That last post ended on a negative note, so I’ll try to throw in a few more positive aspects here…

I did learn the value of equanimity and living in the present moment. For example, I experienced the fact that a significant amount of suffering comes from resisting the present moment and feeling aversion to it – for the first few days, when I experienced pain in my legs/back from sitting for so long, I would be constantly wishing it would go away, always wondering when the meditation session would be over. And since it wouldn’t go away, and the session wasn’t over, it caused me a lot of mental anguish. After learning about equanimity, I would do my best to simply observe the pain objectively, without feeling aversion, just accepting it as it was in the present, and not thinking about that past or future, and even analyzing the pain with my mind to see exactly how it felt in different areas, what type of pain, at what point in my body it began fading away, etc – just doing as much as possible to accept it – and I found that that made it much more tolerable. The pain was still there, but my suffering was reduced.

Living in the present moment is easier said than done though, and when the pain got bad enough I couldn’t do it any more, but I did experience the value of being able to do so at least somewhat.

Buddhists say that craving and aversion are the cause of suffering, and they are also contrary to living in the present moment – for example craving is wishing for something in the future instead of accepting the present moment as it is. Somehow this doesn’t mean that you can’t set goals for the future etc – I don’t quite get how that all fits together.

It also takes determination and persistence to complete the retreat – it is not a walk in the park – so I suppose I built up some of those qualities in myself also.

I also gained some sort of control over my mind, so that is a benefit also.

CONCLUSION:

So yes, I did benefit from the retreat, but I feel like they were all minimal improvements – I don’t feel like I actually eliminated any Sankharas and purified my mind or improved myself in any significant way which was the main point.

The “old students” (who had done these retreats before, and many of whom had been doing vipassana for years) for the most part did not seem particularly impressive to me – generally not the type of people I want to become like from what I could tell.

I’m glad I went, because it was an interesting experience and there were many great aspects to the retreat, but since the ultimate goal (improving myself in some way) was not achieved, I was, overall, disappointed because I got very little out of it.

Do I recommend it? Yes, IF you have 10 days to blow with nothing better to do, and IF you have read this entire review and have a realistic idea what to expect.

There is a lot more elaboration possible, but I’ll wait to expand until I get questions about specific things.

I welcome your comments and questions. Please type them in below!

2 months ago I did a 10-day meditation retreat, put on the by Dhamma.org organization (they have centers all over the world, including one a few hours from me). I’m going to split this review up into a few posts, since there is a lot to say.

They teach a specific type of meditation called “Vipassana Meditation”. First I’ll explain what the whole thing was like, and then let you know my opinions on it.

THE RULES:

There a few strict rules that you have to follow during the retreat:

• “Noble Silence” for the entire 10 days – no communication of any kind, including verbal communication, non-verbal communication (gestures), physical contact, or eye contact. There are 2 times each day when you can ask an assistant teacher questions if necessary, but otherwise the entire retreat is completely void of communication. Since I was a bit late on the first day, I didn’t get to meet the other students ahead of time, and had no idea what anyone else looked like until the last day when we were allowed to talk again.
• Complete celibacy (no sexual activity of any kind)
• Can’t kill any animal (including insects like mosquitos)
• Can’t lie (not too hard since you can’t talk)
• Can’t have any intoxicants (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, etc)
• Can’t have any reading or writing material
• No physical exercise
• No music
• …and a few others

All the rules are to facilitate meditation, minimize distractions, and allow people to get as deep as possible with their introspection.

THE CONTENT OF THE RETREAT (What Happens):

You can read more about what you actually do on their website (dhamma.org). Basically each day there are 10 hours of meditation, and along with eating meals, showering, the evening “discourse” (a video of the teacher (S.N. Goenka) teaching about the meditation and his philosophies on life), and a couple breaks, the day is full. A side note on food: You only get breakfast and lunch, and then fruit and tea for dinner – but surprisingly it is enough, I suppose because the physical activity is so minimal).

The first 2 days you do nothing during meditation but concentrate on your breath. This is to relax and focus your mind and get yourself in tune with your body – you also discover how out of control you mind actually is, but you get better at focusing and controlling it. For the next 1.5 days you focus on the sensations in a certain part of your face – surprisingly, you start to feel a lot of sensations going on, since you’re so focused and in tune with yourself. The sensations are actually always there, but usually you just can’t feel them. Then for the rest of the retreat you take your now somewhat tamed and focused mind and focus it part by part throughout the rest of your body, with tweaks each day on how you do that.

THE THEORY:

The main purpose of Vipassana Meditation is to undo your “conditioning”, and free yourself of all the things in your subconscious mind that are controlling the way you are, so that you can become your real unconditioned self. This is somewhat related to the Buddhist idea of enlightenment (you don’t get all the way there, or even close, during the 10 days, but apparently you make progress in that direction). They say that at your core, underneath all the conditioning, you’ll find only goodness, love, compassion, etc.

They say that your body and mind are very closely related, and the effects of everything that happens to you are stored in your body as some sort of tension, or some sensation, or something. For example, say you experience a painful rejection by an audience while doing an oral presentation when you are young. The effect of the rejection would be stored in your body somehow. From then on that affects you, and you feel nervous doing presentations. These stored conditionings than constantly affect you are called “Sankharas” (you learn a lot of new words, such as that one).

When you are meditating, and relaxed and in tune with your body, and equanimous (indifferent, just observing yourself objectively, feeling neither craving nor aversion to anything), the Sankharas start coming up to the surface. The idea is that when you just observe the physical manifestations of the Sankharas with equanimity, and they arise and pass away, the Sankharas get eradicated, along with their effects on you. (Before going on the retreat, I though that this meant I would start feeling various emotions, or having memories come into my mind, etc, but actually you only feel physical sensations).

You continue doing this until you are free of all your conditioning (takes a lot more than 10 days – it could take many lifetimes – but 10 days is supposed to be a good first step).

On the retreat you do cultivate some other good skills and attributes, such as equanimity, etc, but really the goal is to undo your conditioning.

Next… A bit about MY experience.