I did a Vipassana retreat a few years ago. Definitely an incredible experience, and I could see directly measurable positive effects on my thinking, on how I made decisions, etc. afterwards (although the effect does wear off after a while if you don't keep meditating regularly). However, I feel I must mention some negatives as well. First, the course emphasizes many times that it is purely secular, but towards the end it slides into the more religious aspects of Buddhism (reincarnation and even some explicitly anti-scientific ideas). I feel that this can turn off a lot of the more analytically-minded/secular/atheist people, which is a real shame because Vipassana still makes a lot of sense without these religious aspects. Secondly, towards the end of the course there's real pressure in the lectures to accept Vipassana as the "one true way" to meditate, and I got a little bit of a cult-ish vibe from some of the returning students and especially from the volunteers. Not to the degree that it's going to be a problem for most people, but I can see how a small minority of "brainwash-susceptible" individuals, especially in a vulnerable stage in life, may throw themselves 100% into Vipassana after a retreat, instead of critically thinking about this powerful experience afterwards. So my advice: definitely do it if you can, take it seriously and give it your 100%, but don't turn off your critical thinking skills during the lectures or after the retreat. If you can do it, there's lots to gain.
I can't stand people who say Buddhism is not a religion. In many, many, MANY ways Christianity is as much a philosophy as Buddhism is. People also don't realize that Buddhism in the West is specifically catered to Westerners who are sick of the dogma of the Abrahamic religions. Ironically, Buddhism is filled with the same dogma, but it's hidden in the West until you buy into it. I can't imagine it's entirely different from how Christian missionaries approach developing countries.
Not saying that Buddhism is "bad" - not at all. But it is in no way as secular, or as peaceful, as Westerners think it is. It has a long and torrid history of violence, as well as dogma.
I just wish people recognized Buddhism for what it is - a religion.
Could I see quotations about the history of violence? Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen (zen priests blessing kamikazes during WW2, myanmar riots these days...) it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).
As for it being a religion, well yes it is, however it is not a theistical religion that explicitly asks you to believe in a vengeful, retributing god.
The Buddha describes how reality works (karma - from a certain action an appropriate consequence will follow, and there's nothing fixed or permanent, just conditions giving rise to other conditions) with the important corollary that if you want to be happy, then do actions that are ethical because "good" consequences will follow from those. This is what we call a "philosophy" in western thought.
It only becomes a "religion" when one believes that one too, could be like the Buddha, becoming something that's much higher than what one is right now.
One doesn't have to believe this bit however, one could very well follow the Buddha's teachings (and meditation, which is an integral part of) just to become a happier human being.
I think the key point shockzzz makes is: "it is in no way as secular, or as peaceful, as Westerners think it is"
(Just look at what is happening in Burma right now or Sri Lanka)
Satan and Jesus are walking down the street. They see man in front of them picking up small piece of truth. Jesus says "Satan! That man has realized the Truth! There is nothing you can to do to stop him now!" Satan smiles cunningly at Jesus "Yes, he has realized the Truth. And now I am going to help him organize the Truth!" As a secular Buddhist the key issue for me is that whenever Buddhism becomes popular main religion, it will will more or less dilute into something very different.
In Zen Buddhist tradition there are many autobiographies and stories from over thousand years of Zen Buddhism. They tell the story of constant struggle between community/authority and actual praxis. Either authorities want to embrace Buddhism and dilute and disfigure it into common religious formula, or they prosecute it. Buddhism as a religion seems to be in the state constant decay and needs periodic reforms to get back into basics.
The history of Thai Forest Tradition is good example of how there was need for reform in Buddhist monastic tradition in a country where Buddhism is everywhere in well organized and accepted form.
Regarding you second point, I am not sure I see the value of saying "Buddhism is not a religion if you ignore the religious bits"... you might well say that about any religion. There are plenty of secular Muslims and secular Jews for example, but that does not make Islam or Judaism any less of a religion.
Regarding you second point, I am not sure I see the value of saying "Buddhism is not a religion if you ignore the religious bits"... you might well say that about any religion.
Key difference is, the founders and leaders of Judaism and Islam claim to have believed in God. The Buddha did not. A lot of us identify a deity as being core to the idea of being a religion.
That's not to say that sects haven't developed and diverged from the initial beliefs, perhaps in order to build their own communities (or empires). But these are later developments than the teachings set forth by Siddhartha Gautama.
When you talk about a community, it is unreasonable to expect each one being a perfect representation of the whole. For a comparison between communities you need to look at the scale. Compare the scale of the violence in history of Christianity and Buddhism and you get the larger picture.
>Just like many people have committed violence claiming to be Christians
if you read even just a bit of 2000 years history of Christianity, you'll see that violence in the name of God and Church and toward the infidels/heretics/etc. has all this time been considered a virtue of a good Christian. Not that Christianity is any special here. The base of any religion is division between "good" and "bad" and fostering the feeling of superiority in "good" and hatred toward the "bad". In particular "<Religion> of peace" for any value of <Religion> is an oxymoron the same way as "white black".
> Could I see quotations about the history of violence? Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen (zen priests blessing kamikazes during WW2, myanmar riots these days...) it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).
Buddhism is mostly peaceful, but there is currently a buddhist army (The DBKA) and 2 buddhist terrorist groups (the 969 movement, and Bodu Bala Sena)
> for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought).
There are plenty of buddhist leaders who've said that violence is acceptable.
This wikipedia article starts by listing many of the buddhist doctrines against violence, and then gives examples of many times when buddhists have turned to violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence
Buddhism has by far the lowest score of violence of all five big religions of the world. Not to mention that when that violence did happen [...] it has been condemned as explicitly not-buddhist by the wider Buddhist world (for violence has no place in the Buddha's thought)
I want to address this comment because it's a key objection from Buddhist Apologists.
