An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
hivelogic.com
hivelogic.com
I did the course in Kyoto years ago (there are locations worldwide: http://www.dhamma.org/en/alphalist.shtml ). The entire 10 days you do nothing more than watch your breath. First 6 or 7 days are hell, the remaining days are heaven. Just need some time for the dust to settle.
The entire course, accommodations, and meals are offered completely free of charge. They won't even accept a donation until you've experienced the course. Even then, there was no overt push to collect money from participants.
They ask you to leave your existing practices at the door, and offer no new dogmas other than watching your breath/mind.
I haven't been back to another course or otherwise involved with the group since then, but it had a profound impact on my life.
No, seriously, before I spend ten days on anything I'd like to have some idea what the point is, even if the communication isn't perfect.
"You spend so much time trying to think that it's like clenching your fist all the time, and you've been doing it so long that your wrist is shaking and your knuckles are white and your arm is cramped and you don't even notice. You need to just stop, shake it out, and let it relax."
I don't know whether doing a big blowout extreme retreat thing is worth it or not (I'm a bit wary of them being cult-ish), but meditating now and then really helps. It's a small and mundane-sounding thing, like flossing or getting enough sleep, but it adds up.
To me, it's worth doing for the experience. You perceive the world and your own perceptions differently when you've been meditating all day for a week or more. According to the instructors, this is playing a sensation game and isn't valuable, so I'll probably be reincarnated as an syphilis spirochete or something like that.
It is difficult to try and relate in words - it really is the kind of thing you just need to experience. Rather like trying to explain the taste of vanilla ice cream. My experience was something like this:
discomfort, billions of thoughts, wait, do i always have this many thoughts, oh yeah, i need to be watching my breath, etc, etc, etc, days pass along the same lines, intense light/energy, no thought, pure experience of what seems like our original state, back to thinking - OMG, can i stay here forever? reluctant return to daily life
That is a very poor substitute for what actually happened - it bears almost no semblance whatsoever to the experience.
My pleasure!
What would you say is the lasting profound effect on your day to day life?
The lasting impact has been a sense of connectedness and perfection behind our apparent reality. Yes, I know this sounds trite and the same sentiment can be found in countless books on near death experience, spiritual life, etc, etc, but that is the best way to put it.
""" the basics: for 10 days, i joined roughly 50 other people in onalaska, wa (a little town in the middle south of olympia) and we learned anapanna and vipassana meditations (as intepreted by s. n. goenka). we weren't allowed to talk to one another. in the evenings, we could ask questions of the teacher, but at the end of it all i probably said about 30 sentences
here's the schedule that we followed scrupulously every day:
4am - wake up bell 4:30 - 6:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 6:30 - 8 - breakfast and rest 8 - 9 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4 (more on this below)) 9 - 11 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 11 - 1pm - lunch and rest 1 - 2:30 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 2:30 - 3:30 - mediate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 3:30 - 5 - meditate in the hall or the sleep quarters 5 - 6 - tea/fruit break 6 - 7 - meditate in the hall (strong determination starting on day 4) 7 - 8:15 - video discourse 8:15 - 9 - meditate in the hall 9 - 9:30 - ask teacher questions if desired 10 - lights out
in general we were instructed to sit however was comfortable and change position as sparingly as possible. "strong determination" sits beginning on day 4 meant that we were to not move the entire hour. of course, as the pain got really bad, we were free to do so. i'll get back to the madness of this later.
day 1 we were instructed to focus on our breath. we were to keep only our breath in our minds. no counting, no visualization, no mantras. not deep breath or shallow breath. just breathe naturally and observe. as the mind wanders away, we we were told, notice it without anger or frustrating and resume observation of the breath. my mind wandered away after observing my breath for about 10 seconds max. it got a little better throughout my stay there, but not much.
day 2 we were given the same instructions as day 1, but were told to also start paying attention to the area of skin right below the nostrils. we were to note wherever the breath brushed past that area and focus on the smallest point of skin that we could.
day 3 we were told to look for sensations on the same moustache-zone. at this point, i began to feel an odd tingling sensation very lightly and ocassionally.
day 4 we were instructed in vipassana meditation. it basically consists of observing every part on the surface of the body, in a fixed order, piece by piece. we were told to observe any sensations as we go through the body and not react with craving or aversion. just observe the sensation and pass to the next part of the body.
