The Vipassana Retreat

The Vipassana Retreat

ABOUT THE VIPASSANA RETREAT

V IPASSANA MEDITATION requires long-term commitment. While it can be done to some extent in everyday life, realistically for the practice to deepen it needs to be done intensively in a supportive retreat situation. Vipassana meditation is developmental, so to realise its ultimate benefit it has to be sustained with appropriate intensity under supportive conditions such as the Seven Types of Suitability:

· Place or Dwelling-well-furnished and supported centre or monastery, secluded and quiet, easily accessible, few insects, basic requirements of food, clothes and medicine.

· Location-not too far or close to town.

· Food-a balanced diet, healthy, digestible and nourishing, taken in moderate amounts.

· People-other meditators as companions, considerate with good attitude and practice.

· Teacher (kalyana-mitta)-learned and respected teacher who speaks and listens well.

· Noble Silence-other than informative Dhamma talks and interviews with the teacher.

· Weather-not too hot or cold, i.e. a temperate climate.

Vipassana retreat centres specialising in the needs of vipassana practitioners have evolved around the world to cater for these requirements and conditions, usually to the exclusion of any worldly, religious or study activities.

The intensive Vipassana retreat centre catering for lay people is a quite recent trend in Buddhism. Originating in Myanmar (Burma) after the Second World War when the Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, a keen meditator, invited the late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw to teach in a meditation centre he set up in Yangon (Rangoon), the Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha. This was the beginning of the modern revival of Vipassana meditation, which originated in Myanmar and soon spread to other Theravada Buddhist countries in Asia and then later to retreat centres in the West.

A worldwide insight meditation culture has now evolved which caters for lay meditators who are not necessarily Buddhists, often with lay teachers, supported by senior monastic teachers in the lineage. This style of practice, while demanding, has proved to be popular as vipassana techniques can be systematically taught, and now there exists a pool of knowledge and experience with a variety of trained teachers from many different countries.

An introductory retreat usually lasts two or three days, while the intensive retreats can run for ten, sixteen, thirty days or even up to three months. They are conducted in noble silence, which includes no talking, no communication through body language, no listening to music, no reading or writing except for brief notes recording the meditation experience. There are however, opportunities to discuss the practice with the teacher through individual interviews or group discussions.

A typical retreat day begins between four and six am and usually ends around ten or eleven pm, with a rest period in the middle of the day after lunch. The whole day is spent practising sitting and walking meditation, cultivating continuous attention to the changing nature of the moment-to-moment experience. The retreat teacher gives evening talks to inspire and explain the practice, providing a time for questions and answers, as well as conducting personal interviews usually every second day.

An intensive Vipassana meditation retreat is a serious undertaking, which requires effort and self-discipline. A retreat is not a chance to escape the pressures of daily life, nor a time out in which to do one's own thing. Rather it is an opportunity to cultivate the Buddha's way of liberation through the practice of ethics, meditation, and insight. Walking this path, we can learn to abandon actions of body, speech and mind that bring suffering to ourselves and those around us, and cultivate actions that bring happiness and harmony to ourselves and those around us.

Above all, the Vipassana retreat requires that the meditator leaves aside mundane preoccupations and commit him or herself to the practice that can realise Ultimate Reality. The late Mahasi Sayadaw gave this advice, "If you sincerely desire to develop contemplation and attain insight in your present life, you must give up worldly thoughts and actions during training".

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR VIPASSANA MEDITATION

THE MEANING OF VIPASSANA

T HE PALI TERM 'VIPASSANA' is a combination of two words: Vi + passana. Vi means various and passana translates as right understanding or mindfulness of ones mentality and physicality.

The term Vipassana is also rendered as 'insight', that is, insight into the three universal characteristics of existence: change, unsatisfactoriness and insubstantiality. Alternatively, this practice is called Insight Meditation, which is derived from the Pali name for this practice Vipassana Bhavana, meaning the development of insight.