Caveat - This blog post is NOT intended to teach you how to do Vipassana or elaborate on the technique. You can ONLY do that by attending the course. I'm focussing on the life lessons learnt by doing something like this.

About 4 years ago, during my self-imposed jobbatical, I read up a lot of books. In particular, I explored literature on happiness, mortality, and art of living. I stumbled upon the technique of Vipassana meditation whose basic premise is to help you see things as they really are. This technique was "invented" by Siddhartha Gautam Buddha (the "Enlightened" one) and taught in India about 2500 years ago. While it is a meditation technique, the premise is to help you get started on the path of becoming a better human being.

The technique was lost for a few millennia. But fortunately, Shri S N Goenka, a businessman turned meditation teacher from Burma brought it back in the 1970s to India. Goenka re-created a 10-day silent meditation retreat/program to teach Vipassana. Lots of material available on Vipassana at dhamma.org.

I started researching this 10-day program in 2014 and realised it seemed quite audacious. It was a 10 days of complete silence - no talking, no phones, no connectivity, no reading/writing, no dinner and more. You live in "complete" isolation with other fellow students while you learn the technique of Vipassana. While it all seemed daunting, psychologically and physiologically, I couldn't get past the no dinner. Here, I'd never even fasted a day in my life and what was this? No dinner?! This was not happening!

Lesson #1. Signing up is the first step to any life goals

Time progressed and I started mustering some courage to try it out. I wanted to push myself to capture my fears and to push my limits. I wanted to improve my mental and physical strength. What's the worst that could happen? I may not be able to complete the course. Well, so be it! I decided in February 2018 that I was going to do this and went ahead and registered for the course in early May.

Lesson #2. Preparation leads to Self-Confidence

7 days before the retreat.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights - Muhammad Ali

About a week before that I decided that I would start preparing for the retreat. I listened to lots of talks, blog posts and other material about preparing for Vipassana. Since lack of food esp. dinner was my biggest "fear", I decided to start doing only a soup and salad for dinner about 5 days before D-day. I knew that there would be long meditation sessions involved, so I decided I would start doing meditation for 1 hour a day, sitting cross legged on a floor. Since the schedule involved waking up at 4am every day, I started sleeping early and waking up at 5am. I tried "clearing" my mind of as much of the urgent and important stuff before I left.

I spoke to all my near and dear ones both to let them know that I would be off the grid for 10 days but also to hear their voices (and as it would turn out later, even to hear my own voice!). It also helped in another big way - I had now made a social commitment to so many folks so this quest was no longer about just me. I had committed to lots of other folks that I would make this happen. By the way this is one of my favourite hacks to accomplish any audacious goals. Make a semi-public resolution and then you owe it not just to yourself but also to your friends and family to make this happen.

As it turned out, all of this preparation helped in terms of being mentally prepared. But, there was more to come!

Lesson #3. We have become prisoners of our own mind, body and spirit

The last 48 hours before the retreat

Now, the real fun began.

Your own self-doubt - can I really do this? This is now showtime. Will I survive? Apparently 5-10% of people quit. If I don't and come back "early", will that be a matter of shame or pride (that I tried)?

The doubts of everyone else around you.

Everyone who didn't know what this was or how hard it was started looking into it. While the journey had been going on in my mind for months, if not years, the well wishers were thrown into the eye of "self-created" mental storm. Everyone's fears started multiplying - someone was worried I wouldn't be able to stay quiet for 10 days. Someone was worried that I'd never stayed hungry for a meal. Someone was worried that I would have no internet access! Even my physiotherapist said that I had a nerve compression issue around my knee and he would strong discourage me from doing this for 10 days or risk 2 months of physio after coming back. That was literally hours before me leaving for the course! With much reluctance, he suggested I change my posture every so often during the meditation session and request a chair for as many sessions as possible.

I was determined. I was going. I was going to find a way to make this happen.

First 24 hours at the retreat: first reactions!

The evening before, one took an oath of "Noble Silence" and signed up for the code of discipline through the 10 days. The journey had started. First, it was novel. Yes, one's mind and emotions were a bit animated but one was calming down. The next morning the first meditation session starts at 430am. That was fine too! As the day progressed, the reality started kicking in. Each hour of meditation felt long and hard but one was doing fine. Lunch was served at 11am. That went well too.

As the day progressed, body started "reacting" and the mind started questioning what you were doing there? Perhaps all the fears were right after all. What about dinner? The moment of truth is about to happen. No, wait, I've prepared for this. I'm resolute in my belief. I will make it happen. Ignore all this self-talk. The mind would throw a counter punch - mate, just wait till dinner! Oh , wait, there's no dinner. My worst fears might happen. Then came one of the big LEARNING moments in the early days.

The 5pm tea break.

As I was walking over to the dining hall, my heart was racing and my mind was pounding. Turned out I was partly right but MOSTLY wrong. I was anticipating a piece of fruit and tea. It turned out one got that and some puffed rice. I've never been more happier to see puffed rice. Even a little crutch like that and I never worried about dinner for the next 10 days. It was all in the mind!

Lesson #4. Stay in the moment and execute one step at a time

All that said, it is still a hard program with all the precepts you sign up for. So, you do need to have a plan of action.

I remember reading about the Stockdale Paradox from one of Generals who was a prisoner of war. It is a good maxim to confront tough situations in life (this is nothing like being a POW to be clear). It states that you have to have belief and conviction that you are going to prevail at the end but you have to take it one step at a time.

Another interesting learning that came was in the early days one was computing 10% done, 30% done and so on. However, as the days progressed, that got harder. By day 5, one realised, it was futile to go beyond the present moment, the present hour, that session.

If you think too far ahead, you won't get through today. 
If you won't get through today, you won't get to far ahead.

BEST TO STAY IN THE MOMENT!

Lesson #5. Give serendipity a chance.

Serendipity (n) - The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Only when you expose yourself to paths less traveled, even if it ends up being for the wrong reasons, you end up learning so much! While I had gone there to push my personal limits, I had no idea that I was opening some amazing doors to learning about a great technique about meditation and an even better set of learnings about Dhamma, Buddha's Eightfold path towards enlightenment.

Last but not the least the bit, the 10-day Vipassana is an experiential learning learning program where you are taken through all 3 of the above steps. Sila - where the focus is on living a good moral life, Samadhi - which helps focus on improving your mental concentration and lastly Panna, which helps you purify your mind and experience your own wisdom.

Buddha was a big believer of only learn as much theory as you practice and only practice as much as the theory you know! You experience both the practice and the theory (in that order) daily during the retreat, typically thanks to the much awaited 1-hour evening discourse by the teacher, the late Shri S N Goenka.

While Vipassana may not be for everyone, what I learnt about myself if you have something you really want to do but your "mind" is holding you back, find a way to go for it. Do the next step. You may just surprise yourself. I know I did.

Lots of people helped and supported me in this quest to try this out. Special callouts for former Vipassana meditators who were particularly inspiring and encouraging - Ajay Sethi, Shanti Mohan, Prasanna K, Pankaj Risbood and Mayank Bidawatka.

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin