A FEW MORE POSITIVE ASPECTS:
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!
Nov. 2010 Update: I have just opened up the comments again, after having them closed for over a year 
Feb. 2011 Update: Sorry, comments have been closed again due to spam 
Tags: Goenka, Meditation, retreat, Vipassana
Did you have a meditation practice before you went? After?
I am thinking about attending a retreat with this group in Illinois. I meditate now, and find it very helpful. But I have never meditated for more than half an hour at a time and struggle with maintaining a daily practice. Also, I find it much easier to read books about meditation and to talk about it than to actually do it. I am considering the 10 day retreat in hopes that it will help me be better about meditating with greater regularity.
You mentioned that you felt that this experience did not largely change you. In the book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron talks about how you can still be the same old person even after many years of putting work into meditation and this this is okay. She says wanting ourselves to be someone different than who we are is a form of aggression towards the self. When I first read this I was disappointed–isn’t the whole point to be a different person??? But then I realized that she is right about the importance of accepting all of ourselves and having a loving attitude towards ourselves.
Are you familiar with Byron Katie? She is not a meditation person, but her work is a great compliment to meditation practice in my opinion. There are some youtube videos of her that give you an idea of what she is about. Her first book is called Loving What Is and I highly recommend it. You can download worksheets from her website that explain how to do the work:
http://www.thework.com/index.asp
Warmly,
Charlotte
Hi Charlotte,
Thanks for your comments. No, I did not practice meditation before attending the retreat. I’d tried it a few times, but usually I’d just get bored / frustrated and give up on it pretty quickly.
You mentioned you’re hoping the retreat will help you to be better at meditating with more regularity… I expect it likely will help with that.
Since the retreat I haven’t been meditating much, although I do very occasionally when feel the urge; it’s nice to know that now I have the ability and experience to do so properly when I choose to
I can see the value of just accepting who you are, but I find it is easier said than done. I’ll check for that book @ the library.
I hadn’t heard of Byron Katie, but her website looks interesting at first glance – I’ll check it out in more detail. Thanks again for your thoughts,
NNB
“Hard it is to train the mind, which goes where it likes and does what it wants. But a trained mind brings health and happiness. The wise can direct their thoughts, subtle and elusive, wherever they choose: a trained mind brings health and happiness.” – the Buddha
Dear NNB,
I believe the main point of meditating is to be happier and more harmonious. S.N. Goenka mentions in one of the evening discourses that the only yardstick for measuring the progress of Vipassana meditation is equanimity. I’m happy to read that you feel your equanimity has improved. This is a wonderful benefit. A great start.
From my own experience I have learned that the real difference comes when you sit daily. I have sat at least 2 hours per day for about 4 months now. It is giving me so much benefit. I am blown away by it. I have been able to handle really tough situations without being angry and spreading my negativity to others. Instead I have helped others and also myself. Please visit my blog, there I have written much about the benefits of my practice: walkthepath.wordpress.com
Don’t worry about eradicating sankharas. Let practice come before theory. If you meditate daily you will begin to understand how it works. I believe our minds are working against us by trying to think of reasons not to meditate. It could be anything from doing something different like watching TV or finding faults with the theory. Meditation is hard, especially in the beginning. But you will see, it gets easier as we walk further on the path.
May you be happy and well,
walkthepath
Wow. Brainwashing? Keep one eye open? This was clearly a wasted effort for you. Your conditioning is deep. Mistrust is the first layer you may need to peel off.
Your statements are quite confusing. On one hand you agree that one should believe only when one experiences and then you sound unhappy that you got “fuzzy” answers! Perhaps the answers were fuzzy because you are supposed to solve the problem yourself to attain the EUREKA moment.
The very concept of meditation was born in India (Hinduism) some five to six thousand years ago and later was adopted by Buddhism – a derivative of Hinduism. Hence the teachings are enmeshed in the culture. Chants are inextricably linked in the process. Please do not it diminish as brainwashing. And no one should apologize for that.
I would strongly recommend educating yourself on these cultures or avoid these methods. Else it will be wasted effort as it is quite evident by your writings.
People misinterpreting goodwill for brainwashing should clearly avoid such retreats. It is not for all.
NNB, Thanks for the time you have taken to write this very honest review. I am at uni and have a mid year break coming up and thought a 10 daycourse would be great. Just started Meditation and loving it. Trying to be able to focus more and gain greater value of my and all of our short time here as the days flash by. Cheers
I will be going for my first retreat this July 1st. I am trying to bring down my expectation that this course will change my life. Maybe my experience will also turn out to be like yours! I hope not.
you said,”I think there may have been a bit of mild brainwashing going on, but I made sure to always keep “one eye open” and I don’t think I was affected. If you are going to do a retreat I encourage you to be aware of this.”
Obviously, your suspicions did not allow you to give a fair trial to this retreat and it is hardly surprising that you did not benefit. I read about this Vipassana from Sarah MacDonald’s Holy Cow. She too did not follow the instructions. She imagined her toes talking to her knees and stuff like that. It was interesting to read, but in the ultimate analysis, she cheated herself.
Prisoners, esp. murderers reformed themselves after this course. Drug addicts, who were unable to wean away from cocaine, finally got control over their cravings. The key difference was that, luckily for them, they were not as critical/suspicious as you. They allowed themselves to be “brainwashed”, but it worked for them. After all, there was no coercion to join this program in the first place.
I just finished this retreat myself and was feeling very light afterward and continue to..I wonder if you are keeping up the practice or maybe you weren’t suffering from much psychosomatic stress to begin with?
I feel like I do somewhat understand the physics behind the process so I’ll share the theory briefly – Goenka tells you in the beginning about how all the particles that make up atoms are continually changing-disappearing and being regenerated 10^22 times a second. Accepting the blackhole theory of matter, this revelation makes perfect sense as does the meditation technique. Blackholes grow by absorbing positive energy particles and evaporate by absorbing negative energy particles. i don’t mean positive and negative as in charge but direction in time. negative energy particles appear to be regular, postive, particles moving backward in time. postive and negative particles are continually being created in pairs and innihalting each other. this happens 10^35 times a second. in nature, at the event horizon of a blackhole, when this particle pair creation occurs, they negative energy particle can cross the event horizon causing the blackhole to evaporate a little while the positive energy particle can either escape, radiating away or fall into the black hole too but the smaller a blackhole is, the more likely the positive energy particle will radiate away. It seems to me that the sankharas are the patterns of negative energy that our minds hold in suspension as waveforms at the event horizon of the atom’s blackholes by observing the sensation, the wave-particle phenomenon is in effect and the negative wave pattern has no choice but to express its particle nature and fall into the blackhole causing it to evaporate a little. This is also why a calm and equonimous mind is also essential. you wouldn’t want to put any new patterns in effect, let nature do the work. That’s how I rationalized it working anyways and so far i think the technique is working for me.
I wonder how you did not benefit from vipassana? May be you were not totally focused on learning the method and busy analysing the process which is the job of our egoisitc mind. to learn vipassana you have to completly surrender to the process It is a process of purification. After 10 days course you autometically know your thoughts and emotions. you dont have to struggle to control your thoughts or emotions. by clearing the negative energies generated by your negative thoughts, reactions, negative emotions you become pure mentally and physically.
You can do vipassan to reach to the Nirvana level or you can do it to become a better person in life. with practice you are a new person and always succeed in whatever you do.
Just 10 day course done properly with full dedication can change you life in many ways.
May be you need to learn to surrender.
VKW
This is completely random. I also did the retreat, at the end of last year. I totally see where you’re coming from. What I find impossible to accept is your conclusion. Though there is no direct evidence that sankhara’s are being eliminated or do indeed have any link to the sensations it is my belief that purely by applying logic it can be seen how this equanimity could really reprogram the mind. If we really persist with the meditation, sincerely, it would very gradually become natural for our mind not to react with aversion or longing to the sensations. The most important thing is I think the slow pace of the change, hence why you have seen no direct evidence of change, you didn’t give it a chance. I think most sensible people can at least see the purpose of the meditation and assume that if they put in the considerable effort than results would be seen.
The core aim of the meditation in my understanding is to cease suffering by reprogramming the mind to remain naturally equanimous in the face of pleasant and unpleasant sensations.
Accomplishing this would surely cease an individuals suffering. Accepting life as it is, expecting no more and no less, it’s beautifully simple in theory and heartbreakingly difficult in execution but surely possible!
Sorry if that made no sense. It was part addressed to you, a faceless blogger and part aimed at myself, reminding myself of the merit I saw in the meditation.
Thanks for your review. It is really helpful to me, as I have just “escaped” from a Visappanna retreat. I lasted until 5:00pm on day 4. This is my first day back at home (So happy to be here!) but now I have to deal with telling everyone that I “failed”… that I escaped from this “mental rehab.” I as sitting on the couch this morning, wondering if I’d made a mistake. That’s when I decided to look online to see how others felt and found your blog. It has been very helpful.
