Around India in 80 Trains (45 page)

Throughout my time in India Vipassana meditation had cropped up in conversations and it sounded ideal: a non-religious method of mental purification that allows one to face tensions and problems in a calm, balanced way. Vipassana, a Burmese technique practised by the Buddha, means ‘to see things as they really are,’ and involves 10 days without external distractions to sharpen the mind and learn self-control. After talking to Ben and browsing online, I chose a course run by a man named S. N. Goenka who had found the technique useful in alleviating his debilitating migraines, and after 14 years of training, had decided to share the wealth. He began teaching Vipassana in 1969 and had established centres all over the world, even introducing courses to prisoners in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. They resulted in such positive benefits that the Indian government was now considering the meditation as a permanent tool for reform. My mind was yet to join the ranks of those belonging to murderers, rapists, drug-smugglers and senior politicians, but a little realignment could do no harm. One appealing aspect was that the course was free of charge, so no bogus guru was going to line his orange pockets with my cash.

I took train 78, the Konark Express, from Bhubaneswar to Hyderabad and arrived at the retreat where I handed in my passport, my phone and for all I knew, my sanity, and was shown to my room: stone walls housing two stone beds with inch-deep mattresses. Two? How could I share a room in silence? I made up my bed and sat down reading through the pamphlet which outlined five rules:

1. To abstain from killing any being.
   
2. To abstain from stealing.
   
3. To abstain from all sexual activity.
   
4. To abstain from telling lies.
   
5. To abstain from all intoxicants.
   

Easy enough—at least until I returned from dinner to find my new roommate Inga staring at four cockroaches on the bathroom floor, their fat bodies shining like medjool dates. I wanted to smash them to bits. Inga shrugged as we went in search of a broom.

‘My mother claims that if you leave a problem completely alone, 50 per cent of the time it will disappear by itself,’ she said.

By the time we returned, two of the cockroaches had vanished down the drain. We swept the other two out of the door and flicked them into the grass. That night, a mosquito found its way inside my net and began humming by my ear. I took a deep breath and gave it a slap. Technically the meditation only began the following morning.

In the still of the night a low gong sounded. 4:20am. My heart sank. It sounded again. Peeling one eye open I could just make out Inga cocooned in her blankets. She was not about to move. I turned over as the gong sounded for a third time. Maybe if we ignored it, like the cockroaches, it would go away. Suddenly a shrill tinkling entered the open window as a bell-ringing sadist went from room to room rousing the dead. Flipping on the lights I washed my face and dragged myself outside. The tree-lined gardens looked like the set of the
Thriller
video. Mist curled around the trunks and from the shadows shuffled glassy-eyed figures, silent and shivering in the morning damp.

At least 100 people filled the meditation hall, most of whom were Indian. Men outnumbered women by at least three to one. For two hours we sat cross-legged on cushions, eyes closed, observing our breath—a practice that is supposed to focus the mind. Goenka is based at the main Vipassana centre at Igatpuri in Maharashtra, but his voice periodically croaks from a crackling tape player, manned by a teacher at the front of the room:

‘Be aware of your breath on your upper lip. Don’t change it, just be aware of it. Does your breath enter the right nostril? Left nostril? Is it warm? Cool? Deep? Shallow? Be aware.’

I was aware that if I closed my eyes and watched my breath, I fell asleep. My head jerked up every five minutes and I looked around grinning to see if anyone had noticed. Everyone else looked so calm. Or they had perfected the art of sleeping upright. When the two hours came to an end I bolted to the breakfast hall, wolfed down a plate of idlis, then crawled back into bed and slept until the next session.

At 8am we were back on the cushions. I soon realised that my breath was a great indicator of my mood. My mind started wandering to my best friend’s hen party that I was upset to be missing. I sighed heavily, my breath sharp and forced. A few moments later I could see an orange hue forming in front of my closed eyelids as the sunshine came in through the windows, warming my arms. My breath became so light it was barely detectable. For what could only have been eight seconds, but felt like an hour, my mind quietened. As soon as I realised, I gave myself a mental pat on the back and then sulked for breaking the stillness. My thoughts now turned into two voices arguing in my head:

Voice One:
What’s wrong with you? You’ve got the attention span of a 3-year-old
.

Voice Two:
Look, I’m trying. It’s not my fault. It’s hot in here. Now go away. Warm air on my upper lip … breath out of the right nostril … slightly twitchy eye … God I hope lunch is better than breakfast …’

Voice One:
You need help—maybe some Ritalin. Everyone else is so quiet and still. Especially the girl to your left, I think she’s called Annie. Look how perfectly focused she is. Back straight. Fingertips gently touching.

Voice Two:
She’s probably been meditating her whole life.

Voice One:
Or you’re just rubbish at this.

Voice Two:
Piss off!

For the entire day the thoughts collaborated with each other to torment me. From time to time Goenka’s voice calmed them, reminding me to observe them but not to attach myself to them. Just observe. But the thoughts soon came out of hiding, ready for action. They mocked and bullied me:

‘It’s going to be so hard finding work when you get back to London …’ Four weddings to go to and you’re still single? How awful, everyone will pity you, Bridget Jones …’ ‘Remember that letter you sent Fiona Lanes in middle school calling her a two-faced cow? You still feel bad about it, don’t you?’

