Days 38-52: Delhi, Taj Mahal and Vipassana 10 Day Silent Meditation Retreat

The Skinny - if you're just here for the highlights: We spent two days in chaos of Delhi where we had the Indian meal of our lives and took a side trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which was thoroughly impressive. Then we voluntarily checked ourselves into what felt like an Indian prison for ten days of complete silence, 120° heat, and eleven hours of meditation a day. It turned out to be one of the most challenging and also fulfilling experiences of my life.

Scroll down for pictures.

Delhi

The flight from Nepal afforded us stunning Himalayan mountain top views almost the entire ride. And while there was a blanket of thick clouds, many peaks were tall enough to rise above and others poked through the gaps.

Having come from Nepal, Delhi seemed like a sophisticated metropolis with its paved roads, large and relatively modern buildings and well manicured landscaping lining the streets. But we were jerked back to reality when, 5 minutes into our car ride from the airport to our hotel, a horde of women swarmed our car aggressively begging for money, tapping and banging their nails on the windows, holding up babies, and ceaselessly yelling. We stayed our two nights in Old Delhi at the Connaught Hotel. Unfortunately, we were dropped off in the middle of Connaught Place, a half a mile from our hotel, which I would liken to a Delhi Time Square. On our walk we were bombarded with self proclaimed “nice guys” who, one after the other, would walk with us and relentlessly ask questions no matter how firm we were or whether we pretended not to hear, nothing worked. At one point I faked answering a phone call from my mom (it was the middle of the night back home) and pulled over to the side to lose a really sticky guy.

That evening, we took an eventful tuk tuk ride to the famous Bukhara Restaurant. Upon arrival, we found out that they book up months in advance, so we could wait around for a few hours and hope a table freed up. But after taking a few pages out of my mom’s book, magically, a table for two appeared. We had the most delicious meal– the best, most buttery garlic naan bread, creamy dal, and tender sole and lamb kabobs with fresh veggies. 

Agra and the Taj Mahal

The next day we set out early in the morning for Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. We booked a tour that included our train tickets, which was important because I am not confident we ever would have found and successfully boarded the train without an escort. The train station was how you would imagine it to be and our express train with assigned seats and air conditioning, though still a very local experience, felt luxurious compared to the commuter trains overflowing with passengers so tightly packed in, many body parts were hanging out of open doorways and barred windows. After a 2-3 hour train ride, we were rescued from aggressive beggars by our tour guide who intercepted us on the other end. 

I would like to say I cared equally about the lesser-known “Baby Taj” and Agra Fort, but truthfully, the Taj Mahal is so extraordinary that it's difficult to focus on much else. Plus, we were touring in the middle of a heat-wave, so our intellectual curiosity had its limits. I will say, the Baby Taj was cool insofar as a more appropriate nickname would be OG Taj since it is actually older than the Taj Mahal and is considered by many to be its architectural predecessor and prototype for what would eventually become one of the most famous buildings on earth.

The main event was almost beyond comprehension and completely irreplicable. The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned it after the death of his beloved third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1631 while giving birth to their fourteenth child, a son who would become the heir to the throne. He built the Taj as a mausoleum in her honor, bringing in roughly 20,000 Persian artisans to work on the project over the course of more than two decades. White marble was transported on hundreds of elephants from Rajasthan and precious stones arrived from across Asia. The result is so perfectly proportioned and meticulously crafted that it somehow manages to exceed expectations.

Besides the sheer scale and translucent qualities of the marble that allow for the mystical play of light effects throughout the day, what makes the Taj so extraordinary are the details. The evidence of obsessive planning and craftsmanship is inescapable. Verses from the Quran are inscribed around the entrances and throughout the complex, but what appears uniform at first glance is actually carefully manipulated: the lettering gradually increases in size higher up the structure so that, when viewed from the ground, it appears perfectly proportioned. The entire complex is similarly engineered around symmetry and balance. Gardens, pathways, reflecting pools, minarets, arches, and decorative elements all mirror one another with remarkable precision.

The decorative stonework is the most impressive detail of all. Artisans carved tiny channels into the marble and fitted them with hand-shaped pieces of semi-precious stone, creating intricate floral patterns and geometric designs. Thousands upon thousands of individually cut fragments fit together so precisely that they appear almost painted into the marble rather than embedded within it. On the train ride back, we finalized our plans for after the retreat– one week surfing in Sri Lanka and one week in the Maldives before flying to Bangkok.

