What does Vipassana mean?

Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is an excellent technique that helps you to anchor yourself in your body and to understand how your mental processes work. It is an art of living that allows the student to find inner peace by eradicating mental impurities, the source of all afflictions. When practiced regularly, Vipassana allows you to be at peace with yourself and to develop a spirit of compassion for a harmonious relationship with others. It is an exercise that requires work, but according to Buddha, it is the only way to put an end to our suffering. Vipassana is now taught all over the world during a ten-day course. The teaching is always free, and there are no formalities or rituals attached to the practice. Yogilab runs online Vipassana retreats every month, as well as on-site training hosted in The Istana, Bali. Join us and a couple of hundred thousand other meditators on this life-changing journey.

Vipassana meditation is one of the most practiced forms of meditation in the West. It is a thousand-year-old technique of Indian origin, but it is part of the Buddhist tradition. However, the practice of Vipassana meditation is not related to a particular religion. It can be practiced by everyone. It is not a philosophical trend either. According to the website of the Dhamma Suttama Vipassana Meditation Center located in Canada, it is a method of mental purification that allows one to face, in a calm and balanced way, the problems and tensions of life. The term “Vipassana” which gave its name to this meditation technique means “seeing things as they really are”. In Pali, the ancient Indo-European language spoken in India, it means “the penetrating vision”.

What is this technique that is both very well known and still quite unnoticed? Vipassana is one of the oldest meditation techniques in India. It is by practicing Vipassana sitting under the Bodhi tree that Gautama the Buddha reached the ultimate goal of total liberation, the ultimate eradication of all mental impurities. This was 2,600 years ago. If Vipassana is so popular today, it is thanks to S.N. Goenka, who began teaching this method in 1969, allowing it to keep all its original purity.

How is Vipassana meditation practiced?

A 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat is necessary to learn the technique. It is said that this is the time necessary to fully understand the basics of the method and to start feeling the beneficial effects of its practice. One of the specificities of a Vipassana retreat is that it is free. On-site, the program is intense with very early wake-up calls and rigorous practice throughout the day.

Yogilab helps to spread the Dhamma by making these retreats accessible online. We are aiming at gathering meditators from all around the world to reach 1% of the global population. This is known as the Maharishi effect, where it has been scientifically proven that a large number of people meditating at the same time can reduce the local crime rate as well as boost the economy.

We know that most of you have busy lifestyles, so in order to make Vipassana as accessible as possible to every single one of you, we created 3 different types of schedules.

How to do Vipassana meditation? Before the beginning of the retreat, you take an oath to follow the entire course with regular attendance until the end of the 10 days. You also agree to respect a strict code of discipline as well as 5 precepts, which will be the key to the smooth running of the course, both for you and for the other students:

Don’t Kill

Don’t Steal

Don’t Engage In Sexual Activities

Don’t Lie

Don’t Consume Any From Intoxicants

You will have no contact with the outside world and will not be allowed to communicate with other students, neither verbal nor physical exchanges, not even a glance. Men and women are separated for the duration of the course.

It is personal work that requires commitment, discipline, and patience. So much for the protocol that may seem scary. The only reason for this is that everything is done to give us optimal practice conditions. The results that come from a Vipassana course can be mind-blowing. This will only be possible if you follow all the instructions that are given to you, pure and simple.

4 am. The first gong of the day blows. This sound will punctuate the day to come, as well as the following ones, until the 10th day. You have just started open-heart surgery. During these 10 days, you’ll meet many of your enemies. Pain, judgment, and sleep are among the toughest adversaries. Days 1, 4, and 6 are described as the most difficult. But don’t let that stop you, it’s a path that can be full of pitfalls, but has helped change the lives of thousands of people around the world.

If at any time you decide to enroll in a Vipassana course, it is because you are looking for something. What? You don’t really know. There may be some curiosity, but often you are waiting to experience something extraordinary. You expect to come back transformed. After all, everyone says it’s what it did to them! Yes, you’ll be a different person at the end of this retreat, but it is important to understand that these 10 days are only an introduction to the Vipassana practice. Only continuous practice can make your daily life more harmonious. That’s why Yogilab not only runs Vipassana retreats but also offers ongoing support to all meditators.

Before becoming master of your mind, you will have to fight very hard. If we have to summarize a Vipassana course, we would say that it is learning to observe our sensations without judging them. A purely physical exercise. Thus, we will spend the first 3 days observing the breath that enters and leaves our nostrils. It is thanks to this stage that we sharpen our minds.

We will become aware of the sensations that we have everywhere on and in the body, from the coarsest to the most subtle. This equanimous observation leads to the eradication of our mental impurities. These “Sankharas” come from passion or anger: disappointments, disillusionments, indulgences, conflicts, sadness, desire… All these sufferings are the product of ignorance. In consciousness, suffering is no more.

In silent observation, we create a bridge between the body and the mind. This is the key to liberation from suffering. As the days go by, Dave’s voice will guide you through the technique.

The “me”, “I”, “mine” are probably what cause us the most trouble in our lives. Identification and attachment are the results of our lack of understanding. We obviously take it very seriously, and yet it is an illusion. The ego is just a construct of our mind. It is conditioning. It takes shape and is nourished by our sufferings. We get attached to our sufferings, and we get attached to our desires. The more we pay attention to them, the more our mind identifies with them, and the more they multiply.

However, we should not try to destroy our egos either. In an interview, S.N. Goenka said, “Never push it away. You cannot push away or suppress the ego. It continues to multiply through this. It will naturally dissolve if you practice. Let it happen naturally and this technique will help. The Dhamma will help.”

The observation of ideas, intentions and thoughts: when a thought appears, the individual must create a kind of mental note. For example, if an imaginary representation appears, we must make a mental note of “imagination”, and if we have the intention to do something, we must make a mental note of “intention”. This allows us to be totally aware of our thoughts and intentions at the moment they occur, without being distracted by stories, fantasies, and illusions.

The observation of boredom: not doing anything for hours is associated with the feeling of boredom. You just want to get up and leave to go back to work, to see a friend, or to do your gym session. Here too, you must observe this sensation which is nothing but an unconscious habit that you have assimilated over the years. Learn not to react to it, and you will see your mind getting stronger with each sitting.

The observation of sleepiness: Vipassana meditation can make you feel drowsy. When this happens, the individual should become aware of and identify this sleepiness and accept it. When this happens, the somnolence is transformed into meditation.

Practicing Vipassana meditation requires consistency. However, it is accessible to everyone. Don’t think that because your mind is constantly active, you won’t be able to meditate. Remember that your mind will never stop being active, it is in its nature. The thoughts will always be there. You can’t stop them. So that’s not the purpose. The purpose of Vipassana is to feel sensations in the body.

This meditation practice requires patience and perseverance. Vipassana sharpens the mind to perceive sensations on the whole body. And whatever the nature of these sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, you must remain equanimous, always aware that everything changes. This is Vipassana.