The Quit and The Return: My 11-Year Journey to Vipassana

2005: The Quit

I quit on Day 3.

Let me back up. It was August 2005, and I'd driven three hours from the Bay Area to North Fork—a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills—for a 10-day silent meditation retreat called Vipassana.

I'd read about it and was curious. I had never meditated before, never done any kind of retreat. I went in cold.

The setup is intense. No talking for ten days. No eye contact. No phone, no TV, no writing, no reading. You wake up at 4 a.m., meditate for about eleven hours, and lights out at 9:30 p.m. That's your life for ten days.

Buddha taught this technique over 2500 years ago in present-day Nepal and India. The meditation technique is different in that they don’t want you to chant a mantra or focus on a deity during meditation. All it is is focusing on your breath and later during the course focusing on your body. In simple words, it is about seeing things as they are.

When you arrive, you deposit everything—phone, keys, pen. notebook, anything that connects you to your regular life. I remember standing at that desk, handing over my belongings, and feeling something strange. Like I was leaving my life behind. My mind went somewhere unexpected: Is this what dying feels like? Letting go of everything?

I know, probably too dramatic. It was only ten days.

By Day 3, I was judging everyone around me. The ones meditating with calm faces—I thought they were faking it. Cosplaying enlightenment. Projecting serenity to seem better than the rest of us. Then there were the sad ones in hippie clothes, and I despised them too for reasons I couldn't even articulate.

I told myself: Nothing terrible has happened to me to justify this. I didn't need this. I wasn't broken. Plus, NFL preseason had started and college football was around the corner. I had a life to get back to.

I told the teacher on Day 2 that I was done. He asked me to stay. I went back on Day 3 and he reluctantly agreed. They snuck me out during a group session so the others wouldn't see.

I drove home feeling relieved.

I didn't think about Vipassana for eleven years. Then I did.

2016: The Return

September 2016. I'm back at North Fork, handing over my belongings again.

Same desk. Same ritual. Same building. Different person.

The years leading up to that September had been hard. I won't go into details. But something in me had shifted. I wasn't curious anymore. I was ready. At least mentally.

I find my assigned room, drop my things on the bed, and walk the grounds. The place is still beautiful—lush green paths, little creeks, the meditation hall as serene as ever.

At evening orientation, I take my cushion. The teachers sit silently as S.N. Goenka's recorded voice welcomes us, explains what lies ahead, and wishes us luck.

Ten Days at Dhamma Mahavana

Days 1–3: The Noise

The instruction sounds simple: focus on your breath. Notice it entering your nostrils. Notice it leaving. Don't alter it. Just observe.

Simple. Impossible.

My mind refuses. It generates scenes with the vividness of cinema—conversations I need to have, arguments I should have won, futures that don't exist. I'm supposed to be watching my breath. Instead, I'm watching a screenplay my mind is writing without my permission.

I try to focus. I catch myself taking deep, deliberate breaths—the opposite of what they asked. I try again.

At lunch, I approach the teacher. "My mind won't stop. And when I focus on my breath, I end up controlling it."

He nods. "Don't react."

That's it. Don't react. I want more—a technique, a trick, something. He has nothing else. I return to my cushion, irritated.

Day 3 is when it cracks open.

The mind slows just enough for something else to surface. My son appears. He's six months old—the age he was when I left for this retreat. I see him sleeping. I see him crying. I see him smiling at me.

This isn't a thought. It's a visitation. I feel him, a warmth I have no words for. I get emotional.I feel like I am with him, somehow.

The mind is quieter after that. Like it had to empty its noise before it could show me what it was protecting.

Days 4–6: The Fire

Day 4, the technique shifts. No more breath focus. Now we scan the body, inch by inch, noticing whatever sensations arise. The first three days were preparation—sharpening attention so we could feel the subtle stuff.

There's a new rule: sit for two hours without moving.

