My 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat

What I experienced and learned

I completed a 10-day silent meditation retreat. This is in the Goenka tradition, where there are 10 suggested hours of meditation a day, women and men are segregated, you can’t kill bugs, the meals are vegetarian, you only get fruit for dinner, you can’t read or write, and so forth. An incredibly strict program. But they can get away with it, because it’s completely free. They don’t charge you a cent at any point, but they do suggest you make a donation at the end to pay it forward.

It felt like rehab — or like I imagine rehab might feel.

It was strange being in close quarters with people but not talking to them for 9 days. (On the 10th day, you could talk.) I didn’t mind not having the ability to write at first, but by day 7 I was longing for a pen. I cheated and brought in protein bars, because I wanted to make sure I got adequate protein, but I had to quickly scarf them down in my room before going to the dining hall.

The campus was beautiful: a few buildings in the rural Georgia woods, a small pond with lotus flowers, some minimal gardens here and there. Very peaceful, and we had perfect weather. It was nice to get away from everything and not have to worry about travel, food, or anything else.

Just whether I could survive 4-6 mandatory hours of meditation a day.

This is the only picture I took, driving up to the place

The schedule

The meditation part was incredibly difficult. Below, you can see a sample of our schedule.

Sometimes, the green meditations were also red-mandatory for parts/all of the time slot, depending on the day.

As I said, the men and women were segregated. Different sleeping areas, different dining halls, and different sections in the main meditation hall. I really enjoyed the segregation and wish more aspects of my life were segregated, although I understand why that isn’t the case (and why my life would probably be worse if it were).

There was some interesting gendered behavior. On the evening of day 10, after the 6-7pm meditation, we were told to take a 5-minute break and reconvene in the hall. This is what we’d be doing all week; same schedule. So, the women promptly did this. We were all sitting in the hall, waiting for the discourse. However, the men were 95% absent on their side. Just empty mats, everywhere.

What was going on? Well, they were all outside talking! The teacher had to send someone outside to ring the gong to get their attention. The woman seated next to me, Juliana, turned and joked to me, “And they say women like to talk,” and we had a good laugh about that.

For 9 days, Juliana was just the unnamed soul at my side for every sitting.

I was fortunate to have 2 very quiet sitting partners on each side of me. Nichole was on the other side of me, and she lives in Atlanta about 30 minutes away from me.

This is a little scatterbrained, but it’s tricky to capture everything. Each organization structure I imagine has its faults. And of course I won’t capture everything, but I’d like to do some justice to the complexity.

Play-by-play

I’ll try to talk about each day individually, and let’s see what comes of that.

• Day 1: My prevailing thought here was, “Holy shit, this is hard. Can I even do this?” I didn’t know if it was physically possible for me to sit that long, since I’d never done it before. When you sit for so long, your back aches. When you don’t have any distractions, the pain consumes your attention. A level 3 pain may feel like a level 7 after 45 minutes on the mat. Also, during day 1, I was learning the schedule. It was a LONG day.

• Day 2: I had the reassurance that I could sit for that many hours, but now I had to see if I could keep it up each day.

• Day 3: Each progressive day, I felt a little better. On day 3, I wondered, “Am I having a good day? Is this what people mean when, during their YouTube testimonials, they described ‘good days’?” It felt like a half-good day. I don’t remember much detail from it, but I was settling into the cadence of the retreat and already starting to have insights that made it feel worth it.

• Day 4: They sprung an extra 2 hours of meditation on us this day, during when I’d normally take a break. They left the instructions sitting in front of the oatmeal pot at breakfast. Because you can’t talk to anyone, if you misread directions or misunderstand, there’s no way to get clarity later or even realize you’re incorrect. So, after 1 hour of sitting, we had a 5-minute break and were told we were going to do a 2-hour formal sit immediately following. I had a panic attack during this 2-hour sit, and I had to talk myself through it. On this day, we started “strong determination,” which means you weren’t supposed to change posture at all. You could, but you weren’t supposed to, so I was resolved to do my best. After 1.5 hours of this second sitting (2.5 hours total), I gave up and stretched out my back. I was angry at myself that I’d been beaten by it. It was not a fun day.

