Ask HN: Have you been on a meditation retreat? How has it changed your life?
Hey all - I went on a meditation retreat for the first time in 2016 and have been to several since.
Since then, I've met a lot of friends through the process, but was curious what the overlap between the general tech community and the meditation community was.
Have you been on a retreat? If so how was it and would you go again. If not and you are interested in one - what has prevented you thus far?
43 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 98.6 ms ] threadI did three days of 15 hour different meditations. To this day, I still feel totally relaxed during contentious business projects. I plan on going again at some point.
The 101 retreat was held on campus at Google, and I had a blast.
The 201 retreat was held at a retreat center north of SF. Not as fun, super challenging, but still a rewarding experience.
Net-net: while I'm glad I did it, I don't need to signup for more meditation retreats. One reason is because I got what I needed out of it (i.e. I know how to meditate on my own). The other reason is I discovered that meditation is effective in soothing anxiety about the future. It's more important, in my case, to make sense of the past (aka stop ruminations). Therapy and journaling have been significantly more effective, than meditation, in addressing those needs.
Every retreat I have been on has been worth it. Some have been easier to see the benefits at once, others have benefits planted that are reaped later.
My experience, though, is that it takes about 4-5 days for all the "noise" in your head to start fading away, and then, boom, it's over. ;-)
I used to know someone from France who claimed that the French don't consider any amount of time off under a week to really be a vacation, for exactly that reason.
You're being too clever for me. Do you mean yourself? God? Your actual romantic partner?
To fill this idea out a little more - God is the source of all good and the ultimate goal of all creatures. The ultimate reason for happiness (which all seek) is the Person who creates all things. And He wants to spend time with us, but He also wants us to choose to spend time with Him. A retreat, like a pilgrimage, is time we choose to set aside to spend with Him.
I haven't been on one. I'm not really interested in doing one so much as curious about why other folks do.
I mean, don't get me wrong -- meditation itself is an incredibly powerful, basic tool that a lot of people need. This is, it's kinda like a hammer or screw driver in that it's simplistic-but-essential.
I guess it sounds sorta like a book club to me -- like, why join a book club rather than just read your own selection of books whenever you want? And I guess it's because there's a social element to it that people enjoy, perhaps moreso than the actual activity itself?
That said, in a book club, people can talk about the contents of the book afterwards. What might people share of meditation, given that it's such a personal experience?
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To note it, I suspect that the answer to my question is that meditation retreats can help introduce people who don't normally meditate much to the basic practice, sorta like a quick-start class. But I'd be interested in what people've done them before have to say of what they took from it.
A recent example that worked for me: I took a short vacation by myself. I went to one event I wanted to see, and then for the rest of the time I had zero plans. Basically, I walked around the beach, walked around town, ate food, and that was it.
Was it mindful meditation? Not really. But the effects were the same or similar.
I think some people should really just take time off work more often (mandatory paid leave in the United States, please!)
I do have a suspicion that a not-small portion of the benefits of a meditation retreat is more about the retreating than the meditation. I'd probably feel "OMG I haven't felt this good in years" amazing after 10 days away from electronics and family & work obligations, even if I just read books and napped and took nature walks the whole time. Meditating instead would probably work too.
The highest level meditation is one that creates no separation between the physical reality and the higher self. A completely open stream of consciousness that allows the physical self to be happy with whatever physical reality is, at any given moment in time. That generally doesnt look like a retreat, instead it's a relaxed advance, an acceptance of what is, an engagement with the world around you, be that a good book or a nice walk through the earths natural creation, or a nice refreshing nap with a trip to the dreamlands.
> What might people share of meditation, given that it's such a personal experience?
This is a question of phenomenology. If you can accurately describe your perceptual experience to someone who's very experienced, they can offer guidance. There are many common experiences to people practicing similar techniques (of which there are many). Those experiences tend to follow a pretty well defined pattern within each tradition.
