I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs

I have been doing intensive meditation retreats 20 years, and I never recommend them to anyone. People go to them when they really want to. No need to advertise or hype them.

I have witnessed maybe 5-7 cases of psychosis, 3 of them requiring immediate hospitalization one requiring police presence. Some people have been hospitalized after getting home. It's rare but it definitely happens.

Some random things related to mediation and mental problems:

- Goenka's Vipassana is famous from just taking random Joes from the street into 10 day intensive Vipassana mediation retreats. Most other traditions like to do prescreening and gradual increase in insensitivity. First establish daily practice, then take day or weekend retreats before doing longer terms. I'm not saying its not a good tradition, it's just that they do this differently.

- Meditation retreat is where things happen in your mind. If you repress something successfully in the normal life, it probably does not work in the retreat. If you are depressed but did not notice it before, you probably notice it in the retreat. If you are predisposed to psychosis, meditation retreat is the place where it manifests. What is caused by meditation and what is revealed by meditation is not clear.

- People seek to treat their mental problems with mediation. In principle that's OK when combined with other treatments, but if you use it as alternative for medication or professional health care you get random outcomes.

- Mindfulness as a therapy (like what Jon Kabat-Zinn does) is different. You have a therapist connection with the mindfulness meditation.

- Many long term practitioners who do intensive meditation have mental problems but can successfully deal with them. Their secret is that they go to therapy when they need it or use medication when they need it just like everyone else.

- Ancient meditation literature (sutras and such) are full of descriptions of people having mental problems. Experiences with devils, monsters and hell realms during meditation. One great example is Japanese Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1768). He describes the mental problems plainly. He sought help. He had to take break of several years from his zen training to recover before he could continue.

- If you want to find where the line is, you have to go both sides of the line. Even if you are healthy and grounded individual sometimes you find scary mental states. The difference between 'crazy' temporary mental state versus clinical psychosis or mental problem is that you recover quickly after taking a little break or sleeping over it.