Silence Changed My View on Reality
Meditation isn't an activity, it's a state of awareness
By Vishesh Kochher
"I am the looker, but the Universe is the See-er. Every set of eyes in the world is witnessing on behalf of the Universe (Brahmān), witnessing its own existence in multiple forms, witnessing one slice of reality at a time (Bhagya)."
On the morning of October 11, as the sun touched Berlin's horizon from below, I heard my voice for the first time in 11 days. I chanted "Om" in a deep tone, vibrating the air around me and in all the hollow spaces of my body. I followed it up with an ancient Pali phrase: "Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam," which means "may all blessings come true for all beings."
After a good friend motivated me, I'd decided to try the practice of Vipassana meditation that traditionally spans a period of 10 days: I would have to limit external stimuli, eat in a disciplined manner, meditate for many hours a day, and not communicate with anyone. Through my days of silence and meditation, I experienced revelations that changed my perspective on... This article has three sections.
The first is Set and Setting, to describe what Vipassana is, the goal of the practice, the intricacies of the 10-day schedule, and the setting and surroundings I created to experience this practice. This may help anyone who's interested in trying it out.
The second is Experiential Analysis (Sankhyā, as said in Sanskrit), which details my progressive experience through the days, including how I managed discipline, internal and external conflicts, and the bedazzling realizations I had along the way.
The third (and my favorite) is Wisdom and Philosophical Discourse (Yoga, as said in Sanskrit), in which I discuss the unified "planck" of wisdom gained through the entire experience, the grand revelation of the universe as the "Self," which showed the true architecture of the world to me (the self) through the faculties of my own mind and body, and the interaction of the "Self" with the world around me.
Set and setting
Vipassana is a very specific technique of meditation that was originally formulated (rather discovered, like a mathematical theorem) by Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. He tried multiple forms of Yoga and meditation in his 35 years, and finally used this technique as a path to attain enlightenment. Outside of Buddhist philosophy, the technique is also mentioned in the Bhagvada Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture. Since then, it has been passed down from parent to child by word of mouth. It's been modified from its original form to appeal to the masses, and sometimes filled with certain dogma and rituals. However, a group of monks in the deep parts of Myanmar (Burma) have managed to preserve the original technique in its purest form over the millennia. A few decades ago, Dhamma Foundation, founded by S. N. Goenka, began spreading this beautiful practice to different parts of the world.
The idea is simple, like most great ones. It is a surgery of the self, by the Self. The mind is both the patient and the surgeon. The objective is to remove deeply rooted complexes and convolutions (Aham), habits of craving, clinging, and aversion (Raga and Dvesha), a small step on the long path to attaining true Nirvanic bliss (Moksha). In the process, the deep subconscious is brought to the surface. Biases are recognised. As a metaphor, Vipassana does not merely cut the trunk of a diseased tree, but removes the roots from the ground within so they never grow back again.
SEEING THE SELF BY THE SELF
In solitude, sitting alone, let the yogi concentrate steadily on the Self, controlling the mind and the self, without expectation and without grasping. In a pure place, a yogi should sit firmly, neither very high nor very low, on kusha grass covered with a deer skin and a cloth. And there, sitting on that seat with a one-pointed mind, with the senses and mind under control, one should practice yoga for self-purification. (6.10-12)
Holding the body, neck, and head erect and motionless, with gaze fixed on the tip of the nose, not looking in any direction, steadfast in the vow of dwelling in the Vastness [brahmacharya], with a calm spirit from which fear has been driven out, with a mind under control and a heart absorbed in Me, a yogi should sit steadily devoted to Me. Thus practicing yoga, with the mind controlled, the yogi finds the supreme peace of Nirvana which abides in Me. (6.13-15)
— An excerpt from Ravi Ravindra's Translation of the Gita
Normally people first practice Vipassana in special retreats around the world, where they live for 10 days free of charge (on the charity of others), are served two meals a day, and meditate in individual meditation cells. Not in my case. I originally planned to do this with an experienced friend in the secluded wilderness of a forest cottage among autumn leaves, but this plan didn't come to fruition. In any case, I decided that since I had already cleared my schedule for two weeks and also prepared my body athletically (heavy detox, exercise, and a limited diet in the prior days) and mind scientifically and philosophically (regular breathing exercises, endurance training which is as much a training of the mind as of the body, reading literature such as Meditations on First Philosophy, the Gita, Complete Book of Yoga by Swami Vivekananda, and Siddhartha), I would do the entire exercise in the middle of Berlin, in the idyllic Arkonakiez of Prenzlauerberg, where I live. A meditation center may be more silent and lack the external conflicts of daily life, but in hindsight, I'm glad to have done my practice in an urban setting.
