Thank you! Yes I agree… I’d meditated somewhat regularly before but it did not at all prepare me for this. I think that ideally to reap the full benefits of this it’s best to be at the point where you can clear your mind and sit comfortably for long periods of time. Then again I know some people without consistent practices who loved this; I think we’re all different and designed for different styles of meditation and spiritual practice, though they all lead to the same place ultimately.
Yep yep! Your story is common for many people I think. They do that 10-day retreat like a bucket list item and maybe never meditate seriously again because they already "did it." I don't think a meditation retreat should be a painful boot camp kind of experience. In Tibetan Buddhism, shamatha (meditative equipoise) is considered necessary before practicing vipassana. With shamatha, you focus on a meditative object such as the breath and bring your attention back around to the breath when it starts thinking about lunch or gets dull. Once you have some gained some proficiency, then you can explore the empty, luminous nature of the mind, which the essence of vipassana. You need to bring a stable and clear mind to vipassana otherwise it's gonna go full monkey.
Congratulations on enduring. It sounds like maybe the retreat focused on answering “what?” while you are asking “why?” For my part, I usually try to steer people, and myself, away from asking why for too long— unanswered, it adds to suffering. My two cents- instead of trying to change the what of suffering by asking why we suffer, transition to asking what small part you can play in addressing the world’s suffering. As the Jewish saying about our broken world goes, our job is not to finish the task but not to stop trying.
This is beautiful advice, and makes me think of the Jewish term Tikkun Olam: healing the world, or "repairing the world" or "mending the world."
I also love the idea of each of us being one drop in the whole ocean, and it is in working on our own evolution of consciousness that we add to the oceanic movement of the evolution of consciousness.♥️🙏🕊️
Thank you so much for this insight! I suppose I sort of thought I was much more at peace with the whole "why" thing, but it turns out that on a deeper level I'm not... but I agree, the "why" is kind of a bottomless question, and probably even if we knew the answer we wouldn't understand it — and definitely the advice that keeps coming up is that all we can do in a world of so much suffering is try to help people and spread love in what little ways we can!
Thank you for sharing the truth of your experience with such engaging writing. I'm fascinated by this subject too, and while I have never felt drawn to a Vipassana meditation retreat, I felt quite inspired by reading Cristina Moon's book recently: Three Years on the Great Mountain: A Memoir of Zen and Fearlessness (you can also find her writing here https://cmoon.substack.com/ ). I adore her vow: "My main vow as a Zen priest is to take away fear, most of all through the quality of my presence and who I am." If I was her age I would study at the Chozen-ji dojo in Hawaii too.
I have a sense that so many people all over the world - and it seems women especially - are going deeper into the evolution of human consciousness, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if we're at a tipping point. And it's time for us to transition out of patriarchal thinking and its focus on never-ending doing rather than an equanimous balance of doing and being. Yang AND Yin.
Another writer I've been enjoying lately is Hazel Gale, and her work inspired by K.M. Weiland's book, Writing Archetypal Character Arcs: The Hero's Journey and Beyond. I deeply appreciate how Hazel Gale has given the 6 character archetypes that we experience over a human life, gender-neutral names so that people don't get stuck on identifying with Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, that is so deeply embedded in our patriarchal culture. You can find an intro to these archetypal character arcs here https://stack.betwixt.life/p/the-archetypes-that-are-ruling-your
All of this is of course "offered on the table" meaning you get to choose what you want to pick up or not.♥️🙏🕊️
p.s. May you heal well from Covid - I had it while traveling too. Not fun.
Thank you so much for all of this! I’m excited to dive in. I do also feel we’re at a planetary tipping point and the wild popularity of vipassana seems like a sign of that - people are craving deeper spiritual meaning for sure :) and while I don’t think vipassana is necessarily the best path for everyone, I do hope we see more free spiritual retreats like this pop up to facilitate this shift, ideally some that flow more with the yin side of things and focus on balance.
Great stuff. I think one should a solid meditation practice before doing this retreat. So many people wash out or have a hard time.
