Why should I meditate?

I get this question often. My response: one doesn’t need to find meditation, let it find you when you need it.

If you don’t have a problem, why solve it? Besides, meditation is one of those things that you only realize the benefit of after significant up-front investment. It’s unusual for someone to invest in something they don’t understand the rewards of.

Even once I explain what I got out of meditation, many don’t find meditation appealing. Improve concentration? I don’t need that, I have good focus. I have to stay still in one place for some time? No thanks. I have to be remain silent? Count me out. I have to pay attention to “the sensations” that are arising in my body? Get the f*** out.

To be fair, it’s very difficult to explain the benefits of meditation, because I don’t have the words to describe it. Our language is based on the five senses, and meditation is trying to transport us beyond these. You may have heard this referred to as the “inner world”.

I can only speak for my own experiences. After practicing Vipassana for some time, I’ve become more attuned to how I’m feeling. I’ve become more aware of when I’m “bull-shitting” myself and others, and when I’m creating drama in my relationships (and why). It’s strange; there are times when I am arguing and I can see myself from above myself and know that I’m only trying to avoid the pain of being wrong, or looking stupid, or having to apologize for a mistake I made. I know this sounds like basic life skills, but before I practiced Vipassana I would’ve reacted without this awareness.

I’ve also become more sensitive to the intentions of others around me. I find I can be more tactful because I understand how someone else must be feeling.

I’ve started paying attention to the causality of things… what led to this particular event? What triggered it? What were the parameters in question? The flip side of this is: what will this action lead to? Such understanding of causality is key for learning from mistakes and making sound decisions.

I’ve also realized that once we express something as an action, we are sowing a trigger for the action to happen again. This works both ways, whether the action has pleasant or unpleasnat consequences. Basically, our actions are not memoryless systems. What we do sows the seed for who we are likely to do (and therfore who we are likely to be) in the future.

There’s another aspect of what I’ve experienced with Vipassana, but I’m not sure how to explain it (or what to make of those experience). I have had experiences where I’ve “dissolved” into everything else. There’s some loss of the notion of “Jawad”. I’m aware of “I”, but the “I” becomes less important than the awarenss of what’s being experienced.

I call these “spiritual” experiences, because “sprituality” implies beyond the world of senses, and such experiences beckon me to consider the world beyond the signals (senses) received by the “I”.

In truth, I haven’t been diligent with practicing Vipassana (a.k.a Insight Meditation) consistently. And consistency here, as with so many other aspects of life, is key. While practicing consistently is still a goal, I find that I’m still able to get into the meditation after being away from it for some time. It’s like muscle memory; the more one has practiced a physical movement pattern, the more likely they are to be able to repeat it.

I learned Vipassana at a silent meditation retreat. For ten days, participants are asked to take a vow of silence, and to live a life similar to Buddhist monks, by taking the following “precepts”: 1) no lying, 2) no killing, 3) no sexual activity, 4) no stealing and 5) no intoxicants. The no talking part takes care of 1. Precept 2 was pretty easy—except when the mosquitos came along.

The retreat was located an hour north of Toronto, an area called Innisville. This is a fairly secluded area, far away from Torontonian hustle and bustle. There’s a lot of stillness in this part of nature, and that stillness tends to instill humans as well. Stillness is good. The analogy many spiritual masters give is as follows. If one looks into turbulent water, the depths remain murky. But with stillness one can see through to the depths. That’s why meditation is more than a tool for concentration. It’s a vehicle to help you peer deeply into yourself, see what you’re made of.

In this secluded forest were situated a few wooden structures, some one storey high and others two-storeyed. The two-storeyed sturctures were where the dwelling rooms were, with two people to a room. The structures for men and women were separated. I wonder where persons of non-traditional gender identity reside.

The other structures were for the kitched, and another for the meditation hall. The meditation hall was a large, open space, sheltered and usually dark, with a slightly raised platform at the front for “teachers”. The rest of the hall was flat and carpeted (IIRC). We would use yoga mats and cushions on the floor to meditate. Some people used chairs.

Each day we woke up at 4:30 am to the sound of a tolling bell. We would head out of our rooms, make our way down to clean up, and then head over to the meditation hall under the as-yet star-lit sky. Here we would meditate for an hour and a half before another tolling bell would announce breakfast was served in the kitchen.

The food (and everything else) was compeletely free. Participants are free to make a donation after they leave but it’s not necessary. The food is vegetarian. The authorities insist this is to keep costs low, but I found this diet to be very energizing compared to may daily meal. It was very simple food, whole, unprocessed food, and I was surprised by how easily it passed through my system. Sadly I haven’t been able to stick to that kind of a diet with my family. Something I want to do more of day-to-day.

