The sound of silence

Ten days of noble silence. Ten days of meditating for ten and a half hours a day. Ten days of no eye contact, no touch, almost no human interaction. 10 days of waking up to the sounds of a gong at 4:00am, with all movements being dictated by that gong throughout the day until lights out at 9:30pm. Intensive like nothing I have ever encountered, the ten days of the Vipassana meditation course that I completed on Friday were undoubtedly the toughest days of my life to date.

A bit of background on Vipassana meditation. According to Wikipedia, “Vipassanā-meditation uses mindfulness of breathing, combined with the contemplation of impermanence, to gain insight into the true nature of this reality. All phenomena are investigated, and concluded to be painful and unsubstantial, without an immortal entity or self-view, and in its ever-changing and impermanent nature…By observing the breath one becomes aware of the perpetual changes involved in breathing, and the arising and passing away of mindfulness. One can also be aware of and gain insight into impermanence through the observation of bodily sensations and their nature of arising and passing away”. In its most simplistic form it deals with the concept of mind over matter.

The Vipassana course that I did, developed by S.N. Goenka, runs over ten days but also includes two half days, one before and one after. During those ten days, noble silence must be practiced, meaning no communication at all with fellow students, whether in the form of talking, hand gestures, eye contact or passing of notes. Noble silence also includes introspective silence; singing, dancing, thoughts or speech that might distract you from the process are all strictly prohibited. In addition, no method of communication with the outside world is allowed, and other forms of distraction are also prohibited, meaning no phones, laptops, cameras, books or even notebooks for writing. The mind must be solely focused on learning the meditation technique and not be side-tracked by any external stimuli. Two hot meals, strictly vegetarian, are provided a day, at 6:30am and 11:00am, with a snack at the end of the afternoon meditation period at 5:00pm.

Before I left for Nepal I had been researching things to do while in the country and came across the course, which was something that had intrigued me for a long while. The dates for the November course coincided with my visit to Nepal and there were places available. I wasn’t sure whether it was wise to do such an intense course so early into my trip, but decided that the tools and insights the course would give me could only help. With that in mind, after a delicious last dinner at an incredible Turkish restaurant in Pokhara with Lior and Ofir, two girls I’d met on the bus up to Pokhara a few days earlier, I packed my bags and prepared myself for the journey the following day to Narayangarh, a small town in the Chitwan region where we would meet for registration and then be driven to the center.

Finding the office went without a hitch. We registered, locked all our valuables and potential forms of distraction into the safe, and piled into the bus that would take us to the center. We were all in high spirits as if we were heading off to school camp, laughing and joking, the noise levels intense, as if everyone was trying to cram as much talking as possible into the last few hours before the start of the course in order to compensate for the silence that was to come. New acquaintances were made, bonds were forged.

At the center we gathered for orientation, where they explained the rules and the schedule and gave us our bed numbers and meditation seat assignments (bed 6A and seat B2). After being warned not to leave the residence before the 4:25am gong due to the possibility of rhinoceroses wandering into the property (I kid you not, Chitwan is a national park with many different types of wildlife), males and females were sent to their respective residences (no contact allowed between the sexes during the course) to unpack and organize ourselves before the official start of noble silence at 8:00pm. The residence was a simple brick building divided up into cells, with hanging curtains covering the entrances to the cells. Two people to a cell containing simple beds with very hard mattresses. Bathrooms and showers were located at each end of the hall.

When entering the residence I encountered my first two problems, mosquito netting and Asian toilets. Chitwan is an area infested with mosquitoes, where outbreaks of dengue fever occur and there is a risk, although quite low, of malaria. With that in mind, my roommate and I set to work getting the nets up around our beds, creating a slightly grotesque four-poster bed effect. It proved to be a difficult task that, even when accomplished, seemed unsatisfactorily done, especially when I noticed the many gaping tears in the netting that rendered it entirely ineffective. The netting would provide me with many amusing and irritating moments throughout the course, randomly falling down on me in the middle of the night (imagine waking up to a face-full of netting), or falling loose when getting out of bed.

