Just writing up my experience¹ attending a 10-day Vipassana course from the 15th to the 25th of July at Dhamma Ketana in Chengannur.

Starting off with the location. Kerala, what a beauty. The center is basically a plot of tropical rainforest with a few one-story buildings and the main Dhamma center connected by a path. Plus, there are two ponds. Behind the property, there’s a panoramic view of flooded green paddy fields with groves of trees behind them. Plus, it was the monsoons (great pleasant weather), so it suddenly started pouring and then stopped raining a couple of hours later almost every day.

With respect to the logistics, the food was simple but tasty and nutritious. Even though we didn’t get dinner (only breakfast, lunch, and snacks), I never felt hungry or tired. Since it’s Kerala, almost every meal had some kind of coconut or banana element to it :). The residential quarters were not the best (but in line with it being a meditation center run on donations). There were a few places where the roof leaked, few areas that was mouldy ( again folks from other newer blocks said their blocks were much better) . The area to take a bath didn’t have latches. Lots of mosquitoes (and spiders the size of my first and small snakes in the bathroom). Minor stuff, nothing important.

Coming to the important aspect and reason for attending the course, i.e., Vipassana. I don’t want to reveal too much about it and spoil the experience for someone going. But basically, it’s very hard work—10 hours of meditation starting at 4:30 a.m. every day, sitting on the floor. The technique can be easily described but is very hard to implement. The first 3 days were Anapana meditation, i.e., observing respiration to become sensitive to awareness in the body. The next 7 days were Vipassana. You basically observe sensations going part by part from the top of your head to your feet. At the end of every day, there’s one and a half hours of discourse from Goenkaji explaining the theoretical aspects of the course. Goenkaji explains that Gautama Buddha discovered that misery is universal and then discovered that sensations like craving and aversion were the reasons for it. By doing Vipassana and observing the sensation, you train to not react, yada yada. ( Not too important (like the palli chantings in background during meditation), Goekaji would rather you focus on actually mediating). The no talking to anybody and no phones, no books, no writing) was a nice timeout from real life.

My experience of the course was good despite some struggles. The first time I was able to do the Vipassana properly and experience and observe sensations in the body was an extremely foreign feeling (concentrating and feeling a wave of pleasant sensation moving from your shoulder to your hand sounds like magic). Initially the lack of distraction of a phone and no talking was hard on me (sitting with your eyes closed and nothing to do can make you really feel the flywheel of bad emotions, grateful it didn’t more than the first few days). I personally was unable to concentrate more than 5 hours a day ( still feel like I did better than the median attendee ) mainly due to back pain. But yeah, it’s been a great experience, and I hope to practise it after coming back.