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Comment by seren | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

It's possible that experiencing the extreme makes the "milder ways" much easier to make a habit.

When you've just meditated for 11 hours a day for 10 days straight, 30 minutes a day seems like nothing.

I think the retreats are often just a way to gain perspective or a "crash course" that you can then apply to your life once you leave.

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.

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.

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).

[0] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma...

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.

One milder way is to just start meditating daily. You can start with five minutes, or even one minute.

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