day 5 - 10 was the continuation of this with additional elaborations on the nature of passing attention through the body. these were also the days when the weird shit started happening. i think sometime during day 5 i discovered that my entire body actually experiences a low-grade tingling 24/7, but i just never had the awareness to feel it. the ability to discern it comes and goes, but, just today during my evening meditation, i felt it on nearly every part of my body. (addendum from a month later: the tingling is gone, but still does show up from time to time during particularly good sits.) it's neither pleasant nor unpleasant and has its own internal logic. every person there felt it, as i discovered after i spoke to them on day 10.
during one of the strong determination sits, at about minute 45, the pain in my back became really bad. my mind started screaming for me to move, but i had built up enough experience at this point to have a little delay in response. i started examining the pain, really understanding it. i noticed that the pain itself, the sensation, was not so bad. what was horrible, was the nagging child inside me, the one that felt entitled to feel good all the time. the child pulled on my entire body, trying to force it to move. i ignored it and ignored it and really analyzed the pain. and... it all went away in a single instant. just dropped from my body. i don't know what happened, but i suspect i somehow managed to undo all sorts of knots of tension. i felt perfectly at ease and sat out the rest of the hour plus another 10 minutes. afterwards, i felt a tremendous elation. """
On one end of the spectrum, I am baffled by the drama surrounding the "weird shit" happening to your body. I had the same stuff happening during my meditation but I didn't find it to be all that notable. Yes, after several days you begin to isolate tiny little sensations (like weak electric current) all over your body. It's really just that and nothing more though. I guess I question the value of that particular experience - is it really such a huge revelation that practicing a small task over and over makes you better at it, sometimes enabling you to do things you didn't think were possible?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel like people don't give enough credit to the experience of forcing yourself to keep a position in spite of searing pain. I am preparing to give birth soon and one of the exercises for pain management is to practice relaxed breathing while squeezing ice cubes in your hands. It's painful but also incredibly empowering to learn that pain can be overcome, and unlike meditating for days to achieve a few weird sensations, it's a practical skill. You don't have to commit yourself to a 10-day retreat or practice a particular form of meditation to achieve that though, there is a variety of ways to do it, none of them particularly mystical.
I had severe back pain, have lower back issues, and it took days to get them to allow me to meditate sitting against the wall. When my concentration would break every few minutes, I would gasp in pain, my lower back muscles cramping and spasming the whole time, because it was overwhelming. I thought, and I still think, that requiring me to go through that was ridiculous, and it was only when I told the lead teacher I was leaving if he didn't allow it that he permitted me to sit against the wall. It still hurt like hell, and that was fine, but I could hold myself physically upright at least.
I don't think the courses in the US are so uptight, though.
Everyone should have to sit, and everyone will hurt when they don't move, but if your back muscles don't freaking work, you should be able to sit against the wall. Which they did let me, eventually.
For one, I was disappointed with the supposed difficulty or profundity of the course. Just like miles above, my fellow attendees, the teacher, the guru, and the friend who recommended the course to me in the first place, all described the experience in very dramatic terms (hell, heaven, profound impact, etc, etc). In reality, for 10 days, you don't do anything but sit in a dimly lit room for hours on end and concentrate on your breathing and other sensations. In between, you eat and sleep. That is all. Personally, I haven't found it especially challenging to shut up and focus for a few days. I also can't say that several days of highly-enhanced perception that followed the course had any profound long-term effect on my life. It was nice, but not more than that. (Those of you who do yoga probably know what I am talking about - those couple hours of feeling balanced, clear-headed and less "ADD" immediately following a yoga class).
Also, I felt that the course was misrepresented. What attracted me to this particular form of meditation was the promise of a 100% non-religious, 100% evidence-based practice. The website, the live teacher and the videotaped guru/founder S.N. Goenka stressed over and over the importance of personally and physically experiencing any insights. On the first day, we were told that we must simply observe any sensations that come with the breathing and not intellectualize the experience or give it any meaning other than what is. However the very next day, we were fed a whole bunch of hooey about the life of Buddha Gautama and the attendant reincarnation theory. The Buddha's tale was presented as a true story, and the reincarnation cycle was presented as the imperative to practice Vipassana mediation. The gist of it was, if you are good (i.e. you practice) you will eventually graduate to an enlightened status, but if you are bad (you don't practice, or waste your time with other meditation methods that may mean well but are silly because they focus on chanting or other false techniques) you will continue to suffer here on Earth. I really didn't appreciate the disconnect between the non-sectarian promise of the course and the reality of what the guru was telling us from his videotape each evening.
