Anicca, Anicca, Anicca

In March 2026 I undertook ten days of a silent meditation course called Vipassana. A technique originating from India and carefully preserved across 2,500 years, taught through the recorded instructions by S.N. Goenka (Goenkaji, as students affectionately call him) through centres across the world. I found mine in Kosgama, Sri Lanka, on a hill surrounded by nature, quiet in the way that only places built deliberately for quiet can be. My partner went first, in Nepal. The results he demonstrated without even meaning to created a strong interest in me. I signed up. I got approved. The days leading up to the course I waited patiently, nervously, excitedly. I had never stopped talking from the moment of my birth, not for one hour let alone ten days. This was a challenge I felt illuminated to face.

Before the course starts, as a new student you take up five precepts, the five basic moralities essential for participation. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not speak lies. No sexual misconduct. No intoxicants. You arrive at the centre, sign in, submit your valuables, phone, computer, smart watch, any reading or writing material. You are to abstain from all other forms of meditation, yoga, exercise, spiritual or religious practice. I agreed to all of it.

I noticed the others around me. We were separated by gender, but during my course the male residential quarters were being renovated, so it was twenty to thirty women only for the entire ten days, with the exception of our lovely translator and assistant teacher Mario. Not only was I about to undertake my first ever ten days of noble silence, I would be doing it entirely in the presence of women. I was elated. Let us begin.

The centre, Dhamma Sobhā, meaning Radiance of Dhamma, sits on six acres of land in Kosgama, surrounded by mountains, about 50 kilometres from Colombo. The smell of Sri Lanka, warm and gentle, dusty. Sunlight, flowers, monkeys on branches, tree buds. After orientation and dinner, noble silence began. From that evening on, no eye contact, no physical contact, no speech. The sounds of wildlife throughout the day, birdsong, insects, tropical animals we could not identify.

No phones nearby, no other people's thoughts bleeding into yours. A refreshing new experience I had never before had.

I would describe Vipassana as being dropped into the midst of an ocean that is your mind. Deep. Shallow. Beautiful. Terrifying. My thoughts were swinging between the past, future, past, future, past, future. Anything was easier than to focus on the present. From day one to day three we focused our entire attention on respiration, the breath, as it is, not as we would like it to be. If shallow, shallow. If deep, deep. When the mind wandered, and it wandered constantly, we were simply to bring it back to the breath without judgement, without anger at ourselves for having done it again.

It felt like going from Tokyo, seeing millions of people pass before you every moment, to suddenly being alone in a cave in the Himalayas with nothing but your own thoughts. Goenkaji called it a deep surgical operation on the mind. You start noticing sensations you had never noticed. You start understanding impermanence not from a book but from the framework of your own body. You start questioning why the story running in your mind is entirely self-narrated, fictional, relative. An operation where a wound is created. Stop mid-way, and the wound remains open and untreated. You must go all the way through. You must work hard, patiently and persistently.

The mind is used to being stimulated, constantly receiving input, constantly reacting. To sit with only the breath, something so ever-present it is taken entirely for granted, was extraordinarily difficult. The mind is like a wild bull.

Every evening brought Goenkaji's discourses, which quickly became one of my favourite parts of the day, something to focus on that was not as demanding as the sitting itself, his voice patient and persistent and certain of something I was only beginning to approach.

Gradually across the first three days we narrowed our focus from the full breath to a small area around the nostrils and above the upper lip. By the third day, the trapeze underneath the nostrils and above the upper lip. Notice if you feel any sensation. Heat. Tingling. Prickling. Anything. I was stunned to find that after several hours I began feeling heat coming from my nostrils. I started noticing the breath moving sometimes through the left nostril, sometimes the right, sometimes both. We were instructed not to develop any attachment to the sensation, not to feel happy when we felt something or frustrated when we did not. Just to observe. To understand the nature of all sensation, which is arising and passing away, arising and passing away. The true nature of impermanence. The more equanimous you remain, the more old sankhāras come to the surface and pass away. The more you react, the more you multiply them. A truth you experience within the framework of your own body. Whatever you experience in each and every moment. Moment by moment. Moment by moment. You have to work for your own liberation. No one else can liberate you.

Tremendous patience was required, patience I often did not have. Yet the environment and the commitment I had made kept me there.

On day three we began learning Vipassana. We were to observe and move slowly from head to feet, covering as many parts of the body as possible, noticing whatever sensations arose. Tingling. Heat. Cold. Prickling. Pinching. Numbness. Pain. Perspiration, sweat. Pleasant or unpleasant we were to observe without preference, move through the body part by part, give no sensation more importance than any other, give all importance to the one universal truth that every sensation arises only to pass away. Anicca. Anicca. Anicca. These words ended every sitting, every beginning, every end. Impermanence. Impermanence. Impermanence.

