Most of us heard a lot about meditation and its benefits for the mind and body. Meditation in simple words is mainly to train our mind to focus, be aware, and fully relax. There is a misunderstanding about meditation that we meditate to stop the mind. This is not correct. Meditation does not stop the mind from thinking but trains the mind to think and focus in an organized way. That’s why meditation could help people deal with stress and anxiety. There are many types of meditation such as:
- Sound meditation: use the sound as a tool for making us focus and allow the vibration of the sound to heal and make us relax. Sometimes, we use natural sounds like rain, beach waves, or the sound that is produced by equipment like crystal bowls, and drums, …
- Guided meditation: use the guiding speech or mantra as a tool to stay focused and raise the positive vibration through the affirmative statements or mantra that they guide/speech.
- Mindfulness meditation: the meditation to be aware of what is happening in our thoughts without any judgment.
- Movement-based meditation: meditating through movement such as Yoga and Qigong.
Some meditation needs help from the teacher to explain the technique for example Vipassana meditation while other meditation types are easily practiced without the teacher.
So what is Vipassana meditation? It is the combination of “Meditation” and “Vipassana”. It’s more than just focusing and relaxing the mind but purifying the mind through your experiment to no attachment that is a root cause of suffering. Vipassana means “To see things as they really are”.
Vipassana is the ancient Indian meditation technique that was found by Buddha 2500 years ago. Even though Vipassana is found by Buddha, it is not a religious meditation or event in Buddhism. It’s a universal meditation technique that everyone from any culture or religion can practice to make their life better.
How does Vipassana meditation work?
There are two steps in Vipassana meditation. The first step is “meditation” and the second one is “Vipassana”.
The goal of the first step is to train our mind to fully focus, relax and calm. This step uses our breath as a tool. After our mind is calm and clear, we will move to the next step “Vipassana” which uses our body as a tool to experiment and gain insight and wisdom on “Impermanence” and “self-less” that help in dealing with suffering.
I will describe briefly the 10-day course/retreat that I have joined two times already. During this 10-day course, we will spend the first 3 days meditating by using our breath as a tool. During these three days, we will meditate from the early morning at 4:00 am or 4:30 am until 9:00 pm.
From day four, we will start Vipassana practice by starting to scan our body from the top of the head to the toes. We observe the sensation that happens in our body and start to develop the insight and wisdom of “impermanence” and “self-less”.
The benefits of Vipassana meditation
1. Improve awareness
The whole course trains our mind to be aware of what is happening to our body. For example, the sensations that we receive on our body when sitting too long, our breath in and out, and short or long breaths. We also know when the breath goes through the left or the right nostril, or both sides.
2. Master the mind
More than 10 hours per day that we meditated and it’s 10 days. We are more aware of whatever happens, including our breath. And when our mind starts wandering towards something else, with our awareness, we bring it back to the breath or body without getting angry. We start to take more control of the mind.
3. Improve judgment
When we understand things as they really are, our judgment is better than before. And from time to time, we will realize that judgment is useless as something happens based on its own nature and we clearly see it. For example, we can’t judge the clay as not good because it can’t be magnetized. We know the nature of the clay is like that. And from time to time, we will also develop compassion and kindness.
4. Anger management
Have you experienced that when you are angry, you did something that later on you realize that you should not do that. This is because we don’t know when we start getting angry. And we are easily angry because we are seeing only the first layer that happens to us, not the deeper layers behind what is happening. Practicing Vipassana helps us to be more aware quickly so we can know now we are angry so we can manage how to respond better.
5. More focus that leads to more productive
The concept of meditation is to help the mind think in an organized way, one at a time without jumping from one thing to the other thing so quickly. And it helps us stay in the present moment so we can focus on our work fully. This leads to productive work.
6. Reduce stress and anxiety
For sure Vipassana can help to reduce stress and anxiety. Why? Because stress and anxiety happen because we are too attached to something that is impermanent. With the wisdom developed during Vipassana meditation on “impermanence” and “self-less”, we could manage our thoughts better to help reduce stress and anxiety.
7. Addiction management
Addiction comes from the feeling of craving for something. Vipassana helps to reduce the craving feeling that’s why many students who have finished the Vipassana course are no longer addicted to something like alcohol or cigarettes anymore. One of the students during my course in 2017 hated the smell of cigarettes while she used to smoke around 20 cigarettes a day before joining the course.
8. Develop compassion and kindness
When our mind has the habit of seeing things as they really are, we're not reacting to what we immediately see but we look deeper. That’s why we are more kind and compassionate to whoever does things incorrectly or badly. This does not mean that we no longer react to what happens to us anymore but we act with more compassion and kindness. For example, when our sister breaks our favorite cup, she’s in a panic. For sure, first, we will be angry because we still have attachment but we are aware of our anger and start to see our sister's intention and panic, we start showing kindness to her and our anger will fade away.
How you could start Vipassana?
There are many course durations available such as 3 days, 10 days, 20 days, 30 days … Ideally for the starters, the 10-day course is recommended and strongly suggested to start at the center with the teacher. No matter which course duration you join, there will always be 2 steps as described above.
The course is taught by S. N. Goenka. There are many Vipassana centers all around the world such as in the United State, Australia, Canada, France. Figure out the center near you here.
And before joining the course, please check all the details about the course discipline and guidelines. Below is a brief about the guidelines and disciplines during the course:
- No talking allowed during the course including eye contact and body language (Noble Silence)
- Digital detox: No phone or digital devices are allowed to use
- Every day, the meditation starts at 4:00 am or 4:30 am and finishes at 9:30 pm.
- The food served is vegetarian food.
- Everything is free of charge including food and accommodation. You could donate at the end of completing the course if you want others to benefit from this practice too.
- Practice the Five Precepts (Panca Sila)
- to abstain from killing any being;
- to abstain from stealing;
- to abstain from all sexual activity;
- to abstain from telling lies;
- to abstain from all intoxicants.
For more details about the code of conduct, please visit here.
I will share more about my own experience in future articles.
