I know almost nothing about meditation or Buddhism, but I would think that holding on to ideas and realizations so you can journal them is not just cheating "a little bit." It's contrary to the whole purpose of the exercise.
Agreed. For me, it was an interesting read - I just finished the same type of 10 day retreat yesterday. I'd recommend it to most people. It has helped me establish a solid foundation to start practicing serious meditation and the 10 days without looking at a screen was a much needed break. A word of warning though: it was exceptionally difficult and you need to be open to hearing new language.
One interesting thing was the type of people I met there. After the silence was over I met a nuclear engineer, venture capitalist, computer engineer, neuroscience grad student and various other science/engineering types.
Quite to the contrary. Keeping a meditation journal is an invaluable, underutilized tool that allows students and teachers to see patterns that arise during meditation sessions, diagnose progress, and recommend next steps.
If you want to see some people making some seriously fast progress, check out practice logs on these sites:
Or maybe the thing to examine is he didn't trust the leaders of the retreat on a fairly small thing, yet he did trust them to lead him through a very dangerous amount of meditation in 10 days.
Interesting... at first I did agree that the journaling and use of technology seemed to be a direct violation of the ground rules and defeating the purpose. But glancing over some of those logs, I can see how central they were for those students.
I'm definitely seeing some Gladwell's "10,000 hour" experts there. This is a very deep ocean of practice with which I have only the most passing level of acquaintance. It's interesting to imagine investing enough time to actually become adept at this, but hard to square with the reality that the business(es) demand 26 hours from every day.
I'm not sure I'd trade it for my time spent on HN, it doesn't sound nearly as entertaining!
Yes, there are certainly some experts, but also people that have done only dozens to hundreds of hours who have made enormous progress.
As for not having time, most of these folks have worked up to 2 20 minute sits per day. Myself, I take a single 40 minute walk and meditate each day. Thats not so much especially considering that I'm also getting exercise.
No, I selected that title as one of the most common and popular self-improvement resources available for software professionals. The implication is that reading it would do more to improve your thinking than a week-long meditation retreat.
My experience, and that of the people I've talked to afterwards, is that the course is profoundly difficult for many people. It amazes me that in the two courses I've completed, only a handful of people (~5-6 out of ~150-160 total) quit early.
I've done it 10 times already and I find it easy as long as I am motivated to surrender to the process and trust it. The more opposition I carry in me, the more difficult it is. If this kind of motivation/absorption appears, it is possible to meditate for all these hours without feeling tired or having much pain.
> I’m shocked to hear how different some peoples’ experiences were from mine.
Yep. I've done the Goenka course twice and in talking with fellow students afterwards, the common thread was that it was very hard for almost everyone, but hard in completely different ways. Sometimes you can tell during the course that other students are struggling, but by and large everyone else seems to be doing fine and it's easy to think you're the only one who's barely managing to hang in there.
I'm noticing that whenever something similar comes up, it turns out invariably that it revolves around a lionized "founder" figure whose teachings are the one path to follow.
I would also assume (pure speculation here) that this retreat is a for-profit operation.
This is not cynicism on my part, it is the mere observation of a pattern.
The Goenka centers are non-profits and the courses are free, including room and board.
At the end of the class, you're given an opportunity to make a donation. It's made clear that this is what sustains the center and makes it possible for future students to attend the course. If I remember right, they tell you how much it costs to house and feed a student, so there's an implied "this is how much you should give". But I have the strong impression that many students give much less, and a small number give a multiple or give large donations at other times.
There's no further pressure to give money (or come back) after you leave the course.
Edited to add: as for Goenka as a leader figure: the whole course is taught using audio and video recordings of Goenka explaning his interpretation of the teachings of Gautama Buddha. He adds his own life story. I can't think of any way that adoration of Goenka is encouraged. In fact, Goenka refused to confirm whether he had reached certain standard levels of semi-enlightenment (e.g. arahat) saying that he wanted to avoid idol-worship around his person. And unlike many "gurus", I don't know of any accusations that Goenka took advantage of his students.
The retreats can seem cultish because the rules are strict and weird, and you're strongly discouraged from leaving halfway through the course. But I think by any reasonable checklist of what makes a cult, the Goenka centers would not quality.