Every small religion is going to score low on the "violence meter." That's because Buddhism wasn't politically successful. China went Communist and took over Tibet, and Buddhism lost in India.
And for those that condemn violent actions - OF COURSE! Everyone does that! Muslims overwhelmingly condemn ISIS, American Christians condemn wars and domestic terror, and many Jews condemn Israel's military behavior.
Many of the popular religions can be interpreted to be peaceful or violent. Blame the people, not the religion.
But does buddhist scripture, teachings or lore advocate violence in the same way islam or even christianity do? I thought it was all about not harming any living being. Jihad, martyrdom and stoning infidels and such on the other hand are legitimate concepts of islam. Not to mention the violent god of the old testament.
1) Most of Buddhist scripture is not translated to modern languages
2) There is so much of it. Which Buddhist scriptures? Zen? Theravada? Tibetan? Tantric? It's hard to say which text is representative of Buddhism as a whole. Some people say all of them are (except when they disagree).
I'd encourage you to wonder if that's the right question to ask. In terms of International war and politics, do the words themselves matter more than how they're used?
In most cases, Buddhists kill others in the name of compassion. It is compassionate to kill a misguided (or Muslim) person and give them the chance to reincarnate as a Buddhist. To me, that's more fucked up than justifying murder by twisting the definition of something like Jihad.
I believe the core tenets of buddhism to be more about hacking your mind and body with certain lifestyle and practice (meditation etc) and living without infringing on others. The fairytales are extra baggage.
The difference between for example islam is that there are some seriously bad ideas (by socially liberal western live-and-let-live standards) in that scripture. Islam is an inseparable part of the culture in muslim majority countries hence it is bound to influence actions and attitudes to some degree.
Buddhism can not be accurately understood by simply looking at the whole of Buddhism and its teachings. Buddhism was created in a society where Hinduism was the norm, and it is the changes (the “diff”, if you will) which Buddhism introduced which are the interesting bits. What we may see as strange and religious will make more sense if you compare it to what Hinduism had and what the change which Buddhism introduced was trying to accomplish.
It would be interesting to “rebase” Buddhism on western culture, but I can’t think of anything which would fit this description.
Today, large chunk of Buddhism (well Mahayana (Chinese buddhism) and Vajrayana (Tibetan buddhism) at least) is practiced in societies where there was never Hinduism in the first place.
So it mixed with the local religions instead and what we get in China, Japan, Korea is mix of local religious traditions and Buddhism.
Theravada ("Sri Lanka and company" buddhism) seems to me closer to the "actual" original Buddhism, but really I was never in any Theravada majority place for a longer time, so I don't know
Vipassana is actually quite a new tradition, as is for example Japanese zen as we know it now (from what I can gather, it was sort of a reaction to Meiji reforms in Japan that violently separated Shinto and Buddhist traditions, not that long ago).
One can interpret certain suttas as showing the Vipassana noting technique, but it's not explicitly pointed out in an instructional way, so it's hard to say if it's not a later interpretation of the text used to justify a newer practice that developed in Burma and Sri Lanka.
The explanation Goenka gives is that the technique of noting was passed down from teacher to teacher all the way back to the Buddha, but of course every tradition says this about every technique so it can be hard to verify.
Maybe I misunderstood what you are saying, but there is nothing exceptional in Buddhism origin. Every religion is based, or is a reinterpretation of an existing tradition : Islam on Judaism and Christianity, Christianity on Judaism, Judaism was probably influenced by Zoroastrianism and Egyptian tradition. It is turtles all the way down.
I was certainly not trying to imply that Buddhism is in any way exceptional. I was trying to explain why Buddhism seems strange and religious to people who did not grow up in a Hindu society.
For example, many people believe that Buddhism teaches reincarnation. But Hinduism also has reincarnation, and Buddhism simply chose to alter the concept, and it is this alteration which is the interesting bit. Buddhism can only be properly understood as a reaction to Hinduism, not by coming to it fresh and reading about the eightfold path or whatever – that way it will only come across as weird.
Hinduism as it exists today didn't exist in the Buddha's time. There were sects of Brahmans who practiced varied ritual folk religions with contradicting beliefs and ideas. Actually, at the time of the Buddha, there was a lot of debate between Brahman clans about what happens after death. There were arguments for reincarnation, which Buddhism clarifies as rebirth without an eternal soul, as well as for eternalism (ie you go to heaven forever if you're good) and annihilationism (ie you die and that's it, no more existence), both of which the Buddha explicitly refuted.
I can't stand people who say Buddhism is not a religion.
It is definitely a religion. But I'd like to add the remark that the earlier writings in particular (those attributed to the Buddha and those of early Zen masters) focus mostly on meditation practice and ethics and are quite agnostic about other (e.g. existential) questions.
Well one difference is that Gautama was an atheist. That makes it different almost all other major religions. Another difference is that he kept on emphasising on practice and self experience (to improve one's life) than theory/intellectual-discussion and blind belief. Also self observing and believing only that much which one experiences himself and take it step by step. This is unlike asking someone to just believe and accept something as a fact.
>I just wish people recognized Buddhism for what it is - a religion.
There was no one ordained by him or any religion proclaimed by him on his name. Around his words later there is a whole religion of buddhism that came up with many different kind of practices and rituals. You could follow none of that (this religion and its rituals) and just live by the principles by which Gautam Buddha "lived" himself and could have a better life.
To say Gautama was an atheist is to push onto history a distinction that had yet to be invented. He was very much a participant in the spiritual / religious frameworks of the time, and rejection of certain aspects of those frameworks does not necessarily make you an apostate or unreligious or atheistic.
