Vipassana Meditation Retreat: 10 days of silence

Hello my name is Zack and I am addicted to craving. I read addictive, page-turning books, follow the occasional addictive TV series and obsess about food and sex. When the weather is hot I want it cold and when it is cold I want it hot. I hate mosquito bites, waiting for buses, being hungry and the last 5 minutes of an exercise routine. I eat when I am bored. I just want the suffering to end.  I can rarely enjoy something nice, like a sunset, without craving something that would make it nicer, like a beer. Sometimes, even when I am satisfying a long-anticipated craving, I am already thinking about the next thing to crave. I am obsessed with the past and future and spend little time truly in the present. If you don't think these things apply to you, try sitting still and quiet for an hour. Even a minute.

So how does one overcome this addiction? The options available are the same as for breaking any addiction.  You can gradually wean oneself off little by little, or you can quite cold turkey. I opted for the latter. I recently participated in a 10-day residential meditation course in Nicaragua. The Nunnery used for the course was set in beautiful gardens, surrounded by cloud forest. The only distraction I would encounter from the outside world in those 10 days would be the resident howler monkeys demonstrating their namesake ability each dawn and dusk. The group of 60 or so students were a mix of travellers and locals, old and young. For most of us it was the first time, but some were returning for a second or even tenth time. One guy was a recovering cocaine addict. Most were just hippies. Vipassana meditation is not a religion, and people of various faiths attended, as well as many atheists. 

When we arrived we handed over our contra ban items to be locked away. For the duration of the course we were to abstain from as many things conducive to craving as possible. We were to give up talking, non-verbal communication, physical contact, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, reading, writing and music. The two genders were separated and where possible divided by screens. Even the mere comfort of eye contact was denied to us. They could not quite deny us the pleasures of food and sleep, but they sure tried. Food was confined to two small meals a day consisting of plain, unspiced vegetarian food without added salt, sugar or oil. Dinner was a small banana. As to sleep, the last refuge, I got 6 1/2 hours to lie down on my thin mattress on the hard floor. We also received a copy of the daily schedule: 10 hours of meditation per day every day. We had lost more freedoms than most prisoners in the world, and we had done so voluntarily. At the last moment, after the silence had begun, I was moved to another room and therefore did not know the names or nationalities of the two guys I would be sharing with for the following days. The stage was set. It was going to be a difficult 10 days as we faced our addiction.

The basic premise of this meditation technique, common with Buddhism and Hinduism, is that most suffering is the product of our own cravings and so is purely mental. It is rooted in a deep-seated tendency of mind that wants things to be different from what they are. The technique is to observe the bodily sensations and practice reacting to them with equanimity and objective detachment; with neither revulsion nor attraction. To do this you need immense amounts of patience and concentration. Thus we started by developing our concentration. On the first day, for all 10 hours, we observed the breath: watching the air come in and out of our lungs. On the second day we narrowed the area of attention down to the nose and nasal passage. On the third day, again for 10 hours, we narrowed our attention down to the small area between the nose and the upper lip. By then I could notice all sorts of subtle sensations concerning the workings of the body that I had not previously been aware of. We were then instructed in the specific Vipassana meditation technique and for the remaining week, day in day out, we observed the sensations of the entire body.

At 4:00AM, like every morning, I was woken by the morning bell to go meditate on the sensations of the body for two hours. But I already knew what the body felt: tired and hungry. I had only been lying on my thin mattress on the floor for 6:30 hours and had not eaten a proper meal in 17 hours. Then, on one such day, a new rule called 'Sittings of Firm Determination' was added. For a minimum of three designated hour-long sessions we were to sit without moving. When kneeling or sitting cross-legged on the floor, this becomes very uncomfortable very fast. In your private bubble of closed-eye silence, it was pure, unequivocal, agony. But with it comes a constant opportunity to practice non-identification with cravings - in this case the craving for the agony to relent.

