Hey...! Hearing this term "Vipassana" for the first time??? If yes, you might have missed something great. Its basically a 10 day meditation course which can change your life. Let me take you to the whole 10 day journey that i did...so here i go :-)

So i should start with what Vipassana is. Its a meditation technique started by Gautam Buddha about 2500 years back. It started in India but somehow lost its existence about 2000 years back in India. But was kept safe and practiced properly by some people of Burma. From there, its now again getting its pitch back in India for about past 20 years.

"Vipassana" (English) or "Vipashyana" (Hindi) or "Vipashchana" (as pronounced) means to see things in a special manner. This technique helps us to understand and observe things around us and conclude deep conclusion from them.

Vipassana 10 day meditation course is conducted in about every major city of India. To take the course, we have to stay in the vipassana centre for all the 10 days and its free of cost. But there is a twist in this story, hahaha, yes, a big twist..we have to stay silent for first 9 days of course. One cannot talk even with actions. This is basically called noble silence. Dont worry, its not that hard to stay silent with the strict schedule of meditation. Chillax, everyone can do that ! The schedule is like-
4 AM- Wake up
4:30-6:30 AM - Meditation
6:30-7 AM - Breakfast
7-8 AM - Rest/bath
8-11 AM- Meditation
11 AM- 12 noon - Lunch
12-1 PM - Rest
1-5 PM - Meditation
5-6 PM - Tea break
6-7 PM - Meditation
7-8:30 PM - Discourse
8:30-9 PM - Meditation
9 PM - Go to bed, sleep.

Also, along with this strict schedule, one has to follow few rules, known as sheel->

1. Abstain from killing any being;
2. Abstain from stealing;
3. Abstain from all sexual activity;
4. Abstain from telling lies (can only happen when you are asking any doubt from teacher);
5. Abstain from all intoxicants.

Since you are not allowed to talk, use of mobile phones is also not allowed for 10 days!

Now i think i have given a complete overview of course and i should begin with what one does for 10 days there....
The zeroth day when i reached there at about 2 PM, i registered myself for the course and then i had to submit all my valuables including my mobile phone. I was allotted a room and i went there for rest. There were about 40 people in the camp and among them, 15 were foreigners ( this thing motivated me a bit again ;-) ). We had to gather for the tea at 6 on the zeroth day, but you didnt notice one thing, i was without my cell phone( no fb, no whatsapp, no calls) and i had to stay like that for next ten days! That was eating me like anything. Millions of thoughts came in my mind at that time regretting the decision of coming to this camp.
But soon we gathered at 6 and there was something to do every time. So the day went by and soon came the time to sleep. Zeroth day has nothing more than introduction of course that i have done above.

The first day is basically focused on making the mind focus on one thing. Mind never sits at one place! This is what i observed on first day. The technique used for doing this was "AANAAPAAN MEDITATION". What we did here was that we just observed the breath, natural breath. Beware, it has nothing to do with pranayaam or so. Well, its not that easy that it looks. You can try it now and you will see that within two minutes of observation, mind will flow somewhere else( and you cant even imagine the place where it goes). Boss, mind is actually unstable! I observed this that day. We practiced this for the whole day and situation had to improve, so improved :-) The next day was also based on Aanaapaan and we had to further observe the breath. On the third day, we picked up the nose area and we had to focus on our nose and see that what all is happening around the nose. What we observed was sensational :D. Yes, everyone there observed a number of sensations around the nose area. In the first half of the fourth day, we reduced the area of nose to meditate and then meditated in order to see things happening in a compact area (ie more precision).

OOOh....! I talked something about sensations above...what are those?? Was that our state of mind like Munna Bhai's Gandhigiri or its different :D. Just joking btw. I still remember my JEE preparation days where i studied wave nature of particle and a wavelength associated with it ( that's de broglie wavelength most probably). And since our body is made up of tiny particles called cells, so it has also wave nature. Those sensations are related to those waves :-)

The second half of the fourth day is very important. This is the time when we get vipashchana from guruji. What we do in vipashchana? When we focused our nose and observed that there is something happening there, in the same manner, there is always something happening in the whole body. We had to observe the whole body there. And yes, we found a number of things happening in the whole body! When we did that, a number of sensations were observed on the whole body. These were basically of two types, either subtle or gross.

Now here comes the concluding points. While meditating, observed sensations used to come and go, come and go. That was the time when we understood the "LAW OF IMPERMANENCE". Everything that has come, has to go! You may argue on this that what new i learnt in this, everyone knows this law. But let me tell you dear, you know but i observed it. This is the basic difference! For example, you may have heard about a particular restaurant that its good, but till the time you dont eat yourself there, you cant actually know.

Another point concluded was that the miseries of human being are because of two things, either aversion or craving. The more you like something, it hurts you the most when that leaves you. In the same manner, if you get something which you totally dislike, that again hurts the most! Dont worry, Vipassana provides the solution too :-) The time when one observes sensations on his body, his mind is very sharp at that time and whatever you teach this mind, its in the best position to take that! So, when we observed sensations on the body, either subtle or gross ( subtle sensations are awesome to feel and gross hurts a lot ), what we have to do is just stay in equilibrium or neutral state of mind, ie neither happy nor sad. This our mind will remember forever. (Although i haven't gone into lot of detail while explaining this, but it can be taken as short summary).

Vipassana meditation centre where i went (dhamma pushkar)

This is what we practiced for next six days. Thats bit difficult to do and it brings amount of frustration when we are unable to meet guruji's expectations. This is what happened with me twice, once on 5th day and on 8th day. But there was difference in the attitude that i showed on these days. On the 5th day, it was like "what the hell i am doing here, its not for me and why i am wasting my time out here", but on the 8th day, it was like "the situation i am getting is also impermanent and will go, just keep on trying"

The food that we got was buffet but since we had to sit for number of hours for meditation, it was hard to intake more than 3/4th of diet. Food used to be simple. So this is how my course went and i really learnt a lot from this course.

I have just covered the important points that i learnt in the course but there are so many more things that i learnt and everything i learnt will stay in my mind till i am alive! If you want to experience it, please go soon, life is too short :-)

A WORD OF CAUTION : YOU MAY LOSE THE ADDICTION OF DRINKING/SMOKING OR QUIT NON VEG AFTER TAKING THE COURSE! SO, BEWARE :-)

SPECIAL THANKS TO GURUJI SHRI S.N GOENKA FOR TEACHING THIS TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION TO A NUMBER OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD AND ALSO TAKING THIS TECHNIQUE TO PRISONS. A NUMBER OF JAILS IN INDIA AND AROUND THE WORLD USE THIS TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE THE MENTAL STATE OF PRISONERS! SIMPLY, HATS OFF!

For more details, please visit www.dhamma.org