• Day 5: Each evening, there was a recording of Goenka talking through the method. On the evening of day 5, he dropped a lot of Buddhist “theology” on us. He discussed the reincarnation cycle and how the Vipassana method could be used to break the cycle of misery continuing from lifetime to lifetime. I’ve heard people say this talk is a real bummer because Goenka talks a lot about misery, but I don’t think that’s why at all. We already accept we’re miserable, on day 5. Instead, it’s a real bummer that you’ve spent 5 days working so hard only to learn that the man in charge has some faith/belief about the reason you do this, which he hid until this moment, and which you don’t share! So you’re left to wonder, “Well, why am I doing this?” Evidentally many people quit the course on day 6, and I think this is why. I had to make up my own reason for doing it, which is this: I think developing a mindset of equinimity and developing resilience to aversion/craving is valuable. Goenka continued to reference this “theology” for the last 5 days, but I ignored it.

• Day 6: I was incredibly bored this day, probably my first easy day. I realized that I’d have to push through boredom in order to complete the course, and I wanted to complete it. I decided that days 6-9 would be the hardest, because we could talk on day 10 and that would break the monotony up. So I counted down each of these days, 1, 2, 3, 4. Basically, I accepted my boredom and refused to let it dictate how I followed-through with my goal, which is an important mindset throughout life. (How much of me getting my eating/diet under control is exactly this struggle? A lot of it.) “Boredom” is also a nebulous concept, and if you break it down, it can be different things… and usually just some form of aversion/craving. Sometimes I was “bored” when I was actually tired of sitting with pain. Sometimes I was “bored” because I actually craved a pleasurable experience. So it helps, with boredom, to dissect it and call a spade a spade.

• Days 7-8: I looked forward to the meals, which were almost always delicious, and my naps and walks in the woods. I didn’t let myself think, “Will I finish this course?” and instead told myself, “This is my life now,” and made the best of it.

• Day 9: On this day, I learned the true meaning of boredom! Things became incredibly tedious. I stopped meditating competely. I went to the mandatory sittings, but I planned other things to occupy my mind. I thought through a novel idea I’d had, through issues in my life, and so forth. Sometimes I remembered pop songs and “listened” to them in my mind. Also, I wanted to tear my hair out with how repetitive Goenka was being at this point. I had to make a game of predicting what he’d say next, as he repeated himself 5-6 times, sometimes. He wasn’t only talking during the evening discourse, but he’d preface some of our sittings with instructions. I swear, you could have put him on 4x speed, and also thrown everything he was saying into ChatGPT to cut out all the repetition, and read it in 20 seconds and had full comprehesion. He also chanted. I knew about that going in, so I didn’t let myself be frustrated by it, but… I will not miss the chanting.

  Also they sprung 2 additional 1-hour meditations on us this day. I also told myself, “You have no control here. Expect them to take your time. Expect them to not care whether or not you’re miserable.” I think my experiences in childhood granted me resilience here.

• Day 10: I continued to not meditate and instead thought about other things. This is the day we were finally allowed to talk to each other. This was a huge relief. A weigh lifted from my mind. I felt saner. The day passed quickly after the talking was allowed.

• Day 11: We were told the day ended at 6:30am, but surprise! They added 2 hours of mandatory meditation/discourse starting at 4:30am that morning. And, they asked us to stay and clean, which took about 2 additional hours. I didn’t drive away until 9:00am. But at least I was free.

Why it was worth it

I’m really selling the misery of this experience, but I’m glad I did it. I had some massive insights into myself, things that will prove immensely valuable for as long as I live. Here’s a few of them:

• I figured out that my back muscles are shot. Until this week, I’d been too busy to slow down and investigate this, including the nerve pain I was feeling whenever I tried to sleep on my left side. I just assumed I was getting old, or I needed new pillows (and I’ve spent about $250 on pillows in the last year). With my free time, I spent about 15-20 hours massaging my back with a lacrosse ball, and now the nerve pain is gone when I sleep on my side. It’s also more natural to stand up straight; my shoulders hang properly. I know you may be thinking, “This is a small thing,” but sorry, no. It’s been 2 years and I never figured it out, and my sleep was taking a huge hit. Who knows how long or how much this situation might have deteriorated before I had a clue.

• With the meditation, I was able to observe my anger before/after. I clearly noticed the chemical certainty that came after I had a surge of anger. Because there were no distractions, I had two strong senses of my mental states (the before/after) to compare with each other, to understand what was going on. This will help me, in the future, to doubt whatever resolutions come out of my anger, and to avoid making a situation worse with my unfounded certainty.

• I was able to talk myself through a panic attack. Now I know I can do that.

