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Comment by gesman | Hacker News Reader

I loved about the course: - Amazing food - Donation/karma-driven sustainability. Sort of Open Source Meditation :) - Silence (no bullshit talking and no bullshit listening for 10 days) - Heightened sense of creativity achieved - Heightened sense of humor achieved - Great attention to needs to everyone from organizers. - It's funny - I always gave funny nicknames to everyone.

I didn't mind: - Goenka parables.

I didn't like: - After suddenly switching to raw/vegetarian food - you'll be running to the bathroom for an explosive, nasty dragon fart breaks day and night. - No clear plan to maintain gains. They suggest 1-2 hours daily meditation afterwards which is impossible to maintain.

Overall: five stars (Quebec mountains location)

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A lot of people discussing the 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour before bed requirement. I also found this impractical, but lately I have been pondering something that Goenka said on this subject: If you don't have enough time, sleep less. When I heard this, it sounded ridiculous, since sleep is so important for the body.

A theory I have been developing is that perhaps meditation that achieves a no-mind state for a long period of time, may allow the practitioner's brain and body to enter the same kind of restorative repair cycle that it normally only enters during unconscious sleep (the only time a normal person's mind is truly shut-off).

A variety of experiences have lead me to suspect this, most profoundly being the night AFTER my 10 day retreat ended, when I was quite tired from a long day, having stayed up past midnight, despite having gotten up at 4:30 am that day for the final day of the retreat.

When I lay down to sleep, exhausted, I fell into a deep meditative state. I got up and opened my eyes, took a walk around the block, went back to try and sleep, and immediately was back in a meditative state. Gave up and just went along with experiencing being in that state all night, since I was totally aware, yet in the morning felt very rested despite having not slept a wink.

Yes, there is no doubt that if you meditate two hours a day, you won't need to sleep as much. You can basically assume you can lose about 1 hour of sleep, safely.

Agreed that it takes determination to continue, but I've managed to do the 1 hour morning and evening sittings for stretches, including a year or so while working full time and going to school. It's just a matter of incorporating it into a routine. Also, in my experience, since it helps maintain productive use of time, it's a net gain.

> No clear plan to maintain gains. They suggest 1-2 hours daily meditation afterwards which is impossible to maintain.

30...60 min twice a day to maintain gains or continue progress seems to be the norm in any meditation system anywhere.

To maintain living status you need to keep breathing 24/7, every single minute, continuously.

1-2 hours daily meditation is definitely not impossible, especially if you think it is important. How many people spend 1-2 hours daily at the gym?

That's the point though. I have around 2 hours of free time on the evenings, and I spend that time in the gym. I definitely do not have an additional 1-2 hours for meditation.

That said, gym is a very therapeutic experience for me. It helps me empty my mind of all stress-causing stuff in my life (e.g. work) and I get to focus on just one thing: lifting weights. I also gain additional benefits such as being strong as hell and looking great. ;)

yeah, I know it's cliche, but it's true: you make time for the things you want to have time for.

Exercise is very important for me, too, and I do it almost every day. I also meditate an hour every day. It just means I have an hour less of watching tv or browsing facebook, or something like that.

What made me stick to it, and mostly what made me realize its importance, was I made it a new year's resolution in 2011 to meditate every day for 30 minutes. It had such a huge impact on the quality of my life that I haven't stopped, and I've increased it to an hour a day.

> gym is a very therapeutic experience for me. It helps me empty my mind of all stress-causing stuff in my life (e.g. work) and I get to focus on just one thing: lifting weights. I also gain additional benefits

I had the exact same experience with lifting.

But I've found an even more powerful vacuum-cleaner for the mind: racing sportbikes. Squeeze the throttle, hear the engine climb above 10,000 RPM, and feel the mighty rush of speed, and poof! your mind is crystal clear, free of all the daily junk.

http://florin.myip.org/blog/engines-joy

But meditation is better than all of the above. It seems like it tinkers with the hardware directly, whereas the other methods are more round-about.

Gym has worked with me in similar fashion.

A lot of the science looking at physical measures of stress and anxiety reduction from meditation find that you get 80/20 benefits at 20-30 minutes a day. I enjoyed the bootcamp approach of the Goenka 10 day retreat, but I also think that the hardcore nature of the recommendations can make the perfect the enemy of the good. You feel like you need to keep up the 2 hours, and you want to after the retreat, and when you slip up you end up doing no mediation. I do believe that there are larger cumulative benefits to be had with full program, but 20 minutes is definitely going to make a big difference over doing none.

Re: maintaining gains. Isn't the point to live free of the very measure of gain/loss this present moment?

Continuity of practice is the secret of success.

http://www.dhamma.org/en/qanda.shtml

I read this as Qanda, thinking it was some ancient teachings on the principles of consistency, but then saw it was Questions and Answers.

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