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Communicate in any way, have fun, write, read, smoke, drink - what else is impossible during Vipassana and why go through it.
Vipassana is taught in a ten-day course in which participants take a vow of silence and find themselves alone with themselves. This is an ancient technique of meditation that has come down to us, as they say, from Siddhartha Gautama himself, that is, Buddha. Vipassana courses are held in special centers around the world - there are more than 180 of them, and they exist on donations, so the adventure will be free. You can donate a ruble to the center only after completing at least one course.
Why did I go there? True version: I'm just fucked up.
Now "correct": I understood that I was rushing somewhere in the wrong direction. In Moscow, there is usually no way to stop and think what the hell you are doing with your life. In addition, I have ADHD, problems with concentration, and without drugs banned in Russia due to drug-phobic policies, it's hard. Meditation works well for the prefrontal cortex - and in people with my syndrome, this part of the brain is just refined.
I learned about this type of retreat from my friend R. psychopath, she liked to embellish her biography with episodes from someone else's. Once R. told how she allegedly took a course - although in reality it was someone else.
The main Russian vipassana center, built on the basis of the former Druzhba pioneer camp, is located about 100 kilometers from Moscow. You need to arrive in the evening of the "zero" day - the course itself will begin in the morning. People usually come there by electric trains - and I was late for the last one, because I was listening to the new single by Bjork instead of packing up. There was nothing to do but order an Uber for 5K.
The driver Zukhurdin was very talkative, and for the first time I was happy about it, realizing that I would not have a better chance to talk before ten days of silence.
“I don't understand one thing: what is Russian food? So I come home - what will my wife cook for me? Pilaf. Horse meat sausage. And what does a Russian wife cook for a Russian husband? Will he cook buckwheat? "- complained Zukhurdin.
I completely shared his indignation with our kitchen, so I asked to be attentive on the road and look for MacAuto - after two hours of a tiring ride, I finally chewed a second Big Tasty in a row under some stupid Noginsk on the Gorky Highway. I don't understand how I once endured six years of vegetarianism and veganism, but ten days of a plant-based diet scared me - Buddhists do not feed meat. Third Big Tasty, please!
An hour and a half later, overcoming nausea, I was already registering. Both when applying for the course and upon arrival, you must fill out a questionnaire. The most important thing in it is the items that ask about mental health and drugs. It is required to talk about the experience of substance use and diagnoses related to mental health.
The meditation center attracts both drug addicts and madmen - from here they are periodically taken out by orderlies, as meditation can aggravate.
They do not want to have any business with either one or the other in order to avoid unnecessary problems.
If you have ever been bothered by mental disorders, you will need to submit a certificate from a psychiatrist stating that the "giver" is in complete remission and this course is safe for you. As for the experience of taking substances - most likely, your application will be approved only if it was a long time ago and the matter was limited to soft drugs.
To get on the course, many lie. I also lied: the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with schizoaffective personality disorder and prescribed handfuls of psychoactive substances would have been very surprised by my questionnaire. I was very, very healthy.
You must also confirm that you agree to the rules. During the course, it is prohibited, among other things:
1) communicate in any way (except for consultation with a teacher);
2) to be sexually active;
3) have fun, write, read;
4) smoke, drink and use drugs.
After that, the ministers of the center, with a Buddhist smile, took away all means of communication and identity cards - and locked them in a number box. "Why are you smiling, bitch, have you decided to issue a loan for my passport?" - I thought, but there was nowhere to retreat.
If earlier at four in the morning I went to bed, now at this time I had to get up - by a vile gong. My room was located between two toilets - male and female. So the morning atmosphere was complemented by the sounds of diarrhea on one side and pouring urine on the other. Most of the day was occupied by meditation - about ten hours. The evening lecture took about two hours. There were breaks: short breaks between meditation sessions and long breaks for meals.
Unaccustomed students did not get enough sleep, and many, including myself, used the time allotted for food to sleep. Both my roommates and I used the bed several times a day. Here the main shock awaited me: they always made the bed. At first, I mentally giggled at them and suspected that this was how army reflexes were manifested - but I myself did not serve. But over time, I realized that there is a benefit in this: it's not about order, but about a habit that reinforces your discipline. Now I tried to imitate my neighbors - and made the bed too, albeit casually.