Schedule, meals, and the urban challenges of meditation
Meditation centers follow daily timetables like this:
| 4:00 am | Morning wake-up bell |
| 4:00-6:30 am | Meditate in the hall or in your room |
| 6:30-8:00 am | Breakfast break |
| 8:00-9:00 am | Group meditation in the hall |
| 9:00-11:00 am | Meditate in the hall or in your room according to the teacher's instructions |
| 11:00-12:00 noon | Lunch break |
| 12:00 noon-1:00 pm | Rest and interviews with the teacher |
| 1:00-2:30 pm | Meditate in the hall or in your room |
| 2:30-3:30 pm | Group meditation in the hall |
| 3:30-5:00 pm | Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to the teacher's instructions |
| 5:00-6:00 pm | Tea break |
| 6:00-7:00 pm | Group meditation in the hall |
| 7:00-8:15 pm | Discourse in the hall |
| 8:15-9:00 pm | Group meditation in the hall |
| 9:00-9:30 pm | Question time in the hall |
| 9:30 pm | Retire to your own room—Lights out |
However, since I was doing the entire exercise alone, without any teachers or co-meditators, I tweaked the timetable without deviating from its core essence:
Meals were a major challenge since it is recommended not to lose your meditative state of awareness (dhyān), even during meal breaks and walks. Because I was the meditator and the cook, I had to make sure I could feed myself with food that could be prepared through mere muscle memory so I wouldn't have to focus on the act of cooking itself. I bought all the low-effort, high-nutrition items I could source from my supermarket.
- Breakfast: Muesli with honey, milk, seeds, bananas, and a spoonful of spirulina (highly nutritional algae), two slices of toast with butter and cheese, one cup of decaf ginger tea, and one glass of fruit juice.
- Lunch: All my lunches could be prepared in under 10 minutes. A big batch of chili sin carne (with rice) prepared beforehand fed me for the first four days. Thereafter, I had either pasta with pesto or soups with rice. Each lunch session ended with a cup of decaf tea.
- Tea: Decaf turmeric tea with honey, and two tiny apples.
- Dinner: Dreams.
Throughout the experience, I endured urban challenges: neighbors dancing upstairs, heavy smoking next door, kids being loud, construction work in the adjacent buildings, and the sound and smell of neighborhood traffic. These are displeasing even under normal circumstances. Whenever I had to interact with people and they figured out what I was undertaking, they were much softer and accommodating in our indirect contact. The urban setting eventually let me see the humanity in everyone. At first, I cursed myself for having committed to such an intense activity in such a chaotic setting. But then, as the days progressed, my mind tamed itself, and my faculty of focus improved, I realized that the city was a hidden boon. After all, the purpose of my meditation was to overpower any disturbance on the outside and to find the peace within. Also, to accept that all these events out of my control are part of the beauty of reality.
Some neighbors and acquaintances encountered me on my daily walks and greeted me with a friendly "hello," or asked how my day was going, or other neighborly icebreakers. I didn't want to be rude, but also didn't want to break my vow of silence, so I prepared a note I always carried with me when I left the house and presented it to them. Funnily enough, some of them would whisper "sorry" to me after reading it. Hey, lovely people, no apologies needed.
Lastly, since I was not in a meditation center and had no guides or group to learn from or meditate with, I prepared a downloaded playlist on my YouTube Premium account, with one discourse for each day. These discourses feature the voice of Goenka. He reveals more about the theory and practice of Vipassana meditation, and shares stories from his personal experience and from the life of Buddha - stories about conflict, harmonious resolutions, equanimity to pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and the theory of nonattachment. My playlist also included a guided meditation which I must have heard over 30 times by the end. (I can recite the entire one-hour meditation by heart now.)
