[joke]
A more advanced student would be taken away with just ONE hand cuffed.
[/joke]
I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
51–60 of 99 posts
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did a week-long silent meditation retreat in Thailand a few years ago. I thought it would be difficult for the same reasons you mention -- I tend towards night-owling and loathe the thought of not eating for more than a few hours. It turned out to be much much easier than I expected. Without electronics and other sources of artificial light the circadian rhythm shifts to the sunrise-sunset cycle pretty rapidly. I s…
Three meals a day including breakfast is basically lobbyist propaganda to support the cereal, milk, and egg industries. I'm never hungry in the morning and breakfast is unnecessary for me.
Interestingly enough, if I wake up before 10 I'm hungry for breakfast, if I wake up later, I'm not.
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#53I found the article a little disorganized and the author seems to be having trouble expounding a clear thesis. I just read it for the second time, and I still don’t have a good grasp of what he experienced or what connections he’s trying to make to Buddhism. Maybe that’s understandable given what happened to him (though I’m not really sure of, besides him going “crazy”), but I still think that as a journalist he shou…
> I found the article a little disorganized and the author seems to be having trouble expounding a clear thesis.
How many psychotic episodes have you had in your life?
Perhaps it is amazing that the author could even put words to paper to describe the experience. Yes, the piece is a bit rambling, but how often do you get a first-hand account of a visit to the Dark Night and back again?
The notion that meditation is not a universally "good" thing, that it might unlock parts of your mind that you might not want to (or be able to) deal with, is certainly worthy of exploration.
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#54Meditation retreats sound interesting, but they've always struck me as tending to have a fairly grueling, bizarre schedule- awake and breakfast at ~6AM, dinner at 4pm, lights out at 9PM (and no meal until breakfast the next day.) It strikes me as the worst setup for long meditation sessions- getting everyone sleepy and hungry and out of sorts. That it would send susceptible people off the deep end doesn't sound surpr…
The author doesn't mention where he went on retreat, but there's more than enough information in his post to figure it out. I won't name them, but I will say that they aren't a monastery and aren't part of an established Buddhist tradition. The movement that the retreat centre is affiliated to was established in the late 1960s by a businessman with no monastic training. Bluntly, there are a lot of organisations out there who are accountable to nobody and are teaching stuff that isn't Buddhism, but sorta-kinda looks like Buddhism if you don't know any better.
Actual Buddhist practice is, by and large, considerably less bizarre. Not eating after noon is the sixth of the eight precepts accepted by laypeople during retreats or special days in the Buddhist calendar. The purpose of these precepts is to focus the mind on spiritual matters rather than worldly pleasures; they aren't all that different to the restrictions of Lent, Ramadan or Ta'anit. The overwhelming majority of religious and spiritual traditions make use of some kind of temporary asceticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_precepts
The eight precepts aren't terribly difficult to follow, but they can be a shock to the system, especially if you go from dabbling in meditation to an intensive retreat. More significantly, meditation is much more physically and mentally taxing than you might expect, so an intensive schedule of meditation can be utterly exhausting if you haven't built up a baseline of endurance. It'd be like going straight from jogging in your local park to a desert ultramarathon.
No reputable Buddhist sangha would invite someone who is pretty much a total novice to a ten-day retreat. I'm a fairly experienced meditator and I'm comfortable with sustained and lengthy meditation sessions, but there's absolutely no way I'd go on a retreat of this level of intensity. Novice monks in my tradition wouldn't be expected to follow this kind of schedule, let alone people who had just walked in off the street.
I think there's a problem on both the supply and demand side; dodgy organisations are offering recklessly intensive retreats, but there's also a broader culture of extremism and quick-fixes that drives people to seek Enlightenment In A Week™. A huge amount of diet advice is dangerously unhealthy, because sensible eating is much less appealing than "The Miracle Diet - Get Your Perfect Body In 21 Days". CrossFit practitioners joke about rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal symptom of extreme overexertion. I regularly see submissions to HN that brag about extreme "productivity hacks" that involve chronic sleep deprivation or eating pseudo-food substitutes.