It was strange at first to eat and not talk to anyone, let alone make eye contact. I could see everyone else heading in and out of the kitchen, and lining up after one another. I could see the volunteer servers preparing and laying out the food arrangements. But everything happened without a single word uttered. The silence is defeaning at first but I soon grew accustomed to it. In fact, once the outer world is silent, the inner world starts to become noticeable. What’s noticeable can be observed, followed, and eventually “engineered” (or reverse-engineered).

After breakfast, we headed back to the meditation hall for an hour and a half of guided meditation. The rest of the day was comprised of such hour-and-a-half chunks of group meditation with a few minutes of break in between. All said, we meditated for 11 hours a day. It’s very difficult not to notice what’s going on within oneself after sitting still and observing oneself for 11 hours, day days straight. I noticed my own agitation start to spring up after day 4.

At 12 we had lunch (of course, announced by the bell that tolls), and at 5pm we had tea. After this, there would be no food until breakfast the next day. I was concerned at first, but quickly realized that eating actually makes meditation harder. It’s easier to meditate on an empty stomach. The body just seems to be more readable without the distraction of food-processing happening within. Again, sadly, I haven’t quite been able to take this back with me into my life. I tend to abuse food and use it as a reward mechanism. Much left wanting here.

At 8pm there’s the final group meditation, which involves a lecture covering the “theory” behind what was practiced that day. First we practiced, then we understood the widsom behind the practice. I liked it. Having been to engineering school, I wonder whether I’d have learned better this way.

The lectures were delievered by S. N. Goenka and are avaiable on youtube. I had the option of viewing these before I went to the retreat, but decided not to. I’m glad with the decision. I think I would’ve judged the quality of the video, or misunderstood some of the ideas therein without having experienced it myself. Needless to say, these lectures blew my mind. Regardless of whether the ideas were fact or fiction, the ideas themselves were fascinating.

The meditation itself was divided into two phases. The first phase of the meditation was a breathing-based exercise called “Ana Pana”, which refers to the breath going in and out of the nostrils. This meditation was about bringing our attention to the triangle formed from the top of the nose at its apex, and the upper lip at the base. As the breath travels in and out, it touches the upper lip. We were asked to pay attention to the nature of the breath when it enters and leaves. It’s temperature, it’s feel, it’s volume, it’s frequency. The idea here was to prepare us for body-scanning (the second phase). Since this triangular area is small, it helps prepare us for eventually body-scanning the entire body by taking baby steps.

The second phase is Vipassana meditation. What we did with the upper lip, we would not do with the entire body. Starting with the crown of the head, we would take each “patch” of our skin and rest our attention there for a few seconds, noticing what sensations are present. Itchiness, numbness, large unnoticeable patches, small very noticeable patches, tickles, hot, cold… whatever was going on, the goal was to just observe, without judging the sensation.

The underlying wisdom in this practice is that all our actions stem from sensations. There’s a closed feedback loop between our environment and us, and if we don’t pay attention to this loop that we, being creatures of habit, will habitually react to our environment. Thus our environment will contorl us. To break this loop, we prevent the cycle from completing. The loops looks as follows.

First a trigger occurs in the environment. Our senses pick this up and send out, hint hint, a sense-ation. Our perceptive centers judge the sensation as pleasant or unpleasant, based on a few factors, including past experiences. How we react to a sensation will be recorded in this perceptive center, which is why our actions are so important. This is how trauma is stored in the body. Positive learning is also stored in the body (that’s a fire, I mustn’t touch it!). The goal is not to indiscriminately forget all the past. The goal is to not react to the sensations that are coming up, but to be able to look at them anew and make the right decisions in the present.

The point at which we can break the feedback loop is when the sensation is first noticed. If we don’t notice it, the perceptive center will automatically judge it and create a reaction. But if we can sense the sensation, remain equanamous (neither develop an attachment or an aversion to it), we start to weaken the judgement, or labelling, around that sensation. The next time that sensation comes up, we’re more likely to be robust to it, and instead of reacting unconsciously, repsond to it consciously.

This was so long ago, but I still remember being there vividly. I’ll try do another one of these retreats soon, they really do transform you. They’re not the easiest thing to do, especially when you come out of a secluded, quiet forest and into a bustling city like Toront which is pregnant with sound. It can be a lot. But these excursions made me realize that there’s so much unconsciousness in my life and if I am to grow beyond my current condition, I must weaken the hold that my environment has on me.