Ten Days of Silence - Vipassana

Almost Didn't Make It

Last year, a friend told me he went to a silent meditation retreat where he had to leave on day six when the practice became so intense he nearly got sick. Rather than scaring me off, his experience sparked my curiosity. If meditation could be that powerful, I wanted to experience it myself.

Getting to the retreat wasn't straightforward. I almost didn't make it.

I tried three times: first, I got accepted but graduation got in the way; second, I didn’t get in (waitlists are 3 months long sometimes); third time's the charm, barely. One day before the retreat, I was still waitlisted. The night before, they told me I hadn't made it.

Disappointed but determined, I stayed up late reading about meditation, planning to create my own silent retreat experience the next few days. Then came the morning miracle - a spot opened up. Within hours, I was on my way to Duncan, British Columbia, for what would become ten of the most transformative days of my life.

When I arrived, I was the last person to get there.

The organizers had to squeeze me in - I initially had to share a room with another person because they didn't have enough space. It felt like I had manifested this opportunity somehow, despite all the obstacles. On day 5, few people left and I eventually got my own room. This turned out to be crucial - Vipassana practice requires complete solitude, and you're not even supposed to make eye contact or any non-verbal communication with others.

I want to highlight that I’m not an experienced meditator nor did I practice yoga prior to this.

What I Signed Up For

I arrived nervous and excited, uncertain what I had signed up for. The setting was humble - just a simple residence retrofitted for the course. As I handed over my phone and embraced the rules of noble silence (no speaking, no technology, no reading or writing), I felt a mix of doubt and determination.

Vipassana meditation, as taught today by S.N. Goenka, traces its roots back over 2500 years to Buddha himself. It's a non-sectarian practice - no religious belief required - intended to help you "see things as they really are" through disciplined self-observation.

The course would be simple in outline but challenging in execution. For the first three days, we'd practice Anapana, observing the natural breath to focus and sharpen the mind. With that foundation, we would spend the next days practicing Vipassana - scanning the body for sensations with balanced awareness. According to the tradition, this technique is a path of self-purification: by observing the changing nature of body and mind, you directly experience the universal truths of impermanence, suffering, and the illusion of a permanent self.

One more remarkable aspect of Vipassana that still feels surreal is that the entire program - accommodation, meals, instruction - is offered free of charge, sustained entirely by donations from past students. You cannot donate unless you've completed a 10-day course first. This creates a self-sustaining system where only those who've experienced the technique's value contribute to making it available for others. The tradition has operated this way for decades, ensuring the teaching remains accessible regardless of financial circumstances while maintaining its integrity through the voluntary support of those who've directly benefited from the practice.

The Five Precepts: A Foundation for Practice

Before meditation instruction began, we committed to five ethical guidelines: no killing (including insects), no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no lying, and no intoxicants.

The precepts weren't restrictions but supports. Each eliminated potential sources of mental agitation. Without managing lies, guilt from harmful actions, or clouded thinking from intoxicants, the mind becomes clearer and more stable.

Goenka called this "sila" - moral conduct that supports mental purification alongside Noble Silence. Without this ethical foundation, concentration (samadhi) and wisdom (paññā) remain superficial. Living by these guidelines demonstrated how much mental energy normally goes toward managing ethical compromises. When freed up, that energy (or working memory) becomes available for understanding the nature of impermanence.

Day 0-2: Learning to Watch the Breath

About 30 of us gathered in the meditation hall, men and women on opposite sides. When the initial chanting began, I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?" But the straightforward explanation that followed reassured me - this wasn't about adopting beliefs or rituals, it was about exploring the mind through direct experience.

I want to be explicit here: I will try not to share too many specific details of my personal experiences during these days. Hearing others' experiences can create expectations and comparisons that interfere with your own natural unfolding. Instead, I'll focus on the progression of the technique and some experiences that were felt by most people. Hopefully this can inspire you to form your own experience in Vipassana.

The gong rang at 4:00 AM everyday - a brutal hour that soon became routine. In the pre-dawn darkness, I stumbled to the meditation hall, wrapped in a blanket against the occasional chill. By 4:30, we were instructed to meditate either in our rooms or the main hall. I chose the main hall every morning to stay alert, knowing how easily I might drift back to sleep otherwise.

We started with Anapana meditation - simply observing the natural breath. The instruction was clear: "Observe the bare sensation of breathing," as Goenka's calm voice instructed. Don't control your breathing, just watch it "as it is." Simple, right? Not even close.

