What is Vipassana?
Vipassana is a spiritual practice thought by Gautham Buddha 25 centuries ago (around 500 BC). As a short summary, its a rigourous 10 day meditation course where you will meditate for ~14 hours a day with minimal breaks for food, bath and sleep. All 10 days, you have to observe silence and you will be cutoff from the usual world - i.e no phone, no TV, no outside contact. You will need to be totally silent and you should not even talk to fellow meditators even during non meditation hours.
Why you should practice it and how frequent you should do?
I would recommend to go to Vipassana once a year (It means reserve 10 days a year) and ensure you attend one course every year. This has huge benefits - It will help set a strong mental health and physical health which are pre requisites for spiritual growth. By Mental health, it will help gain peace of mind by syncing with your internal core. Generally when we get stressed, we find solace in external factors (Eating favourite food in your favourite restaurant, entertainment like movies TV etc, social gathering, etc). Point is these will help for sometime but the root cause of mental worries will return and you will again get stressed. Vipassana meditation is powerful where it can help reduce stress and attain peace of mind by simply observing your body and mind.
By physical health, it means it will help in normalizing your Blood pressure, Cholestrol, Sugar and improve overall energy in the body. The course is free of cost and you will donate whatever you can at the end of the course.
Spirituality - Is it for youth or after retirement?
It depends. Lot of youths across the world are practicing it. Reason is they want to understand how to reduce stress. Vipassana provides a practical way of finding peace of mind.
Is it difficult to practice or Is the course difficult?
YES. Typically, you may expect a feel good course where you go, listen to feel good lectures, have good food, environment and return back with a pleasant experience. Vipassana is difficult to practice, but if you go with a free mind i.e ok, lets see what it is, you will benefit. The cases where you are unlikely to benefit is if you go with a very pre conceived notions or if you are unable to focus on whats being taught and your mind is fully pre occupied with home/office tensions, you may not be able to grasp the technique. So my suggestion is if you are spiritually inclined, you should attend Vipassana and be prepared to be cut off from the outside world for ten days and focus on what is being taught. Just enjoy what they are teaching and saying, you will soon be able to understand the technique
Overview of the Vipassana course
10 days - Meditation is taught from 4:30 am in morning to 9:30 pm in the night.
Food and accomodation is free. You can donate whatever you can if you successfully complete the course. Also be aware they give limited breakfast, lunch and light snacks. This is sufficient for the energy required to do meditation. Do not overeat as this makes you feel sleepy and can upset digestion.
W.r.t the meditation - Start of every hour, technique will be taught and you will practice this for that hour.
Is it a religion conversion to Buddhism?
Absolutely NOT! You will be taught that Gautham Buddha was least interested in converting people to Buddhism. Rather he wanted people to understand the technique and practice according to their own volition. What is taught is common to all religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. So anyone can attend
More details
Where is it taught - It is thought in Vipassana centres all over the world. It is free to attend. ANYONE can attend it. No marketing, No brainwashing to any religion. Just a passion to know what is within you and an interest in spirituality plus the firm resolution that you will be there for 10 days in the center and follow their instructions.
Register and get all information at www.dhamma.org. You will need to book 2 or 3 months in advance for the course.
What is the takeaway or what do we achieve by doing Vipasana
Vipasana helps you be aware of your breath and hence makes you observe and accept the present. It makes you realize that pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin . It will come and go. The only truth is that the world that we see is ever changing and nothing is permanent. The universal law that governs us is that love, compassion, gratitude, tolerance, mutual respect - each of these behaviours will be rewarded . Negative traits like anger, jealously, greed will be punished. 10 day Vipassana course is the LKG certificate, and we need to progress in that path to realize ourselves the truth about the world and the universal law.
