What I Learned From Ten Days of Vipassana Meditation

I.

"a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;"

A number of years ago, I worked as an English teacher in Taiwan. Following a sequence of badly timed events and decisions, I found myself between jobs. My money quickly dwindled. When the rental contract on my apartment expired, I moved into a hostel on the upper floors of a highrise where I shared a closet-sized room with five others. Every morning I paid the bill for one more night.

Living in the hostel was a daily adventure. I met people from Belgium, Japan, Germany, Korea, Ukraine, France, Spain, Orlando (ha), and many other places. Still, I needed a job so I wouldn't be forced to leave the beautiful country I loved. One night while searching the internet for ways to live cheaply, I stumbled across the idea of going on a ten-day meditation retreat of silence. Meals and housing were provided free of charge. Not having to pay for food or shelter for ten days would be a boon to my depleted bank account, so I gladly signed up.

Ten days of silence! Silence was a luxury in Taiwan. Constant, repetitive pop music blared from shops and stores; endless flows of shoulder-to-shoulder crowds blanketed the wide sidewalks; cars, trucks, taxis, buses, trains, planes, bicycles, subway cars, the el train, the scooters, the scooters, and the scooters: they zipped and zoomed around you at all times; amplified music rose from nearby temples just after sunrise; trucks drove through neighborhoods, mounted with loudspeakers that shouted about who to vote for, where to eat, or what brand of make-up to buy; parades and processions banged their way along the roads on religious holidays; firecrackers exploded over the city on holiday evenings; wherever you went, you were within range of the sound of a karaoke machine. At the hostel there were conversations, music, and movies in the dorm room, conversations and TV in the living room, and conversations and the sounds of the city on the rooftop. There were even conversations in the showers. I loved living in Taiwan, but - without leaving the big cities - sometimes even the thought of silence was hard to conjure.

As the day approached, my excitement grew. For the first time in my life, I'd be able to hear what was really going on inside my mind. Finally, my genius would surface! I knew it was in there. In the perfect silence, whatever fantastic ideas I'd always had for novels and stories would float to the top of my noble mind, I was sure of it. I'd mine the deep, dark depths of myself for the golden nuggets of my own creative brilliance, and it would be pure pleasure. I began to daydream that the retreat of silence would light the spark of my first great idea as a writer.

A few days before the retreat, I received an offer to interview at an English school in Taipei. The day of the interview, I was in a very special mood. This led to a couple of unconventional (even for me) decisions. First, although the interview lasted two hours, I held onto a basketball the entire time. The principal of the school asked me four or five times why I wouldn't put it down. I told her because I liked it. Every time. Second, I sang all of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Perhaps because of this spectacular and totally unsolicited performance of my homeland's national anthem, I was offered the position. Feeling myself, I asked my new boss if I could postpone my start date until after the retreat. She graciously consented.

II.

"I am an alien in their sight."

The day before the retreat, I boarded a bus for the south of Taiwan. I arrived in Kaohsiung late in the evening. Unable to afford a taxi, I city-hiked a few miles from the station to the hotel. The hotel was the cheapest in Kaohsiung. I walked through a grimy neighborhood that screamed organized crime. Shiftless punks and wasted waifs, covered with tattoos of dragons and flames, accented the dirty streets. A hunched up geezer in a wifebeater and blue plastic tai-ke sandals walked down the middle of the road. He shuffled along, defiantly pushing everyone else – cars, scooters, and pedestrians – to the margins. When he turned to look at me, his face was oddly terrifying. The neighborhood was seedier than anywhere I'd ever been. As I walked, I entertained myself by coming up with reasons why I wasn't going to be robbed. One, I'd lived in Taiwan long enough to know that it was a country where "organized" actually meant organized. Two, robbing an American would attract more trouble than it was worth. Three, my presence itself probably proved I didn't have anything worth stealing: it was that kind of neighborhood.

The walls of my tiny hotel room formed an interesting shape that I decided to name a "unique-agon." The floor, walls, ceiling, table, and bed were made of flimsy, flaking wood. A large window that didn't shut looked across an alley into two other rooms, each with its own large window that apparently didn't shut, either. I turned off the useless A/C unit. The room became much quieter. The lamp on the table was the only light.

I spent most of the night awake: because I was excited about the journey ahead, because it was so hot, and because the three open windows made me nervous. Because the light from the lamp didn't reach the bed and someone had apparently thrown the room's only chair out of the window, I was unable to read any of the books I'd brought. Lying or sitting on the filthy floor was out of the question, of course. In between thoughts about how great this experience would be for me as a writer, I spent the early-morning hours circling back to the comforting idea that nobody worth robbing would ever be caught dead in such a place.