> There was no one ordained by him or any religion proclaimed by him on his name.
Jesus ordained nobody either. Nor did he ever proclaim a religion. All that came later.
If Buddhism isn't a religion, Christianity isn't either. Buddhism has teachings, mythology, places of worship, specific means of prayer, (meditation, anybody who says meditation isn't prayer has never really prayed) holy books, priests, and a thriving metaphysical dialogue. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, water rolls down its back like a duck.
A brief search also pointed me to a thread where Catholics believe Jesus ordained all 12 apostles. To me it seems like after-the-fact justifications, but you have to learn to live with this kind of non-rigor when studying religion.
One of the important differences between Christianity and Buddhism is the concept of monotheism in Christianity. According to Christianity, there is only one god and to accept Christianity, one has to reject rest of all. The way Buddhism was received in far East, without replacing their existing belief system shows the tolerant nature of the religion. This is why many Japanese claim to follow multiple religion - the idea unimaginable in the Christian countries.
I don't think it's fair to say Guatama was an atheist, at least in the common-use definition of the word. He doesn't teach about an almighty creator God, but there are plenty of unimaginably powerful, vast, supramundane beings that he interacts with in the Buddhist canon that your average atheist would deny the existence or possibility of.
Although many people practice it as a religion it doesn't have to be practiced as one. For example one can attend a meditation workshop and learn Theravada or Mahayana techniques in a non sectarian environment free from any ceremony, dogma or iconography. Unlike the Judeo-Christian faiths there is no litmus test for who is a buddhist and who isn't one.
Well of course there are a lot of dogmatic elements in both, but I still think they´re not comparable. It´s hard to call yourself a christian without at least accepting the bits about Jesus dying for mankinds sins. Already at that point you´re heavily invested in dogma. Also the religious violence regarding buddhists don´t really have a clear line from the doctrine (except perhaps zen buddhism which doesn´t really emphasize compassion). In the case of christiany there are clear lines between doctrine and behaviour. God in the old testament clearly hates gays for example. The violence from buddhist from what i´ve read is more just regular tribalism, it´s not like it´s doctrine-inspired.
There´s a lot of research going on about mindfulness / vipassana and what ever is true about it is of course not buddhist. Just like algebra isn´t muslim because the inventors of it were muslim. Real knowledge / facts transcends these cultural contingencies.
Interesting. I can't stand the bible for more than two pages. That and the few historical aspects of European culture (missionaries, inquisition,...). The few bits I heard about Buddhism are much more poetic and abstract. I'd like to see the bad arbitrary / absurd part of Buddhism now.
Penguin Classics publishes a book called Buddhist Scriptures that does a pretty good job of exploring the breadth of Buddhist thought. There's no room for it to be a good single-volume reference to all of Buddhism—it's just too diverse and has too many important works for even a substantial fraction to fit—but it's a good way to get an idea of the lay of the land. It's very diverse, and I'd say the majority of it in practice easily fits in a Western definition of religion. Pure Land even comes off as a cousin to Christianity, in its insistence that saving ourselves isn't likely and that we should devote our practice to praying (more or less) for intersession at death by a specific Buddha, who will take us to paradise (again, more or less).
With religions, isn't it all relative? I can't think of a single religion which is not violent. Maybe people think highly of Buddhism because they think it is relatively less violent than other religions?
Religions are were created by organizations of followers, with made living out of the teaching. Later these organizations developed itselfs into what we call now corporations or big government (actually, governments became bloated and corrupted due to deflation of Catholic churches).
Buddhism, my friend, has many branches and sects. The original teaching, which is more or less accurately preserver in Dharmapadda of so-called Pali canon is a philosophic doctrine, losely based on Upanishads, narated in an easy to understand, poetical way - a bunch of metaphors familiar to a village folks.
This doctrine has no notions of rituals, idol worship, mantras, tantras, mandalas, monasteries or other kind of social hierarchy. These were almost 1000 years later inventions (the era of Indian writings dated back to 6th to 8th century AD - thousand years after Buddha's death, and associated with places like Nalanda "university" in Bihar).
All that lately written nonsense usually referred to by using the umbrella term Mahayana (with implies, of course, better than older teachings). These writings were translated into Tibetan in the first wave of translation, about 7th AD.
The second wave, which is associated with the mythical guru Padmasambava and his so-called tantric Buddhism - a profound tribal (non-arian) influence of primitive deity worship - Tantra - could be considered only as a farce.
The branch of teaching adopted and developed in China has been already distorted by Mahayana writers, but, strictly speaking, it is closer to the Pali Canon than the texts translated into Tibetan during the second wave.
So, which one you are refering to as Buddhism religion? Which set of rithualized idol worship which has been imported popularized in US in 60s and 70s?
I'm talking about any of the Buddhist religions. Many of the claims you make here can be made of the Abrahamic religions as well.
And, I call bullshit that you know what's in the Pali Canon. The vast majority of it is still in ancient Tibetan. You have no evidence to prove that there isn't dogma within it, nor is there any conclusive evidence that the "original" Pali Canon was all philosophy.
That's like saying the "real Bible" that Jesus heard from God was not the "actual Bible" that was written down. Perhaps the "real Bible" was only philosophy, and we humans added the dogma.
Plus - the existence of Buddhist dogma in ancient India is abundantly clear. Just go to a museum or Google it! What do you think those people are doing when they're bowing to the Buddha!?
You're also kind of an asshole to say Tantric Buddhism is a farce. Who are you to say something like that? I'm just stating a blatant fact that the Buddhist religions are indeed religions. Nothing more, nothing less.