In the first four days, a simple meditation was practiced with concentration on the sensations around the nostrils - roughly speaking, on the breath. This stage is preparatory, it is necessary to train attention for basic meditation.
Then Vipassana itself began. Once we were asked to shift our attention from the nostrils to the crown, and over time it should be extended to the whole body.
The idea is that the sensations in our mortal shell are associated with this or that mental garbage - and by observing them during meditation, you get rid of this garbage.
My body was mostly painful, but it was not frightening. We were taught to accept both pleasant and rough sensations as something natural and remember about "anicca" - the principle of changeability of everything: if you feel bad, it is normal and temporary; if you feel good, this is temporary and normal.
This philosophy resonated with me - relatively recently, I swallowed handfuls of tranquilizers every time I was "not very", but, giving up the pills, I found that if you just watch and accept your pain, it dissolves.
The real painful experience was the local food. The daily meals consisted of two full meals and an evening fruit tea. Old students (those who took the course not for the first time) could not indulge themselves with tea - they were only supposed to have lemon water.
The typical breakfast dish was semolina on the water. However, there was always a choice: in addition to porridge, there were cereals, homemade yogurt, carrot salad and sprouted wheat grains.
It was wild to watch how many men mixed all this in one bowl - and poured strawberry or sea buckthorn jam.
It was lousy from the unusual food.
“I want a happy honey! I want a Happy Meal! "- I moaned inside myself, sitting in the meditation hall, and could hardly restrain myself not to scream out loud.
But the student from Baumanka really liked the diet: he lives on a scholarship and eats much worse. Perhaps this was the main reason why he found it possible to skip university for ten days.
In total, about a hundred people came to the center - and it seemed that I was the worst student of all.
This year I was diagnosed with ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. To put it simply, the brain of a person with such a disorder is like a TV that constantly switches between different channels, and you don't have a remote control from it.
During some meditations it was impossible even to move - my mind and body could not calm down, and it seemed that I was about to explode from within. I wanted to bang my head on the floor.
But I was not the worst. Some could not stand at all until the end of the course - and left, sometimes due to illness or family circumstances.
In the meditation hall, each student was assigned a specific place, which was designated by a square pillow. When someone left the course, she was removed.
The universe laughed: all the pillows disappeared around me. On the second day there was a void in front, on the fifth - behind me, on the seventh the handsome man on the left disappeared, on the eighth - someone diagonally.
The handsome man seemed perfect: his physical shell resembled an antique statue, during meditation the guy was never distracted, did not move, did not open his eyes. I licked his eyes and envied his ability to concentrate. But he could not resist and left - what seems ideal is not.
Even with my weak concentration, meditation helped to extract from memory too distant events: for example, on the fourth day I remembered an episode that happened to me when I was two years old. And I realized that even then I felt myself gay.
My great-grandmother was rather careless with her medications. Once, crawling on the floor, I picked up and swallowed some pills that she dropped. The adults did not notice anything and at first thought that I was just falling asleep. But it was not a dream - so I ended up in intensive care.
And now I have been sitting for the third or fourth day in the meditation hall, my head shows different pictures. And suddenly I see my children's ward with a window for observation. A woman in a white robe looked at me through him and wagged her finger with a smile - because I woke up. I am two years old, but I dislike the nurse - simply because she is a woman. I feel her as something cold, ugly and as if watery. Whether it is male doctors! I loved them, I liked their warm hands. But I was also afraid of them - with the same specific fear that I am afraid of men now.
"You left me, you left me, / When you left, I was left alone!" - on the fifth day I suddenly remembered the song of the group "Strelki" in 1999.
It turned out that I know the text completely - inside and out. He didn't get out of my head for the remaining days of the course and was just spinning on repeat. Ironically, I was dumped the day before going to Vipassana - but I quickly became imbued with Buddhist pokhuism and did not worry.
The Argentine Daniel taught us to be indifferent to troubles. With his wrinkles and at the same time simple and elegant advice, the mentor resembled Yoda.