No. In fact, it's 100% free. They never ask you for a donation. And you're not even allowed to donate unless you stay the full ten days. It's run completely by volunteers and old students, who walk away from their jobs for a week and half in order to cook you free meals.
I'm also weary of personality cults. Goenka did everything (he passed a year ago) to make sure you don't worship him. He claims throughout his lectures that he is not a sage, but instead a mere "householder." He doesn't say he's enlightened. He tells his story of having migraines, learning from another Vipassana leader the technique, and then dedicating his life to teaching others.
tldr; don't knock it till you try it.
But I do agree with the author that there all elements of "faith," whereas he claims you don't need faith. There are concepts in his lectures that imply belief in reincarnation for instance. That being said, 95% of the course is just about developing concentration by focusing on your breathe, and awareness & equanimity by focusing on sensations of the body.
Now, admittedly I had done very little meditation before hand, but _please_ don't just jump into this course like I did. And no, there was no history of manic depressive behaviour in my family so this came as quite the shock.
10 days of total silence (no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no nothing) is a really serious stress on your brain. Do not take it lightly.
I did a 7 day retreat at Deer Park Monastery (affiliated with Thich Naht Hanh) in San Diego. It was pretty laid back, you could talk, fraternize at will between sessions. I don't think any sitting session was longer than 30 minutes. There were also talks on mindfulness, and training in different forms of meditation. The day started at 5 am, but they warned us not to try to adhere to such a schedule at home (they said it would just cause pain). Overall it was a really positive, peaceful experience.
When I did it, there was a guy in my dorm who left halfway through. I learned later that he had taken the retreat as an opportunity to quit smoking. Terrible, terrible idea.
I've done the course a few times now, and I would say the hardest part is integrating meditation into daily life. Goenka recommends meditating twice a day, one hour each sitting. Sometimes this isn't possible, so I just try to meditate however much I can.
I have heard from others that serving a ten day course (as opposed to sitting a course, as the author here did) is more beneficial as you are able to talk with fellow servers, help prepare food, and can even read a newspaper. Although you can't go deeper into your mind, you learn to integrate meditation into daily life better. I have yet to serve a course.
I haven't served either, but my impression is that the servers are supposed to limit themselves to functionally necessary talk only. So serving a course will be less isolating, but I don't think you're supposed to discuss meditation, or your feelings, or the weather.
Agreed that meditation in real life is hard to maintain. I find that I quickly lose the ability to do the body-scanning technique effectively, and with that I lose the motivation to put in the 2x 1 hour.
Yup, I have trouble doing the body scanning technique also. I recently came across Sam Harris' interview with Joseph Goldstein, who I believe himself began with Vipassana. He has a guided meditation on youtube that I found very helpful, though different from my Vipassana experiences.
I'm not one to throw around the c-b word, but I really thought this article would be about a prison in a Buddhist country that used meditation as a form of rehabilitation. I was disappointed with the actual article.
I bought "Mindfulness in Plain English" and I've read it a few times. In the couple times I've meditated for at most 20 minutes I got some amazing experiences and insights that, I don't would be an exaggeration to say, changed my life and how I viewed other people, things, and events in my life.
That said, even though I've always wanted to give my self a time and place where I could really "break the barrier" to meditating more often, I'm not so sure I'd do some thing like that after this...
I would highly recommend anyone interested in doing a 10-day vipassana retreat, particularly their first, to look into Insight Meditation Society[0] (outside Boston, MA) or Spirit Rock[1] (near Marin, CA). They're not free, but you get access to extraordinary teachers and impeccable guidance.
The problem with Goenka retreats is that they don't tell you about the Dark Night stages. If you have a map for what you're facing, its much easier. - http://alohadharma.com/the-map/
Is there any selection bias at play for these kinds of retreats? Are there certain kinds of people who are able to set aside 10 days in a row for something like this?
I can't remember the last time I had 10 days I could free up.
Probably. Most serious yogis have something they're dealing with that they want to "solve" and that drive to solve the problem is exactly what leads them to success i.e. awakening.
