My experience in the 2nd Vipassana retreat and insights

[Thinh]

I want to introduce a little bit about the place which I went to

It’s a Vipassana center in Nam Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam. My teacher was a student of Master Goenka and she has graduated from that system. From what I know, the Vipassana retreat in here is a little different from the one from dharma.org. The different is that in all sessions we have to meditate with others in the big meditation room (I guess this is easy for beginners and people to follow the schedule).

The retreat have three parts:

1.       1st part is 3.5 days. In this part we were guided to practice concentration meditation. The subject we use to train our focus is breath and the we have to focus on the nose area to feel the sensation of the air come through your nose. There are many ways to train your concentration but this is the reason why we need to focus on our breath. First, the breath is the one that connect your body and your mind (subconscious mind). For example, if you have emotions rise up (any emotions), your breaths will change (the only thing is that are you concentrate enough to notice this). The more subtle the emotions the more focus you need to notice it through your breaths. Second, when using your breath you are able to sharpen your focus, it’s like you use a lens to focus all of the light into a spot (or a laser beam). Imagine you have a light in you and now you’re learning to control that light, in here you need to focus all of its energy, its light to penetrate yourself to discover the deep of you. As you practice more, you’re able to narrow the area that you can feel the sensation and you’re able to feel the one which is subtle.

 

2.       2nd part is 5.5 days. In this part we were guided to use what we’ve trained in the 1st part to scan our body for sensations. The reason why we need to use sensations is that they’re expresstions of emotions. There are two ways which you feel a sensations: from outside (when you touch things) and from inside (your emotions). Your sensations is also a connection of your body and your mind (subconscious mind). And because your mind don’t have any form or shape so you need to rely on your body to hack your mind.

 

3.       3rd part is 1 day (aka Metta Day). In this part, we were guided to express unconditional love to others. This part depends a lot in two parts that we’ve done before. If you do the last two parts right and have as much result as possible, your energetic field will be big, powerful and the practice will be more effective. One of the thing with this practice is that if you do in a group of people, the effect will be big. It’s like in each person, there’s a light, depends on the power of each light the ability to shine will be different.

I'll add more about my experience and my insights in the future.