That Misery Called Meditation

http://www.slate.com/id/2257585/

by grellas • 16 years ago

137 62 16 years ago

I've never done a 7-day retreat-- 3 days is the most I've tried-- and although my experience was quite different than the one described here, it definitely was quite profound.

microtonal2• 16 years ago

It seemed very familiar, at least the motions the author has gone through. On my first retreat, after one day, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to leave. Sitting was painful, there was a lot of sleepiness, and I was longing for daily joys such as listening to music. And the mind is very well able to snowball unpleasanties :). After that first day, when I had the first talk with the meditation teacher, he made a joke about my mocking, subtle enough to make me smile. The discontent quickly melted away, and it suddenly became clear to me that I was suffering because I was craving for pleasantness.

The following week had moments with intense joy, moments with intense pain. But it became easier to see them without clinging, giving a lot of peace.

It's something definitely worth doing. Though it doesn't hurt starting with tiny steps, rather than cold-turkey ;).

michael_dorfman2• 16 years ago

I've done a number of weekend retreats (and have a daily practice) but definitely plan on doing a 10-day retreat, when time permits, as I think the extended timeframe would be quite powerful.

flatline• 16 years ago

I've done a couple 7 day retreats and have had some similar experiences to the author, though I'd already been doing meditation for a while so was more inclined to "just sit" from the start. The one thing that always impresses me is how much crap gets dredged out of your subconscious. Old fears, regrets, guilt, etc., would come to light and seem like an absolute crisis right in the moment. Then ten minutes later, I wouldn't be able to remember what I was so worried about. Definitely a worthwhile experience, and by the end of seven days, nothing could faze me, everything seemed carefree and effortless.

ic3h• 16 years ago

I guess you didn't bother to read the article beyond the title.

edanm• 16 years ago

The OP copied the article's name.

oliveoil• 16 years ago

.. which is brilliantly chosen because the article later evolves quite unexpectedly. (huh, guess I spoiled it now).

novon• 16 years ago

I see he went to an IMS retreat, the one I attended around Seattle was good - until the main teacher came in and gave us a 20 minute speech on why we should donate more money to his "begging bowl." That kind of ruined it for me... and they kept asking for donations afterwards. Once these groups become self-prepetuating institutions it's time to find something else. It's easier just to incorporate meditation into daily life and activities.

humblepatience4• 16 years ago

An interesting description of an experience -

all I can say is, a 7 day retreat is probably a really, really bad idea for a beginner

swombat• 16 years ago

What do you reckon is the ideal way for a beginner to get into meditation, then? Particularly if that beginner lives in a busy, noisy place like London and has a busy, time-consuming jobs like running a start-up.

thomas112• 16 years ago

Ideally, you would find a regular meditation group that has one or two weekly sessions of maybe 30 minutes and some members with experience who can give you hints. That gives you a commitment to regular practice and a supportive group of peers without being too invasive. Skipping a week isn't a big deal, either.

humblepatience4• 16 years ago

From what I've heard, it's practicing 10 minutes a day for a while.

Going to a session helps too

carbon82• 16 years ago

Long meditation retreats for beginners are pretty standard. Repeatedly sticking a toe in the water doesn't really do much, you need to dive right in.

humblepatience4• 16 years ago

I'm a big fan of `starting out slow.` Jumping into a 7 day retreat is not starting out slow.

It's different for everyone what `slow` is, but if you're not sure if you're ready for a 7 day retreat and you go anyway you might end up like this guy (in the article).

rsheridan6• 16 years ago

Having tried it both ways, I think beginning with thirty minutes a day or something like that is like trying to learn to swim in a bathtub.

Unless you're on the edge of psychosis, a long retreat won't hurt you. There are rare horror stories about somebody going nuts, but that's probably about as common as somebody dying from a bee sting.

humblepatience4• 16 years ago

I don't see why I'm getting down voted. I've been meditating on and off for years and I wouldn't just jump into a 7 day retreat until I was ready, it's do-able but probably not pleasant.

subwindow• 16 years ago

I read the first half of the article just screaming "He's doing it wrong!" However I later realized that was the entire point of the article.

chipsy• 16 years ago

Indeed. Meditation is kind of funny because it's dead simple - opportunities to practice it are plentiful - yet people have an incredibly hard time with it. They're going 90 miles an hour and it's like slamming on the brakes for them.

For my part, I've decided there's nothing else I'd _rather_ be doing. It's the only thing in life I can reliably count on to provide a satisfying, enriching experience. The material/hedonistic experiences are still important to me, and most of my time is still spent on them, but they're all pretty transient in comparison.

mcantor4• 16 years ago

Maybe it's because I went through a similar experience with meditation, or maybe the author used some clever foreshadowing that I can't consciously pick up on, but for some reason... I knew, as I read his recounting of the misery, that he would come around on page two. The description of pain in the neck and shoulders felt right, in that sense that the author seemed to be saying, "This is when I began to feel the stress I have carried with me for so many years."

philk• 16 years ago

I'm not really sure of the benefits of these big one off things; after seven days meditating you come back into your regular life, surrounded by your old environment and soon end up reverting to your previous mental patterns.

It seems analogous to going on a running retreat, spending seven days running all day and then coming home and not running again.

It strikes me that it would be more worthwhile to cultivate the habit of meditating once a day rather than making a large unsustainable change.

astine• 16 years ago

I disagree. I've been on retreats (not Buddhist ones but close enough.) One thing that a retreat will do that regular practice won't, is give you a taste of the mindset and attitude you are attempting to get. The author doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would have easily adopted a meditation regime. After this retreat, it seems like he might be more capable or at least motivated to integrate one.

thomas112• 16 years ago

The idea is that you continue to meditate regularly after the retreat. It will be much less practice, but it will build on the experience and monumentum you got during the retreat.

carbon82• 16 years ago

It's pretty much impossible to get as focused and steady in tiny spurts of meditation mixed in with the turmoil of daily life as it is when doing it essentially non-stop for days/weeks.

