A 10-day Vipassana retreat taught me the meaning of pain

I recently finished a 10-day Vipassana retreat, at a monastery in Sweden. This was my third attempt to do a monastic retreat — I’d done a runner from both previous efforts, from a Russian monastery in Lent 2006 (the head monk kept trying to convert me to Orthodox Christianity) and from a Benedictine monastery on the Isle of Wight in January 2013 (I was bored). This time, I vowed not to do a…