Again - I'm not suggesting that Buddhism is bad. I think there are many beautiful lessons to be learned as you eloquently allude to. If you, as a person, connect with the Dharma, no one can take that away from you. Once you find a Sangha, it is profound and incredible. My goal is to clear misconceptions of the Buddhist religions, which many Westerners have.
Exactly how I feel about it.
I am pretty critical and have a knack for spotting hypocrisy, which there was enough to find of, at least in the center where I was (Bavaria, Germany, they are so attached to rules there, no amount of Vipassana can take that away).
One anecdote: Mr. Goenka ends every day with 'May all beings be happy.' Imagine my surprise when the server said we could not pet the stray cats that were walking around, to prevent them from coming back all the time, because they didn't want to take care of them.
Some of these contradictions started to annoy me, and almost made me leave, until I realized on day 5 that this is all part of the meditation, more or less. I wasn't there for them, I was there for my own development, and so I had to accept the reality as it is, stop comparing and focus on the experience. All externalities are not relevant, and the ability to not let your mood be influenced by things outside your control is exactly what is developed there. So every contradiction or irritation became a challenge, to strengthen my discipline.
I had an interesting conversation on the last day with a Buddhist. He also didn't like the 'one true way' part of it. He became a Buddhist mainly because his teacher told him honestly that his way was just one of many that one can follow.
And although Mr Goenka says it's the one true way, he also continuously says that you should not take his (or anyone else's) words for granted, but that you should experience and decide for yourself, and that whatever you do, decide on a path to follow and stay with it, because if you start a new path all the time, you will never reach the end of the road.
>Imagine my surprise when the server said we could not pet the stray cats that were walking around, to prevent them from coming back all the time, because they didn't want to take care of them.
That seems like an ethical approach to me. Once you start feeding and messing with wildlife, you interrupt their natural habits and processes. Many animals have starved to death because some "do gooder" decided to feed them, thus raising their populations to an unsustainable level, then he gets bored of it, and now their babies cant get enough calories and starve.
Not to mention the potential of passing on or catching some virus or bacteria from touching feral or wild animals or the slim, but real, potential to get a rabies bite.
Well, it wasn't wild life and it's not about feeding. There were 2 cats, who perfectly took care of themselves (saw them catching bugs multiple times), and sometimes they came to the people, stroking their bodies along their feet.
If an animal does that, it's normal to pet it and it's not harmful or unethical at all.
Nobody had to feed them, or take care of them, they just came for attention sometimes.
It's also quite dangerous if you haven't taken physical preparations beforehand. To sit on the floor 6-8 hours a day with a weak westernised body, used to sitting in a chair, is dangerous. If your not super fit and have great core strength, the muscles around your spine simply can't hold you for that long and you collapse into the skeleton, which can lead to injury. Traditionally, Vipassana would have rigorous physical training before the meditation, now in the westernised setting, we just go from sitting at desk 8 hrs a day for decades, to sitting on the cushion.
Furthermore, the endocrine system can get really messed up when you sit for that long over a number of period of days. When the body doesn't move, things stagnate and cause problems (just look at all the research coming out about the dangers of prolonged sitting)
However if one is physically fit & ready to begin, then great things can happen!
It's not like you have to sit 10 hours a day without ever moving. The longest streak is about 1 hour, and only from day 5 there's two times a day a sitting with determination. Nobody's asked to force it, if it really hurts, then just move.
Every hour there's a 5-10 minute break to walk around and stretch the legs.
As I knew there would be sitting with determination later in the week, I trained my body and mind in the first days by sitting still as long as I could.
Yeah, I guess I'm more addressing those Type-A personalities who might be reading this thinking "I'm gonna go do this and kick ass, taking the practice to the maximum limit my mind will let me"... then going in and ignoring their pain through sheer willpower then coming out in a lot of trouble.
Yes- nice to see I'm not the only one who felt this way! It's an amazing experience but some of the cultish aspects bothered me as well. I understand that they want you to focus on the Vipassana way of meditating during the retreat but pushing it as the "one true way" felt contradictory.
I understand what you mean with religious talks and I can understand your point of view. Tho, first, Goenka explicitly sates that whatever part of the theory, you don't like, take it out, as long as the practice is in tact. From a scientific point of view, the practice is tested to work very well. Only on my personal level, it works very well in alignment with the mental body-mind model I developed over the years, but it not a published scientific model, at least yet.
Unfortunately, that your physical model does not have a model for rebirth like information exchange does not mean there exists none. Hey, if you think in the standard model, your model has be proven to never predict absorption lines correctly apart from all the other problems it has. Not all 4 general believed facts on a black hole can all be true at the same time. Lots of unexplained phenomena even counterfactual.
The model I adopted explains general and special relativity, all known quantum mechanical effects, rules and energies and predicts some more, the periodic table, stable and unstable isotops, all chemical bonds, absorption lines, has a correct arrow of time, irreversible processes and is ultimately reversible, explains much more cosmological phenomena then your model, quasars, pulsars, binary pulsars, cepheids of type II, globular clusters, and and and
Uses much stricter energy conservation, stricter logic while having fewer assumptions.
And yes, it also has predicted phenomena not existing in your model at all, called ring photons. One or many photons entangled with: start<->end, building a very stable ring with 2 bits of information. Those can build up loop in loop structures encoding very dense informations in a very quite stable structure. And know what, those rings are predicted to be emmited in 3 amino acids we humans use, so - I see things a bit different now, scientifically :)
But I don't see those fields as some indestructible object, and more like fragments that flow around. But without understanding the model it will not make much sense for you.
Luckily, when I did vipassana, I was in a group that did not insert much religion in weekly practice or retreats. Sometimes, there were separate reading groups for people who were interested. But practice was only sitting, walking, sitting, and then the opportunity to tell about your experience if you wanted to.