I struggled, the entire time that I was there, because I desperately missed my partner. I am used to calling him in the middle of the day, just to hear his voice and find out how he is doing. I’m a worrier, in the real world. With nothing to do but meditate and think all day, I felt like every feeling I was having, every thought, every fear were multiplied 10x or maybe even 100x! So my mind went in all kinds of crazy directions, concocting all kinds of scenarios — both negative and positive. This just drove me crazy! I think if I had been permitted to call my partner once a day, or even once every two days, I might have been able to survive the duration of the retreat. (I was doing pretty well with maintaining the meditation position for longer durations)
Another thing that may have influenced my stay was that I initially shared a room with two others. One left on the first full day after becoming very ill and having to go to the hospital (part of me was jealous and thought how lucky he was). At the end of the first full day, my remaining roommate walked out of the first evening group meditation session. Then immediately following the next morning’s 4:00 gong, he packed his things and left. I watched him as he walked away from the building, in dim morning light. I was so full of emotion when that happened! I wanted to cry. I wanted to run an join him. I “connected” with him more than anyone else during the few hours we were allowed to meet and greet on arrival day. I felt like his presence there was helping me, and now it was gone. I was left alone in a room for 3, with two empty beds. The manager offered to move me into a new room so that I was not constantly faced with these empty beds and “bad vibes,” but I declined. As it turned out, I’m glad I did because I needed the extra space to breathe and pace back and forth during multiple future anxiety attacks! All I could think about — other than a few very strange random thoughts — was my partner and how I could escape. I even thought, as I slipped a little in the shower, that maybe I should let myself slip and fall and maybe break a wrist or something so that I could get out!!
Although the “staff” were very nice — as nice as you can be with limited interaction I had a strange feeling about the Teacher. He always had such a stern look on his face, it was very intimidating. Whenever we spoke, he became very gentle and understanding but I wasn’t able to feel that this was real. I approached him at 5:00pm, immediately after the first 2 hour introduction to the Vipassanna meditation session on day 4. During that session, I wasn’t able to sit still at all. Against instruction, I was moving my legs all over the place, scratching my face, etc., etc. Yet, when I told him I wanted to leave he told me that I was doing so well and I sat very well through that session. Was he really watching me? If so, he would see how badly I followed instructions! Seemed to me that he was BS-ing me so that I would stay. But maybe I’m just to much of a skeptic.
This retreat was located in fairly peaceful setting, except for a main highway up on the mountain that was off in the distance, but close enough to see and close enough to hear the whining of the busses and large trucks as they drove down the hill. Every time I heard that sound — which was all day — I thought of how they were heading in the direction of home and it made me “crave” home even more. Funny enough, when I did “escape” I was on one of those busses and I listened to it whine as we descended the hill over the retreat. I smiled with relief.
(I wish I could write as well as you because I feel like I’ve just been blurting out thoughts, randomly. My apologies for that.)
I just realized that this post is kind of old. I found it while looking up this place because a friend ( who has gone before) and I are going this January. I wanted to know more than what she told me and found this. While reading it you say how it didn’t help you because you feel the same, then you go into how it help some what in different areas. Do you think your expectations of it were too high, and that’s why you feel like even though it helped you a little it should have been a bigger impact? Have you gone again since this blog?
I completed the course 2 years back and found it immensely beneficial in all ways possible. They are not promoting any religion, god or anything, …. just asking you to believe your personal experiences and see things as they are.
it is challenging, difficult and makes you wanna run away sometimes, but facing the truth was never easy anyways.
lastly, faith is everything. you must do any program, course or training with utmost faith to get any results. Any intellectual peron would be skeptical and inquisitive, but faith above all is a necessity.
God bless you all.
Atul Bhansali
Bangalore, India
I understand why some people find the experience to be unsatisfactory or even unpleasent. The new student(from my experience) thinks that older students (Sat more courses) will display some special qaulities but they are just people working on themselves.
Some old students become “believers” and that can sometimes lead to a dogmatic slightly extreme aprouch but most are just doing this because it makes them happy.
On most courses a few new students will find the course underwhelming sometimes one or two might quit half way through. That is to be accepted because it is not going to suit everyone.The emphasis on reincarnation and the chanting can agitate some people.
If people change through spiritual or psychological methods then it is not about changing into a new better version of themselves an iddea that they will be able to better accept and feel accepted by others.
What changes us for the better is the acceptance that we are what we are at this moment and surrendering to that is all that we need to do,its not about improving how we think of ourselves because how we think of ourselves is the problem, its not real its a dream constantly monitering what we like or dislike whats right and wrong and always with this idea in your head of a me that lives in seperation.
Vippasana is not the only way, it may in some ways be hampered by its cultural refrences.
The whole course is geared to one thing only, teaching this technique, and the organisation relies on the fact that for the majority of people it has a positive affect and they give a donation.
It has grown rapidly and apart from a few postings from people who didn’t”enjoy” it there has never been a scandel or any instance of people being harmed by it ever reported.
I don;t have any interest in the dogma of vippasana but the method is a great help