Wintering on Vipassanā

This February, I went on a 10-day silent Vipassanā meditation retreat. It's something I've always wanted to do, to deepen my Buddhist meditation practice, and the dates slotted between my teaching term times, so I took it as a clear invitation.

On arrival, before we observed noble silence, I chatted with one of the older students, who said something that stayed with me throughout: "whatever you expect to be hard, the challenge always seems to be something else". She was totally right about that.

Whilst I thought the 4am starts or 11 hours of daily meditation were to be my Everest, my difficulty was in fact nested in the second step of the eightfold path: Right Thought (sammā-sankappa). My mind whirred with self-critical thought, judgement and a lack of compassion as I took Goenka’s teachings too literally, striving to ‘work diligently’ and ‘make the most of the opportunity’. When I approached the teacher about dizziness and overheating, she said I was trying too hard. She, too, was right about that.

In the following days, I lessened my expectations of myself, allowing a softening at the edges. My heady approach, overthought and forced, dissolved into trust and arrived slowly at what felt like a clearing in the trees. 

My most significant moments on the retreat were not in the meditation hall but in the grounds of the retreat centre. The ‘designated walking area’ was a forested woodland carpeted with cheers of snowdrops and daffodils, the occasional lollop of cotton-tailed rabbits and a soundtrack of bleating of lambs and birdsong. I loved to see others retreat into nature; leaning against a tree for support, admiring the first buds on a branch and turning their face towards the sun. I too took deep delight outdoors, come rain or shine, bearing witness to the micro-changes in the landscape. I snuck pumpkin seeds into my pocket for friendly robins that feasted from my hand and noticed the snowdrop petals gently wither and curl.

As the days rolled by, marked by Goenka announcing “The day is over” in each evening discourse to much relief, I became progressively humbled by the practice. Meditation no longer happened just on the cushion; walking, eating and breathing all became imbued with mindfulness. Not all of these experiences were buoyed by pleasure either, sometimes they were accompanied by difficulty, pain, boredom, grief or sadness. What I was steadily learning was to welcome whatever was there, however it presented, and practice acceptance.

The teaching of equanimity is fairly new to my practice and I’m bringing it with me into the studio. I have always tried to meet my artistic process with discernment rather than judgement, curiosity over critique, but it’s not always easy when you’re so close to the work. It’s something that I see time and time again in class - how soon one’s perception shifts when confronted with whatever is created. How quick the binary of ‘good/bad art’ presents itself. This declaration is perpetually waiting in the wings for so many of us and artworks are burdened almost immediately on creation, or worse yet, during the process. Art is often condemned to success or failure, overlooking the value of what’s actually been learnt. 

I adopt quite an emotionally supportive role as an art teacher, in solidarity with students who struggle to navigate the complexities of the creative process. I’ve come to know that this process requires risk, failure and resilience. Whilst I always encourage whatever artworks are made, I find myself reaching for reflections that highlight value rather than accomplishment, and even more so since Vipassanā. I have always heralded the process of artmaking as the essential creative source, not whatever is created, and to comment merely on aesthetics somehow diminishes the journey the artist has been on.

This leads me to consider the simple importance of showing up to practice, just as you are - whatever your mood, however the work turns out. I know how hard on myself I can be, but this last couple of weeks mirrored this back to me in a way I hadn't known before. It was like I came into contact with my self-critical mind burrowed into my body's very being. When our noble silence was lifted, I was chatting to a woman about practice and a phrase someone had said to me years before arrived: "good enough is good enough". The words reverberated in my body and it was as if I was hearing them for the first time. I've spoken those words to myself, like a mantra, every day since. Even writing this. I will keep revisiting these words in the coming seasons and, perhaps it’s a reminder that you need to? To just keep showing up, as you are, and that's enough.