Experiential analysis (sankhyā)
As I mentioned before, I really had no idea what I was getting into before I started. I knew the logistics I needed to take care of, and I had a basic outline of the apparent "curriculum." Everything else - the "I don't speak" note, the essence of Vipassana, discoveries about my inner truths - revealed itself over the days, either through trial and error, conclusions drawn while meditating, or through the daily discourse. The key themes being about conflict, harmonious resolutions, equanimity to pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and the theory of nonattachment.
Each of the daily discourses reminds the listener not to blindly believe what is said, but to pass it through a test of logic. One should only believe something after experiencing it for oneself. As a skeptic to most esoteric practices, I was inspired by this reminder, and I woke up full of energy at 4 a.m. every day. I did snooze my alarm on the second day, but never again.
The first three days are dedicated to the practice of Anapana - to focus the entire mind on the entrance of your nostrils, to observe respiration. This is primarily to strengthen the concentration capacity of the mind, and to be in the true present - not drift into memories of the past or imaginings of the future.
Descartes said, "I think, there I am." Well, "I breathe, therefore I am." That is the one truth beyond all illusions, or "Maya," of the world.
For three days, almost 14 hours a day, I merely observed my breath. I didn't try to control it, or influence it, merely observe it. I noticed if my left or right nostril was dominant (I also noticed that it varied depending on the time of day), how the air coming out was warmer than the air going in, and the sensation when exhaled air touched the area above the upper lip. My mind was like a wild horse, eager to run its own course to thoughts and imaginings of the past or future. The reins of the present were being put on it, to tame it. Of course, this wild horse, which has been getting its way all its life, takes time to train. When thoughts would drift from the present to good and bad ideas of the past and future, I would consciously pull focus back to my breath, and notice a change in its natural rhythm based on apparent emotions of those drifted thoughts. It's fascinating how fictitious ideas of the mind can have physical effects on something as real as the breath. Simple observation can give us the objective truth about what is happening inside - joy, sorrow, aversion, cravings, insecurities.
In the first few days, many thoughts of past remorse popped up in my head and some even made me cry. I noticed how my breathing rhythm changed, and thereafter the tears were reduced to a mere physical phenomenon, nothing else. The same thing happened with other emotions, too. Suddenly emotions were not able to overpower me.
Holding the same posture for hours can be "painful." Over the days, my body got used to it, got increasingly flexible, and built an endurance to this pain. A knee ache or numb foot that I originally couldn't stand for 10 seconds suddenly became something I could sit through for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes. Soon enough, I also noticed how pain is temporary, transient, impermanent, like a bubble on water that may emerge, may grow, but will eventually burst. The same is true of pleasure, and of every feeling and emotion we experience, physical or mental.
By the third day, the discourse instructed me to go one step further and start observing tiny sensations on my upper lip, when the breath touches it. On a gross level, there was the feeling of air touching skin. On finer inspection, there was the feeling of heat, the feeling of tingling, the feeling of prickling, the feeling of my mustache growing. To zoom in even more, I saw my existence as a quantum phenomenon for the first time. On the minutest level, there was the feeling of all the atoms of my skin vibrating. On the minutest level, there was no pain or pleasure. Only vibrations.
The technique of Vipassana was finally revealed to me in the discourse by the fourth day. Essentially, the exercise of Anāpānā must be expanded to the entire body. For three continuous days, I'd only observed my breath and the sensations on my nostrils and upper lip. This had done two things. It trained my mind to exist in the present, and not drift into the Maya (illusion) of past and future, and it helped me develop a new faculty of the mind. Like a new sense organ presenting itself, my mind was now able to perceive minute sensations on the skin. Like a colorblind person seeing color for the first time, I could look at the spectrum of sensations beyond just dark and light. Instead of feeling pain in my knee, I could better articulate a feeling of high pressure on the left corner under my kneecap.
With the technique of Vipassana, one has to basically make a loop of the entire body, one small skin area at a time. One has to ignore every other thought, every other sensation, and focus their entire mental energy on observing what is happening at that one specific area of the skin. Am I feeling warmth, cold, numbness, tingling, prickling, perspiration, or a new sensation for which I don't have a word yet? There were new sensations, like a new color that you've never seen and therefore cannot describe. Approximate proxies and descriptions, but no exact word.
