Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. They call it a ‘vipassana vendetta’. In the stillness, tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever’s available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones.