The Asian toilets and bathroom hygiene proved to be even more daunting. As the newbie to traveling in Asian countries, having been in Nepal for less than a week, I had yet to encounter the phenomenon of sunken toilets, squatting, and drenched bathroom floors (still not sure why people throw water all over the floors when they flush?), as I’d been exceptionally spoiled in my first week with western style everything, including toilets and food (more about that soon). My roommate laughingly explained the basics to me and recommended I roll up my pant-legs before I went into the toilet each time. I felt like a child being toilet trained, a feeling that didn’t go away as the course progressed (I’ve never been happier to see a western toilet as I was the day we finished the course). The science of squatting is something I’m still trying to master, as I progressed from holding onto the walls to keep balanced, to managing to squat without needing my hands (I felt VERY accomplished) to mastering the art of removing squares of toilet paper from my bra strap ( where else are you going to keep the toilet paper you need to carry with you) and cleaning up, without losing balance and falling down on the soaking wet floors.

Dinner time arrived and with that my gastrointestinal fate was sealed. I’d emailed the center a week before the course started about my gluten intolerance and after realizing that the issue had not been communicated to the relevant parties (I have yet to meet a Nepalese person who knows what gluten is), tried to make myself understood. Realizing that “keep it simple” was the way to go, I wrote a note to the kitchen staff and servers that simply said “no wheat, flour, rye, oats, spelt” with the hope that when they understood that I could eat rice (“Rice ok?” “Yes, rice ok”), all would be fine. I walked into the dining hall and was confronted with Nepalese food for the first time and discovered it would not be so simple. I had no idea what anything was, and what I could and couldn’t eat. After being presented with something unidentifiable, being told it was ok and then discovering that the servers had made a mistake, I started to despair, overtiredness hitting me for the first time and all I could think about was the stomach issues that were about to hit and that I wanted to go home. That wasn’t the first time that I’d feel that way during the next ten days.

A few hours later we were summoned by the gong to the meditation hall, the Dhamma Hall, and at 8pm noble silence began. We were given our instructions for the first day’s meditations and were sent to bed, both anticipating and dreading the start of day one and the 4:00am wake up.

Night-time in Chitwan in November is eerie. There is a dense fog that descends when it gets dark, which lifts properly only at around 9:00am. Walking to the Dhamma Hall at 4:25am for the first morning meditation (4:30-6:30am), the path was illuminated by lights that were almost entirely obscured by the fog. I stood outside the hall waiting to enter and watched the other girls appear like ghosts out of the mist, silent, shrouded in scarves and shawls. The first meditation was tough, two hours of sitting with freezing feet, registering a cacophony of sounds outside that seemed unnaturally loud for that time of morning. Mediation in the middle of a national park means that the background sounds are those of the wildlife that are active at that time of day, and those sounds never stop, they only intensify and subside slightly. I remember that first meditation being full of sounds and strange hallucinations, memorable for the strange long and loud burping attack that my neighbouring meditator, had in the middle of the session.

The first day was tough. Body parts I had barely registered started aching and it was difficult to focus on the first day’s task, observing the breath entering and exiting the nostrils. Sitting for such long periods of time trying to focus, my brain escaped into hallucinations. It was as if I was sitting inside a movie set as snippets of different scenes were acted out in front of me. I actually had to open my eyes periodically to ensure that the scenes weren’t real, and was reassured each time by the comforting view of the back of the Estonian girl who was sitting in front of me. Pain, and exhaustion were the main themes of the day, and for the first time I started to understand the meaning of being surrounded by people, but feeling totally alone. Noble silence, the tenet that is in place to ensure that each person experiences the vipassana process unaffected by the experiences of the other people around them, can also lead to feelings of intense loneliness.

The morning of day two was both beautiful and torturous. After breakfast I decided to take a walk. Exercise during the course was strictly forbidden, except for walking, which was limited to a specific area. The center was located on a beautiful expanse of grass and trees and set up in the shape of a rectangle, with the dining hall and the Dhamma Hall on the short ends, connected by a path on either side. The male and female residences were set on either side, slightly away from the path. We therefore had the length of path between the main buildings to wander up and down on whenever we needed to stretch our muscles or move a bit.

Looking around at the greenery, my eyes caught sight of an insect asleep on a blade of grass. Realizing that this was the perfect time of day for macro photography, I kept my eyes peeled, searching for more of the same. It’s amazing how things that are ugly or unsightly, or even banal or annoying can suddenly be transformed at a certain time of day or a moment. That morning the spider webs were covered with dew and, stretched between bushes like fine jewels, everything looked so precious and beautiful. And then I found the dragonfly, a gorgeous red dragonfly asleep on a long green leaf, wings outspread and covered with dew. It was then I knew I was in hell, the hell known exclusively to macro photographers denied their cameras. This hell continued to tease and taunt me throughout the course as I witnessed hundreds of butterflies and gorgeous insects at play, using my mind to capture their details, instead of my camera.