For the first couple of days, this was an exhausting exercise. Occasionally I had the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. Not the nice ones, but ones that make you feel breathless, make you want to scream. This is exactly the point of Vipassana - to sense displeasing feelings and not be averse to them, not run from them, but simply acknowledge them, observe them, and realize their transient nature. At first, I would try to hold off for a couple of minutes, and then open my eyes and change my posture out of a feeling of claustrophobia. But over time, these "bad" sensations befriended me. I greeted them every time they visited my body, and through it, my mind. And soon enough, they would go away. The same thing happened with pleasurable sensations of ecstatic tingling. At the beginning, I would seek pleasure in them when they arose, hope for them to stay longer, and not be replaced by pain. But over time, I realized they are just as impermanent.
As I progressed, I was soon able to go beyond the good/bad, pain/pleasure, aversion/craving dichotomies of sensation. I was able to sense my body at the most minute level of tiny vibrations, just the cognition of existence, indifferent to any feelings and reactions. The discourse I'd been listening to had described this feeling, and the idea that our bodies are simply a bunch of atoms that are holding themselves together, sticking together because they share a common frequency and hence resonate together. My intermediate knowledge of general physics and introductory knowledge of quantum physics also qualified this idea, and I was able to observe it without a bias of skepticism. Having directly experienced the vibrations myself, I also started viewing external reality differently. I had a new perspective on the trees I observed on my post-meal walks. I saw how everything is connected. Even between the tree and me, the empty space is filled with air atoms. Some of them touch my skin, which I feel, and some of them touch the trunk of the tree. Everything is one, just resonating at different frequencies.
By the fifth day, as this sense got stronger. I acquired yet another sense organ: the ear of the mind. For some time, I had been hearing a faint, high-pitched sound, like the one you would hear in the background if you switch on an old-school CRT television, or the sound of the rail tracks when a high-speed train is approaching from kilometers away. But this one was at an exponentially higher frequency. My ears couldn't hear it, since they are limited to the upper limit of 20,000 Hz. This sound, however, not constrained by the mechanical limitations of the sense doors, rings directly in the mind.
As a scientifically curious individual, I needed to do some hypothesis testing. I began by closing my ears with my fingers, and still heard it. Then I moved away from all electronic devices, and still heard it. Then I observed at different times of the day. I still heard it. The only time it went away was when I distracted myself. It was like the sound unique to every tuning fork - but in this case, I was the tuning fork. This is what it means to be "wired."
The "sound of silence" had revealed itself to me. At the beginning, this was faint, and easily went away with urban noise and disturbance. It was hard to retain this when I went for walks, when the construction drill was being used, when the church bells rang, and especially when the nearby tram tracks made their high pitched noise (this is the closest frequency to the sound of silence that I've heard from the external world, but it's still exponentially lower). I realized that the higher the external frequency, the easier for me to lose this sense. Then I started training my mind during walks, to be aware of this sound from a meditation session, and go out with this state of awareness, trying not to be distracted by external stimuli. Every time it faded away, I would pause, stand still, practice Anāpānā for a couple of minutes, and get it back. I would sit on a bench in the park and try to keep my mental ears on this sound from within, and to ignore the noise from outside. It is the sound of silence within me, inner silence, not the sound of silence around me. The practice of Vipassana got a whole lot easier with this new sense organ. Keeping focus was much easier. Acknowledging the loss of focus was much easier. And I quite like this sound, so I preferred to stay focused as long as possible. As they say, you either use it or lose it. The vibes were always there. I just wasn't listening.
The discourse repeatedly mentioned that the sixth day is extremely hard. It's when most people doubt themselves, want to leave the practice, and break the vow of silence. I was not sure this would apply to me since I had managed to overpower my bodily pains, feel minute sensations, and hear the cosmic sound of existence within me. However, as an example of the limitations of urban meditation, since I was living at home (with cooperative housemates who were informed that my protocol was to be overridden only in exceptional cases), I was informed through a written note that my beloved dog, my best friend who I raised as a puppy in my family home in Agra, India, had passed away. I was quite devastated to lose my friend, and sad that I wasn't there for my family in tough times. I imagined the pain and sorrow my parents and little sister must be going through, who would have to cremate him and live in the space with his memories. I almost broke my vow of silence, but I didn't.