Our tour guide insisted on photo shoots at every turn, but I have to say he had quite a way with an Iphone camera:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

10-Day Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat in Jaipur

The next morning we left our hotel at 4am to begin our anxious travel day to our 10 day Vipassana silent meditation retreat in Jaipur. When we arrived at the retreat center, we were confronted by two major obstacles– one, for whatever reason, I was under the impression that a retreat like this would attract a common percentage of expats– pilgrims, if you will– like the Camino. Not only were we the only non-indians, but the center was also clearly not terribly accustomed to foreign participants. Two– we were in the middle of a heatwave, and there was no AC except, thank God, for the meditation hall, which kept their units at a balmy 90 ish degrees fahrenheit. This was a welcome reprieve from the 120 degree outside temperature… it's true what they say about Indian Summers… 

The grounds were divided in half, a mirror image of men’s and women’s sides that joined to meet in the middle with the meditation hall upstairs. Below this was the dining hall, split in half by a solid wall. And while I absolutely insisted on following the rules to a T and hardly so much as made eye contact with Sean, very early on as I ate my gruel from my metal tray at my assigned seat staring at the dividing wall, I had an overwhelming inkling that Sean was seated directly across from me, also eating, and I pictured we were on a date each meal time. As it turned out, he was in fact seated there the whole time. 

My very wise college advisor, after a long, meaningful philosophy discourse on this or that, confident that none of us understood or cared about a word he said, used to often jest: “well anyways life is really just about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, right?” As it turns out, there is a lot more truth to that that I was ever willing to admit. Pretty early on at the retreat, we learned that we move through life clinging to that which is pleasurable and resisting the discomfort that eventually always follows. It seems perfectly natural, and in fact it's about the most primal instinct we have. But it also seems to be the root of suffering. Luckily as humans with consciousness we find we are indeed capable of rising above this primal instinct. But this first requires another purely human attribute, which is discipline. 

The retreat follows a very strict, consistent daily schedule that I will include below. Everything was just ok enough– the food sucked but was edible (well for me anyways because there was fresh coriander in everything– Cilantro’s evil twin, Sean didn’t mind it too much), the beds were terribly uncomfortable and under or around 6 hours of sleep was the norm, we were able to walk around the courtyard during breaks but it was too hot most of the time. On top of all this, Indian social manners are incredibly different from what we are used to– wonderfully curious people, there is a lot of staring, open-mouth belching, shameless coughing and clearing of the throat, eating habits, etc. Of course there was no talking, and we had to turn in our electronics and any reading and writing materials. But all of these things, even combined, were a footnote compared to the real challenge, which was the 11 hours of sitting on the floor and meditating every day. This is where the true test of discipline came in. I never expected it to be so hard on my body, so physically painful, but being with the discomfort is a keystone of this retreat. 

We practiced several progressive meditation techniques– first was Anapana, where we zero in on the natural breath moving in and out of our nostrils, and then the triangular area between our nose and upper lip. Here we are sharpening the tool of focused concentration that has become more dull than we know. Thoughts drift but you always find your way back to this focused area. Here you notice things about the quality of your breath, how it tends to come out of one nostril or the other, and work really hard to maintain focus. 

After a few days, Vipassana meditation is introduced, whereby we move through the whole body, observing each individual part, down to the inch more or less. Noticing innumerable tiny sensations in many places, and absolutely nothing in others, we learn on the physical level that which we know to be true at the atomic level: everything is constantly changing. We are to observe these phenomena without seeking to change, control or expect anything at all. Rather, the task is to maintain complete objectivity and equanimity. And if we thought this was hard, by the evening of day 6, we added in a final layer to the Vipassana, which was not to move at all for one hour. 

The only thing stopping you from running is you. The only thing forcing you to confront yourself, to not move, stand up, even just give in to your imagination and fuck off the body scanning, is you. But by persevering, you begin to learn that when a negative emotion arises and you simply observe it, it becomes weaker and weaker until it just fades away.  

One of Buddhism's foundational observations is that suffering is inevitable, but as we learned everything is constantly changing, it will always come and go. It's our aversive reactivity that furthers and prolongs suffering. Pain, disappointment, illness, grief– they're all part of being human. But much of what we experience as suffering comes from what happens next. We resist the pain. We resent it. We fear it will last forever or desperately wish it away. When we react to the suffering it's likened to being shot with an arrow and then proceeding to shoot yourself with another arrow (or five), a process we have so deeply habituated, non-reactivity seems impossible. In 10-days you do not eradicate reactivity, but you do learn that it’s very much a developable skill.

