My learnings from the camp
During the camp, I had many realizations that will stay with me and which I want to incorporate into my daily life. I am not a changed person, but definitely gained a new perspective on a many things, which I would like to share with you.
The mind is easily distracted
During the retreat, I noticed how busy my mind actually is. Without major distractions from outside, countless thoughts rushed through my head, often without any real connection or logic. Research suggests that we have tens of thousands of thoughts per day, and around 80% of them are negative. Jay Shetty calls this phenomenon the "monkey mind" in his book, which accurately describes the issue. Only by focusing on your thoughts and observing them can you realize how quickly your mind switches between different trains of thoughts. Being aware of this behavior of the mind is important, it is necessary to keep reminding yourself that "mastery of the mind" is the key to happiness. According to Vipassana, you are not happy /unhappy because of the events happening around you (they are neutral), but because of your thoughts and reactions to them.
Since the camp does not offer many external distractions, emotions started to feel more intense as you focus on them. Thoughts that you would usually try to get rid of, often by just distracting yourself (with alcohol, your phone, friends, Netflix, sweets, etc.), are suddenly right in front of you and you can't put them aside, which is not a pleasant feeling. It was interesting to observe in which situations I was trying to reach for my phone (only to realize it was not there) to watch some quick video or to check for a message. These were usually the situations in which I had a thought I didn't enjoy and wanted to quickly put it away.
You don’t really know what’s going on with the people around you
You never really know what's going on with the people around you. During the 10-day camp, I noticed that everyone else seemed so calm and peaceful, while I was often going through a whirlwind on the inside. At times, I felt a bit jealous, wondering why it was so hard for me. However, on the 10th day, when I was finally able to talk to others, I realized that they were surprisingly going through similar cycles of ups and downs. Everyone had their good and bad days, some even said I looked very calm throughout the camp, even though I definitely was not. This made me realize that on the outside, it can be hard to see how someone is actually feeling. It made me realize the importance of being kind to others, as you never know what they might be going through.
What happens if you give your mind time to recharge?
Another interesting experience for me was that once I stopped feeding distractions such as TV, phone or alcohol to my mind, it actually became very attentive and alert. One outcome was that the longer I stayed at the camp, the more vivid my dreams became.It's rare in everyday life that I can recall my dreams in such detail after waking up, but during the camp, it happened several times. It feels very healthy to give your mind a break from all the social media influence and stressors of our modern society, then it will quickly recharge again.
Different levels of learning
One insight I found very interesting was that in one of the daily video messages at night, Goenka talked about the concept of learning in three different levels:
Intellectual level: You read/hear/observe something, so you know this information exists (e.g. reading a study in the newspaper)
Emotional level: You think about what you have learned, evaluate it, and accept it as your own belief.
Experiential level: You experience something first hand, so you can evaluate directly based on your own experience if it's true or not. This is the strongest of all learnings, and the only one that will really have lasting impact.
This is true in many ways. When I look back to the early days of my current job, probably no book or mentor could have prepared me for this role - I was able to learn the most from positive, and especially from negative experiences. Every experience, no matter how tough, was necessary to teach me something valuable.
Priority of thoughts over verbal/physical action
In our society, we have three types of actions: Verbal action, physical action, mental action. We tend to place most importance on physical action, followed by verbal action, and least important is mental action. Actions speak louder than words, walk the talk, say what you do and do what you say - but thoughts are often not seen as important, as they are not visible to others. However, actually this thinking is wrong - thoughts should have the most importance of all three types. For every action, verbal or physical, a thought had to come first to manifest it. Therefore, if you can control your thoughts, you can control your actions directly. Positive thoughts lead to positive verbal and physical actions, while negative thoughts lead to negative ones.
What's the correct way of following a belief - and what's not?
Goenka talked a lot about non-sectarian Dhamma teaching. At first, I didn't think much of it, as religion isn't a passionate topic for me. However, it was interesting to see that Buddha's teachings do not exclude any other religion and attract people from different religious backgrounds. Goenka mentioned an example where someone said to him that they were a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. Goenka responded "Good - Jesus was a very saintly man. He was tortured, crucified, and even in these situations, he had nothing but love and goodwill for the people who did them wrong: 'Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing.'"
