Blog #4: Vipassana in Delaware

The spiritual scene can be a disorienting landscape for newcomers to navigate. On one end of the spectrum there are countless books that serve as uplifting reads, but which alone cannot give results – aside from giving you the confidence to share spiritual platitudes on social media. On the other end there are notions that enlightenment is only possible for the few who give up everything to achieve it, the ones who literally wander through forests and deserts for decades, or the chosen few who are allowed to touch the feet of X or Y supreme guru. Fortunately, for all newcomers and adepts there is a middle way, and from way experience, the skill to sit with yourself in meditation is the doorway to tangible inner change.

It was the summer I turned 20 when I drove through the front gates of the Dharma Delaware Vipassana center, asking myself if I was fully prepared for a twelve day silent retreat. There was no glamor to the location: a fenced off 4-5 acre park in the suburbs filled with a half dozen gender segregated barracks, a dining center, and a humble meditation hall. The generosity of this organization still amazes me. After you sign up online you can show up, check in, and live for over a week with good meals and shelter without a single cent paid. The teachers, cooks, and staff are all volunteers who seek nothing more than to give back, and they ask nothing more than ‘whatever donation you can give’ at the end.

After two hours of formal briefing everyone is ordered to the meditation hall, where all sit and take the vow of silence that’s held for almost the entire stay. Although Vipassana doesn’t ally itself with any religious dogma, it takes deep inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, and so asks each person to put their trust into the Buddha, the example of enlightenment in man; the Dharma, the universal path to enlightenment; and the Sangha, the community of people seeking enlightenment. Everyone is also asked to commit to sila (moral precepts), and restrict themselves from violence, sexual misconduct, and mind altering substances (except for caffeine, naturally); the interpretation of these restrictions is largely left up to the individual. Electronics, books, and journals are forbidden.

The method of meditation taught in Vipassana is deceptively simple. The first three days you are instructed to practice samadhi (concentration), where you sit and focus all mental energy on the air coming in and out your nostrils. Once that method is worked into you, the teaching moves on to practicing pujna (wisdom), which can be thought of as the truth within one’s body; it’s a method where you continuously move your awareness through all the sections of your nervous system, simply noticing the ever-changing phenomena of sensation and thought...

To say this is easier said than done is an insult to all luminous beings. The best analogies I have for a Vipassana retreat is that it’s like doing time in prison you sign up for, or bootcamp for a war you can't see with your eyes. Two days in and I was mapping out my escape; my bunkmate, unable to settle, dipped out the day after. It’s an ironic psychological situation, as you are the one who decides to be there, and yet you’re so restricted from the things you’ve been grasping at for years that the illusory self (or ego) wants to get the hell out, and fast. Of course, with diligence you remember that there is no prison. You can leave whenever you want. The only prison is the one your mind creates for yourself.

No matter how focused your samadhi or how deep your pujna, you will notice changes in your consciousness after five or six days at a retreat. States I recall include: walking around outside like I was the martian from Stranger in a Strange Land; sitting down eyes closed watching a slideshow of medieval imagery (like the Wise Crow) unfold in my mind’s eye, and tearing up at how my knees had always been there for me... and how one day they won’t be. There were excruciating hours when my lower back ached and I struggled with the truth that my old friend and I would likely never be close again. But the most profound moments were the simplest: the hours I laid down, breathed, and looked up to the branches of a titanic maple tree; the moments I allowed my mind to wander into spaces I’d forgotten since I was a child playing alone in the attic: light from the sun sustaining kaleidoscopic forms, the traces of elf like beings skiing through the air, and the company of myself who smiled upon me like a friend from the future.

If you’re interested in Vipassana, or meditation in general, it’s crucial to remember that it’s not about attaining some far out experience. Really, it’s about shedding the notions of what “far out” means, and being in touch with what’s right before your eyes: that which cannot be conceptualized, that which is silent, that which you know is right on in you. 

Also, once the vow of silence is up, talking again has the stimulation of late-70s discotheque cocaine.