Generally speaking, if your practice involves building a very strong, relaxed, equanimous type of concentration, and using that concentration to deconstruct your survival mechanism of the experience of self and world, doing that for 8-12 hours a day every day while maintaining silence and doing basically nothing else besides walking and sleeping is going to be more conducive to that than practicing less intensively at home, with all of the distractions that regular life has built in. That's not to say it's impossible to do that on your own, but a retreat is built for it.
But I had significant difficulty incorporating the practice and those lessons into my everyday life. It's just hard to get anything useful out of daily practice when I'm subjected to work, phone, tv, internet, etc. I just end up to scatterbrained. I wish I understood how to live in the modern world with some of the clarity that I had during the retreats.
They all went vegan for a while after, all talk about turning off device notifications, and were extremely calm and confident for months after.
I read a vipassana book and think it’s a good perspective to gain for a lot of parts of life and makes me want to try a 10 day retreat at some point.
Haha...I can see how that'd happen. The food at the retreat was amazing. I was most of the way through my first 10-day before I realized that the food itself was a challenge for me to stay in the present moment and not look forward to whatever amazing dishes they'd serve in the next meal. Maybe it's just the centers in Asia, but it really helps you understand what's possible in a vegan diet. So much of the vegan food you see in the US is either really bland or just swaps out the meat for tofu or other such vegan protein. The dishes that they served were extremely varied and seemed conceived from the start to be vegan. Many of the people there who eat more meat than I do said they expected to be challenged by having to eat vegan for 10 days, but actually enjoyed it and never felt like it was missing anything.
Foodgasm aside, I think it's something that everyone with any interest should try at least once to see whether it's for them. If nothing else, just unplugging from the world and doing a digital detox can be a worthwhile experience. I'd encourage you to find a way to go, even if it doesn't become a constant part of your life going forward.
Daily meditation especially vipassana and loving-kindness can truly change your life, bring inner peace and can truly in your personal and business relations.
As an entrepreneur, one side-effect of meditation is that it made me really examine what my definition of "success" and "happiness" is. In so doing meditation has taken away much of my ego and the desire to achieve revenue growth or market share goals. I simply don't care about that anymore and now I just want to operate a business that makes great products that people love while that producing enough revenue to support my team. For myself, building and maintaining an awesome and supportive work environment where individuals and life-work balance are valued are my top priorities. Happy lives and families are key. The gain of status and material objects are just transitory with no significance.
bo bbym artin (two) (at) gmail (dot) com Bobby
I had bad OCD that was entirely cured after 2 10-day courses + an average of 2-3 hours of meditation practice every day for 1-2 years.
However, even 2 hours of meditation practice for 6 months after the first retreat got my OCD to a very manageable level.
Really recommend going!
Wow, that is insane (in a good way)! how long did it take to reach that stage?
I had some pretty crazy revelations. For one thing, I had never really sensed my body up until that point. In Vipassana you literally try to feel the physical sensation of every square inch of the body. I remember during one of the group meetings someone was talking about feeling their gums. It hadn't even dawned on me that I could focus on my gums and feel them. It's a pretty wild experience to just sit and focus on physical sensation for 10 days straight. Even when you're not in the meditation hall, you're still focusing on some kind of physical sensation.
Another interesting revelation I had came when I got sick from eating some of the food. They cooked really amazing Indian food, but my body just wasn't used to it and I got the shits for a few days. It was a really weird experience not being able to tell anyone that I felt sick (of course if it got bad then I would tell the supervisor assigned to my group). I had pretty bad diarrhea for 2 or so days. I had never thought how much I depended on being able to complain to others about feeling discomfort to give me a sense of well-being. It was interesting how my mind started to consider all these negative scenarios if something bad happened and no one knew I was feeling ill so they didn't come to check on me. It was kind of funny going through my head wondering if I should tell the supervisor that I was shitting myself just for future reference in case I shat myself to death. I decided I was over-reacting and just kind of observed my mind freak out about it.