Thank you! Yes I agree… I’d meditated somewhat regularly before but it did not at all prepare me for this. I think that ideally to reap the full benefits of this it’s best to be at the point where you can clear your mind and sit comfortably for long periods of time. Then again I know some people without consistent practices who loved this; I think we’re all different and designed for different styles of meditation and spiritual practice, though they all lead to the same place ultimately.
Yep yep! Your story is common for many people I think. They do that 10-day retreat like a bucket list item and maybe never meditate seriously again because they already "did it." I don't think a meditation retreat should be a painful boot camp kind of experience. In Tibetan Buddhism, shamatha (meditative equipoise) is considered necessary before practicing vipassana. With shamatha, you focus on a meditative object such as the breath and bring your attention back around to the breath when it starts thinking about lunch or gets dull. Once you have some gained some proficiency, then you can explore the empty, luminous nature of the mind, which the essence of vipassana. You need to bring a stable and clear mind to vipassana otherwise it's gonna go full monkey.
Congratulations on enduring. It sounds like maybe the retreat focused on answering “what?” while you are asking “why?” For my part, I usually try to steer people, and myself, away from asking why for too long— unanswered, it adds to suffering. My two cents- instead of trying to change the what of suffering by asking why we suffer, transition to asking what small part you can play in addressing the world’s suffering. As the Jewish saying about our broken world goes, our job is not to finish the task but not to stop trying.
This is beautiful advice, and makes me think of the Jewish term Tikkun Olam: healing the world, or "repairing the world" or "mending the world."
I also love the idea of each of us being one drop in the whole ocean, and it is in working on our own evolution of consciousness that we add to the oceanic movement of the evolution of consciousness.♥️🙏🕊️
Thank you so much for this insight! I suppose I sort of thought I was much more at peace with the whole "why" thing, but it turns out that on a deeper level I'm not... but I agree, the "why" is kind of a bottomless question, and probably even if we knew the answer we wouldn't understand it — and definitely the advice that keeps coming up is that all we can do in a world of so much suffering is try to help people and spread love in what little ways we can!
Thank you for sharing the truth of your experience with such engaging writing. I'm fascinated by this subject too, and while I have never felt drawn to a Vipassana meditation retreat, I felt quite inspired by reading Cristina Moon's book recently: Three Years on the Great Mountain: A Memoir of Zen and Fearlessness (you can also find her writing here https://cmoon.substack.com/ ). I adore her vow: "My main vow as a Zen priest is to take away fear, most of all through the quality of my presence and who I am." If I was her age I would study at the Chozen-ji dojo in Hawaii too.
I have a sense that so many people all over the world - and it seems women especially - are going deeper into the evolution of human consciousness, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if we're at a tipping point. And it's time for us to transition out of patriarchal thinking and its focus on never-ending doing rather than an equanimous balance of doing and being. Yang AND Yin.
Another writer I've been enjoying lately is Hazel Gale, and her work inspired by K.M. Weiland's book, Writing Archetypal Character Arcs: The Hero's Journey and Beyond. I deeply appreciate how Hazel Gale has given the 6 character archetypes that we experience over a human life, gender-neutral names so that people don't get stuck on identifying with Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, that is so deeply embedded in our patriarchal culture. You can find an intro to these archetypal character arcs here https://stack.betwixt.life/p/the-archetypes-that-are-ruling-your
All of this is of course "offered on the table" meaning you get to choose what you want to pick up or not.♥️🙏🕊️
p.s. May you heal well from Covid - I had it while traveling too. Not fun.
Thank you so much for all of this! I’m excited to dive in. I do also feel we’re at a planetary tipping point and the wild popularity of vipassana seems like a sign of that - people are craving deeper spiritual meaning for sure :) and while I don’t think vipassana is necessarily the best path for everyone, I do hope we see more free spiritual retreats like this pop up to facilitate this shift, ideally some that flow more with the yin side of things and focus on balance.
You should publish this. Amazing. Enlightening. Inspiring. Thought provoking…..