I'm a Buddhist in Singapore (a member of Nanyang Technological University Buddhist Society) and have been explained by monks that the chanting purpose is to remind us about the qualities of the Buddha that is good for practice. Since the chanting should have it's meaning, those who chant should know the meaning. Without knowing the meaning, it will just become a meaningless ritual. Hence, when chanting in my society, usually below the pali text there is English text which help the chanters to understand the chanting.
The singing he mentions is strongly reminiscent of Invocations of Gompo, a track from The Pillow Book (a film), which shockingly is trivially found on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5oHTkH6hw
> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
There was at least one Googler at my last retreat.
My experience is that it was an awesome brain hack! Sit around do nothing and gain extraordinary clarity and
intense focus. My thoughts were "how did i get here? do they put something in the food?". Then i served 10 days(prep'd food) and witnessed others similarly affected.
While I haven't done a meditation retreat or anything, I always thought meditation was about mindfulness and essentially the absence of internal thought/chatter. Where you use a chant or a focal point (candle, breath, nostril sensations, sounds) to clear your mind and just "be". This guy's experience sounds quite different to what I would have expected.
The first three days are about that, focusing on nostril sensations, though it takes a lot of practice to truly "clear" your mind. The second part is where the real work comes, which is simply being with whatever comes up. Not suppressing internal dialog but not identifying with it.
I think there are infinite ways to "meditate". Even coding "in the zone" could qualify as a form of meditation helping you to reach what they call enlightenment.
Focusing on something (chants, breath, nostrils, etc) seems to be a proven way for them to help you into reaching a meditative state of mind. You can either master these techniques or figure out others that work better for you.
I'm not an expert or anything so I could be totally wrong here. I'm just a dude who took the Silva Method courses about 10 years ago.
It's very obvious that you needed this in life, and it's also very obvious that you need to do it once more to really understand what the experience is about. You tried to shame these fellows a little too much at your own expense, and remember - it's a retreat, not a prison.
Being a practitioner myself I am happy about the hype about Buddhism. Yet, people seem to overlook how manifold Buddhism is. Vipassana 10 day retreats are for folks who can truly "benefit" from strict rules described in the post. In my opinion, not many people do and luckily Vipassana is not the only way to do Buddhist meditation.
In Vajrayana you can look in each others eyes, have sex and eat meat every day. Also, the meditation rules are more up to you. It is for people who can handle everyday distractions and "use them" to deepen experiences gathered in meditation. For instance, if my boss is somehow behaving in an angry way, I try to imagine a golden Buddha over his head which will change my attitude towards him and as a result my outer reaction. This is how I apply that "all beings are Buddhas whether they know it or not" - an important meditation-object both in Mahayana and Vajrayana. (This is quite strong compared to the meditation object in Vipassana, which is "just" the breath.)
I do not want to say that Vajrayana is better than Vipassana, but that it is better for me and better for a different kind of people.
(btw. meditation cushions should cost about 10$; 80$ is really a lot)
I did three Vipasana retreats back in the 90s in the Shelburne Falls, MA. center.
The OP kind of glosses over what was for me, on my first retreat, the single most enduring issue: physical pain. Yes, all experience is transient, but that drill driving into your knee is constantly impermanent, as in, not much respite (btw, doesn't matter how you sit, cross legged, kneeling, or in a chair, when the body is made still for @14 hours a day, der pain cometh ;-))
Escape in day dreaming, meals, and sleep is par for the course, as is going to your room to meditate (forbidden, a monitor would come and bring you back to the hall), and doing yoga, thai chi or other practice to break the monotony/limber up the sore joints.
Saying that, if you've got time and are of sound mind (have to sign a waiver to that affect), go for it, it's a truly unique experience -- things are not as they seem, the concrete you that you thought you were, doesn't exist, at least not permanently ;-)
I've never understood why people treat meditation like they're cramming for finals, trying to fit as much as possible into a brief period. That's not going to help them incorporate it into their daily lives - if anything, it trains them to think of meditation as something outside their ordinary experience.
If you're at all interested in all the mental and physical health benefits of mindfulness, you do not have to go to this guy's extremes to get them. Try getting started with a guided meditation like Headspace (www.headspace.com) instead. Ten to twenty minutes a day is all you need, and it's great stuff.