I think another problematic aspect (besides religious dogma) is the hierarchy that exists in some communities. While I definitely think that it's important to be guided by an experienced meditator, some leaders are (unjustly) put on a pedestal (even more when they are from the east). This leads to people accepting practice (or even sexual abuse in some cases) without critical thinking.
Wow that is interesting! I have many respected secular friends who have done it and highly recommended. I've being waited listed, but have not done it yet.
Sorry to hear that was your experience in the end. Seems like the people who are preaching may be diverting from the essence of the practice. From what I understand Vipassana predates buddhism. Has not thing to do with religion rather a practice to observe our own internal thoughts without outside influence.
sounds somewhat similar to a "slow induction/sucking into swamp" way the Scientology consumed (in all senses) one my colleague some years ago. If it looks cult-ish, if it sounds cult-ish ...
>but towards the end it slides into the more religious aspects of Buddhism
Well, its a religious practice. This is like joining a Catholic choir and being surprised all the songs are about Jesus, and all the talk of melodies and harmony take a backseat to devotion.
As a meditator, I think this push to strip it down and reduce it to just a "stress remover" is counter-productive and will end in situations like yours where you feel the "anti-scientific" (whatever that means) aspects attacked you. The reality here is that meditators, especially teachers, can't divorce the emotional, spiritual, ethical, and even supernatural parts of their practice for Western consumers who just want a "fix me" weekend to go back to their busy, complex, and stressful lives. The larger point is to fix/change yourself so you don't constantly need "recharge" retreats.
I think there's been this failed experiment in the last 100 years to strip people of spirituality either by force (Communism) or by shame (Western Determinism/Materialism). As an lower-case atheist and non-religious person, I find it all incredible bleak and have been, over the years, working my way closer to the "softer" parts of Buddhism. I'm pretty much an agnostic with maybe some weak spiritual views now and its a good place to be. I don't think you can really expect Buddhists to strip Buddhism from meditation. They find too much value in it the same way I do. Secular/scientific "stress busting" techniques don't work compared to holistic life changes that yes include weird spiritual stuff and counter-modern ideas like living for the moment/experience and not giving into attachment, materialism, emotions, etc. We tried just deep breathing, we tried every psychological fad, we tried drugs, etc. They just don't seem to work very well compared to a serious change in lifestyle as described by Buddhism or some school of mediation/Eastern thought.
I see people stuck on endless skinner boxes on ipads and consoles. I see people fighting and killing themselves at shitty, stressful jobs (yours truly included), etc. I see conflict all the time and the inevitable race to a Nash equilibria that makes everyone unhappy. Samasara looks real to me, even if you interpret it as a metaphor. I don't think its cultish to point out alternatives to the Western idea of "being productive," or to add some "woo." Frankly, I'm not convinced some "woo" isn't real. No, I'm not sending money to Sylvia Brown, but I won't be a dismissive asshole when people talk about reincarnation, or how they think Vipassana or Kundalini brought them close to some important spiritual experience, etc. Funny how we dismiss these experiences, but ask any geek about LSD and he'll ramble one for hours how its pretty much spiritualism in a can and everyone nods in lockstep. Perhaps we're a little too dismissive of the soft parts of Buddhism in the West.
We in the west are very diverse. There are lots of people in America and Europe who are very attracted to the "soft parts" of Buddhism. Especially secular people who started meditating out of desperation and found that the most attractive instructions were Buddhist. Quite a few of them end up doing a Goenka retreat, because they're free and they're advertised as secular and nonsectarian—although they also claim an unbroken teaching lineage descending from Gautama Buddha.
I think the momentum of soft Buddhism is strong enough to warrant some healthy critique. What does it actually mean to align oneself with an ancient and foreign religious tradition? What's the relation between meditation and Buddhism, and what are the good reasons to not be a Buddhist? What is Buddhism, even? How well does it actually work? And so on.
Nobody expects Buddhists to strip Buddhism from their meditation. But the phenomenon here is the scores of Western people who become Buddhists, or quasi-Buddhists, mostly because they like to meditate and are seeking some source of meaning, truth, and devotion. It's an extremely interesting phenomenon, and I'm a quasi-Buddhist myself in just this way (took precept vows at a Zen center, have gone to multiple meditation retreats, have read plenty of Buddhist literature, visited some rural Thai temples, etc).
If you're interested in Buddhist meditation but in a more laid back environment, I highly recommend the retreats at the Thich Nhat Hanh affiliated monasteries in the US (Deer Park in San Diego, Blue Cliff in NY). It's only a couple hours per day of sitting, interspersed with talks, small group discussions, and various other calm activities. Everything is basically optional since they don't take attendance, you could sit in your room all day if you wanted, but I found all of it rewarding. At the end they stressed that the purpose of all this mindfulness and sitting is to increase awareness and compassion within oneself, so that you can deepen relationships with everyone, Buddhist or not. The days usually started at 5:30 but they warned us not to try to recreate this schedule at home, "because it would just cause suffering." So they're totally not humorless ascetics.
I'd love to run a retreat center like this. I'd augment it with a scientifically-backed nutritional plan, have floatation tanks available, and spend a bit more time helping visitors make sense of what they're experiencing and how to proceed.
And definitely, definitely manage expectations better than most of these places. Most of the cultish vibes and/or disappointments that can emerge from these kind of retreats are because people are prone to hyperbole when they spend some time on activities so completely out of their frame of reference.
We have something similar in Norway called Acem Meditation.