Day two was harder than the first day. My back and ribs were aching and I was much more restless. It was as if I had taken the first day’s long meditation sessions as a challenge, and once I had proven that I could pass the challenge my body didn’t want to try again. The hallucinations were also receding as my mind started to calm down, and I found myself bored and restless, with aching muscles, trying to focus on my breathing, but more focused on ignoring the pain and trying to get comfortable. The meditation task for that day was the same as the first, and I was looking forward to moving on to the next stage. When I heard that the next day’s task was focusing on sensation on the upper lip, only a tiny step up from the previous two days, I began to despair.

Songs started to invade my brain. In retrospect it’s amusing to review the songs my brain came up with during those days, a psychologist would have had a field day. The requirement to abandon all forms of religious rites or worship for the duration of the course seemed to give my subconscious cause for concern. From songs warning about not abandoning the traditions of your forefathers (Shema Beni), to Kol Nidrei in the traditional Ashkenazi tune, to REM’s “Losing my Religion”, selected Pesach songs, and a few other random songs, I had tunes a plenty running through my head on repeat. And of course in honour of Shabbat when it came around, “Big Gedalia Goomba” and a few other doozies (thanks Beth Rivkah for that contribution) were added to the collection.

It was definitely easier to sit on the third day. My body had started getting used to the lack of movement and the sitting positions and was hurting less and less. I was exhausted though, trying to catch every possible opportunity to sleep. The day before I had decided to use my breaks to get some exercise and had discovered that moving too much just made the process of sitting still even more difficult, as my limbs weren’t able to adjust to the sedentary nature of mediation. With that in mind, breaks because sleep or rest time, with the occasional foray or two down the path and back again. The gong became both our saviour and our torturer as it signified both the end of sessions and the beginning of new ones.

Day three was also the beginning of a disturbing phenomenon that really affected many of the people in the course. People started to leave. When the Finnish girl who sat next to me in the meditation hall and had seemed so serene and focussed, disappeared, I noticed that the American girl who had been on the bus with me from Pokhara, was also no longer there. Later on that day, one of the French girls also disappeared. At registration we had all signed documents committing ourselves for the duration and it had never occurred to me that it was even an option to leave in the middle. At a time when we were all struggling with adjusting to being there, the disappearances were disconcerting and left us all feeling unsure and unsettled. When I left the hall on the third night after the final meditation, my whole body was aching and I thought to myself that no one could ever have looked or felt more miserable.

By day four we had already started getting used to the routine, the most important part of which was making sure we were dressed appropriately for each meditation session. For the area we were in which was approaching winter, this wasn’t so simple. The days started off freezing, were boiling in the middle and ended off freezing, with every hour producing some change or the other. Morning meditation for me began with tracksuit pants, thick socks, a long sleeve top, jumper, hoodie (with hood on, of course), shawl and blanket to cover the legs. As the day progressed, I moved down to baggy shorts and t-shirt for the two sessions after lunch (1:00-3:30pm) after which the layers started to come back on again. Fashion was left by the wayside with most people wearing and re-wearing whatever was comfortable for them. Socks with sandals, so scorned in the outside world became my saviours as they walked me through the freezing winter mornings from the residence to the Dhamma Hall, and our five minute breaks between meditation sessions became a race to change, go to the bathroom, stretch, and make it back to the hall on time.

Food was also a routine affair by this time, with repetitions of traditional Nepalese vegetarian foods, none of which I could identify and all of which my body took offense to, showing it’s outrage via the most massive breakout on my face I have ever had the misfortune to witness (trust me, it was horrible and just got worse and worse). Luckily, noble silence meant that no one was making eye contact, so I was the only one who had to witness the horrors, at least until we broke silence. Breakfastfor the attempting-to-remain-gluten-free-me, was mushy rice, bean soup and anaemic boiled vegetables, lunch consisted of rice, bean soup and various varieties of cooked vegetables, and the last meal of the day, which was at 5:00pm consisted of some type of dry cereal-like popped rice, and a miniature apple and banana. Meals were eaten facing the wall, each person in an assigned seat with metal utensils that they washed after each meal.