To be fair, I will add that the brainwashing is of spiritual rather than commercial nature and the course organizers do not want anything from you other than to "get" it. I would say that if you can set aside the negative aspects I mentioned above and you have 10 days to spare, it's a great way to reset your focus. Just don't buy it when they tell you that something incredible happens on the sixth day. They re-iterate over and over during the first 5 days that you must stick it out and something profound will happen on Day Six, but it's the same thing every day - meditate, eat, sleep, meditate, eat, sleep.
To me the course was mostly a secular study in mind hacking.
Yes, you are just quiet and meditating. But most people find that... in that total silence that stretches to days, during the extended meditation sessions using the techniques, profound and terrifying things you have long suppressed come bubbling up. Its really intense and emotional. Women often burst out crying during the sessions.
The idea is that while you are cultivating detachment, these things bubble up, and you are not reacting, only observing... you condition yourself to deal with them. By doing this for ten days at length, you wash yourself of your demons.
I found that this happened for me. I stopped worrying about the things that had bothered me daily after that course. I was in India when I took the course, and consider myself a half-assed buddhist, so I didn't have a problem with the relgious aspect, but you're right, it is not totally free of dogma.
The key thing to remember though is that they don't claim that a single ten day course will dramatically improve your life permanently. They just claim that you can learn the technique in that length of time. You still have to practice daily, several hours a day according to them. I admit that... I don't, really. I did for several months and then stopped.
But what I have taken away from the course is a deeper understanding of myself, and I make daily use of anapana when I experience distress. It works, helps return me to equanimity, and I think it actually makes me smarter.
I can say that for me, the experience was... deeply spiritual. Only I don't believe in spirits, I'm an athiest. The things that happened to me during that ten days were profound, and were pretty on par with the claims the hippies coming out of the courses before me were saying.
The course was the hardest thing I've ever done, by far. I'm really glad I did it. But as your experience points out, mileage will vary.
The key to the whole thing for me was that... verbal thinking is not thought, its just a reflection of underlying mental processes... and if you just shut the fuck up inside your head, you find that you have a lot more room for productive work, and thought, and you become smarter. Before that, I confused thought with productive mental work, and so the chatter in my head never ended. Now I can clear my thoughts, and have an empty mind and this is so important for using my limited brain power productively.
The REALLY interesting thing is that at the beginning of the course, nobody can NOT THINK for more than a few seconds. By the end of it, you can go for minutes at a time. And it feels GREAT :)
I made him wait like 10 seconds, just standing there at the door. I couldn't ask for the umbrella, he couldn't offer the umbrella. It was profoundly funny to both of us. We laughed about it 6 days later.
I still laugh out loud whenever I think about it. A joke in total silence.
Your memory may be a little rusty - they have you watch your breath for 3 days ("anapanna") to sharpen your concentration and then you spend the rest of the time doing vipassana, which they define as scanning your body focusing on the sensations.
Everything else you said matches my experiences there.
http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Updated-Expa...
"Mindfulness in Plain English"
It's a great book that is easy to read and explains why and how.
Just be careful, I lost three close friends to the monastic life because of his teachings -- two are monks with Ajaan Geoff at his monastery outside San Diego, another is ordained at a monastery out in the jungle in Thailand.
Never thought I'd run into Ajaan Geoff on Hacker News.
http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/
http://www.relaxationresponse.org/howto.htm
It's trancendental meditation boiled down to the basics and demystified by a Harvard MD.
There have been many complaining about the pain in sitting.
I am not a meditation expert, I have had numbness to my legs after 20 mins of sitting and I tried Kneeling- sitting such that, your balls of the feet touches your butt and the bottom part of the feet is completely parallel to the floor. (http://media.wiley.com/assets/6/99/0-7645-5116-7_0703.jpg) why? this forces you to have a natural posture i.e. keeps your spine in its natural state, thus prolonging your meditation time. But, don't wear any footwear.