In the allotted time, he could be asked about the technique of meditation. Many people tired of the vow of silence saw this as an opportunity to talk and asked off-topic questions, and therefore Daniel distanced himself from the students and ignored many of their remarks.
English was used for communication - it was possible to contact the teacher directly or through an interpreter. Women knew the language better than the representatives of the "strong half of humanity" and looked much poorer. Among the men there were those who immediately showed: "He has money." Among women, no.
This is not a representative study, but one fact has been confirmed in my head: women are more educated, but they have limited access to financial resources.
The center smelled of sexism in general. In the women's part of the camp, the area for walking was less than two times.
For meditation, men were given blue pillows, and women were blue. In no case was it possible to mix them up: here they were too afraid of sexuality and saw its manifestations in everything.
Hence the stupid rules: even after the end of the course, any physical contact is prohibited on the campus - be it an ordinary hug or a handshake.
But everyone here became offenders to one degree or another. Someone warmed up after meditation, someone talked in a dream, I accidentally began to sing out loud while walking, and my roommate generally went on dates.
Once there was a knock on our window, and when I opened the curtain, I saw a woman's face. "Can you Artyom?" The girl asked. This is how I learned his name. But the girl did not answer - Artyom was not there. As it turned out later, the guys met regularly in a greenhouse on the territory of the center.
After that, I stopped hiding from my neighbor that I myself break the rules and keep records - on paper napkins, a stack of which I stole from the dining room.
There was some kind of invisible friendly connection between us - and one day it was reinforced by a general hysteria. We were meditating in the room and suddenly we heard crying from the women's toilet, then it was replaced by an unhealthy laugh - and in a minute we all three were laughing seizurely: me, a neighbor, and an unknown girl behind the wall.
By the way, about the toilets. On the wall of one of them, I found notches - students marked with dashes the days they endured: for some it was another day without drugs, for others - without a beloved dog.
Course managers helped to get through difficult moments. The experience gained on thousands of people allowed them to understand the emerging problems and get ahead of them. Sometimes, when you wake up, you find on the wall a note with stupid advice like: "Continuity of practice is the key to success." And then I realized that this particular day was the most difficult and you wanted to give up, so such instructions were very useful.
To minimize the shock of returning to the big world, on the tenth day the vow of silence is lifted - and people can finally communicate and get acquainted. Oddly enough, no one really wanted to talk again - but over time, everyone blabbed out, exchanged contacts and frivolously promised to maintain friendly relations in the future.
My new acquaintance Nikita found a treasure in the crevice of the tree - a small figurine of a boat and a note with the text: “On the sixth day I cried. And you? "We decided to return everything to its place - because we did not cry, let someone else find the treasure, who, perhaps, will feel better.
There was a huge amount of mushrooms on the territory of the Buddhist zone. As I learned after the end of the vow of silence, many talked to them and even gave them names.
This is how you meet the same mushroom for ten days in a row while walking and ignore its existence, and then it turns out that his name is Stepan.
On the eleventh day, I said goodbye to Styopa, returned home - and it was a disaster.
For about a week after the course, my brain burned from the inside - as if a hole had been drilled in my skull and a "Every Day" brand toilet cleaner had been poured into it.
I became antisocial, and it seemed that even with the closest friends I was now divided by a huge chasm. I didn't feel like I was part of anything human and was afraid that it would always be so.
But I remembered "anichchu" and the eternal phrase of the teacher: "Just watch the sensations and keep working." And he resumed meditations - even if not every day, and I could no longer sit for a long time. One way or another, the painful sensations passed, and every day I saw more and more clearly the benefits that the course brought me.
As it may sound, vipassana changed my life, and the most important experience was the experience of overcoming. Earlier I lived as if with a learned helplessness, but now I know that I can do even what I cannot do.
During meditation, I often found myself at the limit - at a point of extreme despair, rejection and fatigue.
“I just can't take it anymore,” I thought. But then he convinced himself: “You chose it yourself, you wanted it yourself. So we should continue. "And he continued.
