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Comment by dayvid | Hacker News Reader

Doing intensive meditation retreats is a Navy Seal hell-week for your mind. If people took that into consideration, they would be better prepared for the results.

It's much better to start with a simple meditation practice or go on a shorter retreat (1-3 days), build up a base and periodically dip your feet in deep waters. There are too many people in the west who treat it like an extreme sport and get burned out in the process.

It reminded me of when Tim Ferris decided to go on a 10-day meditation retreat after a multi-day fast and almost had a full mental breakdown.

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I think some of that is the type A crowd being competitive about their meditation practices. It’s partly status seeking whether they realize it or not. Coupled with a mental health crisis I can see that being a terrible combination. Most people aren’t going to go on retreats or try to climb the enlightenment ladder like this.

Never understood the need for meditation retreats. The only purpose of gathering would be to meet and converse with other people. Not to sit and listen to them breathe.

I suspect the primary driver for 1 - 2 week retreats is that is the average Western vacation length and the mindful companies are maximizing revenue relative to CAC.

Formal Buddhist training - such as to be a teacher within the Kadampa tradition - can be done once a week over a course of years. Other traditions training requires full-time reading training over years.

I wouldn’t recommend someone try to master an instrument in 7 - 14 days as learning takes time for integration and people progress at different rates. So I’m skeptical of why anyone would suggest that for attempting to master the mind.

I can think of better ways I would want to spend a vacation.

I think for a good deal of them you're in silence (no cell phones or talking with others). It's really valuable to be in silence if you haven't before. You can gain awareness of random thoughts and things you don't notice when you're surrounded by distractions. Doing it for too long or with no stimulation (e.g. only sitting all day and meditating or wandering off w/ no structure when you can maybe do some activities in-between) can lead to strange things popping up.

I suppose there's some value in them for supplying some kind of structure.

Did anyone commenting read the article? The author was a meditation teacher who had been meditating for over 10 years, when he had this experience.

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