Once you've dived into it deeply, then you actually have an understanding of what's going on when you do regular sittings.

samatman• 16 years ago

Think of meditation as a pot of water you're trying to boil away.

A retreat is a chance to get that pot of water to a boil. Once there, a little meditation each day will continue to boil the pot.

Without the focused immersion, a little heat each day might never boil the pot.

Note that this works for languages, physical skills (aikido) and many other complex tasks.

Groxx• 16 years ago

And going back into the world analogous to having a cold shower. How much is undone?

Estragon• 16 years ago

You need both.

timwiseman• 16 years ago

Precisely. Retreats (or equivalent period of intense focus) can help you get started or help you break through a plateau, but they mean little without sustained practice.

Of course, if you hit a plateau in that sustained practice or have a hard time getting started, a dedicated retreat may be just what you need.

trominos• 16 years ago

Meditation is learned skill in a way that "running" in your example doesn't seem to be. Ten days of practice is more than just "ten more days of meditation in my life"; it's a hundred hours of improvement. A more reasonable comparison would be to say that a meditation retreat is like going off and doing math for ten days straight. (I've actually done the latter, and it's shocking how much you can learn and improve in a week and a half if you completely dedicate yourself to something. Total immersion really is very very powerful.)

keefe• 16 years ago

and that week was a complete waste of time if you don't have mathematics integrated into your daily life

initself2• 16 years ago

You revert back to your own habits if you stop meditating everyday after "taking refuge in the Buddha".

c00p3r• 16 years ago

Just stop reading a journalist's crap and try to read something that worth it ^_^

http://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Spiritual-Materialism-Shambhal... is a good starting point.

lacrossegm• 16 years ago

Ten to twenty minutes of quiet meditation is a nice stress reliever but an hour or longer is just wasted time.

callahad• 16 years ago

How so?

mcantor4• 16 years ago

an hour or longer is just wasted time.

I think that's the point.

zephjc• 16 years ago

It's only wasted time if that's your attitude about it.

abdulhaq• 16 years ago

If you meditate on the correct things for an hour you might realise that actually it's your 50 hour-a-week job that is wasted time and taking a time-out to contemplate the bigger subjects is a far more useful pursuit.

rikthevik• 16 years ago

Does anyone else ever get the desire to throw off the shackles of this Western society, renounce their possessions and go live in a monastery somewhere?

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

Yes, especially after reading Anathem.

Then I realize that my refrigerator is full of delicious things, and that my friends mostly live in Western society.

mcantor4• 16 years ago

Desire is the cause of all suffering, but there's also bacon.

lincolnq• 16 years ago

Do you think it would be possible to replicate the relevant aspects of the math from Anathem? How much money would it take? I bet there would be a decent number of people in the world who would want to commit for a year or two. And I'd like to imagine that there would be some useful research that would come out of it...

dinde• 16 years ago

All the time!

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

That was my plan if my startup failed. Fortunately(?), it didn't.

pstuart• 16 years ago

Just for a year.

rokhayakebe3• 16 years ago

I say drive for an hour or two, find some place with streaming water and some trees or just a huge green field, and take a day there.

cylinder714• 16 years ago

A feature of meditation is that it is portable--you can do it virtually anywhere, anytime. Awareness and equanimity are the only ingredients required.

mcantor4• 16 years ago

My Dad went to a zendo regularly for quite some time, when I was much younger. As a child, the concept of sitting and only sitting was mysterious to me, so I asked him why he did it. He told me that he wasn't sure, so he asked the head teacher at the zendo, and later recounted the exchange to me, which I have always valued as something of a modern koan in its own right:

Dad: "So, sitting will definitely produce positive results if you do it for long enough, right? What if I sat for 20 years?"

Master: "You mean, a guaranteed amount of enlightenment, however small?"

Dad: "Exactly."

Master: "The only thing I can guarantee you will get after 20 years of zazen is hemorrhoids."

mannicken• 16 years ago

On my winter break last year, I spent two weeks meditating, lucid dreaming, astral projecting, OOBing, and smoking pot :)

Scariest time of my life. Apparently meditation, when done with some skill is similar to third plateau of DXM. Doing it everyday made me feel extremely weird in normal life. Still recovering.

roqetman• 16 years ago

I spent a few days in a rinzai zen buddhist monastery in upstate New York about 3 weeks ago. I was also initially skeptical, and in a lot of pain. Doing the retreat with other newbies, and talking about the experience with the monks during the informal meetings really helped. I still feel the effects of it - my crazy schedules at work and tight deadlines just don't seem to bother me anymore. It's wearing off a bit now, but I still feel much more focused, peaceful and "together". I highly recommend it. - I only went for 3 days though, perhaps I'll consider a 7-day retreat someday.

r0s• 16 years ago

Can anyone with experience recommend this kind of meditation to build discipline?

Stress relief and mindfulness are great but not really my goal. I want more focus and energy.

Natsu• 16 years ago

> I want more focus and energy.

In that case, I suggest a nap instead.

astrec• 16 years ago

Try Qigong.

alexyim• 16 years ago

It seems like you have to have a particular mindset to practice meditation.

For some reason, the concept of meditation is intuitive to me.. an analogy I feel like making is that it's similar to "reading between the lines." Yet at the same time, I understand the author's frustrations and I can't think of a way to make meditation work for him.

Maybe meditation isn't for everyone.

devinj• 16 years ago

Am I the only person actually scared by what he went through? "Zombie" seems quite apt. I don't want to be an automaton.

That Misery Called Meditation

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