I started observing my respiration, how my breath got shorter and more erratic - that is the breathing pattern of grief, of heartbreak. Well, objectively I knew this. I managed to pull myself back into the here and now, where I was breathing, where my inner bell was ringing. But every now and then I would be transported to past memories of me and the goldador, and a decade of brotherly mischief and love. Then I was transported to the theory of the guided meditation, where it is repeated: "Be perfectly equanimous. Don't cling to pleasure, don't be averse to displeasure. Be perfectly equanimous." This is where my principle of nonattachment was put to an extreme test. This is where my attitude of gratitude was tested. I sent a written note back home (through my housemate who sent a photo of the note via WhatsApp to them since my phone and I were off the grid):
Nothing is permanent. So, don't be sad that he is no more. Be grateful that we were fortunate to experience his pure existence, if only for a brief moment. The Universe manifested itself in the form of this beautiful soul to experience itself in the purest form.
By consoling them, I really consoled myself. Since my family knew the tough path I was on, I assumed they would find strength in my silence, and so I continued with the rest of my days, making peace with my loss. Nothing is permanent, except love, which will be there forever.
The remaining days flew by like a breeze. Since I was experiencing reality at such a quantum level, time was of no essence. Each meditation session felt like a single moment to me, whether it was one hour long or three. I was also perfectly in sync with the sun and the stars, having observed their movements so closely at my 4 a.m. wake up, my post-breakfast walk, and the tea break in the evening. I had also dealt with a major loss with perfect equanimity, and I believe the Self was quite proud of what the self had achieved. I increased the time I spent outdoors while in meditation, trying to hone the new senses I had discovered and developed, and to keep my state of awareness even when surrounded by noise, wind, drizzle, cold, anything. The sound of silence in me got louder and louder, and each sitting of Vipassana felt shorter and shorter.
I planned to break my silence to the sun on the last day. Having realized the Oneness of existence, I was eager to speak my first words to the ultimate source of energy of my life, of my consciousness, Surya, or "Sun." I did my morning meditation, ate a light breakfast, and then started jogging to Humboldthain Park in Berlin, a spot with anti-missile bunkers from the World War II era, the highest vantage points in this part of the metropolitan area. I would be the first person in the city to be kissed by the sun that morning - I didn't hope, I just knew. As I was jogging to the park, I saw the sky getting brighter and felt a sense of urgency to not miss the first glimpse of the sun. And so, after sitting in peaceful silence for over 10 days, I ran. With a perfectly detoxed body, a mind immune to the feeling of fatigue, and the sound of silence ringing in the peace of the predawn morning, I ran. I ran faster than I ever have in my life. I didn't perfectly time myself, but I likely ran a 5k in 16 minutes. Reaching the top of the bunker, I realized I still had some minutes, so I sat and did another round of Vipassana. As the sun rose over the Horizon, I hummed "Om" and thus broke my silence of 11 days.
"I (Infinite Existence) is Vishesh-ing (taking limited form of the mind/body of Vishesh)."
Wisdom and philosophical discourse (Yoga)
Yoga isn't a sport, it's a way of life and of perception. It's a way to find unity, to witness The One in all the separate parts of existence. Using Vipassana as a medium of experience, I have gotten closer to the true understanding of the word "Yoga" (the "a" is silent).
"The One" is Existence itself, or "Satt" in Sanskrit. It's everything that "is." Instead of saying "Vishesh is Existing," it's more accurate to say "Existence is Vishesh-ing," for I am just one form that existence takes, a temporary manifestation of the infinite being (Ananta). To see ourselves as limited beings, separated from each other in karma and yoga, is the root of our biased perception of reality.
Imagine two friends, both wearing colored glasses but unaware that they're wearing them. They view a white wall. One says the wall is yellow, the other says it's blue. They each think the other is wrong and foolish, but neither of them can see that the wall is actually white. Similarly, "good" and "bad" are just interpretations from each vantage point in spacetime. The same phenomenon can be good for me but bad for you. Or something could be good for me today, but bad for me tomorrow.