Accessing certain states of mind requires momentum above all else. Thus it is very valuable to meditate intensely for sustained periods of time. Otherwise, most people have little chance of breaking through.
If all you want is altered states of mind we have drugs for that :)
When asked why Zen Mind Beginner's Mind didn't include much on Satori, Shunryu Suzuki admitted he'd never reached it[0]. He never broke through, he just sat on his cushion every day and when he did he was just sitting on a cushion. No fireworks, nothing special. At the same time he's also one of the most respected and widely read Buddhist teachers the West has even known.
And, sadly this part is noteworthy, he's one of the few teachers in America who never had any major scandals.
Oh man...this retreat. I tried it, and it was somehow way more traumatizing than it sounds. I prepared for the retreat with a month of hour-a-day practice and felt really prepared. In reality nothing could have prepared me for this claustrophobic silencefest.
Went to the center in rural Illinois around Thanksgiving. The air was cold with a jagged wind. An occasional crow croaked ominously in the damp brown grounds. Surrounded by old decommissioned farm machinery and a jet-black manmade pond, I entered with unexpected foreboding, crossing the opening of a rickety wrought-iron fence.
I signed some forms in what felt the relinquishing of my human rights, and the leaders demanded to take away my car keys and cell phone. It was an odd request since I was earnest about doing a good job at the retreat and going deep into it. I felt immediately like they didn't trust me and wanted to control me. I handed the phone over, and prepared for the gong which marks the boundary into silence.
Silence. Sounds relaxing, doesn't it? Finally at peace accepting our inner thoughts and rhythms. Wrong, this was no natural silence. it was an enforced interpersonal death, with not so much as a meaningful glance allowed between participants. Although we were all merely obeying orders I felt like the lack of eye contact or human sympathy as an omnipresent hostility. I realized that everyone who cared for me was miles away and could not possibly contact me, nor me them. These cult leaders could do anything to us really...
Time to start the first evening meditation. The well-worn paths between meditation hall, dorms, and cafeteria had become bare dirt and were at this point a boggy muddy slough. We wore clogs in between buildings. They gave us beat up metal water bottles. As a last sound of the human voice they softly called us one by one to join the meditation hall.
We found a place on the mats and got quiet. Then the tape-recorded chanting began. In this expectant calm the halting burbling throatwreck of a song was unstoppably funny. I tried with all my might not to laugh. "Ohmmmm... ...Hngghgh!" Far from being a sacred experience it sounded, well, mentally challenged.
Then back through the misty darkness, holding my bobbing flashlight and watching its feeble beam dance over the impenetrable horror of the black pond. I fumble removing the muddy clogs in the dorm entrance then off to my divided cell. My contented roommate falls asleep nearly immediately and rips into my ears with full chested snores. How am I going to sleep? What if this place makes me actually go insane from the weird treatment and sleep deprivation? They will be waking us soon, at 4am. I toss on the narrow cot.
Next day it's back to the main hall. Time is going impossibly slowly, I get out of a two hour session and go back to my dorm. There is no living thing outside. All plants are dead, there is no sound but the unrelenting wind. Once I catch sight of a squirrel far away but it scurries leaving me alone.
In the distance, but entirely surrounding the retreat center, I hear actual gunfire. Am I hallucinating in here? No, it's hunting season. There's no way I can escape. They'll mistake me for a deer and shoot me if I step outside the iron fence. All these paths just loop back, inward inward. At the ends of the paths are signs telling you to turn back. Back to the chanting, back to the hall. No talking, no looking, no feeling. They'll shoot you if you leave, you know.
What am I thinking? These thoughts aren't right, but I feel brave, I have to stand up to this. Who can I talk to? How much time is passing. (Steal a look at the watch I smuggled in.) It's been only three minutes since I entered my dorm? Ten days has become inconceivable, like a dark mountainous wave cresting over my flimsy dinghy. And nobody knows how oppressive it is here. No one will come help me.
I lined up a one-on-one talk with one of the teachers. You can't just go talk to them, you have to write your case on a clipboard and aw...