Day four was the day that things started to go bad for me. It was Friday, and with Friday came the realization that I hadn’t given my parents contact details for the center, in case, god forbid something happened. Day four was also when, with minds now being finely tuned and hyper-sensitive, we began learning and practicing the vipassana techniques. After the first few days of restlessness, I had given myself a good talking to and decided it was time to start getting serious, so when we entered our first vipassana session on that Friday afternoon my mind was wired and ready to go. We were taught how to scan the body, searching for sensations and to focus on each of those sensations objectively, telling ourselves that they were temporary and would pass. Over the next few days we were taught additions to this technique, including scanning down the body and then back up again, and about scanning multiple body parts at once, to ultimately achieve a “free flow” throughout the body with all current and residual sensations eradicated.

The first session was great, and with tremendous focus I managed to make it through really well. I was doing and feeling all that I should have been, and more. Unfortunately, as I was soon to discover, this was not necessarily the good thing I thought it was. Around about the same time, the hyper sensitivity of my mind also lead to a hyper-sensitivity of my emotions and I began to worry about my family, especially knowing they had no way of reaching me. That evening, realizing that this was the first Friday for as long as I could remember that I hadn’t been in touch with any member of my family, I broke down for the first time and, as the sun went down and Shabbat started, I sat myself down on the path and cried. As I was sitting there, a girl walked past and, without looking at me, handed me a banana leftover from her 5:00pm snack. In the depths of my misery, that act of kindness at a time when it was so necessary and I felt so alone, is something that I will never forget. Singing, something that has always calmed and soothed me, seemed appropriate and, when no one was around, I comforted myself with Shabbat songs in an attempt to connect with those I loved outside.

My roommate left the next day. At a stage in the course where the body was already subdued and the mind was sharp, it was assumed that all who were still there would be there for the duration. Stubbornness and curiousity were what was keeping me going, and her leaving felt like a betrayal, not just because she had come so far with all of us, but because she had been my ally in this strange world of silence we had found ourselves in. When you share a tiny room with someone, there is always is bound to be an accidental glance or gesture, silence or not, especially when something amusing happens, like my mosquito net falling onto me when getting out of bed one afternoon, and catching her coming back from the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper down the front of her t-shirt. Meditations in the residence were made easier knowing that there was someone across from me who was also struggling, as, with relieved smiles, we emerged from within our mosquito netting at the sound of the gong signalling the end of the session. Although she left me a note with an explanation, she also left me with questions and doubts and an empty bed in our room as a reminder. From that day on I found it hard to fall asleep at night.

As I continued practicing the vipassana mediation technique, I found that my head was so heavy during the sessions that I was forced to rest every 10 minutes or so. Approaching the teacher with my concern he told me that my mind had become too sensitive, that I had gone too far into my head and needed to pull back a bit. He advised me to scan from my shoulders down, and not go into my head. Trying to follow his advice, I cautiously continued with my practice for the next few days. Those days now began for me with 4:00am showers in freezing cold water (there was no hot water at the center) and continued in the usual routine. Instead of wandering up and down the path, I now found myself using the breaks between evening sessions to sit in front of the dining hall watching the other students moving around. I was particularly fixated on the men’s side which, although only a few meters away, seemed like another world. Whereas earlier on in the course I had found my mind wandering repeatedly, with time I had lost any ability to think of anything outside the walls of the center, and as I watched the meandering students, my mind was mostly blank, occasional snippets of melancholic songs coming in, which I sang in a low tone when no one was around, or to myself.

On the eighth day during late morning meditation my heart started beating fast, too fast. I felt like my entire body had become this pulsing entity that I couldn’t control. Scared, I approached the teacher who told me to pull back and focus only on my palms. When even that didn’t help, I went back to respiration, the observation of the breath that we had practiced for the first few days. After doing that for a few sessions, I tried going back to the vipassana meditation, where I found myself experiencing the much-sought after free flow but in a less controlled manner than was expected. I felt like I was being rolled around in a spin cycle, with undulating waves that just kept going and going and going. When the next session saw my heart speed up again, I knew I couldn’t keep trying.

I gave up on the ninth morning and requested to leave. I was miserable, my fears for my family, although I knew they were irrational, were intensifying, and I couldn’t justify continuing to keep myself in the emotional hell that I was currently experiencing, if I was not even practicing the technique anymore. All the curiosity and stubbornness that I had felt I the first week or so were replaced with an overwhelming desire to leave. All I wanted was the things I had left at the center, things that could help e distract my mind, an of course my phone, so I could contact my family. I approached the teacher who told me to take a break, give my mind a rest, and come back to see him in an hour. Back in the residence the Chinese girls were listening to the instructions in English and Mandarin. In my overtired, hyped up state, with the voice of Goenka reverberating through the building, I did the only thing I could think of to take my mind off the center and all that was happening. So while the rest of the students were performing surgery on their souls, I was performing cosmetic surgery on my big toe.

