This post is about days 1 through 3 in an Indian ashram, 10 day silent vipassana retreat. These notes were written the first day of getting out of the ashram, because we were not allowed to take any notes or write anything. I secretly had kept some small notes very roughly to keep the days straight but not much. It's left in its more raw text. There first few days were some of the hardest, mostly because of panic attacks, and near fainting thinking about the recent death of my son. It doesn't get more painful or raw than that, so it's appropriate.
To be honest, Day 1 through 3 was kind of a blur. They all sort of mixed in my mind as the same type of experience. We had all handed in our various sorts of contraband on the first night — books, reading or writing material, tablets, mobile phones, computers (which I didn't hand in because mine was too big for the lockers) — and so I didn't have any way to take notes until Day 4 when I started being a cheater myself.
A couple of highlights from Day 1, so you can get a sense of the experience.
First meditation. 4:30am to 6:30am. Of course this was painfully long, and just generally painful, but the time did go by a bit faster than I thought. I had kept my eyes closed pretty well for this time, and I remember when the session ended I was surprised because it had felt like 1 hour instead of 2. This was the only time during the entire 10 days where I felt like the time was up sooner than I thought.
10:35am. On my way walking from the dorms to the Dhamma Hall I came upon a tiny tree frog. We were allowed to keep our watches, so I knew I had about 10 minutes until the next sitting. This tree frog was the tiniest little guy I'd ever seen and I decided to squat down on my haunches and watch him jump across the lane. It was a peculiar moment for me because I couldn't recall any other time in my life where I would have a) done this b) had the time to do this c) would have even been able to do this without thinking about the next place I had to be.
I guess it was one of the first benefits I had during those early days of doing meditation. Joy can be found in something so simple as watching a tiny tree frog hop across a lane. Not sure why, but it just could have been one of the more profound things that happened during my stay for the not-so-subtle reason that I hadn't ever done anything like this before, and then wondered why I hadn't. That realisation stuck with me early on, and I was able to build upon that foundation. My newly found sense of gaining back all the time I had lost while living with my head not being present.
For the first three days, TEO and the teachers focused on Anapana — a breathing technique where you observe the natural breath as it comes in and goes out. You don't control it or manipulate it in any way, you just watch. On the first day, the area of focus was around the nostrils, the inside of the nasal passage and then the exit. On the second day, the area became smaller, only the outside of the nostrils. On the third day, the last day of Anapana, the area was only the upper lip below the nostrils. The reason the area becomes increasingly smaller is so that the mind can sharpen and be ready for the Vipassana phase.
The rest of that day and the following 2 days was Anapana breathing and a painful shifting of meditation poses from cross-legged, to elbows on knees with knees up, then shifting to right leg crossed with left leg back, left leg crossed with right leg back, hands on knees, cross-legged, and then round again in the same circle. This went on endlessly for the first three days.
The pain levels were ranked like this. Level 1 through 3, bearable, but something to watch. Only lasted for the first 5 to 10 minutes of holding the pose. Levels 4 through 6 were bearable and could be maintained, but needed to move or adjust to get relief. Just barely sustainable, but needs attention. Level 7 through 8, needs adjustment, shifting in position or posture to remove immediate stress. Perspiration becomes heavy. Level 9 through 10, not bearable, trembling from pain, audible groans, needing to come out of pose, approaching sickness. Fainting.
On Day 2 I did have a fainting episode. Once the meditation was over, I stood up perhaps a bit too quickly and remember a flush of dizziness then the ceiling and me falling back into the Cheater as the Dhamma Police ran over to see if I was OK. I was embarrassed as I had never fainted before, and the entire hall of leaving meditators stared at me. None too surprised though. We were all going through the same extreme pain and uncomfortableness with these extended long poses.
The first two days I could only think about Finn's death. It was a stream of uninterrupted details, relived in painfully acute detail.
I had been experimenting with some astral plane meditations — if you're not familiar with this, it's simply allowing visions to creep up with your eyes closed. At first it took a while, but I would almost always see a single green or blue waving eye. I think this is pretty natural. During the first three days however, the images became very real, graphic and sometimes disturbing. Similar to daydreaming, or lightly dozing. Except you couldn't steer away from them.
There were several recurring images.
Giles. Tristan's father who was at the death scene while I was driving there to see him. Tristan was Finn's best friend and was with him the night that he died.
Giles, can you tell me, is my son still alive?
I could remember how casually I had asked him this. The shock completely masked any emotion that I would ordinarily have asking such an important question.
I recall living the moment of fumbling for the address in the dark drive of the train station on the side of the road in complete darkness. My mind not functioning and I wanted to be able to find the address so we could drive off to see Finn, perhaps even be able to do something to prevent his death.
The call I had to make to my mother at 4am. Half out of my mind, wondering if it was inconsiderate to tell her right before sleep, knowing that she wouldn't sleep. Like any of us would sleep the next 60 days anyway.
The worst, however, was the image of me looking over my dead son's body, his face ashen with 4 or 5 days stubble of beard growth and his mother weeping so profoundly and with so much sorrow —
Why Finny? Why, why, why Finny?
Like why did it happen, or why did he do this to us, to her? I couldn't tell, but it was so pitiful and pitiable at the same time it was the most vivid nightmare account of the entire episode. It summed up all of my agony and torment in a single articulated thought structure.
Three different thought loops were running through my brain those first few days.
All of the details of Finn's death were relived to the last minute detail.
The details of an infuriatingly mundane end-of-work waiver release I had been working on with a vendor that I had fired 6 months earlier. This vendor, a real disaster to work with, was demanding that I release her from all liability for an incident that happened while the source code was under her care. It had started agreeably enough but then took a turn for the worse as she started writing nasty emails to me and copying my client trying to make me look bad. It was no longer an issue, I had told her as much and she wasn't taking no for an answer. She had set her attorney on the case, she was sending me very aggressive emails and it was something that I had been stressing about before going in for the Vipassana. This is not something I should have been thinking about, but it was continuously looping through my mind.
The other main thing that I was thinking about because it was omnipresent was the pain in my joints. Level 6 in the left knee calling in to the command centre. Level 7 in the right hip. Level 8 in the lower back. Like a battleship game where the pain centres were all calling in their coordinates.
Three days of this. Anapana breathing, a tiny tree frog, the worst night of my life on repeat, a vendor dispute I couldn't shake, and every joint in my body reporting in at increasingly unbearable numbers.
By the end of Day 3, TEO told us that the Anapana phase was over and that the next day we'd begin Vipassana proper. The real work.
I had no idea what that meant.