In the morning I woke up ready to go back to sleep and caught a taxi to the train station. A local train took me to a small, isolated village, the kind of place where you could stand in the middle of the road and see the whole town. There were school-aged children everywhere, but - relatedly, perhaps - no school. I bought a bowl of noodles at a little shop and carried it across the street into a convenience store. I figured that if I couldn't catch up on sleep, I'd at least catch up on air conditioning. I sat down on a stool with a good view of the street, hoping to settle into some people-watching. When I looked up, eight or nine kids were standing outside on the sidewalk, people-watching me through the window with their mouths agape. Against my will, I smiled. They stirred, and half of them sprinted into the store to see what I looked like from behind. They surrounded me, marveling quietly from a respectful distance, waiting to see what the waiguoren would do. I felt like the orangutan who's been specially drugged for the day of the school field trip so that everyone can get a good look at him. I turned my head a few times for their benefit, and their startled looks of awe told me this was a day they'd remember for a long time. 

It was midday. I finished my noodles and walked back across the street to a charming little bus station that looked like it had been used on the set of a Sergio Leone film and then abandoned for fifty years. Once Upon a Time in the... East. I waited with ten travelers who were all Taiwanese for "the little white van" that the meditation centre was sending out to get us. The van arrived, and we started out into the rich, green countryside.

III.

"Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears."

The grounds of the meditation centre were a Garden of Eden. It was the heart of springtime, and everything was green and blooming. The air was cooler than in the city or the village. Beyond the flourishing valley in which we lay, a mountain loomed, looking no less lush than any of the ground that led to it. The view and the life of the place were breathtaking.

Students of all ages congregated in a large garage with one wall opened. Many faces smiled, and there was a feeling of anticipation, as though we were all about to build something together. A few students expressed doubt about how they'd handle the spartan amenities and two small vegetarian meals a day. I was assigned a small hut with one other student. Toilets and showers were communal. If we wanted to wash our clothes, we had to do so by hand. None of the huts, restrooms, cafeteria, or the main meditation hall had air conditioning, but all except the cafeteria were specially designed to allow lovely breezes from outside.

When I entered my hut, I smiled. It was so much cleaner and sturdier than the hotel the night before and so much more private than the hostel in Taipei. I hummed an old song to myself as I set down my things and made the bed. Movin' on up! To the east side! Movin' on up... A few minutes later, my hutmate arrived. He was a recent college graduate who had that combination of reserve and innocence more common in Taiwanese than in Westerners his age. He was meticulous with his effects. After speaking a sentence or two obviously intended to show off his impressive English, he resolutely began to ignore me. I took this for the zeal of a spiritual overachiever who wanted to get a headstart on the silence. I put my things in order and went outside.

Among maybe eighty students, only two others were Westerners. Both were English-speaking males around my age. The tall, bookish blonde was a seasoned veteran of vipassana, while the ruddy, confident world-wanderer was a rookie like myself. We formed a triangle and struck up an amiable but guarded conversation next to a flowerbed. I don't know whether this will make any sense, but the conversation gave me the feeling we were standing on a windswept outcrop overhanging an ocean, all with our hands in our pockets, looking at each other and cheerily agreeing, "Well, I guess this is it. We can't go any farther than this!"

IV.

"And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known."

After about thirty minutes of that, a gong sounded and called us to orientation. The three of us were sent to a small room in a temporary building. A nice-looking man came in, put a VHS tape into a VCR, smiled at us, and left. On the tape, a Burmese-Indian guru introduced us in a measured baritone to what he called "the method." Students were not allowed to have books, pens, paper, phones, or laptops at any time. We were to bring nothing but our bodies. He told us in a slow, soothing singsong that if we were religious (I wasn't) we should give up all practices and rituals - including prayer - so that we could be certain that whatever results we achieved would be from the method alone. This was presented in scientific terms. It seemed to make sense. Soon after the tape ended, another gong sounded. All of the students filed over to the main building for the first session of guided meditation. The ten days of silence had begun.

We received about an hour of guided meditation each day in the large meditation hall. In a classic show of Taiwanese hospitality, the guided meditations were in English for the sake of the three foreigners. The disembodied, hypnotic voice of the man from the VHS crackled through the PA system, telling us not to direct our thoughts, but simply to let them appear, observe them dispassionately, and then release them. Then we'd all sit on our mats in complete silence for another two or three hours. Besides the aches of sitting upright for so long, the caresses of the breezes through the hall, and the chorus of cicadas and toads in the evenings, each student was alone with his or her thoughts. Finally!

V.

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing."

After a few days of following the method, I'd observed hundreds of independent thoughts and thousands of bodily sensations. I discovered that I'd been right to suppose one thing: in the absolute stillness, my thoughts took on an unprecedented crystalline clarity. 