Some bullet points taken from their webpage (acem.com):
- Developed by medical doctors and psychologists
- No mysticism, neutral technique
- Taught by non-profit organization
- Receptivity and productivity
- Evidence-based meditation
- Stimulates cognitive and emotional processing
Haven't put too much thought in it, too be honest, as it's mostly a pie-in-the-sky dream at the moment.
But I'd probably sit down(with some other, more knowledgable folks) and consider things like vit D3, omega 3, magnesium and zinc supplementation, microbiome stimulation, possible ketosis for those who react positively to it,and a general elimination of unnecessary sugars.
Hydration, maybe surprisingly, would be a major component as well. Another one would be breathing exercises, stretches and light exercise(to encourage serotonin and hormonal stimulation), all of which can be combined with meditative practices ala yoga or taijiquan.
On the extreme side, for those who are especially adventurous, I'd even consider sessions with nootropics, and possible micro-dosing with psilocybin or DMT - where legally permitted. This would absolutely be done with the involvement of medical professionals, I should add.
I've heard about this before and the people were usually happy. However it sounded pretty culty from descriptions. Trying to convince people that your way is the only way sounds like you don't understand Buddhism at all (I don't understand it either just on a very superficial level).
I also hear quite a few "I felt more productive, less stressed out" etc. remarks. I wonder if 10 days of relaxing on a beach wouldn't have a similar effect. Has anyone done scientific studies on this? I remember a study on meditation being positively correlated to learning but am not sure if I remember correctly.
It's definitely not the same as relaxing on a beach for 10 days. Not even closely similar. Yes, you might be more relaxed, but this meditation is hard work and really disciplines your mind, something you won't be doing on a beach. As far as you are even aware of how active the mind is all day long, the beach will be full of distractions and you would take any opportunity to avoid any uncomfortable situations as well as take any opportunity to do things that give you short, momentary pleasures.
I noticed the culty part about it as well, but it makes sense to me, because it really works. The claim they make is really met and this convinces a lot of people that everybody should at least once in their life do such a retreat, including myself.
There is the Vipassana Research Institute, but their website disappoints me a bit, because the amount of links that is actual research is quite meagre. There are some good results with Vipassana in prisons, though. See http://www.vridhamma.org/Home.aspx
>> "I also hear quite a few "I felt more productive, less stressed out" etc. remarks. I wonder if 10 days of relaxing on a beach wouldn't have a similar effect."
I've never been to one of these retreats but for a while I meditated twice daily, morning and evening for 15 minutes. I only did it for about 2-3 months. I had a similar effect while I maintained it. Not so much with productivity but I was definitely less stressed. So although I'm sure 10 days relaxing anywhere will help with stress, short daily sessions seem to have the same effect.
>> Trying to convince people that your way is the only way sounds like you don't understand Buddhism at all
Buddhism is a diverse religion. In Myanmar Buddhist monks routinely commit hate crimes against the Muslim minority. It's no different from Christianity, where some (Universalists) believe everyone goes to heaven while others (the Baptists yelling outside my university) believe almost everyone goes to hell. There's no "authentic" version of a living and changing tradition.
I did three retreats, and my experience is that Vipassana -- and meditation practices in general -- induces extreme forms of dissociation, and as such not a reliable to way to deal with emotions in the real world.
I did 14 over the last 13 years and dissociation in a bad way is something this technique does not, not in a bad way. There are different forms of dissociation: one where your body becomes alien, there is one, where your ego is not associated with the feelings, etc...
There is a dissociational element in vipassana, but it is that your ego does not associate pain with suffering or fine sensations with lust.
What I experienced in me and I see it in others as well, is that they deal with the real world much intensified. Of course, you distance yourself in the retreat, but this is for self improvement, as sometimes you need a time out to really look deep inside, calm your mind so it is sensitive enough.
A Vipassana meditator dissociates from their emotions while identifying with the physical sensations (whereas what is generally called as the ego/soul/self is, at core, the emotions themselves). Retreats acutely develop this process, but the effects are felt throughout one's daily life.
Your saying "the real world much intensified" is the effect of this process of identifying with the physical sensations (hence "intensified") while tacitly dissociating from the associated emotions.
While dissociation is one way to cope with emotions, it is not a reliable to way to deal with them in the real world.
I just read your recent comments which indicates that you are a fan of the Vipassana method.
Do you realize that Vipassana as practiced in the West is not so much about elimination of ego as distancing (hence dissociation) the said ego from the soul (the seat of emotions)?
As the emotions are still in place, when push comes to shove the distanced ego will rear its ugly head again and again (hence unreliable).
There is more to the human condition than the ego, and this is what Satya Narayan Goenka doesn't get. He is essentially promoting an extreme form of everyday psychological dissociation.
Hmm. I wonder what kind of person I'd be if I had the privelege and luxury to be by myself without having to talk to anyone or be a slave to mt phone, for ten damn days. Imagine!
I went to a retreat at Tassajara Zen Center recently. If I didn't have obligations (wife, house, bills), spending time in a place meditating and focusing inward would be a wonderful experience.
In this case they are more a Japanese style of Zen Buddhism... Quite stark and austere.
There are formal retreats during the late spring to early fall. There is a retreat fee and different sorts of lodging prices (from shared dorms to private cabins on the creek).
Some people just go to work and stay there at a reduced to minimal cost (typical work could be anything from landscaping to the kitchen to helping clean cabins). This sort of approach one stays in one of the dorms.
What was surprising to me is the number of people there. Monks/students probably between 80 and 100 with guests in the same range.
Tassajara Zen Center website has more details I believe. There are two other properties as well (in SF and in Marin County).
Yes, the Tassajara Zen Center in the Ventana Wilderness. It really is a nice location but can get quite warm in the summer.
