My Experience in the 10 Day Vipassana Meditation Retreat in Lima Peru

I spent 123 hours in a room learning three types of meditation techniques. The “professor” or teacher sat on the little platform to the left middle of the photo. Mostly she would just hit the play button on her MP3 player and we would listen to pre-recorded audio instruction from S.N. Goenka (one of the major Vipassana leaders in India). The instructions were very informative and assumed you knew nothing about meditation, so they started with the very basics of breathing and moved to more advanced techniques.

158 Meditation Retreats World Wide
Started in the 1950s, Vipassana is a big organization which has locations world wide. About half are owned by the organization (custom-built), white the other half are “rented” temporary locations. My retreat was in one such temporary location in a christian church which is being used until construction is completed of the nearby permanent building.

Vipassana
Vipassanā (Pāli) or vipaśyanā (Sanskrit: विपश्यना; Chinese: 觀 guān; Standard Tibetan: ལྷག་མཐོང་, lhaktong; Wyl. lhag mthong) in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the true nature of reality, namely as the Three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering or unsatisfactoriness, and the realisation of non-self. Presectarian Buddhism emphasized the practice of Dhyana, but early in the history of Buddhism Vipassanā gained a prominent place in the teachings. (taken from wikkipedia)

Free (But They Do Encourage Donations)
This 10 day program is free of charge. Food, Lodging and meditation instruction is all completely free. They only ask that you follow their rules while in the program and encourage donations the last day of the course.

No Talking, No Internet, No Phones for 9 Days
In a weird twisted way, it seems like you have been abducted and bussed off to some unknown location where a cult takes away your phone, computer, money and jewelry and hold you hostage for 10 days. During that time you are not to talk, not to make eye contact with anyone, or even read or write anything. On the last day they allow talking and eye contact, but no phones and no “touching” which includes hugs and handshakes. They explain the purpose is to allow you to learn meditation and focus on that and only that.

4am Wakeup for Meditation
That’s right, every morning a gong would sound at 4am calling you to do whatever prep you need to make the 4:20am meditation. Meditation continues all day (with some breaks) and ends at 9pm.

Typical Schedule
4:00am wakeup
4:20 meditation
6:30 breakfast & personal time (shower or more sleep)
8:00 meditation (breaks every hour)
11:00 lunch & personal time
1:00pm meditation
5:00 dinner snack (usually just a banana and tea) & personal time
7:00 meditation
8:30 video presentation Dharma talk
9:00 bedtime

Vegetarian Food
You get two meals a day, and a snack for dinner. All food is vegetarian and mostly bland in flavor. You are asked not to bring outside food and eat only what is offered to you (no stashes of snack food!).

What I Learned
Sitting meditating for over 120 hours you learn a lot, too much to really write about here. But here are the basics: I learned that physical pain can be controlled and ignored through meditation. I understand better the temporary nature of everything around us. It is like breathing in and out. That breath of air is gone and moment is gone. I learned more about acceptance. Lastly, one of the focuses of Vipassana is to learn to not assign values or labels to sensation and just recognizing them with equal value. Cold, heat, prickling, moisture, cramping are all sensations and apply extra values like “bad” or “good” is like adding a colored lens to our view of reality. Mostly, I learned to calm my mind and remove much of my “monkey brain” of random thoughts.