On the fourth or fifth day, I had an epiphany: all of my thoughts that didn't have an immediate stimulus could be put into one of three categories. 

The first group of thoughts comprised roughly two thirds of everything that went through my mind. These thoughts were essentially sexual in nature. Not all were explicit (though many were), but they all evinced a desire for the presence of attractive women. 

The second group made up about one fifth of all my thoughts. These contained anger toward someone who had recently refused to lend me money. I knew with certainty that she was within her rights to refuse and that I had no moral or logical leg to stand on, but for some reason I was still angry. This surprised me very much. Before the retreat, I'd had no awareness of this anger. 

All of my remaining thoughts were about the future and usually involved money. Though many of them were dispassionate, they could all be described by the word "worry."

Not once in the ten days did I have an unprovoked thought that was original, creative, noble, or good. However, this didn't bother me. In fact, I was fascinated. It was something new for my bag of knowledge and experience. I wasn't worried about morality, nor was I concerned about the implications for my future as an artist. I took it as a reliable lesson that being a great writer was a matter of (self-)nurture rather than nature. I was happy to have learned this, and I decided that from then on I'd be more intentional about shaping my life to fit my goals and aspirations.

VI.

"it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded,"

I had spent my life so phenomenally stimulated and so fantastically distracted that I'd never truly heard myself think. This wasn't a self-indictment. It was simply a fact.

As I think it over, I believe the same must be true for many others in this 21st century. We never actually get to hear the natural tendency of our thoughts for more than a few moments at a time. They disappear, and by the time they return to us again, a sea of interference has made us forget them. We live as strangers to ourselves. 

How often do we pass through prolonged periods of silent stillness in total darkness, with a studied focus not to direct our thoughts anywhere outside of our own bodies, and a firm intent to be objective about all we observe within our minds? 

Some will read this and deny it, but I know I'm not unusual in what I found within myself. I'm basically a normal person. When a surgeon cuts open a patient, he doesn't have to look for the heart, the lungs, the liver, or the stomach. He knows where they are, because people are the same on the inside. This is true of our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls. It's true of our spirits, too. You might have stronger lungs or a weaker liver than I do. Maybe only twenty percent of your thoughts are about sex. Maybe you worry more than I do. But, in our natural state, we all have the same parts in the same places.

VII.

"Why doth thine heart carry thee away? and what do thy eyes wink at, that thou turnest thy spirit against God, and lettest such words go out of thy mouth?"

When the ten days ended, it was time to head home to Taipei. I paid about twenty dollars as a "gift" to the centre. A Taiwanese man offered to drive the ruddy world-wanderer and I to the nearest bus station. From there it was a short trip back to Kaohsiung before we'd part ways. The Taiwanese man didn't appear to speak English, so the wanderer and I were left to ourselves in the back seat of his sedan. 

We agreed how strange it felt to be speaking again after ten days without a word, but within a few minutes we became well-oiled talking machines. We got onto the five moral precepts of vipassana buddhism. The world-wanderer said he found them a little unreasonable. The conversation turned to the one that says, "refrain from taking what is not given." Hoping to to come off as a charming rapscallion with a dash of derring-do, I decided to tell a story or two.

I told him about the poster I'd taken off the wall of a bookstore in Texas. It hung next to my bunk in the hostel in Taipei. Another time, I'd stolen a bottle of beer from a refrigerator in a cafe in Houston. The cleaning lady saw me, and when she started to yell and chase me, I'd sprinted through the back door with my girlfriend. Happy to be talking freely again, I went on and on, sharing more and more related stories. The stories kept coming, and I kept spewing them out. Some supernatural assistance seemed to be aiding my memory. I confessed to crimes I'd never told anyone. Big things. I actually started to feel a little dirty, but I kept talking, doing my best to appear cheerful or at least blasé, trying to give the impression that each story was no different than the first two. Inside, I felt like a plane that had been left on autopilot just before the pilot died.

Later, I marveled at how unreserved I'd been. It was a little frightening. I decided it must've been the rust on my conversation skills after ten days of total conversational abstinence. Maybe hiding my true self was a bigger part of "the art of conversation" than I'd ever realized. Still, I was puzzled by my inability to stop talking, and I was stunned by how often and how much I'd stolen over the course of my life. These thoughts felt dangerous, so I decided not to go back to them.

VIII.

"But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man."

Years went by. I left Taiwan and moved back to Texas. Eventually, my experience on the vipassana retreat came back to me. I found that it made sense in light of the words of Jesus.

Jesus said: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.  And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Here was Jesus commenting on my sexual thoughts.

Jesus said: "Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment... but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." Here was Jesus teaching about my unjustified anger.

Jesus said: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." This was Jesus addressing my worry.

