Contemplations during 10 days in silence

Recently, I finished a 10-day Vipassana course, which is in short, an intense, immersive course in the ancient meditation practice that has supposedly been passed down from the Buddha himself. To appreciate how intense and immersive the 10-day retreat was, let me tell you that it involved giving up all the “distractions” of modern life including cell phones, reading and writing instruments and even all kinds of communication with fellow meditators. It aims to simulate a few days in absolute solitude, practicing meditation and spending all your waking minutes with your own thoughts and consciousness. This mental exploration was quite grueling and extremely difficult at times, but it also came with its share of revelations and realizations and finally, a sense of discovery into an omnipresent yet vast, unexplored realm of one’s own existence, the realm of the mind.

One of the remarkable realizations for me was the level of learning I could attain while following a disciplined training regime such as the one imposed during this course. The complete silence, lack of distractions and many hours of practice each day certainly accelerated the rate of focused learning. At the end of 10 days, I felt like I had learned a new language from scratch. I was by no means expert enough to express all my thoughts in it, but perhaps I could start to have a conversation. It reminded me of brahmacharya, the learning phase of life as described in ancient Hindu scriptures where one would go to a teacher as a young student and completely dedicate oneself to learning a trade, free from all other distractions. I wondered if this was indeed one of the best ways of learning something new from scratch.

The goal of this practice, in essence, is to train the conscious mind to wrest some control over its unconscious counterpart. Our mind by default tends to react to external stimuli, without us even noticing it and often these reactions tend to drive a feeling of nagging discontent or unhappiness in us. Happy moments are soured by our immediate thoughts of the future where the external factors that caused it would cease to exist. Likewise, pain is only made worse by our attachment and involuntary emotional reaction to it. In theory, if the mind could be trained to break away from these involuntary responses and rather maintain a steady position, fully and curiously observant in experiencing the present, it would cut off the supply line that feeds our discontent and unhappiness. Of course, it not easily achievable and requires many years of practice and perhaps a total restructuring of the default tendencies of the human mind.

The subject of true happiness has probably crossed the mind of every thinking person in the world, especially those who, unlike our prehistoric ancestors, don’t have to struggle for existence in daily life. It is easy to see that material gains only create an illusion of happiness that is fleeting and soon turn into other negative emotions whenever the gains cease to continue pouring in. Contemplative practices such as Vipassana may indeed help us achieve a much more stable version of contentment in our lives. However, ancient practices such as these must also be examined with modern scientific tools to give us a better objective understanding of the phenomena that is subjectively experienced during meditation. Certainly, significant portions of the theory behind these practices are based on ancient pre-scientific era notions and teachings and hence suffer from false pronouncements. It is also wrong, in my opinion, to preach these practices as the proper or natural way of living, as is done by most traditions. Clearly, humans and every other species for that matter, were not evolved to be happy, but rather to survive! Surviving in the natural world amongst millions of other organisms was doomed to induce suffering, but natural selection, owing to the way it works, did not care about that at all! However, our current state of comfortable and dominant existence as a species on this planet and our extraordinary brain provides us with the tools to not only survive, but also to explore happiness in our lives. Certainly, many aspects of our modern life can also be viewed from this evolutionary standpoint which enables one to question things we often take for granted and attempt to determine whether they are inherent features of our existence or merely illusory mental inventions.

Such understanding is vital, specially in the context of the advent of artificial intelligence which would likely alter human lives and fundamentally change the meaning of human existence. Ever since civilizations have flourished, humankind has been engaged in increasing productivity. Nearly every person in the world is engaged in producing something that may be deemed useful by other people, either individually or as a community, and it is in this constant escalating productivity that we currently attain much of the meaning to our lives. However, as we move towards perfecting artificial intelligence, much of this productivity will inevitably be taken out of our hands and we may be left with an existential vacuum like never before. What happens then? It is extremely difficult to answer that question but contemplative practices that search for the meaning of life within the mind could be an alternate, or even a complementary path to the one we as a species are currently on. Learning how our mind works and its realities and projections at a scientific as well as experiential level would help us cut through the messy undergrowth of collective human imagination and social constructs and reveal the reality of the ground on which we stand. The reality may be harsh, at times, but removing the cataract of illusions would undoubtedly help humanity make better decisions now and in the future, as the world evolves with exponentially growing innovations. Scientific study and practical implementation of contemplative practices, such as the one I just got a glimpse of, provide a unique window to tease out these realities.