First session, I last maybe forty minutes before my knees start screaming. By an hour, my back joins in. Shoulders turn to stone. I'm supposed to be feeling subtle sensations. All I feel is pain—loud, total, everywhere.

I eye the chairs at the back of the hall. They're for people with injuries, but no one's checking. I could move. No one would judge me.

I don't move.

Day 5 is worse. Day 6, something shifts. The pain is still there, but my relationship to it changes. I stop fighting. I stop narrating—This is unbearable, how much longer? I just sit in it.

Pockets of quiet open up. Between the waves of pain, I notice something subtle—a tingling at the top of my head, a faint vibration in my hands. Nothing dramatic. But something other than pain.

I still miss my son and I still have four more days to go.

Days 7–9: The Stillness

They offer private meditation rooms—small cells in the pagoda, ten by ten, dim and silent. I take one.

Something's changed. I wake at 4 a.m. with much less resistance. My mind is quiet—not empty, just still. I can sit for two and a half hours without moving.

The body adapts when the mind stops negotiating.

One afternoon, I go to my private meditation room after lunch. I open the door. There's a guy inside, cross-legged, watching a video on his phone.

I stand there, stunned. My mind starts its familiar routine—judgment, outrage, the satisfying screenplay of confrontation.

He never surrendered it. Ten days in, and he's been sneaking it out the whole time.

Then I let it go.

Not because I'm enlightened. Because I've spent nine days learning that reacting costs more than it gives. I wait for him to leave but I can sit in that room. I head to the meditation hall and sit in my spot. Within minutes, he's gone from my mind.

The old me would have spiraled for hours. This version recovers in minutes. That's the only progress I can claim. But it's not nothing.

Day 10: Breaking Silence

Morning starts like the others—4 a.m., meditation, silent breakfast. But there's electricity in the air. Today we speak.

At lunch, the silence breaks. The hall erupts. First-timers huddle together, laughing, comparing notes. "Can you believe we did it?" People shake hands, exchange names they've wondered about for nine days.

I don't join.

The noise feels like intrusion. My system isn't ready. I eat alone, like I have for nine days.

Next morning, I drive home. The highway feels aggressive—cars too fast, billboards too bright, radio too loud. Inside, I'm still moving at a different speed.

The silence lingers for a week or so but I know it will fade. The stillness isn't something I get to keep forever. It's a glimpse of what's possible when you stop running long enough to meet yourself.

What Stayed

People ask if Vipassana changed my life. Honest answer: I don't know.

Here's what I can say.

I learned that the mind is a relentless storyteller—and you don't have to believe everything it writes. I learned that the body can endure far more than we think, if the mind stops telling it to quit. I learned that everything—sensations, emotions, pain, joy—rises, plateaus, and falls. Nothing is permanent. Equanimity is watching that process without grabbing or pushing away.

For ten days, it was me against me. That's a harder fight than anything the world throws at you.

Goenka recommends practicing two hours a day—one in the morning, one at night. He says the clarity you gain will make you so effective that the two hours pay for themselves. I believe him. Have I been consistent? No. I'm still working on it.

Discipline beats willpower. Discipline beats intelligence. I'm building that muscle slowly—with meditation, with lifting, with sleep. It's a practice, not a trophy.

The Invitation

Here's what I wish someone had told me in 2005: don't wait for a crisis to build capacity.

Vipassana isn't a remedy. It's preparation. You don't learn to sit with discomfort after life breaks you. You learn it before, so when the hard seasons come, you have something to draw on.

Sitting still for ten days is hard. Taking ten days out of your life is hard. But the harder thing—the thing most of us never do—is spending time alone with ourselves without distraction, without escape.

Silence is a teacher. Most of us never let it speak.

I'm not saying you need to do Vipassana. But I am saying this: whatever you're avoiding by staying busy, it's still there. It's waiting. And it's more patient than you are.

The Buddha said, "Aapo deepa bhava"—be a lamp unto yourself.

The question is: are you willing to sit long enough to meet yourself?