Vipassana sounds horrible. I want to try it.

[This is day #13 of my 30-day microblogging challenge. You can and should still join!]

The first time I met someone who had done a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat, I was shocked. This was years before I encountered “meditation bros” (back when I hadn’t yet set foot in the Bay Area), and the whole concept sounded almost unfathomable to me. Who in their right mind would travel to some remote location just to sit in silence for ten days?

And this guy didn’t just choose to do it once… he was signing up to do it all over again! Why?!

Well, last year I finally understood, and I felt intrigued, so I started looking into it myself! Specifically, I looked into the Dhamma retreats, which are held multiple times per year all over the world. These retreats are free to attend (they survive on donations from past attendees), and the spots fill up absurdly quickly.

This is what the retreat looks like:

You are woken up with a gong at 4 am. You must then meditate for 1 hour, before having a (silent) breakfast and meditating again.
You must remain completely silent (!), avoid eye contact (!!), and refrain from taking notes (!!!) for 10 days.
- Once per day, there is an optional one-hour slot to discuss with an experienced meditator.
You meditate for 10 hours a day in 1-hour sittings, with breaks in between.
Before day 5 or so, you are allowed to change your posture during meditation. After that, you are requested to stay as still as possible for the entire hour.
- Most people report unbearable back pain after days 4 and 5. Some cut the retreat short at this point.
  - Those who make it through the pain report that they get used to it after a few days.
Small vegan meals are served. You cannot eat in between.
- (Only first-timers are allowed two meals per day; veterans do OMAD).

My immediate reaction after reading all of this for the first time was “Wow, this sounds absolutely horrible, like pure torture. I cannot think of anything more uncomfortable than this.” …Immediately followed by “sounds amazing, actually!" and looking up Vipassana centers in my area.

Why? Well, precisely because it’s the most painful experience I can think of safely subjecting myself to. Because I cannot imagine anyone emerging from a week of excruciating back pain and complete silence unchanged.

Because I believe that learning to feel okay with discomfort (a.k.a. building character and grit) is one of the most valuable life skills any ambitious person can develop. There is no playbook for doing big, ambitious, novel things; it is hard by definition, and hard things are inherently painful.

Modern life has become too comfortable. It’s too easy to get caught in the hedonic treadmill, or to become too soft. I see real value in periodically subjecting ourselves to safe, time-limited experiences that are uncomfortable or even painful, as kind of “system reset”: to recalibrate our comfort baseline, and push our discomfort threshold further.

From this perspective, I can understand how serial meditators end up developing that “grounded”, calm default state. They have chosen to put themselves through hundreds of hours of utter pain and boredom!

To wrap up this piece, I shall reference the one motivational speech I keep going back to (my favorite): *“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering”, by Jensen Huang*

Random notes:

(*) Another option would be some form of military bootcamp, which I would consider doing too!
Life is painful in general, regardless of what you do. Building pain tolerance is helpful. More on Vipassana:
Many people report noticeably lower levels of anxiety and overthinking (not just with Vipassana, but meditation in general – which makes sense, since it’s basically literally the practice of creating distance from one’s thoughts and impulses, and overworrying is basically a compulsion)
Others report much lower rates of procrastination and other impulsive or addictive behaviors (again, meditation is basically a way to practice foregoing avoidance)
I’d love to hear about your experiences if you’ve tried it!