Finding Vipassana: A long path ahead ...

If there is one thing I feel deeply grateful and genuinely happy about, it is discovering the word Vipassana, which was mentioned in passing.

During my engineering days, I spent countless hours watching interviews on iDream Civil Services. I happened to see interview of Dr.Kiranmayi Koppisetti Mam's at 19:30 min Mam mentioned about Vipassana casually as her hobby.

 

At that time, my mind was already crowded with videos of Jiddu Krishnamurthy. I watched them intensely, repeatedly. They were profound, but honestly, they hardly made sense to me then. Still, they stirred something—questions without answers, silence without form. Looking back, I realise I wasn’t confused; I was simply unprepared.

Somewhere along that confusion, a quiet thought emerged:

What if I start meditation from scratch?

Not as philosophy. Not as theory. But as a lived discipline.

To actually get established in it.

That thought led me back to Vipassana.

A simple search revealed that Vipassana is taught through a structured ten-day residential course, and that the minimum age requirement for adults is twenty. That alone told me something important—this was not casual meditation. It demanded seriousness, commitment, and readiness.

I applied to Dhamma Khetta, the Vipassana meditation centre in Hyderabad. My application was rejected.

Only later did I understand why—the centre is perpetually flooded with applications.

Rejection has a way of testing intent. Instead of giving up, I applied again—this time to Dhamma Arama in Bhimavaram. The response was the same. No confirmation. No assurance.

Yet something in me had shifted by then.

I gathered courage, withdrew a few thousand rupees in cash, and boarded a train—towards a region I had never explored before. There was no guarantee that I would be accepted. No certainty that the gates would open for me.

But I made a quiet decision:

If I am given a chance, I will attend the course.

If not, I will travel across northern Andhra Pradesh.

There was freedom in that resolve. For the first time, the outcome did not matter as much as the movement itself. The journey was no longer about reaching a meditation centre—it had become an inner declaration.

In retrospect, Vipassana did not begin for me inside a meditation hall.

It began the moment I chose sincerity over certainty, experience over explanation, and courage over comfort.

Sometimes, the path does not wait for understanding.

It waits for readiness.

And sometimes, all it takes is a passing word to change the direction of a life.