Everything we experience arrives first as sensation, through the five sense doors. Sensation arises. Perception names it. Reaction follows. By the time you believe you are responding to reality you are already three steps inside a story your nervous system predetermined without consulting you.

Equanimity, the balanced observation of whatever arises, means not wanting unpleasant sensations to cease, not wanting pleasant ones to continue. Simply to observe. To let the wave be a wave without becoming it.

Consider hair. Oh so beautiful. So dark, so smooth. Nails. Oh so strong, so beautiful. I am drawn to it, I want to relish it for a long long time. Imagine the beautiful person whose hair it is then makes me dinner and their very beautiful hair and nails are served accidentally to my consumption.  Straight away I no longer find it beautiful. I am disgusted, if not revolted. I want a new plate or at least, the hair or nail removed at once.

My partner. My family. My home. My, my, my. I feel elated at praise, distressed at blame, and I mistake appearance for substance. The difference between knowing anicca and feeling anicca, is the difference between reading about the ocean and being dropped into the middle of it.

On day three, towards the end, we were also introduced to adiṭṭhāna, strong determination. For one hour, three times a day, we were to sit without shifting our posture, without opening our legs, our hands or our eyes, developing strength of the mind.

Oh the excruciating pain. The numbness. The legs trembling. I contemplated whether to sit in this position with intolerable numbness or in that with intolerable pain. After a while I started telling myself that this pain cannot hurt my mind. It may feel like pain, but it too, is a sensation and it is bound to pass away. This, is a thousand times harder to do than to say. After forty-five minutes the real challenge begins. Surely the teachers have forgotten to ring the bell, surely it has been more than an hour. I tell myself anicca, anicca, anicca, eagerly waiting for Goenkaji to begin the closing instruction, yet it keeps not coming. And then, I finally see. This waiting, this desperate clinging to the sound that will end the suffering, is the same mechanism as the suffering itself.

One hundred percent of suffering comes from you. None of it is external, however much it may appear to be. I could tell from first hand experience, seeing my anger arise and pass away in the hall, my fear arise and pass away, my joy and sense of peace arise, and pass away.

By day four or five I could observe sensation across my entire body, moving head to feet then feet to head, a continuous sweep. Vibrations. Wavelets. The only way out is through. Through observation. Feeling it clearly enough that it loses its grip. In my case, my sankhāras had to do with the anger I felt, the fear I felt, from being misunderstood, from old wounds carried without examining. Like the sensations, they arose. Like the sensations, they passed. I clung to past moments that made me feel violated and I clung to moments of joy and happiness, not letting either go, causing myself misery in both directions.

You cannot change other people. You can only train the mind. And a trained mind, meeting the same world, creates a completely different experience of it.

If all we are is sensation, sensation arising and passing away across the entirety of this body, then what is I? The elements are direct physical qualities of every sensation you feel. The solidity, hardness, heaviness of the Earth. The movement, vibration, oscillation of Wind. The warmth of breath and heat of Fire. And the fluidity, and holding force of Water. We are temporary patterns of earth, wind, fire, water. The same elements as the rain. The same elements as the hill. The same elements as everything. The taboo against knowing who you are dissolves when you feel clearly enough that who you are is earth, wind, fire, water that arises and passes like everything else. Then, is this bubble of wavelet I? Is this hair that is currently still on my head, is this I?

We arrived as strangers. We shared a space for ten days. International Women’s Day arrived and I picked some flowers from the gardens to leave on the communal washroom sinks in hopes of communicating with my fellow peers with words amiss. We are so inquisitive, take away one means of communication we come up with another. We gather information of each other by the other’s nail toe polish or any signs that can sate our curiosities. Since we were paired up, I was most curious about my neighbour. We were put together for a reason. When she cried, I felt for her. When she heard me cry, I felt held in that silence, and when finally, the silence on the 10th day broke, we could hear from each other what we already felt to be true. And when the silence was lifted, cries, laughter and stories erupted the space we held quiet for 10 days. The shared experience felt and spoken and indulged in together as a team that journeyed together, apart.

On the final 11th day, as we were listening to the last discourse, a heavy downpour arrived. The sound overpowering any other sound we could hear, the sound of the discourse, of  the wildlife buzzing outside. When the discourse came to an end we all walked out to see the rain for ourselves. Many of us walked straight past the frame of our shelter and directly under the rain, letting it soak us to the bone. Hugging, laughing, jumping, never another moment has ever felt so pure. As much as I wanted the course to be over, when the end finally came, I felt sadness unexpected. For the end of ten days of total demand that has been the most honest place I’ve ever been. I’ve not been anywhere so difficult, I’ve not been anywhere so pure.