Everyone’s experience at this retreat is different, but there seems to be a common encounter with the edge of pain. In Vipassana, when the naked pain gets so strong that you feel you have met your absolute limit, and more difficult still, when you know you could end it instantly simply by untangling your legs, you come face to face with your own habitual reactions. If (with a very strong determination), even for a few moments, you can observe the sensation without reacting to it, you begin to realize that the pain itself is only part of the experience. Much of the suffering comes from the frantic, automatic mental struggle against it. The deeply ingrained patterns of concretizing, grasping, spiraling that we develop over time all come out of that moment, so if you isolate that moment and change your response, you can begin to rewire the habit patterns of your brain to non-reactivity, and this is the beginning of liberation.

At first I likened it to running. Every 1,600 meter race I ever ran felt like the hardest thing I had ever done because I pushed myself to my absolute limit, fueled by the familiar comfort that all the pain would be over in just a few minutes, and 30 seconds after that I would feel nearly well enough to do it all again, so I had no excuse not to give it all I had. But the critical difference here is that I still had an aversion to my pain. Whether it was counting down the seconds, laps, or breaking either of those down into smaller more manageable finish lines, I was inescapably averse to the pain I felt. That is a very helpful exercise in its own right, but it is different nonetheless. Not necessarily less than, but different, than the training offered in Vipassana. 

One meditation in particular, I was in excruciating pain and every instinct told me to flee, adjust my body, escape. Instead, with stronger determination than I realized I had, I refused. Moments later the pain peaked, dissolved, and gave way to an extraordinary feeling of lightness. I felt every atom in my body tingling. More importantly, I was able to enjoy it without trying to hold onto it, knowing it too was impermanent and would pass. I had worried Vipassana would teach a kind of emotional numbness, one of less pain, but also less joy. Instead, it taught the opposite. Impermanence doesn't drain joy; it enhances it allowing for delight in a beautiful experience without the taint of desperately clinging to it, avoiding the withdrawals of its inevitable eventual disappearance. 

A personal observation from my meditations was that the distinguishing difference between examination and judgement is attachment or lack of equanimity. And so the difference between self-examination, which we learn at the retreat, and self judgement, which most of us whether consciously or unconsciously do habitually, is attachment to the self. When we release attachment to the self we can examine without judgement. From here, we no longer have a basis on which to judge others. In this case judgement and examination or deliberation are crucially distinguishable. It is of course of utmost importance to examine and deliberate, but relinquishing judgement gave way for me to have the most profound experience of compassion I have yet had in my life. The closest language I have for what I experienced is what I've always understood only intellectually as Christ Consciousness. But the concept of a person having such a profound sense of compassion that they have true honest and deeply unconditional love for even the people that have harmed them or they used to hate most, seemed to me very far away in the material world. I can't claim to have mastered it, but for the first time I felt that kind of love wasn't merely an idea. It was something I had actually experienced.

I am a visual learner, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have been able to witness a living example of this kind of compassion and non-reactivity prior to the retreat because by the eighth day, Father Jack, a priest I was very close with at Boston College popped into my mind. His fervent compassion and unwavering equanimity were the image that served as the catalyst for my “ah-hah” moment, putting together the pieces of my intellectual understanding with my practical experience.

Even aside from all of the takeaways I numerated above, as well as the additional ones I have yet to even discover, shutting down for nearly 12 days of silent self-examination, away from distractions and even the smallest sources of stimulation in today’s world was a true gift. While this retreat is offered all over the world, going to its birthplace to practice the very rigorous but still very simple 2,500 year old technique was an experience neither of us will soon forget. 

Other than writing my thesis, which was the result of two to four years of cumulative work, and probably helped me prepare immensely for vipassana, this retreat was the most difficult and also the most enriching experience of my life. I can’t say it's for everyone, especially the proper Indian version, but for those willing and able, I can not recommend it enough. 

Breaking Silence

I mentioned our experience that Indians are incredibly curious. After the silence broke, we both felt famous. I honestly had a lot of empathy for celebrities because in that moment, after all we had experienced, it was quite overwhelming to have so much attention from complete strangers. They knew our names before we told them. They wanted photos and to know where we were from, how we found out about Vipassana, and how our experience was, all of which was actually quite difficult to communicate in broken such english. But they were so kind, so full of love and interest. They offered for us to come to their homes, begged to keep in touch, and insisted we return to India ASAP for more sightseeing... we'll see about that.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•