If anyone who believes in Jesus aims to develop qualities of love and goodwill within themselves, then following his teachings is a great thing. However, if someone just says "I believe in Jesus because he is the son of God," but doesn't want to develop any of his qualities in him/herself, then it becomes blind faith and can be harmful, as religion can become a tool to divide without holding oneself accountable for their own actions.
Connection of body + mind in other areas
Through the combination of mind + body sensations that Buddha apparently discovered and what I could experience during the camp, some things that were loosely connected suddenly started to make more sense. If the body and mind are so strongly connected, changing the mind could directly impact what's happening in the body (e.g. to cure psychosomatic pain), and if you do positive things for your body it can directly affect the mind (e.g. working out, massages, hot springs).
Even techniques such as Reiki or Walking in your Shoes that i heard before now make more sense: As the mind keeps sending signals to the body, and if you can feel and observe them, you can sense certain things correctly, make decisions based on observing your intuition (walking in your shoes), or even cure some pain (Reiki) just by feeling the energy.
Attachment is a major source of unhappiness
The mind is very attached to a few things, and wants to protect it against any disturbance from outside, according to Goenka:
Me: What others think of me
Mine: What I consider to be in my sphere of influence and possession
My values: What is important for me
My rituals: What do I do
The mind gets agitated if any of these four attachments types appears to be in danger. By letting go of them, we can improve our overall happiness and be more peaceful. It’s very human to have these feelings, but placing too much importance on them is a root cause of suffering in life, the goal is to eradicate them.
Avoid cravings for positive feelings and aversion for negative feelings
During the meditation camp, if I had a session where I could feel many pleasant sensations throughout my body, I would get very excited and wish it could be there next time as well. If it was not, I was disappointed and wanted to try harder to get back to the previous state. Whenever I experienced a negative train of thoughts, I wished it would go away as soon as possible so I could feel good again.
Life will be full of misery if one gets attached and develops a craving for things that make you feel good. If anything disturbs that positive feeling, aversion is generated, as we want the bad thoughts/feelings to go away as fast as possible so we can return to the feeling of pleasure. This is the hedonic treadmill, in which humans keep chasing things that make us feel good and keep avoiding things that make us feel bad. However, this is not what life is about - life always has ups and downs. The less we get affected by the regular swings in both directions, the happier we will be and the healthier our life will become. The secret is to stay equanimous no matter what happens - enjoy the positive feeling while it lasts without getting attached to it, and also be okay with negative emotions, knowing they won't last.
Due to the law of impermanence, change is inevitable
Everything in life is constantly changing, being reborn, aging, and decaying. Nothing is forever. No job, friendship, relationship, material possession, or positive feeling can last forever. Our time here on earth is limited. Not accepting this law of nature creates misery in life.
It makes us human to want to keep things stable if we like the way they are. However, since the world and people around us keep changing (whether we want to or not), there is no status quo that can be maintained forever.
It totally makes sense, even though it's sometimes hard to fully accept this truth. However, through reflection, it is possible to understand more and more about the universal law of impermanence, and by accepting it and living according to it, we can open many doors for a happy and fulfilled life.
Final thoughts
Leaving the meditation camp with all these experiences and lessons, I was excited to return to my regular life and to apply them differently. However, I soon realized that while it's one thing to be aware of these concepts in general, it's another thing entirely to use them in everyday situations. Once work or life gets stressful, it's easy to slip back into old patterns. So it's important to keep reminding yourself of these principles and closely observe your own feelings in everyday situations. I started to ask myself questions like "Why did I make this decision?" "Why did I react this way?" or "Why am I having this thought now?" Overall, the camp helped me to gain a heightened self-awareness which can help me to deal better with certain situations, therefore it's important to keep up the awareness in everyday situations to ensure that the positive impact of the camp lasts.
Overall, I am very glad for this unique experience. I can highly recommend it to you, and wish you will be able to make your own learnings. The details about signing up are mentioned in Part 1: Good luck for your journey!
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