The retreat my wife and I did was "Zen in the Kitchen" plus an extra day to just unwind. Cooking, for me, is one way I do relax. We really wanted to do their Bread class.
The retreat structure for us was:
- meditation in the morning
- maybe something like Qigong or similar after that
- breakfast (family style)
- set up your lunch for the day (pack in tins/lunch box)
- morning session
- a break
- lunch
- afternoon session
- dinner
- evening meditation
It seems like sessions are informal, if you want to wander off and just hike, use the pools, etc, there is no problem.
Oh, and most importantly, the food is amazing (even as a meat eater).
Cool, thanks so much for the info! Can't wait to check it out :) I love that area and Carmel Valley in particular is my happy place. If you're ever down that way again, go to Wills Fargo in Carmel Valley and order the steak bites appetizer, it's stupendous.
You can just not be a slave to your phone for 10 days.
I don't use my phone for anything but SMS and phone calls. I don't have any other apps on it (or at least any apps that I use). Occasionally I use my phone for maps, but that's it.
No Facebook messages, no email, no twitter. I think I do get hangouts, but nobody sends me messages via hangouts/Gchat.
You can easily have this privilege. I asked my employer and they had no problem giving me 10 unpaid days off. I didn't mind it was unpaid, because I would not be spending money for 10 days either.
Usually you have to register about 4 months in advance, you can find a center close to you on http://dhamma.org.
Just realize how there will _always_ be new things happening and work never ends and is never finished, so missing 10 days is nothing and no job is so important that it can't be interrupted for 10 days or done by someone else for that period.
AFAIK it's free. I know that the center in Delaware that I've looked to going to is free.
[edit] Yup, the article address this: ...these courses are 100% financed by voluntary gifts from previous students (who are explicitly asked not to donate anything unless it is from the pure wish of helping other people).
The first two days will be hell, believe me :). The mind will crave for talking, listing to music, reading the web, etc. The thirst will become bigger and bigger.
On my first retreat, I decided to leave after two days. I told my meditation guide at the daily personal meeting that I would stop. He jokingly said "I'll make sure that you get the refund". His light-hearted response made me realize that I made a monster out of my cravings for daily distractions.
I did it 10 years ago. I left on day 7.
Overall, I'd say the experience was very interesting and unique.
When I managed to sit in the same position for an hour - I was ecstatic. I was also sweating profoundly and the pain was unbearable, yet I managed to just examine it, feel it, accept it.
I also remember having nightmares involving the meditation center - I clearly remember dreaming that building burning with huge flames and I was happy about it. It was a very vivid, colorful dream. My mind wanted to escape.
But then the most difficult part came. My wife was also in the group and we started being sexually attracted to each other starting with day 5 or so.
The inability to speak and even look at each other added to the sparks of desire that have been growing for 5 days of meditation, silence and abstinence.
By day 7 the attraction became electric - just a glimpse of her eyes revealed that she was feeling the same way - we were both fighting the sexual force ... Dreams became sexual...
We both fought the desire, but eventually we lost the battle - we ran away and had sex.
Although nobody has seen us, we felt like we cheated and we couldn't continue the course.
So we told the teacher that we can't stay anymore and she mentioned that usually they try to avoid married couples in the same course because of the sexual thing.
Another reason for bailing on day 7 was the feeling that I was being brainwashed into accepting this new religion/sect/whatever. The helpers definitely behaved very cultish and I didn't want to become like them - I had a startup to run.
So my mind had this powerful argument - "we're being brainwashed, we have to escape".
Anyway, overall it was interesting, even though I haven't achieved whatever I had to achieve on day 10, I think I learned a great deal of lessons about myself, about weakness, desire, love, etc.
This November was my sixth 10 day Vipassana course (first was 12 years ago). I achieved momentary clarity on the 8th day which helped me get rid of some of unnecessary but deep rooted complexes of my mind. I believe that it was possible only because of the continued practice and focus of the past 7 days. If it were two courses of 4 days each with some gap in between, I do not think I would be able to experience what I did. In other words, I feel that my brain needed the 10 consecutive days.
For me it means that I was able to look objectively at some of my ways of thinking and feeling and realize that I didn't have to do it that way. I was able to let go of the attachment to doing so and change my own reaction to things.
In the tradition I follow this is called "finding the listener".
During meditation, one can experience moments of such clarity of mind, that the answers to difficult or deep rooted issues suddenly show up in front of you. Usually it turns out the solution is so simple, that they wonder why they've never seen it before, and now they cannot unsee it.
I did a 10 day workshop with Jelle Bode last February and found the same thing. The combination of active and passive meditation, silence except for answering the question "Tell me who you are.", no alcohol or caffeine, and no outside contact really works if you give it the time. My personal clarity occurred in the afternoon of the seventh day. I wonder if that timing is similar for everyone.
Nice write up! Thanks for sharing. I attended a similar retreat in Australia and it's definitely a nice way to decompress and reflect.
However trying to bring it into everyday habit/life is a lot harder. In the end I found that isolation tanks/floatation filled that need perfectly. My write up here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/local-california/float...
Have you tried floatation?
I find the experience interesting. However, I can't to help to think that a 10 days Vipassana session is kind of extreme, from checking your smartphone 100 times an hour to not speaking to anyone for 10 days.
There are probably milder ways to experience better mindfulness and focus. And then somehow, I understand that in our daily lives it might be easier to commit to 10 days than having the fortitude to leave social media for a day.
I also feel it tells something about our time when we want to have full and unadulterated experiences.
> However, I can't to help to think that a 10 days Vipassana session is kind of extreme
The theory is that that's sort of the minimum you need to get the full experience, in terms of the getting the point where there are significant psychological and physiological changes. I think it could probably be 8 or 9 days instead, but realistically things don't start getting interesting until day 6 or 7 and that's after doing it for 7 - 10 hours per day.