Sorry you had to go through that. I wonder if anyone here can help me understand why the evasion and control is a necessary part of this process for meditation? Why does it have to feel so weird to be effective? Is it even effective? It seems like a cult like setting is a terrible platform through which to bring people calm and peace of mind.
A totally normal part of insight meditation is to cycle through states of mind that have increased suffering. They're so common, that experienced meditators can pinpoint when they are entering into "Fear", "Misery", "Disgust", "Dissolution", "Desire for Deliverence", etc.
It is these states of mind, where, if you can hold strong to the meditation instructions and objectify everything in the field of experience, the possibility for liberation from suffering arises. When you realize that these experiences are just experiences arising and vanishing on their own, not things happening to 'I', there is an immediate relief from the suffering of those experiences.
"As the meditator moves along the path and has already experienced their attention syncing up with the arising of phenomena, then the peak of phenomena, it then moves to the passing away of phenomena. I call the next section of the path the “Dark Night” and in the commentaries it is also called “the knowledge of suffering.”
As you can gather from the name, this is a pretty difficult part of the path. It is so difficult in fact, this is where most meditators get into trouble, and can become stuck. The sheer discomfort and negativity of this part of the path may lead the meditator to conclude that they are no longer “doing it right,” and they may decide to just quit meditating. After all, why keep at it when it pretty much hurts to meditate? In the Zen tradition, this part of the path is called the “rolling up of the mat” for just that reason – the meditator just wants to throw in the towel and stop.
This actually makes a lot of sense if you do not know the map. The memory of the rapturous A&P is still fresh in the mind of a meditator who initially steps into the Dark Night. Compared to the joy and wonder that was only just experienced, the Dark Night is a horrible let down. But it is important to know that the difficulty being experienced is a sign of progress – it means that you are doing the meditation correctly."
So, the reason for the aloofness of the staff is partially because these phases are totally expected and normal, and unless you are having a true psychotic episode, the whole point is to push through.
Intentionally causing yourself suffering is an inherently violent activity and shouldn't be taken lightly (if it should ever be done at all.) Even without going through a psychotic episode you could still be doing internal damage.
It's like lifting weights, with time you learn the difference between the pain that comes with growth and the pain that comes with injury. If you haven't lifted for long enough to know the difference then you shouldn't be "maxing out" because the risk of injury is so high.
By the same token if you haven't been meditating long enough to know the difference between when you're being a cry-baby and when you really need to go take care of yourself you might not want to go to an extreme meditation retreat.
This is slightly off topic, but I am really amazed at how many in the HN community have attended these retreats. How did you justify a 10 day split from the world, or rather, how did you actually make it happen? This seems really intense, and must have taken a lot of preparation, you must have been really driven, I'm really interested in hearing more about what drives people to sign up for such an extreme experience.
Also, I see a lot of these ask for donations and have no fixed price, how much did HNers pay or donate for these retreats?
> I'm really interested in hearing more about what drives people to sign up for such an extreme experience.
Since nobody else is biting...people arrive to the Buddhist scene (and in particular retreats and such) for any number of reasons. Most have some type of thorn in their side they're trying to take care of. Some people who attend are people in their twenties who are traveling and trying out new experiences, some have an unexpected amount of free time after losing a job, getting divorced, or just "life happening." Maybe the kids left for college. Maybe they're deep into recovering from addiction and trying to understand themselves and why the addiction happened in the first place. Some people have a daily practice and they use their vacation time to go on retreat and become better people. Some are there as a rite of passage, or for social status back home where "doing a Vipassana" may be a badge of pride. Some people are essentially homeless and move from one Dharma center to the next without any real sense of direction.
At the places where you're allowed to talk to the other people you find it's quite an eclectic mix, everything from overworked executives to homeless musicians.
68 comments
[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadOne interesting thing was the type of people I met there. After the silence was over I met a nuclear engineer, venture capitalist, computer engineer, neuroscience grad student and various other science/engineering types.
If you want to see some people making some seriously fast progress, check out practice logs on these sites:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa... http://awakenetwork.org/forum/kfd-archive-wetpaint
I'm definitely seeing some Gladwell's "10,000 hour" experts there. This is a very deep ocean of practice with which I have only the most passing level of acquaintance. It's interesting to imagine investing enough time to actually become adept at this, but hard to square with the reality that the business(es) demand 26 hours from every day.