And now I'm much less afraid of prison - a very useful skill when you live in Russia.
Vipassana is taught in a ten-day course in which participants take a vow of silence and find themselves alone with themselves. This is an ancient technique of meditation that has come down to us, as they say, from Siddhartha Gautama himself, that is, Buddha. Vipassana courses are held in special centers around the world - there are more than 180 of them, and they exist on donations, so the adventure will be free. You can donate a ruble to the center only after completing at least one course.
Why did I go there? True version: I'm just fucked up.
Now "correct": I understood that I was rushing somewhere in the wrong direction. In Moscow, there is usually no way to stop and think what the hell you are doing with your life. In addition, I have ADHD, problems with concentration, and without drugs banned in Russia due to drug-phobic policies, it's hard. Meditation works well for the prefrontal cortex - and in people with my syndrome, this part of the brain is just refined.
I learned about this type of retreat from my friend R. psychopath, she liked to embellish her biography with episodes from someone else's. Once R. told how she allegedly took a course - although in reality it was someone else.
The main Russian vipassana center, built on the basis of the former Druzhba pioneer camp, is located about 100 kilometers from Moscow. You need to arrive in the evening of the "zero" day - the course itself will begin in the morning. People usually come there by electric trains - and I was late for the last one, because I was listening to the new single by Bjork instead of packing up. There was nothing to do but order an Uber for 5K.
The driver Zukhurdin was very talkative, and for the first time I was happy about it, realizing that I would not have a better chance to talk before ten days of silence.
“I don't understand one thing: what is Russian food? So I come home - what will my wife cook for me? Pilaf. Horse meat sausage. And what does a Russian wife cook for a Russian husband? Will he cook buckwheat? "- complained Zukhurdin.
I completely shared his indignation with our kitchen, so I asked to be attentive on the road and look for MacAuto - after two hours of a tiring ride, I finally chewed a second Big Tasty in a row under some stupid Noginsk on the Gorky Highway. I don't understand how I once endured six years of vegetarianism and veganism, but ten days of a plant-based diet scared me - Buddhists do not feed meat. Third Big Tasty, please!
An hour and a half later, overcoming nausea, I was already registering. Both when applying for the course and upon arrival, you must fill out a questionnaire. The most important thing in it is the items that ask about mental health and drugs. It is required to talk about the experience of substance use and diagnoses related to mental health.
The meditation center attracts both drug addicts and madmen - from here they are periodically taken out by orderlies, as meditation can aggravate.
They do not want to have any business with either one or the other in order to avoid unnecessary problems.
If you have ever been bothered by mental disorders, you will need to submit a certificate from a psychiatrist stating that the "giver" is in complete remission and this course is safe for you. As for the experience of taking substances - most likely, your application will be approved only if it was a long time ago and the matter was limited to soft drugs.
To get on the course, many lie. I also lied: the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with schizoaffective personality disorder and prescribed handfuls of psychoactive substances would have been very surprised by my questionnaire. I was very, very healthy.
You must also confirm that you agree to the rules. During the course, it is prohibited, among other things:
1) communicate in any way (except for consultation with a teacher);
2) to be sexually active;
3) have fun, write, read;
4) smoke, drink and use drugs.
After that, the ministers of the center, with a Buddhist smile, took away all means of communication and identity cards - and locked them in a number box. "Why are you smiling, bitch, have you decided to issue a loan for my passport?" - I thought, but there was nowhere to retreat.
If earlier at four in the morning I went to bed, now at this time I had to get up - by a vile gong. My room was located between two toilets - male and female. So the morning atmosphere was complemented by the sounds of diarrhea on one side and pouring urine on the other. Most of the day was occupied by meditation - about ten hours. The evening lecture took about two hours. There were breaks: short breaks between meditation sessions and long breaks for meals.
Unaccustomed students did not get enough sleep, and many, including myself, used the time allotted for food to sleep. Both my roommates and I used the bed several times a day. Here the main shock awaited me: they always made the bed. At first, I mentally giggled at them and suspected that this was how army reflexes were manifested - but I myself did not serve. But over time, I realized that there is a benefit in this: it's not about order, but about a habit that reinforces your discipline. Now I tried to imitate my neighbors - and made the bed too, albeit casually.