PS: I found the image doing a google search, this link is hotlinked to a "meditation for dummies", where there are more postures described. I won't post it here and make it messy. I trust your knowledge in doing a google search!
Some systems of meditation I've encountered encourage experimentation to find a posture that works for you.
Mostly my experience fits with what I read here. Overall it was fine, and I will continue going there. Probably my biggest problem is that I finally understand and feel the difference between atheism and agnosticism. I am atheist, zen is agnosting. That is, it really doesn't care what religion (if any) you have. In practice this means people will be occasionally talking about "positive energy" and "negative energy". It's mostly small talk though, and the teacher was reasonably... well actually emphatically neutral.
As for the regular meetings, they are much cleaner. It's just "hello" and small talk, then you sit, then "good bye" without small talk.
I did learn a lot of tips about correct posture and I got a proper pillow, stuff I could not learn on my own. So even if you don't plan to join a dojo, a few visits are probably very useful.
Edit: Oh yes, another thing that somewhat irked me. It took me a long time to put my finger on it, but there was too little self deprecating humor in the teacher's talks. Sue me, but this is how I felt.
In AoL, they teach you what they call 'Sudarshan Kriya'. It's a breathing technique which helps you in variety of ways. I originally took the course because I was very stressed and my friends recommended the course so that I can learn how to deal with stress. I can definitely say that the particular breathing technique helped me a lot and I can say without reservation that my stress has reduced drastically. What I like about Sudarshan Kriya is that it is a very practical technique. It's very easy to follow and as you do Sudarshan Kriya regularly, your breathing capacity and your ability to focus on breathing will increase. Sudarshan Kriya helps you slip in to meditation much more easily. I highly recommend taking the Art of Living course.
A friend and I went for a free seminar by Sri Sri himself and had to sit through the parody of meditation and acted humour, which the paid patrons enjoy. He evaded questions from everyone and all he 'preached' was to join this course and not one person(outside their organization) I met afterwards told me anything positive. It's a good way to loot you of 400usd.
I have my first cousins who attended the course and told me firsthand about the "materialistic" association related to this course.[for instance, you are told not to worry about money by a person who worked as a banker(made his money) and now is a spokesman, then you are told to put in more money and rope in more people for this course by 'volunteering" ]
I have attended Sri Sri meet-up once and I did feel that the humor was forced and all the attendants were still laughing. Also most of what Sri Sri talked that day didn't make any sense to me. Let me give you an example. This is what Sri Sri said: 'Everything is nothing' and then harped about it for next 15 mins.
When I learned that course fee was 350$, I wasn't really inclined to attend the course. But I was so desperate for solutions to my problems, I decided to give it a shot. And I can safely say that I learned a lot and it helped me tremendously.
Later on, I wanted to attend another course and the fees were 450$. At that time, I and my friend spoke to the course organizer and complained about the high fees. They say that this money goes to the charity effort and there is nothing he can do. Anyway, I could afford the fee and attended the second course as well.
Personally, I don't agree with the 'forceful' charity and few other things, but that doesn't discount the fact that the actual techniques they teach, are very useful. If you can afford the course fee, it's worth giving a shot.
The bottomline for me is, there is a definite connection between breath and mind. I highly recommend experiencing this connection regardless of the route you choose.
I highly recommend the following books, which really help you chew through the layers of expectations, belief and doubt when it comes to Buddhism (and in particular, Zen):
http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Pursuit-Happiness-Zen-Guide/dp/...
http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-without-Beliefs-Stephen-Batch...
The next thing that will come up is that zazen can be incredibly boring.
(It is.)
But it helps.
Also, sometimes people considered authority figures act like dicks. Sometimes people cut their authority figures slack because they're "enlightened", or whatever.
"In order to do a sit-up, lie flat on your back with your knees at a 45 degree angle. This is what Jane Fonda calls 'getting the body into position.'"
No kidding? What else would you call it?
Get it?
url:http://www.simplynoise.com/
If you prefer something more flexible, sbagen is a freeware binaural beat generator. you can create your own(and risk?) or use several beats generated for you. There are about 40 beats just for focusing