Vipassana Vault: Day 6
Context
After more than a week spent mulling over the experience, losing the plot at times, forgetting everything I learned and felt, and being swept back up into the real world, I finally have set aside time to reflect—in writing—upon my 10-day Vipassana retreat in Kyoto, Japan. I tried my best to keep a mind palace throughout the ten silent days (plus the two additional days as well). Mercifully, I dumped everything into a series of voice memos on the train back to Ōsaka, which has allowed me to let go a little bit over the past week, knowing that my in-the-moment thoughts are there to return to.
In short, a mind palace refers to the mnemonic technique of mentally placing information in specific locations along a familiar route or space. For me, I chose my bedroom growing up, with each day being allocated a particular section within it. To recall the information, you simply take a mental walk through that space and pick up what you left there. It leverages the strong spatial and visual memory of the brain to encode otherwise abstract or hard-to-remember information. I tried my best to make up little stories and objects scenes that would stick in my mind more easily.
Hence, I’d originally titled this series Inside the Mind Palace of a Mad Man, but that felt too complicated in hindsight, and kind of misses the major detail about these reflections in that they relate to a Vipassana course. So, the Vipassana Vault it is instead.
Over the next ten days, I’ll share my Vipassana adventure with you through this mind palace lens, hopefully offering a light-hearted spin on the whole journey and using it as a gateway to dive deeper into what I felt. Ultimately, this is both an exercise for myself in aiding my own digestion and processing of the retreat, but also a medium to share everything I experienced with others.
I should clarify: each day from one to nine was essentially the exact same, in terms of schedule. You can hopefully find a simple snapshot here. Whilst the minutiae of how I exactly used these chunks of time varied from day to day, the overall gist was unchanged. These mind palace reflections, therefore, intend to highlight mainly just the moments or thoughts that stood out to me, rather than attempting to capture every detail in a running commentary fashion.
Day 6
In allowing me blocked out periods of time to sit, and think, but also write if I can find a seat, catching so much public transport this year has been a blessing for me being able to put thoughts to a page. Now that we’re nearly two months post-retreat, the memory is hazy. I’m grateful for the voice notes I recorded on that train home to Ōsaka. Hearing random beeping noises, platform tunes, and station announcements in the background as I listen to it now takes me back. Again, having two hours set aside in the middle seat of this plane becomes an opportunity. An opportunity to reflect as I am now, and as I’ve struggled to maintain somewhat since returning from the Vipassana course itself.
Song of the Day
How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly
What a song. Like Money, another one for the Australian crowd. In not quite the same way, though. This one means a whole lot. Memories flood back. Christmas. Debating with Josh and Lily in the car about the most iconic songs from our country. Backyards, barbecues, and amazing vibes. Family. Longing for home. The whole gamut. It came to me in the morning and never quite left. It also unintentionally foreshadowed somewhat amusingly what would occur later in the day. Very important song for me.
Day 6 was really a positive day. As always, the optimism was never felt uniformly, but it was there in patches. In my recollection of events, I see myself sitting down before a desk. On this desk lie several objects. My watch. An entire roasted chicken. I gaze towards a blackboard and see Goenka with chalk in hand.
The word equanimity stares back at me in bold letters. A strange term. I’m curious how it was translated, over and over again, into a Japanese equivalent. I also can’t imagine it would be at the forefront of a part-time English speaker’s vocabulary. The unnecessarily complex, often flowery delivery was definitely a gripe I had with Goenka. Nevertheless, this concept of maintaining balance and objectivity was perhaps the most important technical teaching from the entire retreat. Any sensation, any thought, can arise. In Vipassana, your progress shouldn’t be measured by what you think about, or feel—whether those sensations are positive, negative, or otherwise—but instead, by how you react to them. The subtle challenge lies in facing both the most pleasant and unpleasant feelings, repeatedly and unobstructed, and responding with nothing but balanced observation. Simple. Incredibly difficult.
Back to the mind palace. I don’t use a chair to sit at this desk, but rather, a meditation cushion. The provided warm blanket folded neatly and squarely on top. I started treating my time in the hall and on this cushion as a work space. Whenever I entered that environment, I was committing to work for an hour. Outside of the hall, I was free to relax. I could wander around the garden to my heart’s content. I would allow myself to lie down in bed if I felt like. I could let my mind drift and become lost in thought. But the other side of that coin was strict adherence during these focused periods. Either fully immersing myself, or allowing myself to switch off and decompress, as dictated by the environment, helped tremendously in reframing the group sittings.
I had the thought a few times that it felt, in a roundabout way, like a basketball tournament. You might have three games in a single day. One in the morning, another in the afternoon, and a third at night. Each is another challenge; another opportunity. You have downtime between each game, but when you step foot on the court, you have to treat it like your workplace, bringing your fullest attention. Having three games a day is exciting, but also draining if you struggle to reset and start again each time. Although the analogy falls short in several ways, I found it a useful reframing. Viewing each sitting as an event to prepare for, plus an opportunity to perform and make progress, made it somewhat of a game for my mind. A repeated challenger that I’d have to be ready to face, three times a day.
Aligning with this approach, my watch makes an appearance here because I started using it more deliberately as a tool. Clocks were allowed, but you were advised against bringing them into the hall. At first, I’d dismissed this notion. Scheduling breaks from the torture of continuous sittings seemed like a no-brainer. But I realised it absorbed me sometimes. If I knew I had a thirty minute timer set, I’d constantly sneak a glance at my wrist, and receive an instant rush of bitter disappointment or validation. With nothing else to do except let time pass, having a concrete value to continually see tick over became consuming. The numbers themselves—and a craving for them to become smaller—became of fixation in itself for my mind. One that very obviously took me away from the present moment. Thus, another line in the sand was drawn: timers for individual sittings; no watch for group work. It helped.
An amusing footnote from today, but one that threatened to derail a great morning, was the fact that I simply ate way too much, hence the chicken sitting on my desk (more so a cue to remember the song of the day—there were only vegetarian meals). Throughout the week, one constant variable that I struggled to pin down was my eating. It was in stark contrast to my schedule heading into the experience. Essentially fasting after noon was unfamiliar. I could skip breakfast, but dinner felt crucial. Often, I overrate. Observing the impact of a full stomach, but also just food in general, throughout the week was fascinating. Meditating fasted offered greater clarity. The food was extremely nutritious in a detox kind of way. It felt good, in moderation. But in this particular lunch break, I ate too much, failing to escape the temptation to compensate for the lack of dinner. I felt shocking after lunch as a result, souring what was an excellent morning. Yet, like all other things, eventually, the feeling passed. An important lesson learned.
Perhaps my most productive day in hindsight. I think my reframed outlook opened things up for me, allowing me to go deeper into my practice and fully commit to the task at hand. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but the waters were calmer than days prior. Very grateful for how it all played out.