Back in 2001 I had surgery on my big toe to correct a problem with an ingrown toenail. The surgery wasn’t as successful as it should have been, leaving me with a slightly disgusting additional toenail remnant. An unfortunate encounter with a piece of furniture a few years later when cleaning my apartment, left my poor big toenail even more disfigured and unsightly, providing it with the justified nickname, coined by my then seven year old cousin, of “the ugly toe”. I have spent years wearing nail polish on my toenails in an attempt to cover up the monstrosity. As I ha been in a naked toes phase since a month or so before I left on my trip, my toenail had been bothering me, and so I decided now was the time to do something about it. Armed with a nail file and a pair of nail scissors, with Goenka providing background listening material, I set to work. Half an hour later I surveyed the results with satisfaction. My toe, once a cause for embarrassment, had now been transformed into something that actually looked normal! Happy for a few moments, I said to myself that if anything, something good had come out of the course, as there is no way I would have even attempted the drastic repair work (I won’t go into details), if my mind hadn’t been so desperate for occupation.

An hour later I went to see the teacher who tried to focus my mind elsewhere by talking about his visit to Israel in 1985. Somewhat calmer, I decided to stick it out for the duration, but after enduring session after session of mindless meditations, I was becoming more and more fixated on the world outside, petrified for my family. It’s hard to understand the irrationality that occurs when you’re silent for so long with nothing to occupy your thoughts, but the feelings got worse and worse until on the tenth day during the morning group meditation, less than two hours before we were to break silence, I left the meditation hall, went back to the residence, packed my bags and demanded to leave. All I wanted was my things, I couldn’t think of anything else. The teacher told me to come back after the next meditation session and that I would be free to leave then. The gong sounded and I went in search of the teacher. I was an emotional wreck by then, even more than I had been before, and really thought I was losing my mind. Sitting in the teacher’s room, the director of the center appeared and told me that all our valuables were there. I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying.

After that everything changed. Breaking silence was amazing. Turning my phone on and reconnecting with my family, speaking to my brother, and even more importantly, speaking to all my previously silent companions, sharing experiences and discovering that all of us had had similar anxieties and issues throughout the course. Most of us had cried at least a few (many!) times, had wanted to leave at some stage or another, had feared for our families.

Those last twenty hours before we left the center were so important. They allowed us to start gaining perspective on our experience during the course, to reconnect with people after being silent for so long, and most importantly for me, to heal. My throat started hurting and eventually I actually lost my voice, possibly from talking too much after being silent for so long. We still had group meditations that day, and still had to get up for a final 4.4:30am to 6:30am session the following morning, but it was all so much more lighthearted and free. We spent the time chatting, laughing and relaxing, preparing ourselves to re-enter the world.

The next morning we were returned to Narayangarh and went our separate ways. I continued down to Sauraha for a few days to a safari that I’d pre-booked and found myself with two of the boys as my companions. Those few days of relaxation and healing with fellow students were exactly what I needed, and I’m not sure I’d have been able to do it alone. Being with them was exactly what I needed.

People ask me how the course was and I tell them it was probably the hardest and most traumatic things I have ever experienced in my life. They ask me if I would do it again and I say probably. They ask me if I would recommend it to others and I say yea, but only if they go into it fully aware of the psychological implications of noble silence. The theory behind vipassana is excellent. It can and does help thousands of people around the world. I think that my experience was influenced by the short amount of time I’d been in Nepal, my food issues and problems with communication, and if I do choose to do the course again, I would probably do it in a country where I speak the language, either an English speaking country, or back in Israel. The course is hard enough without adding additional stressors.

Since the course finished I’ve spent most of my time with friends from the course, and will be continuing to India next week with one of those friends. The experience has connected us in ways that are so deep, and so strong, and I am grateful for my new friends.

As I'm sure you can imagine, this was a tough post to write, and it has taken me a few days to try to get my thoughts down on paper as honestly as possible. I’m ok, actually I’m doing great. The trauma I experienced is healing and I’m learning lot as I continue to process my time at the center. I will be processing for a long time yet.

Please note that this is my experience only and shouldn’t be used as a benchmark for the vipassana meditation course. If anyone has any questions, feel free to be in touch.