Day 1
15th December 2025
The gong came at 4.00am.
Not a gentle wake-up.
Not a polite reminder.
But a sound that pierced through sleep and announced, “This is it. There’s no turning back now.”
By 4.30am, we were expected to be seated in the Dhamma Hall.
Still half-asleep, wrapped in layers, carrying stiff bodies and silent minds, we assembled. The hall felt vast, cold and intimidating in the early hours. Cushions neatly arranged. Assigned seats waiting. Silence already heavy in the air.
And so it began.
The first sitting stretched until 6.30am; two full hours of meditation.
Two hours of stillness for bodies that had barely woken up.
Two hours of minds that had not yet learned how to obey.
When the sitting finally ended, an announcement followed. I saw others rising, so I did the same, assuming it was time for breakfast. As I walked towards the exit, suddenly someone pulled my long overcoat from behind.
My heart leapt.
For a split second, my mind screamed: monkey! We had been warned about wild monkeys roaming the centre, and fear surged through me.
I turned around startled, only to see a Dhamma server sternly gesturing for me to return to my seat. The teacher was still speaking.
I wasn’t angry.
But I was shaken.
Why pull someone like that?
Where was gentleness?
Where was loving-kindness?
By the time breakfast came, my body had moved on but my heart hadn’t. That moment stayed with me through breakfast, through the next sitting, through the long hours that followed.
Vipassana had begun and already it was teaching me something uncomfortable ie not everything will be delivered with softness.
The rest of the day unfolded in a rhythm that would soon become familiar:
Meditation.
Breakfast.
Meditation.
Lunch.
Meditation.
Tea.
Meditation.
NO Dinner. Yes, seriously NO Dinner 🥹
Meditation.
And finally, the Dhamma discourse in the evening.
The discourse became my anchor. Watching and listening to the late S.N. Goenka felt oddly personal, as though he was speaking directly to me, articulating thoughts and frustrations I hadn’t yet admitted to myself. It was comforting, grounding and strangely reassuring.
By nightfall, exhaustion had seeped into my bones.
As I walked back to the dormitory, the cold felt sharper than before. My right hip began to ache; a deep, radiating pain that felt like the start of a sciatic flare. The kind of pain that doesn’t ask permission. The kind that demands attention.
Thankfully, I had brought the tennis ball with me; a small act of foresight that now felt like a blessing. I lay there, pressing into it, breathing through the discomfort, reminding myself that this was only Day 1.
Lights went off at 9.30pm.
The room was silent.
The cold was unforgiving.
The body was protesting.
And the mind… was just beginning to realise what it had signed up for.
Day 1 didn’t welcome me gently.
It didn’t reassure me.
It didn’t promise ease.
Instead, it whispered a truth I would come to understand deeply over the next days ie,
This path is not about comfort.
It is about seeing - clearly, honestly and without escape.
And so, I closed my eyes, breathed into the pain and stayed.