Jesus said: "For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." Here was Jesus explaining my autopilot mouth and why I couldn't stop talking about the times I had stolen. Those stories were a very small part of the evil treasure I had gathered into myself in abundance.

IX. "Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

I saw that Jesus spoke the truth. A judgment was coming, and I would be found guilty many times. I said, to no one, "I am a Christian. I believe Jesus." But I did no more than that. I didn't know how. I had given up on God almost fifteen years earlier, telling a friend, "I can't find God. He's welcome to come find me, but that's the only way we're ever going to connect, because I've tried everything I know how to do, and I can't find Him."

So, He did.

One day, about six months after making my silent declaration of belief, I was lying in bed reading my roommate's Bible when I came across these words:

"Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him."

I had gone to church for the first twenty-two years of my life, so I knew the famous first half of this verse. "Without faith it is impossible to please God." I'd always thought this meant that if I didn't walk on water or command mountains to move, then God would reject me. After years of trying to get to Him, trying to find a way to please Him, I'd concluded that I stunk at faith: pleasing God just wasn't an option for me. I'd even had a vision of Jesus when I was twenty-two, but the vision wasn't salvation. I figured that if seeing a vision couldn't save me, then maybe I wasn't cut out for knowing God. 

A few months later, I'd given up on Him, leaving the door open for Him to not give up on me, if that's what He wanted. It was an unspeakable relief. I could be normal. I could fit in. I could get a girlfriend and have sex. I could do my own thing. I could lounge around. I could try stealing things. I could explore the world. And that's exactly what I did, for the next fifteen years. All of that and much more.

But, reading these words with the light of the sun coming down onto the page through my bedroom window, I saw something I'd never seen before: "Believe that God exists. He rewards a sincere seeker." Suddenly, with joy, I realized how simple and small my faith needed to be. I realized that I was already doing it. I believed in a good God, and I spoke to Him (admittedly, not often) sincerely. That was all He wanted from me. I had what it took to please Him! I was already doing it! With tears streaming down my face, I read the words over and over again, making sure they were real. 

But that, also, wasn't salvation.

X.

"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord ...?"

Two thousand years ago God sent His Son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to the earth. He was fully God and fully human. Jesus (God) spent the first thirty years of his life in almost complete obscurity. Then, "from that time, He began to preach, and to say, 'Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" When He spoke, people said, "Never a man spoke like this." He spoke of hell and a Judgment Day that would come to every person, yet He was so popular that He had to go out into the countryside so the thousands and thousands of people who followed Him would have somewhere to stand. Jesus (God) "spoke a great salvation."

Here is how I understand this great salvation:

God is a God of perfect justice. You and I, eternal beings created in his image, have earned His wrath by disobeying the consciences He placed inside us. Like any good judge, He cannot allow a criminal to get away with his or her crimes. A good judge does not simply "forgive" criminals. That would be a corrupt judge, not a good one, and God is infinitely more just than any judge we can imagine. He will see that no evil deed, word, or thought goes unpunished. This puts us in terrible danger. However, God is not only perfect in justice, He is also perfect in love. He wants to give every good gift to you and I, but His justice keeps Him from being able to forgive us and unite with us. It is the problem of the unmovable object (God's justice) and the unstoppable force (God's love). 

Because He is also perfect in wisdom, God found a way to satisfy both His perfect justice and His perfect love: He sent His Son, Jesus, who was fully God and fully man, to live in uninterrupted obedience to His Father's commands. Then He took upon Himself (the love!) the punishment His own justice demanded for us. His resurrection verified that He was an acceptable substitute for you and me. Now He can say to us, "Justice has been done. Moral perfection has been upheld. Your punishment can be removed from you, because it has been placed on Me. We can be together again, in love. I will perfect you, and you will be with Me and will become like Me."

This is the great salvation. I have received it, and I want to share it with you. To receive it, you must do two things.

First, you must acknowledge to God that you are guilty of violating His laws, and you must turn away from whatever you know displeases Him. You must do as Jesus commanded and repent. If it feels hard to do this sincerely, then tell God, "God, this is my most sincere right now. Please help me to turn away from all the things that I know are wrong." He will.

Second, you must trust that what Jesus did for you is enough. This is where the "believe" part comes in. Once you have trusted Him, He will prove to you how trustworthy He is, causing your trust in Him to grow and grow. Your trust will become evident in how you live your life.

A child can understand it: repent and trust in Jesus. Once you do these two things, God will perform the unmistakable miracle of bringing a new life into you. You will know God, and you will know that "this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Otherwise, as you will discover on Judgment Day, His wrath remains against you. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3:36) It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. I have written this so that you would believe in the goodness of God and believe in the Way that He offers to bring you into a loving relationship with Him. I mean all of this literally. Please, if today you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.