Goenka Vipassana Retreat in Israel

10 days of silence, is a powerful practice to become more self-aware. We kept to a strict vegetarian Diet and this course, which is given totally based on donation throug out the world, was a powerful experience in seeing how my mind, breath, body and physical sensations affect my behaviors and habitual thinking in my daily life.

The retreat center is situated on a Kibbutz, and for ten days a group of 40 people were in semi summer camp like situation and spent it together in silence. We would work every day on enhancing our sila (morality), Samadhi (concentration), and Pania (mental purification of negative habits and mental defilements. It was a great experience to be traveling externally in Israel, as well as internally, by looking into how my own mind works for ten days. We‘d awake at 430 am and until 9:30 pm an night we’d be primarily sitting noticing our breath for the first few days and during last seven days, we were told to notice the sensations throughout our bodies.

The basic teaching of this contemplative technique involved first becoming more of our breathing, in order to develop a calmer mind. Since our breathing is one physiological process that can help us become more aware when our minds are less focused and balanced. For instance, if you are relaxed your breath may be stable and calm, while if you’re angry, excited, or depressed, the rhythm of your breathing will become more irregular. The practice of Vipassana, isn’t about controlling the breathing, to be calm and focused, it involves becoming aware of exactly what we are feeling in the sensations of our body or at the tip of nose and above the lips, in order to become more self- aware. By merely becoming aware of our breathing, the mind calms its self, but don’t take my word for it, try it yourself, try doing this scientific self-observational process on your mind, body and breath, to see how you feel?

By practicing focusing on the breath, one trains their awareness to become more concentrated. After you learn how to calm your mind systematically by returning to your breath, no matter how many times your thoughts float you away from your body, you can eventually practice directing your awareness intentionally. For the rest of the retreat, we’d practice becoming more sensitive to the subtle sensations in our body.

Basically, when we feel good and happy, this is physically associated with a subtle light flowing energy and sensations in the body, and when we feel upset or angry, this is associated with a heavier, stuck, painful energy and sensations in the body. By judging our feelings, we in fact exacerbate averison and clinging to things in our lives outside of ourselves, when the source of aversion and clinging, is to the sensations within the body.

The practice of Vipassana, involves becoming more aware of what we are feeling physically in the sensations of our body, and learning how to not be attached to or have aversion towards any sensations arise in the body in the present moment. By learning how to directly experience our sensations, rather than just experiencing our thoughts “I feel happy if I get this or I’m angry because of this person,” we become more aware of the impermanence of our sensations in the body, as they are felt in terms of sensations in the body. Hence, we begin to see that happiness and anger and the whole slew of emotions and thoughts that are created in the mind, all have their origination in the sensations of our body.

By learning how to objectively observe the sensations in the body, we begin to see that no sensation, no matter how difficult or enjoyable, will stay forever in the body. But our minds can very easily become stuck in thinking a sensation will last forever, and actually have a negative impact on prolonging the stay of sensations in our body, through agitation or grasping for that which it doesn’t have or want.

In this way, we create our own suffering, for true happiness or unhappiness, lies within each one of us. If your take two people and put them in the both frustrating sensation, why is it that one of them become depressed and stops trying to achieve their life goals and the other person keeps pushing forward, regardless of the circumstances outside of their control, and stay realistically optimistic? The key is in how we are able to develop our ability to view situations in our lives from various perspectives, rather than merely the ego perspective of Me, Mine, I and My.

Unhappiness often occurs whenever we want something to be different than it is in the present moment. A primary quality of unhappiness is rooted in an internal agitation that arises in our minds, and results with a feeling of aversion or clinging towards the sensation, which is the subconscious source of our thoughts, as they arise from moment to moment. This is the wisdom part of the practice, learning to see the nature of nature, which is in a constant state of flux and transformation, as is present in the sun and moon, the ebb and flow of the ocean, or changing temperatures of the seasons.

As we more intimately practice vipassana meditation, we begin to see the impermanence our sensations, and not be so attached or averse to whatever is occurring in our bodies from moment to moment. Hence we begin to develop the capacity to a live with a happier and more equanimous state of mind and develop our self-awareness, from within.