I remember having the sensation of having a big revelation although not entirely sure of the content. I kind of just assume that it's integrated itself into my mind. It may have had something to do with the idea that what my mind perceived as reality didn't necessarily have any truth to it. Particularly when it comes to how I perceive others' perceptions of me. For example, I could have a sense of how a friend, family member or even some random person thinks of me that might be totally off base from what they themselves actually think about me. An interesting book that touches upon this topic is "One, No One and One Hundred Thousand" by Luigi Pirandello.
Aside from that, it's mostly given me the ability to just take a break from feeling stress/anxiety/anguish, focus on the physical sensation that is associated with it and take some comfort in knowing that it's not permanent. There's the whole idea that when something negative occurs in our lives, we prolong its existence by trying to push it away when instead we should observe it, let it pass and maybe even learn from it. As someone who was diagnosed w/Hashimoto's I've had periods of my life where I feel really shitty and at one point I dipped into a really dangerous depression (prior to the retreat, part of what motivated me to do it). I should note that I mistakenly had the impression that meditation would simply let me "zen" myself out of these modes. Unfortunately, they seem to carry some inertia with them and so meditation was not the superpower I thought it might be to attain a state of happiness and well-being at any instant I desired, however I certainly take value in my ability to not amplify them anymore and to be able to look at them objectively and take the necessary steps to dig myself out of those holes.
I've also done ...
Something like this: https://www.shaolinskungfu.com/Accommodation.html
I've also done 8-day retreats and 10-day retreats. These are my favorites. As someone else in the comments said, it takes a few days for silence to break through your barriers. There's a whole bunch of science on the 3-day effect which seems related to my experience. For me it works like this: day one I'm excited and my mind doesn't shut up. I have a million ideas floating through and I try to grasp them all and to remember the "fruits" of this time for later when I can talk. Early on in my retreats I would journal furiously. I filled a moleskine notebook each day, front and back of pages. It was insane, and also counterproductive. I was taking the dialogue away from my tongue and moving it onto the page. Now I don't journal at all, or I'll do so only every few days and briefly. Even so, day one is a wasted day. It's like my mind is flipping out craving contact. I just need to let it run its course.
On day 2 I have intermittent moments of calm when I can sense the silence underneath everything. I try to spend this day in solitude if possible. It helps to speed up the transition. Remember, silence in a retreat isn't about sound, it's about communication. Don't make eye contact or gestures at others. You're not being silent.
Day 3 for me is when I'm finally at rest. I listen to the little movements of my mind. It's a great time for contemplative prayer, or mindfulness meditation. If you've read anything about Ignatian spirituality, this is where the real enlightening stuff hits. Days 3-7 are a blur of wonder that I never want to end.
That being said, I've also done 30 days in silence and it is there that I'd use the term "life changing." How life changing was it for me? It led to me deciding to leave religious life to get married and start a family. It was not in rebellion to the style of life I was living, but as a result of it. It took me 30 days of contemplation in silence to finally find the answer to the questions that had been bouncing around in my head for a decade.
Would I go again? Certainly.
It felt a bit euphoric the first few days but then it wears off.
If you continue your daily meditation practice, I believe it might have a net positive effect.
My friend went about 5 times now. He swears by it.
Two anecdotes.
So many people in the comments mentioned retreats but I'm surprised not a single person mentioned enlightenment. The whole point of retreats is to get you to a point where you willfully and intentionally seek freedom from suffering, but it seems like a ton of people get stuck in the retreat treadmill. Living a happier, more peaceful life is one thing but it's very possible to completely eradicate the subjective experience of suffering (or at least eliminate enough of it that it's largely unnoticeable). Enlightenment is very accessible and super achievable, especially now with the internet.
I highly recommend reading Living Realization (https://www.amazon.com/Living-Realization-Simple-Plain-Engli...) or Falling Into Grace (https://www.amazon.com/Falling-into-Grace-Insights-Suffering...) to see if any of it resonates. Once you get what all this is about then retreats become a practice ground towards a goal rather than a stabilizing mechanism or a way to feel better for a bit.