I did it once and I'd like to do it again, but realistically it is pretty difficult to balance with other life commitments.
FWIW, I've talked to plenty of people for whom this has been far from the case. They went to a 10 day retreat, some of them had blissful times or fascinating out-of-body experiences or whatever, but most of these people haven't ended up with a stable daily meditation practice. So right now I'm pretty skeptical about this hypothesis.
I don't know what you (they) meant by "blissful times", but "fascinating out-of-body" experiences doesn't sound right. It could be that they experienced something close to Jhana[0] but I'm skeptical it can be done on a 10 day Vipassana retreat with no previous experience. In all Buddhist traditions, excepting Tantric ones, that emphasize meditation, the techniques (Vipassana being one of them) are mostly really hard work in practicing concentration and attentiveness. It's very hard to get it right, essentially to practice hard without practicing hard, without attaching yourself even to the effort you're expanding, which then can lead to Jhanas. Most of the time, I think, people convince themselves they are experiencing fascinating things, but it's just the mind playing it's tricks. Especially in the West where people attach all sorts of wacky stuff to the term "meditation", which really isn't event the right translation of "samadhi" as it's borrowed from Christianity where "contemplation" is much better fitting as a Western analogue (other techniques from Tantric Buddhism, on the other hand fit the Western term "meditation" better).
It's possible that's the case. It does take far more than 10 days of devoting your time to something to truly make it a habit, especially when experienced in such a different setting that will be nothing like home.
My original post was just a thought/hypothesis presented without any data to back it up.
Being without smartphone and no talking is the easiest part. At least for me, an ADHD IT nerd who checks his phone all day long, and very, very talkative personality.
It was the best 10 days of my life, it felt quite liberating. And now my phone stays in my pocket most of the day, I talk a bit less, and I have no stress at my job at all, as I just do what I can and the rest is for tomorrow and after.
Any milder way wouldn't have the same effect, you cannot train discipline by giving in to your mind all the time.
While travelling I met several people who went to meditation retreats and they seemed to all have the insight of stopping to check their phone so often, or even stop having a smartphone.
Also, because of that it's unlikely many of them read Hacker News or Medium so there is a selection biais as to who is talking about those meditation retreats.
> Emotions and addictions start small, and get stronger as we feed them by reacting to them. If you want to stop a destructive emotion or an addiction, learn to notice it early and stay completely equanimous to it.
I've just been doing a bit of reading on NLP and, underneath the jargon, one of the key ideas seems to be that emotional states have a physical location in your body - and if you can locate it then you can start to enhance or attenuate the emotion.
This sounds pretty similar, although approaching it from a different direction.
Author here. This is very interesting, as it sounds very similar to how it was explained at the Vipassana camp. What is a good starting point to familiarise oneself with NLP?
A word of warning about NLP. Practitioners can be somewhat cultish. NLP is really about learning techniques to get people to do what you want then to do. Once they realise that you are doing that to them, they start to hate you for it.
Once you have practised it for some time, you start to forget that you are doing it. Before long people hate you and you don't even know why.
Imagine being able to hypnotise people using words to get them to do things that they might not really want to do. That's NLP. It's not sold like that though. It's sold as a way to empower yourself. Unfortunately, it is on other people's behalves.
A while ago I did a Contemplation course where you do sitting & walking meditation for ~9h / day. The experience was very similar. It's fascinating when you look into spiritual practices of different religions: There is so much in common. E.g., when you read from Buddhist teachers vs. Catholic saints vs. modern mindfulness meditation. I strongly recommend to pick up one of these and experience them.
The Buddha went to a solitude retreat to conquer and master his "mind", not to some for profit "meditation center". Solitude is what is required for deep introspection and realizations which lead to permanent transformations in the environmentaly and socially conditioned "model of the universe" each person is used to build and maintain through lifetime.
BTW, what makes you being so sure that all the readers of HN required to become aware of your narcissistic tendencies - you made a username to post a link to your personal site with a description of how special you believe you are?
What is your comment aggressive towards the OP? He presented his experience for anyone who might be interested. No one is being required to become aware of the OP's story.
If they write interesting posts, which, after submitting, interest enough people, why not? That's why we have the voting system, so the interesting things are filtered. But, you know, the vast majority of people won't, making it even less of an issue.
Probably I am biased by seeing way to many of this "narcissistic spiritualism" which is nothing but another way of boosting the ego, while one of the cornerstones of Buddhism is to get rid of notions of "I", "soul" and "mine" or, at least, to diminish them to the point of language idioms, given that it is known since Upanishads, that there is no "I" or "myself" apart of a environmental and social conditioning, plus conditioning by personal experiences, related to your social niche (a cast). That's why this is an issue for me.
I didn't see it as "narcissistic spiritualism". Rather, I saw it as a method of promoting meditation and this sort of practices in this community.
In any case, if someone is shows narcissistic behavior, don't you think there are better ways to point that out to them? Compassion might work better than resentment.
Mr Goenka set up the centers after he was profoundly helped by the practice. No money is asked, and donating either time or money can only be done after completing a course, when you sincerely feel that you want to pay it forward for a next student.
Of course. Retreats are public as shrines in India (which, btw, is an illusion, because the land belongs to someone - there is no unclaimed land in India) and no one is making living by running these retreats.
Oh, come on. Have you never seen a "charity" guys who just cover their expenses, which include luxury gadgets, top-branded clothing, liquors, taxi rides and four square meals a day?
Welcome to Nepal, then (or any other place in the World). And don't tell me, please, that meditation centers are any different. It is a business. Period.
