Open-Hearted Insight. Everyday Awakening

“I came full of doubts—could I survive eight days without my phone? The moment it began, I forgot the outside world and started discovering myself. I found a peace I’d never known. The centre feels like heaven on earth. Manjula Teacher’s patience made meditation so easy to grasp, and the Sisters’ food was made with love. I arrived confused. I left with peace, clarity, and a smile in my heart.— Mehrzad Irani, Nashik”

The Metta Vipassana meditation retreat was a deeply transformative experience for me. Unlike traditional Vipassana, this practice is rooted in metta—loving-kindness—and that made the progress feel natural and surprisingly fast. The daily one-on-one interactions with Bhante provided profound insights and gentle course correction, helping me deepen my practice with clarity. The emphasis on smiling, love, and compassion made the inner awakening feel alive and joyful. What stood out was that progress wasn’t just meditative depth, but an inner joy that naturally wanted to be shared—even with ‘enemies.’ The daily discourses were beautifully aligned, answering doubts before they arose and preparing me for the next day This heightened mindfulness helped me clearly see my habitual thought patterns and gently rewire them toward more constructive, joyful ways of living. I am sure that even first-time meditators can experience remarkable inner shifts through this practice as it is simple and joyful, focusing on just smile and relaxion.

The bad qualities I had before the retreat were: impatience, arrogance, insolence/haughtiness, excessive sexual involvement/interest, laziness, anger, and harsh words. All of these have undergone a very great transformation. Furthermore, I have consciously experienced and realized one of the key stages of wisdom: that everything is one within us, and that we are not separate from others. Many thanks to the almighty Nature, to the Buddha, to the Bhante, and to Rajmahendra.

A wonderful eight-day course of Samath Vipassana was completed.  I also realized after Supriya’s gratefully written post, I also want to express my gratitude. I got to learn important things: that Panchsheel and Arya Ashtangik path are of unique importance in human life, I want to practice them daily.

I have become aware of the qualities and defects in myself, so of course I have started to cultivate the qualities and remove the defects. Manjula madam took this course single-handedly. I have taken their enthusiasm, energy and positivity and of course started using it.  🙏🙏

Just completed this eight days course and returned home yesterday.

 I had heard about Vipassana till today, but I heard about this course from my friend from 9th to 16th March and decided to go for at least two days.  Now I know what I would have achieved in two days..?Really, everyone must do this course.. This is a very useful course for beginners.  In eight days only by observing the movements of the mind, giving a sense of friendship there, a light smile, mastering the art of stopping those movements for a while and experiencing one’s own mind free from thought and calm, the joy has been experienced in life… and this joy is beyond all the joys experienced so far.  Realized that it is much more valuable than moments.  Now I will try to keep this happiness forever by using this art of calming and alerting the mind forever.

My sincere thanks to Manjula madam because I have succeeded in raising my mind by very calmly giving solutions to whatever distractions I had in two days and doing the eight days course fully alert.  And I returned home with an unlimited supply of positive energy.

Physically, my body felt light, and it felt like I didn’t really have a physical body except for the sensations I was feeling on the top of my head.

Mentally, the excitement/pressure feeling from the initial days of the meditation has subsided. Now, the feeling of Metta is more calm in a way without the excitement.

This continues during the walking meditation as well. My mind is more silent and quite with the intention of Metta but not the excitement and the pleasure of it. I am genuinely surprised as to how silent my mind has become, especially during walking meditation and during daily activities. Starting to understand what Bhante meant when he said, “Life is meditation, meditation is life.”

“Today during my morning sit, which was from 8-11am, I could radiate metta for the first hour until my body dissolved and I felt no discomfort at all. And my mind got so quiet that I could see just the vibrations that eventually become thoughts, and I could relax these vibrations before they become distractions. It was so clear how all things in the 6 sense doors arise because of some cause and how ignorantly we tend to react to them and create a mental proliferation about these things in our mind. When none of it is under our control. It’s all just happening, and I could watch this process for many hours today. It was very beautiful state to be in it even stretched into meal time and as I walked. The quiet mind stayed along as I kept 6ring all the distractions before they took my mind too far into mental proliferation. This is a very amazing technique. I’ve been doing Goenka style vipassana for 13 years, and in all my time I haven’t seen dependent origination so clearly”