Why Would Anyone Choose To Not Talk For 10 Days?
Also: If you did do it, you might want to choose a more exciting location than Saxony to do it
Six years ago, I participated in a Vipassana course. Vipassana is an experience that lasts for eleven days during which you cannot read, talk, have a phone present, listen to music, or receive any external input. It was one of the most extreme and difficult but also one of the best things I have done in my life. As the bubble I am in isn’t typically a Vipassana bubble, and most people around me have never heard of it but are usually very interested, I thought I’d share this experience with you. This article was originally published for Hey Woman! in 2018 and was amended for this version.
What is Vipassana?
Vipassana is one of the oldest forms of meditation in India and it means to see the things as they really are. It was taught in India over 2500 years ago as a “universal remedy for universal suffering and thus as an art of living”. It is possible to apply through an online platform for a course in over 150 meditation centres around the whole world - from Asia, to Australia and Africa (of all choices I decided to go to Saxony, Germany - don’t ask me why). The course takes ten days, in which the participants learn the art of Vipassana: This means meditating for in total ten hours per day, without speaking, eye-contact, no music, no reading, no nothing. Just you and your thoughts, and meditation.
Who The Hell Would Voluntarily Want To Meditate For Ten Days For Ten Hours Per Day and Stop Talking Entirely
This is the big question. Weirdly, in October 2018, I felt a very strong desire to do it. Back then I was still in a full-time job and decided to use some of my precious vacation days to learn the art of Vipassana in, as I mentioned - beautiful Saxony in February.
Why would anyone voluntarily participate in such an experience? Two years before, I had found myself pondering this same question during my Ashtanga yoga teacher training in Thailand, when I encountered the term for the first time. Over the following couple of months and years, I heard so many more mentions of Vipassana from various people. I learned that some very interesting people, who I admire, had also undertaken such an experience. There is for example artist Marina Abramovic, host Oprah Winfrey and historian Yuval Noah Harari, who states that Vipassana shaped his success story. It seemed that engaging in this practice could be very beneficial for personal growth and character development. Who doesn’t want that? I suddenly had this really strong feeling I needed to do this too, and decided to sign up for a Vipassana course in February 2018, just before my 30th birthday.
I remember when I arrived by train in Saxony, I encountered a lot of people getting off the train just barefoot. Interesting, considering it was February in Germany and really cold - I realised these people are my co-vipassaners. Once we arrived at the location, I was quite surprised: It was a really beautiful location and by far not as spartan as I had imagined. That’s honestly all I remember though from my first day, as I then started to get really nervous when it dawned on me what I had signed up for, because I got the timetable in my hand (which I knew before, but somehow didn’t really look at it).
Handing in all phones on the first day, no speaking or making eye contact with anyone, no music, reading, or writing for the entire length of the ten days. We had to get up at 4 am, no snacks nor dinner, and go to bed at 9:30 pm. For someone who is on their phone a lot and also had two of those, lives a fast-paced life, loves being with people as well as is passionate about reading and listening to music, this sounded really rough. Everyone at Vipassana shared rooms in doubles or triples, which was also interesting: It meant you had to spend eleven nights with a stranger whom you cannot talk to. I remember my roommate, who was a nice woman in her late sixties. She, however, continued to open the window at night (it was February and ice-cold), and, as I couldn’t speak, I continued to cough dramatically every night to make her close it again.
From the introduction on the first day onwards, time started to pass at the slowest snail's pace. In the breaks I was lying on my bed, reading and studying in depth the six or seven page rules of Vipassana which I had in paper form: The content definitely got old after the third read. Then I studied the lines of my hand, again, for hours. Excitement is really something different and I started to experience heavy boredom: A feeling I hadn’t really felt in such a long time, because with a phone there is always something to do.
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