Two challenges emerged immediately. First, physical discomfort - my knees and back protested within minutes. Second, my wandering mind - despite my best intentions, thoughts constantly hijacked my attention. I'd suddenly realized minutes had passed while I was lost in memories or plans about work, about what I'd eat after the retreat, about whether I was doing it right. Every few seconds I'd catch my mind off in a daydream, and gently herd it back to the breath only to see it scamper off again.

The first day was absolutely the hardest. Memories kept flooding back - not just recent ones, but old memories I hadn't thought about in years. My mind would jump to the future too, planning and worrying about things that hadn't even happened yet. It felt like my brain was dumping everything it had stored away.

Then came the evening discourse by S.N. Goenka, delivered through video recordings.

No other way to say it but he completely blew my mind. Here was this teacher who seemed to understand exactly what I was experiencing - every struggle, every doubt, every confusion. He explained that mental wandering wasn't something to fight against, but rather the very thing we were learning to observe. This reframing transformed struggle into investigation.

By day two, Goenkas instruction was to refine our focus to a small triangular area beneath the nostrils. This concentrated attention would prepare us for the Vipassana technique to follow. Our goal was to progressively train the mind to focus on subtler sensations.

The mind, I discovered, operates on a perpetual cycle of craving and aversion. Pleasant sensations trigger an immediate desire for more; unpleasant ones spark an impulse to escape. At the slightest twinge of discomfort in my knees, my mind would flare with aversion - an impulse to get rid of the pain, accompanied by anxious thoughts ("What if I injure myself? I can't handle this!"). But when a pleasant sensation came - say a few moments of calm, or the light tingling of breath at my nostrils - the mind would lunge at it with craving ("Ah, this is nice, I want more of that!").

This oscillation happens at micro-levels every second, usually below conscious awareness. Recognizing this pattern was humbling - how rarely do we truly observe our mental reactions rather than simply acting on them?

Day 3-4: Discovering Sensations

By the third day, my focus had sharpened. The area below my nostrils became a field of subtle sensations - tingling, pulsing, temperature changes that I'd never noticed before. It was like discovering a hidden dimension that had always been there.

This narrow focus was like using a sharpening stone on a dull knife. It honed my concentration. I began to detect delicate sensations I never noticed before - the cool touch of the inhale on a tiny patch of skin, the warmth of the exhale, maybe even the faint tingling of the pulse there. At moments when my attention really settled, the constant pain in my legs would oddly fade into the background. It was still there, but if I didn't feed it with mental resistance, it became just another sensation among many.

Goenka introduced the concept of Sankhara - mental reactions that arise in response to sensations. Whenever we experience something pleasant, we typically crave more; when it's unpleasant, we push it away. These reactions form habit patterns in the mind. The goal of Vipassana is simple but profound: break this cycle by observing sensations without reacting.

Day four marked our transition to Vipassana proper. The instructions expanded from the triangular area of the nostrils to the entire body. We were to move our attention systematically from head to feet and feet to head, observing whatever sensation we found on each part. It could be anything - pressure, heat, throbbing, itching, or no sensation at all (in which case we simply noted "blank" and moved on). The key instruction was to remain equanimous - not to crave pleasant sensations, nor to have aversion towards unpleasant ones.

As I scanned my body for the first time, I was met with a wall of gross sensations: sharp pain in my back, pins-and-needles in my numbing legs, tension in my shoulders. But something magical had also changed since Day 1: my mind was a bit more concentrated and calmer, thanks to the three days of Anapana. I found that I could actually observe these sensations with a touch more objectivity.

Instead of immediately thinking "pain bad," I could investigate the pain: What is it, really? Is it burning, throbbing, pulsing? Does it stay the same or change? When I paid careful attention, even the solid ache in my knee was not a monolith - it was a series of pulsing, shifting signals. It had a shape, a rhythm; it was composed of smaller sensations coming and going. This realization felt like a tiny crack of insight: the solid pain wasn't so solid after all.

We also began "sittings of strong determination" (Adhiṭṭhāna), where we sat for one hour without moving. During my first attempt, I decided to sit for an extra 30 mins after the hour. The last 20 minutes I was practically shaking, my mind screaming at me to move those legs! But determination kept me frozen in place. When the ending chant finally came, I unfolded myself and discovered - I was okay. The pain hadn't killed me; in fact, it evaporated the moment I allowed myself to move. This taught me viscerally that pain too is impermanent.