In the first four days, a simple meditation was practiced with concentration on the sensations around the nostrils - roughly speaking, on the breath. This stage is preparatory, it is necessary to train attention for basic meditation.
Then Vipassana itself began. Once we were asked to shift our attention from the nostrils to the crown, and over time it should be extended to the whole body.
The idea is that the sensations in our mortal shell are associated with this or that mental garbage - and by observing them during meditation, you get rid of this garbage.
My body was mostly painful, but it was not frightening. We were taught to accept both pleasant and rough sensations as something natural and remember about "anicca" - the principle of changeability of everything: if you feel bad, it is normal and temporary; if you feel good, this is temporary and normal.
This philosophy resonated with me - relatively recently, I swallowed handfuls of tranquilizers every time I was "not very", but, giving up the pills, I found that if you just watch and accept your pain, it dissolves.
The real painful experience was the local food. The daily meals consisted of two full meals and an evening fruit tea. Old students (those who took the course not for the first time) could not indulge themselves with tea - they were only supposed to have lemon water.
The typical breakfast dish was semolina on the water. However, there was always a choice: in addition to porridge, there were cereals, homemade yogurt, carrot salad and sprouted wheat grains.
It was wild to watch how many men mixed all this in one bowl - and poured strawberry or sea buckthorn jam.
It was lousy from the unusual food.
“I want a happy honey! I want a Happy Meal! "- I moaned inside myself, sitting in the meditation hall, and could hardly restrain myself not to scream out loud.
But the student from Baumanka really liked the diet: he lives on a scholarship and eats much worse. Perhaps this was the main reason why he found it possible to skip university for ten days.
In total, about a hundred people came to the center - and it seemed that I was the worst student of all.
This year I was diagnosed with ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. To put it simply, the brain of a person with such a disorder is like a TV that constantly switches between different channels, and you don't have a remote control from it.
During some meditations it was impossible even to move - my mind and body could not calm down, and it seemed that I was about to explode from within. I wanted to bang my head on the floor.
But I was not the worst. Some could not stand at all until the end of the course - and left, sometimes due to illness or family circumstances.
In the meditation hall, each student was assigned a specific place, which was designated by a square pillow. When someone left the course, she was removed.
The universe laughed: all the pillows disappeared around me. On the second day there was a void in front, on the fifth - behind me, on the seventh the handsome man on the left disappeared, on the eighth - someone diagonally.
The handsome man seemed perfect: his physical shell resembled an antique statue, during meditation the guy was never distracted, did not move, did not open his eyes. I licked his eyes and envied his ability to concentrate. But he could not resist and left - what seems ideal is not.
Even with my weak concentration, meditation helped to extract from memory too distant events: for example, on the fourth day I remembered an episode that happened to me when I was two years old. And I realized that even then I felt myself gay.
My great-grandmother was rather careless with her medications. Once, crawling on the floor, I picked up and swallowed some pills that she dropped. The adults did not notice anything and at first thought that I was just falling asleep. But it was not a dream - so I ended up in intensive care.
And now I have been sitting for the third or fourth day in the meditation hall, my head shows different pictures. And suddenly I see my children's ward with a window for observation. A woman in a white robe looked at me through him and wagged her finger with a smile - because I woke up. I am two years old, but I dislike the nurse - simply because she is a woman. I feel her as something cold, ugly and as if watery. Whether it is male doctors! I loved them, I liked their warm hands. But I was also afraid of them - with the same specific fear that I am afraid of men now.
"You left me, you left me, / When you left, I was left alone!" - on the fifth day I suddenly remembered the song of the group "Strelki" in 1999.
It turned out that I know the text completely - inside and out. He didn't get out of my head for the remaining days of the course and was just spinning on repeat. Ironically, I was dumped the day before going to Vipassana - but I quickly became imbued with Buddhist pokhuism and did not worry.
The Argentine Daniel taught us to be indifferent to troubles. With his wrinkles and at the same time simple and elegant advice, the mentor resembled Yoda.
