my opinion
Vipassana might sound and feel tough. The luxury of
taking out time for oneself disconnected from world for
10 days and being a recluse isn’t the idea of a retreat that
one jumps at. But its spiritual, mental and physical benefits
and wellness outweigh all doubts in the long run. When
one exits the retreat and connects back with the world,
the ego is hit with the realisation that nothing stops – with
or without you. In the end, this meditation technique if
practiced well simplifies one’s outlook to life in aspects so
personal, changing things so deep that only its experience
seals its truth. For it all starts and ends with our breath – the
doorway to knowing oneself.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect the magazine’s opinion. The essay is not an
endorsement for anything.
