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100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

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Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#41

Post by mentat »

xtian wrote: post #39
orasis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa... http://awakenetwork.org/f…

His feeling that his thoughts were too precious to let go of might be more important to examine than whatever he wrote down.

Absolutely agree with you. The point is to let stuff going, to be in the present.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#42

Post by zaroth »

orasis wrote: post #31
xtian wrote: post #2

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.

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: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa... http://awakenetwork.org/f…

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!

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#43

Post by vpeters25 »

afro88 wrote: post #35

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.

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.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#44

Post by derekja »

logfromblammo wrote: post #3

A selection of meditation resources for hackers: 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... )

OpenEEG is great, but getting pretty dated. Out much more recently is the OpenBCI project. http://openbci.com/

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#46

Post by vdm »

kemiller wrote: post #38
patrickdavey wrote: post #11

I did a vipassana retreat. It triggered a manic-psychotic (bipolar) experience. More at: http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com 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…

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 quit (and moved city) a week before the retreat. That was three years ago.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#47

Post by alexivanovs »

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.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#48

Post by s3nnyy »

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)

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#49

Post by virtualwhys »

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 ;-)

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#50

Post by gyardley »

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.

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