I'm not sure I'd trade it for my time spent on HN, it doesn't sound nearly as entertaining!
As for not having time, most of these folks have worked up to 2 20 minute sits per day. Myself, I take a single 40 minute walk and meditate each day. Thats not so much especially considering that I'm also getting exercise.
OpenEEG (http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/)
OpenSensors (http://sourceforge.net/p/opensensors/home/Home/)
Brain Refactoring (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Const...)
Yep. I've done the Goenka course twice and in talking with fellow students afterwards, the common thread was that it was very hard for almost everyone, but hard in completely different ways. Sometimes you can tell during the course that other students are struggling, but by and large everyone else seems to be doing fine and it's easy to think you're the only one who's barely managing to hang in there.
I would also assume (pure speculation here) that this retreat is a for-profit operation.
This is not cynicism on my part, it is the mere observation of a pattern.
At the end of the class, you're given an opportunity to make a donation. It's made clear that this is what sustains the center and makes it possible for future students to attend the course. If I remember right, they tell you how much it costs to house and feed a student, so there's an implied "this is how much you should give". But I have the strong impression that many students give much less, and a small number give a multiple or give large donations at other times.
There's no further pressure to give money (or come back) after you leave the course.
Edited to add: as for Goenka as a leader figure: the whole course is taught using audio and video recordings of Goenka explaning his interpretation of the teachings of Gautama Buddha. He adds his own life story. I can't think of any way that adoration of Goenka is encouraged. In fact, Goenka refused to confirm whether he had reached certain standard levels of semi-enlightenment (e.g. arahat) saying that he wanted to avoid idol-worship around his person. And unlike many "gurus", I don't know of any accusations that Goenka took advantage of his students.
The retreats can seem cultish because the rules are strict and weird, and you're strongly discouraged from leaving halfway through the course. But I think by any reasonable checklist of what makes a cult, the Goenka centers would not quality.
I'm also weary of personality cults. Goenka did everything (he passed a year ago) to make sure you don't worship him. He claims throughout his lectures that he is not a sage, but instead a mere "householder." He doesn't say he's enlightened. He tells his story of having migraines, learning from another Vipassana leader the technique, and then dedicating his life to teaching others.
tldr; don't knock it till you try it.
But I do agree with the author that there all elements of "faith," whereas he claims you don't need faith. There are concepts in his lectures that imply belief in reincarnation for instance. That being said, 95% of the course is just about developing concentration by focusing on your breathe, and awareness & equanimity by focusing on sensations of the body.
Maybe not as much faith as in resurrection, angels and miracles. Reincarnation is not necessary as a concept to do awareness practice.
Now, admittedly I had done very little meditation before hand, but _please_ don't just jump into this course like I did. And no, there was no history of manic depressive behaviour in my family so this came as quite the shock.
10 days of total silence (no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no nothing) is a really serious stress on your brain. Do not take it lightly.
this article is very interesting
I have heard from others that serving a ten day course (as opposed to sitting a course, as the author here did) is more beneficial as you are able to talk with fellow servers, help prepare food, and can even read a newspaper. Although you can't go deeper into your mind, you learn to integrate meditation into daily life better. I have yet to serve a course.
Agreed that meditation in real life is hard to maintain. I find that I quickly lose the ability to do the body-scanning technique effectively, and with that I lose the motivation to put in the 2x 1 hour.
Here's a documentary maybe closer to what you were hoping for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_DVac9kkI
That said, even though I've always wanted to give my self a time and place where I could really "break the barrier" to meditating more often, I'm not so sure I'd do some thing like that after this...
I can't remember the last time I had 10 days I could free up.
Maybe if there was some angle on how this could make you a better developer, but no, I don't see that.
> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
There was at least one Googler at my last retreat.
Focusing on something (chants, breath, nostrils, etc) seems to be a proven way for them to help you into reaching a meditative state of mind. You can either master these techniques or figure out others that work better for you.