• In the downtime, I was able to see my “daddy issues” clearly: namely, the way I am numb to men treating me badly in the shortterm, though it eeks at my soul in the longterm. There’s some theories about daddy issues out there that never resonated with me, but using my own experience, I was able to come up with a theory I like and understand. Maybe one day I’ll write about it in more detail. Just looking at the effect now, it’s a lot easier for me to accept that — no actually, he doesn’t really give a shit about you, that’s why he’s treating you that way. Unlike your father, there’s no reality where he actually does care deep down. And to let that go — because you don’t get to be liked by everyone. And to give your time to the people who actually do treat you well.

• I came up with solid ideas for 2 writing projects. One of them is a novel I was able to flesh out the bones of.

• I though through many small, future life things — family, career, health, etc — various conundrums, probably 6-7 different things. For instance, I came up with a mindset with which to approach my career, which feels more peaceful, sustainable and true.

• I loved giving up my cellphone, and experienced the value of not having a distraction at hand in any given second. I’m looking into the Light Phone at the moment. I’ll keep my smart phone for travel and for some dedicated tasks around the apartment, though.

• With meditation, I learned how to manage the sensations of pain better. I observed how I often run to pleasure to escape painful things.

• As I said earlier, I observed how I use “I’m bored” to rationalize giving up on my goals. I know now to dissect what that actually means.

• As I was thinking of my writing ideas, I caught myself in this pattern of thought where I’d like something and then 5 minutes later think, “Well, I’m sure my instincts are totally wrong and it’s actually bad somehow.” I saw how much I gaslight myself. I know that shows up when I write a lot, and I’m sure it shows up in other areas too. In the last few years, I’ve been building up my artistic confidence, and this is just further progress towards that goal.

The silence & disliking people

I’ve heard it said that 70% - 93% of all communication is nonverbal. During the 9 silent days, I noticed there were 2 women I had a strong negative reaction towards. To put it plainly, I didn’t like them. However, I wasn’t sure the basis of this judgement, so I was laughing at myself as I was thinking it. I kept trying to analyze what was going on.

I’m not going to go into much detail here, since I’d be horrified if they ever saw this post. It wasn’t intentional, and I don’t think my judgment should matter that much here. It was more interesting just to observe it happen. If I were in the normal world, would I be as aware that this was happening? Probably what I’d do is gaslight myself and say, “You’re crazy, you should like these people.” But in a situation where we haven’t even talked, and I feel so strongly about it, I didn’t even attempt to try to reform my perspective. I let it be.

It was a good lesson to me, because I don’t think I’m unique. Sometimes people will just get a sense from you, based on nonverbals and their subconscious, and they just won’t like you. And there’s nothing you can really do to change that. They’ll use your verbals to justify their position (which is what I did on day 10, when we were talking), but really the judgment is based on something larger than that.

It’s an important lesson for me because, in the past, I have fought for certain people to like me. I’ve seen people disliking me as a challenge.

Miscellaneous

It was nice to finally talk to people. There were mysteries throughout the week I wanted to solve, like, who pounded on the wall on days 8 and 9? I was able to track that person down and laugh about how alarming that loud knock was amid the silence. (She was knocking at the course manager’s door, which makes sense, but I thought it was someone knocking on a wall.)

Although I was turned off by Goenka himself, everyone who worked the retreat was incredibly nice, supportive and chill. One of the servers even went out and purchased my allergy medicine for me because I hadn’t brought enough and left it at my door. So amazing! (Oh, you’re allowed to talk to the teacher or course manager about things; it isn’t complete silence. You just can’t speak to the other students.) So, you feel the love from everyone.

It wasn’t that hard to be silent. It was hardest in the dining hall, because when you’re trying to get your food in a confined space, “Excuse me” has so much utility. But we muddled through. Also, the silence was always weird out on the walking trails. You’d pass a student… in total silence. There’s something unnatural about that.

We weren’t supposed to kill bugs, so I had some exciting experiences relocating spiders out of my room using a yogurt cannistor and a piece of cardboard.

On day 10, after we started talking, everything was so funny. We were all high with relief. A modest joke would have the room rolling.

After I left

I could feel how addicting the phone felt. The touch/scroll thing is mesmerizing to the mind. Soothing. Yikes.

Initially, I drove for 1 hour in silence, just processing everything. Eventually I thought, “I guess I should listen to some music, since that’s what I’ve been really wanting to do.” When I was bored in my room, I’d quietly sing songs to myself.

My first song choice was “The Ascent of Stan,” and my God… that experience. I heard that song differently than I normally did. The haunting piano melody. Then when the chorus kicks in, with that pounding beat. Beautiful.

This song is newly special to me.

I’m seeing Ben Folds in concert next month!

Going forward

I plan to keep on meditating. I’ve been doing 20-30 minutes in the evenings and mornings, each. We’ll see how that goes.