If you’ve been following me - and Sati - for a while, you may have noticed that I go on quite a few meditation retreats. Someone said to me recently, “It feels like you’re either about to go on a retreat or just coming back from one” and I’ll be honest, this isn’t too far from the truth! The time between each retreat varies but it’s usually a few months before the calling returns… and when it does, it’s hard to resist the pull.
Sometimes people are perplexed by the fact that I want to spend so much time going inwards. I sometimes perplex myself with the inexhaustible curiosity I have towards the interplay of my own mind and body. I remember a friend once asking me whether there might come a point where I was meditating so much that I would no longer have a life to meditate on. Her comment made me smile and I could see why she might think that or be asking the question “how productive can it really be to spend hours on end with your eyes shut?”
But despite how it might look from the outside, meditation is actually a very active, engaged practice and there is so much life happening on the inside when we start investigating it; all of it, in fact. It’s difficult to imagine the complexity of the mind / body experience - and the potential for transformation that lies within it - until we’ve taken the time to really look. (And that's coming from someone who's only just scratching the surface.)
But there was also a level of truth in my friend's reflection. As householders, we need to live our lives and engage with the world and in fact our whole life "off the cushion" can become our practice if we're really devoted to the path.
There are endless opportunities in everyday life to learn, reflect and refine our experience so that it brings greater happiness to our own lives as well as to the lives of others. But there is also value in stepping back to gain clarity and perspective through retreating. We must find our own personal balance between the two.
I practise Vipassana meditation in the Goenka tradition and alternate between sitting courses and serving (volunteering on) them at centres around the world. The impact that practising this technique has had on my life is profound and, even after all these years, the benefits and transformations continue to surprise me.
There is always something new to discover about myself - my thought patterns, both helpful and unhelpful, my behaviours, my responses and reactions to the world around me. The natural laws that govern life (Dhamma) are endlessly fascinating to observe and there is so much truth to uncover that ten days is in fact a very short period of time. The body-mind structure is so complex and ever-changing that every moment feels full of potential discoveries.
All of this is not just a matter of curiosity for me; the practice of Vipassana is deep and transformative. The technique works to purify the mind and free us from suffering - and this is not just a bold claim but something I have experienced in my own life. Every time I make the journey inward, I peel back a few more layers and gain a little more clarity around what is happening inside and how to work more skilfully with it.
A ten-day Vipassana course involves around ten hours of meditation throughout the day, alongside silence and a very simple daily routine. Having so much uninterrupted time to sit, observe and listen allows things to come to the surface to be released.
My recent retreat - aptly entitled a “Special 10 Day” course - gave me plenty of time to learn and reflect. It consolidated a few insights that I wanted to share because I find insights become more valuable when they are shared. We never really know who might benefit from something we’ve learnt, just as we never know what we might learn from someone else.
Here are three themes that punctuated this retreat for me. Perhaps they will resonate, perhaps they won’t, but I hope there is something here that is useful - or at least provides some food for thought.
1. Mind matters most
Everything originates in the mind. Our thoughts inform the way we move through life: our actions and words are, in many ways, an extension of our mental volitions (intentions). Therefore, keeping a healthy and balanced mind is crucial if we really want to effect change in the world.
A meditation technique that works to purify the mind at the deepest level allows us to become more aware of our mental volitions and, over time, transform the way we experience and interact with life.
For me, this is one of the most powerful things about meditation. We often focus so much on changing what is happening around us but there is also so much we can learn by looking at what is happening within.
2. Everything is always changing (you won’t always feel like this)
One of the things that becomes very apparent when you spend time meditating is just how rapidly everything changes. In everyday life we know that things change; you might wake up one morning feeling grumpy and irritable and by the end of the day you might be feeling light and joyful. On a Vipassana course, you get to experience these changes in real time.
The ever-fluctuating cascade of thoughts, emotions, moods and sensations occurring in our experience is observed moment by moment, allowing us to see our constant, often unconscious, reactions to stimuli and sensations. Our job on retreat (and indeed life) is to remain equanimous (balanced) in the face of all of it, recognising anicca - the ancient Indian word for impermanence - and develop wisdom through this.
This is a particularly helpful truth to remember when life feels difficult. It doesn’t mean that something painful isn’t painful, or that we shouldn’t acknowledge what we’re going through but there is some comfort in remembering that we won’t always feel the way we feel right now.
Everything is changing all the time.
3. Effortless effort is key
Finding the balance between effort and surrender is something I’m continually learning in my meditation practice. By nature, I am someone who likes to “get it right” and often try hard to do so (perfectionist Virgo, here) so it can be easy to bring too much effort into meditation too.
The Buddha used the analogy of the strings of a lute. They need to have enough tension to be played but not so much that they break. Not too tight, not too loose... neither forced nor lazy. We need to find what is known as the Middle Way ⚖️
Finding this balance is surprisingly nuanced. Sometimes I need to apply more discipline and effort and other times I need to soften, let go and stop trying so hard. I think there is something in this for life beyond meditation too - learning when to push, when to pause and also when to trust that we don’t always need to be doing more.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons I keep coming back to meditation. There is always more to uncover but there is also always another opportunity to sit, observe and learn from what is already here.
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