In the allotted time, he could be asked about the technique of meditation. Many people tired of the vow of silence saw this as an opportunity to talk and asked off-topic questions, and therefore Daniel distanced himself from the students and ignored many of their remarks.
English was used for communication - it was possible to contact the teacher directly or through an interpreter. Women knew the language better than the representatives of the "strong half of humanity" and looked much poorer. Among the men there were those who immediately showed: "He has money." Among women, no.
This is not a representative study, but one fact has been confirmed in my head: women are more educated, but they have limited access to financial resources.
The center smelled of sexism in general. In the women's part of the camp, the area for walking was less than two times.
For meditation, men were given blue pillows, and women were blue. In no case was it possible to mix them up: here they were too afraid of sexuality and saw its manifestations in everything.
Hence the stupid rules: even after the end of the course, any physical contact is prohibited on the campus - be it an ordinary hug or a handshake.
But everyone here became offenders to one degree or another. Someone warmed up after meditation, someone talked in a dream, I accidentally began to sing out loud while walking, and my roommate generally went on dates.
Once there was a knock on our window, and when I opened the curtain, I saw a woman's face. "Can you Artyom?" The girl asked. This is how I learned his name. But the girl did not answer - Artyom was not there. As it turned out later, the guys met regularly in a greenhouse on the territory of the center.
After that, I stopped hiding from my neighbor that I myself break the rules and keep records - on paper napkins, a stack of which I stole from the dining room.
There was some kind of invisible friendly connection between us - and one day it was reinforced by a general hysteria. We were meditating in the room and suddenly we heard crying from the women's toilet, then it was replaced by an unhealthy laugh - and in a minute we all three were laughing seizurely: me, a neighbor, and an unknown girl behind the wall.
By the way, about the toilets. On the wall of one of them, I found notches - students marked with dashes the days they endured: for some it was another day without drugs, for others - without a beloved dog.
Course managers helped to get through difficult moments. The experience gained on thousands of people allowed them to understand the emerging problems and get ahead of them. Sometimes, when you wake up, you find on the wall a note with stupid advice like: "Continuity of practice is the key to success." And then I realized that this particular day was the most difficult and you wanted to give up, so such instructions were very useful.
To minimize the shock of returning to the big world, on the tenth day the vow of silence is lifted - and people can finally communicate and get acquainted. Oddly enough, no one really wanted to talk again - but over time, everyone blabbed out, exchanged contacts and frivolously promised to maintain friendly relations in the future.
My new acquaintance Nikita found a treasure in the crevice of the tree - a small figurine of a boat and a note with the text: “On the sixth day I cried. And you? "We decided to return everything to its place - because we did not cry, let someone else find the treasure, who, perhaps, will feel better.
There was a huge amount of mushrooms on the territory of the Buddhist zone. As I learned after the end of the vow of silence, many talked to them and even gave them names.
This is how you meet the same mushroom for ten days in a row while walking and ignore its existence, and then it turns out that his name is Stepan.
On the eleventh day, I said goodbye to Styopa, returned home - and it was a disaster.
For about a week after the course, my brain burned from the inside - as if a hole had been drilled in my skull and a "Every Day" brand toilet cleaner had been poured into it.
I became antisocial, and it seemed that even with the closest friends I was now divided by a huge chasm. I didn't feel like I was part of anything human and was afraid that it would always be so.
But I remembered "anichchu" and the eternal phrase of the teacher: "Just watch the sensations and keep working." And he resumed meditations - even if not every day, and I could no longer sit for a long time. One way or another, the painful sensations passed, and every day I saw more and more clearly the benefits that the course brought me.
As it may sound, vipassana changed my life, and the most important experience was the experience of overcoming. Earlier I lived as if with a learned helplessness, but now I know that I can do even what I cannot do.
During meditation, I often found myself at the limit - at a point of extreme despair, rejection and fatigue.
“I just can't take it anymore,” I thought. But then he convinced himself: “You chose it yourself, you wanted it yourself. So we should continue. "And he continued.
And now I'm much less afraid of prison - a very useful skill when you live in Russia.