We mostly perceive reality on an apparent level. Historically, this has worked well, throughout the process of evolution. Our reptilian brain created mental models of the world based on the past that it used to form conclusions and predictions for the future. However, as we zoom in further on the true nature of our perception, and the "human experience" we seem to be having in this life, we are made aware of the various independent steps of this experience - these are introduced through the Vipassana discourses, and experienced first hand through the days of meditation. This is the core perceptual process in a nutshell:
Each step of perception takes more energy than the last, which creates bias and knots of karma. To Cognize is to have a certain stimulus enter our consciousness through one of the sense doors - Ears, Eyes, Nose, Skin, Mouth, Mind. While the first five are a gateway to external stimulus in the present only, the Mind gives stimulus of thoughts of past and future as well. Dreams and nightmares, all included. Thus, just the non-judging observation of the objective fact of an event - a happening of something in space and time, this is cognition. We humans have incredible, limitless sense doors, but use very little of them. With all the distractions of attachment, greed, lust, ignorance, we tend to spend less energy on this part and more on the latter ones.
To Recognize is to acknowledge the stimulus as good/bad, usually based on how the mind and body react to it and their sensitivity. A change in the breathing rhythm makes one experience this unbinding phenomenon for oneself.
To Feel is actually the step to incite clinging or aversion to a stimulus that has been recognized. A temporary knee pain may give rise to a permanent subconscious feeling of aversion to a certain posture. However, not all pains are averse, and not all pleasures attractive. This bit is strengthened with the habit of instant gratification, changing your posture because of a slight pain in the knee. With instant gratification, we tend to forget the concept of transience and want to cling more and more.
To React is when we take action, in form of physical or mental action. A fight or flight response for aversive feelings, and craving feeling for pleasurable feelings. This is where the seed of Karma is sown, that binds us to the future, for all actions have consequences.
Due to our ego, our desires to cling, our attachments, our Aham, we continue to perceive in this inversely biased way where we react to reality rather than accept its true nature of transience. We react too much and too soon. Thus, we sow seeds of Karma that we eventually have to reap. Rather than try to hold on, we should appreciate the moment for what it is, impermanent yet marvelous, and let it pass. Rather than brood over losses, we must find strength in the learnings they give, and the green pastures that shall be. My silence demonstrated how many conflicts resolved themselves without my involvement in them, and that we only have the illusion of control.
Each step of the perceptual process moves outward from the deep consciousness to the outer brain involved with muscle memory, well-conditioned rather than truly experiencing each moment for what it is. "Good" and "bad" are just interpretations from each vantage point in spacetime. The same phenomenon can be good for me and bad for you in a current time, or good for me today, but bad tomorrow. Through enhanced focus on self-presence, and heightened awareness of one's own being, the energy is redistributed through the process. Vipassana helped me to experience this firsthand, to realize that a state of mind like this can exist, so that I can benchmark future perceptual behaviors against it.
With increased cognition, we are able to see things as they truly are, with all senses integrated, looking at the complete picture, accepting the inherent nature of things, and fully aware of the biases of one's own self and the limitations of others. Acknowledging the tricky nature of the mind that needs to be tamed, and hence observing without judgment. Everything that follows - recognizing, feeling, and reacting - becomes less important. Each reaction creates bubbles in the water, but for Nirvana, the goal is to have a calm and still body of water, in which we can see a mirror of reality without the distortion of illusions and biases. The goal of meditation is to master the sense of cognition, to see things as they truly are, and act on them with perfect equanimity and stoicism. The path to a liberated perception is to accept the transient nature of life and physical phenomenon and live as pure energy, ether that exists inside a glob of molecules we call our body.
Earlier I described the process of Vipassana, but I want to revisit the steps more closely to study how they get us closer to liberation from suffering.
Respiration is the one truth about our own existence. To observe the air moving in and out, through the left and/or right nostril, feeling the sensations on the upper lip as it interacts with the air. Simply observing this can help us get to the objective truth of how external stimuli and thoughts from the mind are influencing what is happening in our bodies. This is helpful for dealing with strong emotions. Rather than focusing on an external object that's causing an emotion like anger or sorrow, we can look at the breath and simply acknowledge that we are feeling a certain emotion. This helps us to live in the true present and avoid jumping to the reaction stage. It also demonstrates the highly knotted interaction of mind and matter - how thoughts affect physical reality, and vice versa. To watch the breath is to cognize our feelings and emotions, rather than to react to them. Thus we can master the mind, not be slaves to its reactions.