But sometimes my thoughts paused to play nicely: together we watched a clip from
Coming to America
, then we decided that the blonde hippy sitting on a rainbow cushion in the front row was actually a white witch called Liberty. Just as I managed to coax my thoughts to bed, tucked them in and turned out the light, they leapt up and squeezed my knee joints and the base of my spine until they hurt so much I was sure I would explode. To top it off they invited Robert Palmer to join us and throughout the rest of the day he crooned
Addicted to Love
on a loop.

‘Your lights are on, but you’re not home

Your mind is not your own ... ’

The lights were on but by the time I crawled into bed that night, after observing my breath for 11 hours, I began to wonder if anyone really was home.

Each day began at 4:30am. After the first two-hour sitting, breakfast was served in a communal dining hall with tables running around the edge of the room so everyone faced the windows, as though banished to one big naughty corner. At 11am we came back for lunch and for the next two hours were free to nap, roam around the gardens or ask the teachers brief questions about the meditation. It was the only time we were permitted to speak and they offered beatific smiles and the same response to every question: ‘Just observe the breath ...’

Helpful.

On the first evening I was shocked to find that no dinner was served after the tea, fruit and puffed rice offered at 5pm, and made a mental note to load up at lunch on the rice, dal, butternut squash and beans, which made me feel sick the next day and even more desperate for a cheeky afternoon nap. The sittings ended at 7pm with a 1980s video discourse from Goenka: he was a podgy man with a side-parting, free from ash, beads and robes, who smiled knowingly and summarised the day with a freakishly incisive understanding of the spectrum of thoughts and emotions flitting in and out of us. He also warned us not to overeat at lunch to compensate for dinner. It was the only hour of the day when I relaxed completely and slumped against a wall with something other than my own dull breath to entertain me. Goenka likened the 10-day period to a surgical procedure. An incision had to be made on the surface of the skin to dig deep and find the cause of an infection. The probing would be painful, produce pus and discomfort. But once the root was discovered, it could be pulled out and the wound would then be allowed to heal over.

‘This will be a difficult period. But if you begin the process, please do not leave in the middle with your wound half open, it will be worse than if you never came here at all.’

Two red-eyed girls dabbed at their tears and snot and I made my way to bed reassured that I was not the only one undergoing a real-life
Groundhog Day
and teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Three cushions were empty on the third morning and after lunch they had been removed. A warm cloak of smugness enveloped me as I realised that I was not the weakest in the fold and shuffled on my cushion closing my eyes. I had not expected to, but I was beginning to enjoy the sensation of my breath being the focus of every moment. My shoulders were relaxed, my back ached less, or maybe the aches and pains were still there, and my mind had just ignored them for the sake of observing my breath. A sudden shout ricocheted around the room and a spasm of shock swept through my chest. A lanky man in a red T-shirt was picking his way between the cushions, holding his head between his hands and yelling in Québécois French:

‘That’s it! How have I never seen this before! It’s amazing!’

He grabbed the teacher by the shoulders and shook the little man who did no more than smile as his comb-over came unstuck and flapped around. The man then bounded out of the room, punching the air. Old students of Vipassana went straight back to their lotus poses while the rest of us, with minds like pinball machines, glanced around, shifted and thought:

‘Bastard, how has he reached nirvana
already
?’

He had not reached nirvana. By tea-time he had soiled himself and was tearing up and down the orchards, caressing flowers and picking fights with the gardener. We hovered around watching like a brood of tongueless hens, wanting to cluck but unable to. It later transpired that he had been on medication before coming to the retreat, but had stopped it hoping the meditation would cure him. By sunset he had broken into opera and was streaking up and down the lawns running after the herd of cows that had, so far, lurked peacefully around us. Before bedtime an ambulance arrived to take him away and as the last notes of
Nessun Dorma
drifted out of the gates I sat between the blades of tall grass, feeling them flick against my arms, and gave silent thanks. Praying was not allowed during the 10 days, to teach us self-responsibility, but it did not hurt to acknowledge the gratitude I felt for my health and well-being.

On the fourth morning we learnt that the breathing was a warm-up to the actual technique of Vipassana, the mental equivalent of lunging and stretching before a pole vault. The technique involves scanning the body from head to toe, observing any sensation: heat; itching; prickling; pain; or pleasure. Whatever it is, you observe it with equanimity: no aversion to the unpleasant, nor craving towards the pleasant. The technique was much easier than the breathing as I now had something to do. There were pins and needles in my feet, drops of sweat in the crooks of my elbows, blocks of pain in my left shoulder and mosquito bites itching everywhere. Half way through the hour Robert Palmer returned and picked a fight with Peter Cetera who kept trying to change the tune to
Glory of Love
. I started not to mind. At least both songs were about love. While undergoing the mental MRI, both the music and my mind began to quieten down. For the first time in my life I listened to my body. To me it had always been a shell. But the closer I listened, the more I could hear.