What struck me most profoundly was realizing that this cycle of craving and aversion operates at levels far below conscious awareness. We think we're responding to external circumstances, but we're actually reacting to our internal sensations about those circumstances. This insight would prove crucial for understanding how deeply conditioned our responses truly are.

Day 5-7: Finding Flow

As the middle days unfolded, the practice deepened. The body scanning became more fluid, and Goenka introduced "free flow" - sweeping awareness through the entire body, observing the continuous flow of sensations without getting caught in any particular area.

By day six, I thought about my friend who had to leave on this day and understood why. This was when the practice became particularly intense, as we observed sensations throughout the torso. For some, these sensations triggered physical reactions like nausea. I was fortunate to move through this phase without such extreme responses.

The evening talks provided a wonderful framework for understanding what we were doing. Goenka described how we normally live in a cycle of habitual reaction: an unpleasant experience occurs, we generate aversion; a pleasant experience occurs, we generate craving. These reactions lie at the root of our suffering, because they multiply endlessly. One teaching struck me deeply: every time we react with craving or aversion, we are essentially layering another thread in the knot of our misery. But if we can observe sensation without reacting, we start to untie the knot.

I reflected on how this principle applies to daily life: when someone says something that annoys me, I feel an unpleasant tightening in the chest (a sensation) and immediately the mind screams "I hate this" and I might snap back. That reaction of anger is essentially multiplying the suffering (for me and others). In Vipassana, I was training to instead just observe the initial sensation (the tight chest, the heat of anger) without letting it turn into a blind reaction.

Every time as the day ended I often thought these evening talks were the best part of the retreat. The intellectual understanding felt so satisfying. But Goenka warned us about this too. He said people often tell him the discourses are their favorite part, but he reminded us that knowledge without direct experience is just intellectual entertainment. "Knowledge is not wisdom," he would say. "Wisdom can only be achieved through your own experience."

On day seven, I made a simple but crucial adjustment - instead of sitting cross-legged, I sat with my legs extended, back against the wall. This allowed me to experience sensations more clearly. The leg pain had gone but I was now able to feel sensations clearly throughout my legs.

By the start of Day 7, a palpable momentum had built up. There's a saying Goenka repeated: "Work diligently, patiently and persistently, and you are bound to be successful." I was nowhere near "enlightened," but I was definitely experiencing the benefits of diligent practice. My awareness was sharper than ever; I could actually feel subtle sensations in areas that on Day 4 had felt numb or heavy. Scanning the body became almost continuous, like a gently sweeping radar.

Day 8-9: Samadhi

The final days brought a different quality to the practice. The intensive work of the previous week had created a foundation of awareness that now operated with increasing naturalness. But rather than sharing specific experiences that might create expectations, I want to focus on what these days revealed about the nature of transformation itself.

By day eight, the practice had moved beyond technique into something more integrated. The systematic scanning had evolved into a more fluid awareness that revealed the constantly changing nature of all sensations. This wasn't about achieving particular states, but about developing a fundamentally different relationship with experience itself.

Day nine often brings breakthroughs for practitioners - not because of any magical timeline, but because sustained attention eventually penetrates the layers of conditioning that normally obscure the mind's natural clarity. What becomes apparent is that the solidity we normally experience in both body and mind is actually composed of rapidly changing phenomena.

The most profound insight wasn't about any particular sensation or state, but about the nature of impermanence itself. When you observe with sufficient subtlety, you begin to see that everything - every sensation, every emotion, every thought - arises and passes away. This isn't philosophical understanding but direct, unmistakable experience.

Day 10: Breaking the Silence

The tenth day brought a significant shift as the rule of Noble Silence was lifted at 10:00 AM. After nine days of living alongside each other without communication, we could finally speak.

The transition was fascinating. My voice felt rusty, and my mind had grown so sensitive that the mere sound of chatter at first felt overwhelming. And if I'm being honest, not speaking for the 10 days was the easiest part of this whole experience.

Throughout the silent days, I had formed impressions of my fellow meditators based solely on non-verbal cues. Now, hearing their voices and stories, I experienced a kind of perceptual recalibration. Some people were entirely different from what I had imagined.