I'm not an expert or anything so I could be totally wrong here. I'm just a dude who took the Silva Method courses about 10 years ago.
In Vajrayana you can look in each others eyes, have sex and eat meat every day. Also, the meditation rules are more up to you. It is for people who can handle everyday distractions and "use them" to deepen experiences gathered in meditation. For instance, if my boss is somehow behaving in an angry way, I try to imagine a golden Buddha over his head which will change my attitude towards him and as a result my outer reaction. This is how I apply that "all beings are Buddhas whether they know it or not" - an important meditation-object both in Mahayana and Vajrayana. (This is quite strong compared to the meditation object in Vipassana, which is "just" the breath.)
I do not want to say that Vajrayana is better than Vipassana, but that it is better for me and better for a different kind of people.
(btw. meditation cushions should cost about 10$; 80$ is really a lot)
The OP kind of glosses over what was for me, on my first retreat, the single most enduring issue: physical pain. Yes, all experience is transient, but that drill driving into your knee is constantly impermanent, as in, not much respite (btw, doesn't matter how you sit, cross legged, kneeling, or in a chair, when the body is made still for @14 hours a day, der pain cometh ;-))
Escape in day dreaming, meals, and sleep is par for the course, as is going to your room to meditate (forbidden, a monitor would come and bring you back to the hall), and doing yoga, thai chi or other practice to break the monotony/limber up the sore joints.
Saying that, if you've got time and are of sound mind (have to sign a waiver to that affect), go for it, it's a truly unique experience -- things are not as they seem, the concrete you that you thought you were, doesn't exist, at least not permanently ;-)
If you're at all interested in all the mental and physical health benefits of mindfulness, you do not have to go to this guy's extremes to get them. Try getting started with a guided meditation like Headspace (www.headspace.com) instead. Ten to twenty minutes a day is all you need, and it's great stuff.
When asked why Zen Mind Beginner's Mind didn't include much on Satori, Shunryu Suzuki admitted he'd never reached it[0]. He never broke through, he just sat on his cushion every day and when he did he was just sitting on a cushion. No fireworks, nothing special. At the same time he's also one of the most respected and widely read Buddhist teachers the West has even known.
And, sadly this part is noteworthy, he's one of the few teachers in America who never had any major scandals.
[0] - http://www.cuke.com/bibliography/ZMBM/preface.html
Went to the center in rural Illinois around Thanksgiving. The air was cold with a jagged wind. An occasional crow croaked ominously in the damp brown grounds. Surrounded by old decommissioned farm machinery and a jet-black manmade pond, I entered with unexpected foreboding, crossing the opening of a rickety wrought-iron fence.
I signed some forms in what felt the relinquishing of my human rights, and the leaders demanded to take away my car keys and cell phone. It was an odd request since I was earnest about doing a good job at the retreat and going deep into it. I felt immediately like they didn't trust me and wanted to control me. I handed the phone over, and prepared for the gong which marks the boundary into silence.
Silence. Sounds relaxing, doesn't it? Finally at peace accepting our inner thoughts and rhythms. Wrong, this was no natural silence. it was an enforced interpersonal death, with not so much as a meaningful glance allowed between participants. Although we were all merely obeying orders I felt like the lack of eye contact or human sympathy as an omnipresent hostility. I realized that everyone who cared for me was miles away and could not possibly contact me, nor me them. These cult leaders could do anything to us really...
Time to start the first evening meditation. The well-worn paths between meditation hall, dorms, and cafeteria had become bare dirt and were at this point a boggy muddy slough. We wore clogs in between buildings. They gave us beat up metal water bottles. As a last sound of the human voice they softly called us one by one to join the meditation hall.
We found a place on the mats and got quiet. Then the tape-recorded chanting began. In this expectant calm the halting burbling throatwreck of a song was unstoppably funny. I tried with all my might not to laugh. "Ohmmmm... ...Hngghgh!" Far from being a sacred experience it sounded, well, mentally challenged.
Then back through the misty darkness, holding my bobbing flashlight and watching its feeble beam dance over the impenetrable horror of the black pond. I fumble removing the muddy clogs in the dorm entrance then off to my divided cell. My contented roommate falls asleep nearly immediately and rips into my ears with full chested snores. How am I going to sleep? What if this place makes me actually go insane from the weird treatment and sleep deprivation? They will be waking us soon, at 4am. I toss on the narrow cot.