Ironically, this all runs directly contrary to one of the core tenets of Buddhist practice - the Middle Way.
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#55This article is an important read for any meditation enthusiast who isn't aware that it's not all rainbows and ponies. Intense meditation does affect brain structure, and how it affects different individuals can be unpredictable. This is why some people will need extra support. I have done intense meditation before and became a much calmer person. I experienced a level of peace and harmony that felt like my mind was…
I think what you mean by dark night is the last chapter in The Mind Illuminated.
Being red pilled with the literature doesn't make you immune to the "dark night"
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#56Understanding the difference between nihilism and oneness is what is required to detach from ego in a productive way. To paraphrase Alan Watts, enlightenment is like space travel, it requires enormous, longstanding discipline to go all the way out and come back intact.
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#57Meditation retreats sound interesting, but they've always struck me as tending to have a fairly grueling, bizarre schedule- awake and breakfast at ~6AM, dinner at 4pm, lights out at 9PM (and no meal until breakfast the next day.) It strikes me as the worst setup for long meditation sessions- getting everyone sleepy and hungry and out of sorts. That it would send susceptible people off the deep end doesn't sound surpr…
Lack of sleep, sudden change of routine, total immersion in a new mindset, and withholding food is the classic playbook of cult indoctrination. The point is to weaken existing barriers that would otherwise keep people aloof, disengaged, and instead create a total experience. I’m not claiming that a meditation retreat is a cult indoctrination, at least not most of the time. It does however share some commonalities wit…
>>Lack of sleep, sudden change of routine, total immersion in a new mindset, and withholding food is the classic playbook of cult indoctrination.
None of these:
>>awake and breakfast at ~6AM, dinner at 4pm, lights out at 9PM (and no meal until breakfast the next day.)
..fit your criteria.
Lights out at 9PM and waking up at 6AM gives up to 9 hours of sleep. That's plenty.
Similarly, going from 4:30-5PM until 6AM without food is not a huge deal, especially since you spend most of that time sleeping (in fact, not eating immediately before sleep can be very beneficial for sleep quality).
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
A retreat is more than just meditation . As others have point out in the discussion here, a retreat typically includes at least some of the follow: 1. Sudden and drastic change in sleep / wake schedule than you might be used to 2. Sudden and drastic change in diet 3. Sudden and drastic change in level of autonomy vs collectivism 4. Sudden and dramatic deference to authority / leadership 5. A lack of, or complete abse…
I've been doing 2 to 3 week long meditation retreats every year for the past 10 years or so. I don't disagree with anything your are saying in particular. However I do think there is value in them (otherwise I wouldn't keep going), but I also think people should ease their way in. Do a 1 day retreat first, then do some three days, and then do a week. Have a regular meditation practice, preferably with the same people…
What sort of incidents?
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#59Being a Buddhist born person living in a mostly Buddhist country this saddens me. It seems all this hype with so called Buddhist retreats and meditation apps in the western world is pretty much twisting the teachings of Buddha. Monks have practiced meditation for centuries without any adverse effects as mentioned in the article. It seems like they focus on _state of being mindful_ than really being mindful. Meditatio…
So buddhism knows nothing of these effects? And what kind of buddhism might that be?
Re: I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lack of sleep, sudden change of routine, total immersion in a new mindset, and withholding food is the classic playbook of cult indoctrination. The point is to weaken existing barriers that would otherwise keep people aloof, disengaged, and instead create a total experience. I’m not claiming that a meditation retreat is a cult indoctrination, at least not most of the time. It does however share some commonalities wit…
There's never been any sleep or food deprivation at any retreat I've been to. They keep an early schedule because that's what they used to. The routine that parent described is basically normal for your typical early bird.
Going "hey non early bird, enforced early bird schedule NOW" is a shock to the system. It doesn't matter if it's normal to a completely different person.