Half way through the course we were a comical bunch to behold. We would hobble out of the meditation hall with stiff joints and walk to the furthest limits of the campus, delineated by a thin yellow string tied between trees. Lining up along this invisible force-field, we looked like a group of liberated Holocaust survivors that didn't know what do with their newly found freedom. But we were also looking around like people tripping on psychedelics: people were following ant trails, finding bugs on the ground, flowers or just looking out onto the jungle that surrounded us. I saw one old man stand perfectly still and grin with child-like delight when a butterfly had landed on his shoulder. With heightened awareness and an almost complete lack of visual stimuli, everything seemed so vivid and vibrant.
I was making progress day by day. I was managing the discomfort better and becoming more and more aware of my thoughts and more disconnected with my cravings. Indeed, it was only by non-identification with my cravings that I could survive through those hours without moving. Whenever my concentration lapsed and I thought about how much longer must be left to hold the position, or how much longer my grumbling stomach had to wait until its next meal, my agony would spike to nearly unbearable levels. I was forced to detach from my cravings as the only way to survive. However, I was still not getting happier, just less miserable. 

Most participants make some breakthrough, usually coming immediately after their lowest point. For some it happens on day 5, for some day 10. For me it happened on day seven. I was envious and resentful of one roommate and annoyed and resentful of the other. The first was a handsome young man with long blond hair who could sit for hours without moving, apparently without the slightest trace of suffering while I was in a world of pain. The other was constantly fidgeting and irritating me as he would go to the toilet sometimes more than once an hour, just to break the monotony. He would also shower thoroughly, working a thick lather through his body, shave, clean his ears with Q-tips and trim his toenails almost every day. Then all of a sudden, during one particularly difficult meditation session, it just shifted. I felt inspired by the good meditator and compassionate for the suffering of the other. I was excited about making the most of my remaining days and even started feeling, well... good.

I don't know what happened, but I cannot help but make comparisons with overcoming other addictions. After going through the withdrawal of a week without almost any endorphin hits, the body adjusts to this new state of equilibrium. Just like overcoming heroin withdrawal, eventually the body starts producing the endorphins again, but now without the presence of the previous trigger. For the heroin addict he no longer needs heroin to feel good. For me I no longer needed food when I was bored, no longer needed to talk if I had nothing to say and no longer needed a beer to accompany the already beautiful sunset. I was already content.

It was hard to compare progress when we could not speak, but I felt that it was getting better for everyone. On the eighth night, when we were listening to a recorded talk by a past master, the closest thing we had to entertainment each day, the power went out. The stereo turned off and the lights went black. For any other group this would have been a drama, but not for us. Without any apparent signs of even noticing, we calmly sat in silence in the pitch dark until the power came back on. We then continued as if nothing had happened.

So it was, in essence, 10 days of practicing how to suffer well; how to react to sensations of craving with equanimity and objective detachment. By the end you are no longer resisting the craving, but rather observing it passively. The automatic connection between a craving existing and the need to act on it had been broken. I looked forward to meditating (although never at 4:00 AM) and even papaya, the blandest of fruits, seemed sweet and full of flavour. It was a full-on detox - body, mind and soul.

I am still addicted to craving, and I always will be. It's fun to crave every now and then, and chocolate is still better than papaya. But now I have the tools to establish a more healthy, sustainable and satisfying balance. The road will be long and will require constant vigilance and hard work. But I am so glad I have taken these first steps. Those of us who survived to the end of the course were now privy to the greatest secret to happiness: As soon as you truly stop searching for happiness, it will find you.

Vipassana courses are available on a donations only basis all around the world. http://www.dhamma.org/

A flower that I looked at every day during the course

Daily Schedule 
4:00 Wake Up Call
4:30-6:30 Meditation
6:30-8:00 Breakfast and Rest
8:00-9:00 Full Group Meditation
9:00-11:00 Meditation
11:00-12:00 Lunch
12:00-1:00 Rest and Meetings with the Professor
1:00-2:30 Meditation
2:30-3:30 Full Group Meditation
3:30-5:00 Meditation
5:00-6:00 Tea (one small banana) and Rest
6:00-7:00 Full Group Meditation
7:00-8:15 Lecture
8:15-9:00 Full Group Meditation
9:00-9:30 Question time with the Professor
9:30 Lights Out