Sensation is the apparent level of reality that most of us live in for most of our lives. To classify things as good or bad, pain and pleasure. Consequently, we generate feelings of clinging or aversion to each phenomenon. While the true nature of reality is impermanence (Anichyā), we cling to (or avoid) sensations due to the ruse that it will last forever. This is the root cause of suffering, the ignorance of impermanence. Either we want more and more and more, in the bottomless pit of wants. Or we want to avoid, avoid, avoid.
Vibration is the true reality of the universe, the fundamental level of existence of all matter and energy. This idea experientially paraphrases the true meaning of E=mc2, that matter is a manifestation of energy, wavelets at a certain frequency (the 'c' constant is essentially a proxy for the time dimension, since waveforms can only exist through multiple units of time, or rather, are the building blocks of time itself). The same is true for our personal existence. Through meditation and the enhanced sensory faculties, we can feel our existence at the subatomic level, to experience that we are just made up of atoms, of energy vibrating at the same frequency. While modern science came to this conclusion a few centuries ago, the Sanskrit concept of Kalapa, the smallest units of matter said to be "about 1/46,656th the size of a particle of dust from a wheel of a chariot" has existed for millennia.
"I (Infinite Existence) is Vishesh-ing (taking limited form of the mind/body of Vishesh)"
When we experience our body as a mass of vibrations, we realize how every moment is truly a new manifestation - surely influenced by the past, but a new season in itself. Through meditation, we can overcome karmic inertia to realize the freshness of every moment, full of possibilities. This paves way for a strengthened sense of equanimity, a stoic way of life. This experience makes us realize the following statement as true: "I (Infinite Existence) is Vishesh-ing (taking limited form of the mind/body of Vishesh)"
The "sound of silence" I mentioned before makes more sense now. That is the sound of existence in the form of me. The one frequency that all "my" atoms are resonating at, choosing to stay together when they could disperse at any point. There are multiple reasons that I wasn't so aware of my sound of existence before. First, the noise of the chaos outside keeps bringing in constant stimulus, so the mind is not focused on its own being. Second, the internal chattering thoughts of the mind were like wild horses, causing my focus to drift. Lastly, constant interaction and reaction to the world outside would create new karmic knots in the mind hence taking focus away from the present reality of pure existence. The practice of Vipassana helps overcome all three of these challenges - to develop the faculty of listening to the sound of my own awareness, by my own awareness.
No Vipassana is complete without the three main Buddhist tenets of Sila, Samādhi, and Panya, which together make up the eightfold path. Silä is purity and morality. The five precepts are:
- Prohibition of Killing
- Prohibition of Falsehood (verbal or physical)
- Prohibition of Intoxication
- Prohibition of Adultery
- Prohibition of Theft
The 10 days of Vipassana require strict adherence to this, but it should also be adopted as a way of life, for a transformed humanity. The basic idea is that if you stop doing unwholesome activities, everything that's left is wholesome.
Samadhi is the concept of mastery over one's mind, as if we are taming a wild horse so that we can ride it on the path of liberation, of a complete life filled with eternal bliss. Discipline is inculcated by long hours of meditation, limited food intake, ignoring cravings and aversions, and existing in equanimity, not giving in to the whims of the mind.
Panya is the tenet of wisdom, to realize our oneness with all reality, and its transience, to perceive reality for what it really is, and to act with true and wholesome intent. It is not our actions themselves that matter. What matters more is the "Why," the intent behind them, the driving force. Actions must not be driven by craving or aversion, but by love, compassion, servitude. Perception must be observant, nonjudgmental, nonattached. One must aim to purify and liberate one's own mind through the practice of Vipassana.
In the battlefield of reality, the body is the chariot, the mind is the horse. The Self is the rider.
From my personal experience, without attempting to taint the pure, secular practice of Vipassana to a specific religion or community - it is truly the wisdom of the Gita in practice. I have read a lot of versions, interpretations, and translations of the Gita in the past, and understood it at an intellectual level. But through this practice, I have experienced the Truth firsthand, and made it my own.
"The journey from asatya to satya is a very exciting journey if only you realize that there is a journey. Otherwise, you come with your eyes closed and you will go away with your eyes closed."
— Krishna Yogeshvara