What struck me most was watching how quickly people fell back into old patterns. Here we were, having spent ten days learning about the cycles of craving and aversion, about not reacting habitually to sensations - and yet within hours of speaking again, I could see people (including myself) slipping back into familiar ways of expressing themselves and reacting to others. It was both humbling and enlightening. The intellectual understanding was there, but the deep experiential wisdom would take much more practice to truly integrate.

We were also introduced to a new practice on Day 10: Mettā (loving-kindness) meditation. After scraping out the mind's deepest reactions for days, Goenka had us spend a session generating thoughts of goodwill - first towards ourselves, then expanding to all beings. It was a beautiful, gentle capstone to the intense surgical work of Vipassana. The message was clear: we cleanse the mind not just for our own sake, but so we can share positivity and live with compassion.

The Real Insights

Looking back, the most profound realization wasn't about meditation techniques or mystical experiences. It was about understanding how deeply attachment runs through every aspect of human life.

I saw that technology, especially our phones, had become the ultimate attachment creator. Every notification, every swipe, every "like" had trained my brain like Pavlov's dog. We live in constant cycles of craving the next digital hit and avoiding even a moment of boredom. Our devices feed us tiny doses of pleasure and stimulation, keeping us in an endless loop of wanting more.

But it goes deeper than technology. I realized that even our relationship with our own body is a form of attachment. We treat our body like a house we own, forming deep attachments to how it looks, how it feels, how it performs. We crave when it feels good and have aversion when it doesn't meet our expectations.

The beautiful thing about Vipassana being non-sectarian is that it doesn't create another belief system to get attached to. It's simply a technique for observing reality as it is. This makes it accessible to anyone, regardless of their religious, philosophical or intellectual background.

Through years of exploring different fields - quantum physics, psychology, ancient philosophy, mythology - I've always looked for connections and patterns. This retreat helped many pieces fall into place. In quantum mechanics, solid matter dissolves into probability waves, and particles exist in multiple states simultaneously. Similarly, in deep Vipassana practice, the apparently solid body reveals itself as a mass of vibrations in constant flux.

Modern neuroscience supports what Buddha taught 2500 years ago. FMRI studies show that experienced meditators have decreased activity in the Default Mode Network - the brain network associated with mind-wandering. They also show increased activity in regions associated with attention and awareness, precisely what Vipassana aims to strengthen.

The Big Question

Here's what I keep wrestling with: if everyone is caught in the same cycle of craving and aversion - whether you're wealthy or poor, successful or struggling - then what does this mean for human progress? How do we balance the wisdom of non-attachment with our drive to advance as a civilization, to solve problems, to reach for something better?

I think about the Kardashev scale and humanity's push toward becoming a more advanced civilization. Does the pursuit of technological advancement conflict with the understanding that all attachments ultimately lead to suffering? Or is there a way to engage with progress and ambition while maintaining equanimity?

This isn't a question I've answered yet. It's something I'm continuing to explore. Maybe the key is in how we approach these pursuits - with awareness rather than blind craving, with wisdom rather than pure ambition.

What I Took Away

I didn't become a saint during those ten days. I still get frustrated, still feel cravings, still react habitually to difficult situations. But there's a difference now: I try to be more often aware of what's happening inside, and that awareness gives me a choice. It's kind of like upgrading the mind's operating system to be a fraction more intelligent in how it responds rather than reacts.

The most valuable lesson wasn't any particular state or experience, but a different way of relating to all experiences. The ability to observe sensations without immediately reacting creates freedom - freedom to respond consciously rather than react habitually to life's challenges.

It was also interesting to see that we spend so much of our time focused on the external world and humanity builds so many things for the external world, but no one really looks within and tries to understand the internal world.

Understanding impermanence at a fundamental level changes everything. When you truly grasp that all sensations, all emotions, all experiences arise and pass away, you stop clinging so tightly to the pleasant ones and stop fighting so hard against the unpleasant ones. I’m still learning to do this and understand it from my individual experience.

Vipassana isn't an escape from reality but a deeper engagement with it. It doesn't promise perpetual bliss, but rather a more skillful way of being with whatever arises. In a world of increasing distraction and division, this ancient practice of turning attention inward offers precisely the clarity and connection we need most.

Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom can only be achieved through your own experience.

I would encourage anyone reading this to reach out to me if they have any questions and definitely try this. Goenka said that the biggest gift you can give to your fellow human beings is having them form their own experience and understand the nature of impermanence.