Next day it's back to the main hall. Time is going impossibly slowly, I get out of a two hour session and go back to my dorm. There is no living thing outside. All plants are dead, there is no sound but the unrelenting wind. Once I catch sight of a squirrel far away but it scurries leaving me alone.
In the distance, but entirely surrounding the retreat center, I hear actual gunfire. Am I hallucinating in here? No, it's hunting season. There's no way I can escape. They'll mistake me for a deer and shoot me if I step outside the iron fence. All these paths just loop back, inward inward. At the ends of the paths are signs telling you to turn back. Back to the chanting, back to the hall. No talking, no looking, no feeling. They'll shoot you if you leave, you know.
What am I thinking? These thoughts aren't right, but I feel brave, I have to stand up to this. Who can I talk to? How much time is passing. (Steal a look at the watch I smuggled in.) It's been only three minutes since I entered my dorm? Ten days has become inconceivable, like a dark mountainous wave cresting over my flimsy dinghy. And nobody knows how oppressive it is here. No one will come help me.
I lined up a one-on-one talk with one of the teachers. You can't just go talk to them, you have to write your case on a clipboard and aw...
It is these states of mind, where, if you can hold strong to the meditation instructions and objectify everything in the field of experience, the possibility for liberation from suffering arises. When you realize that these experiences are just experiences arising and vanishing on their own, not things happening to 'I', there is an immediate relief from the suffering of those experiences.
From http://alohadharma.com/2011/06/12/the-dark-night/
"As the meditator moves along the path and has already experienced their attention syncing up with the arising of phenomena, then the peak of phenomena, it then moves to the passing away of phenomena. I call the next section of the path the “Dark Night” and in the commentaries it is also called “the knowledge of suffering.”
As you can gather from the name, this is a pretty difficult part of the path. It is so difficult in fact, this is where most meditators get into trouble, and can become stuck. The sheer discomfort and negativity of this part of the path may lead the meditator to conclude that they are no longer “doing it right,” and they may decide to just quit meditating. After all, why keep at it when it pretty much hurts to meditate? In the Zen tradition, this part of the path is called the “rolling up of the mat” for just that reason – the meditator just wants to throw in the towel and stop.
This actually makes a lot of sense if you do not know the map. The memory of the rapturous A&P is still fresh in the mind of a meditator who initially steps into the Dark Night. Compared to the joy and wonder that was only just experienced, the Dark Night is a horrible let down. But it is important to know that the difficulty being experienced is a sign of progress – it means that you are doing the meditation correctly."
So, the reason for the aloofness of the staff is partially because these phases are totally expected and normal, and unless you are having a true psychotic episode, the whole point is to push through.
It's like lifting weights, with time you learn the difference between the pain that comes with growth and the pain that comes with injury. If you haven't lifted for long enough to know the difference then you shouldn't be "maxing out" because the risk of injury is so high.
By the same token if you haven't been meditating long enough to know the difference between when you're being a cry-baby and when you really need to go take care of yourself you might not want to go to an extreme meditation retreat.
You can't beat a good wank for helping you get to sleep.
Also, I see a lot of these ask for donations and have no fixed price, how much did HNers pay or donate for these retreats?
Since nobody else is biting...people arrive to the Buddhist scene (and in particular retreats and such) for any number of reasons. Most have some type of thorn in their side they're trying to take care of. Some people who attend are people in their twenties who are traveling and trying out new experiences, some have an unexpected amount of free time after losing a job, getting divorced, or just "life happening." Maybe the kids left for college. Maybe they're deep into recovering from addiction and trying to understand themselves and why the addiction happened in the first place. Some people have a daily practice and they use their vacation time to go on retreat and become better people. Some are there as a rite of passage, or for social status back home where "doing a Vipassana" may be a badge of pride. Some people are essentially homeless and move from one Dharma center to the next without any real sense of direction.
At the places where you're allowed to talk to the other people you find it's quite an eclectic mix, everything from overworked executives to homeless musicians.