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Ten Days of Silence

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145 pointslxm78 comments

This is a terrible article. Meditation is a great way to get to know yourself better or solve problems, I would not compare it to "tripping balls" in any way. If you want to learn more I recommend reading about it on http://www.dhamma.org, where you can also find meditation centers near you.

Adding some science, just those crazy people from Harvard:

Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri-stud...

Can Buddhist practice liberate us from the prison of physical pain?

"How can meditation help when medicine falls short? Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts medical School, speaks to these questions as a long-time practitioner of Buddhist meditation and hatha yoga, and as a pioneer in the use of mindfulness to treat chronic pain and illness. More than 13,000 people have visited the world-renowned Stress Reduction Clinic that Kabat-Zinn established in 1979 at the UMass medical Center, and the eight-week program- described in Kabat-Zinn’s bestseller “Full Catastrophe Living”- is now also offered at some two hundred medical facilities worldwide."

http://www.bemindful.org/kabatzinnart.htm

Vipassana is an absolutely wonderful experience. A 'brain washing' where it can rid your mind of all the crud that has accumulated from our culture and society. It puts you in touch with your body in a way that nothing my life ever has. I'd be happy to answer some questions if anybody has any.

Same here. It was difficult at first but became a very beautiful experience.

Personally, I found it easy. I live mostly in my head anyhow, so not talking wasn't a big deal to me. And before I went into it, I told myself that solitary confinement would be much worse and that this is a vacation where I get fed and just have to be quiet and try something new. Also, it was recommended by someone I respect very highly, so I was convinced it was worthwhile before ever going.

It was difficult the first 5 days and then suddenly something clicked. It was all sunshine after that :)

I've signed up for a 10-day course in mid August and am stoked about what I'll gain and also about the sheer difficulty. Could you talk more about the long-term effects of Vipassana on your body/life?

I did it first in 2011. I've only done one session. I've tried to go back a few times but have created barriers in myself to doing so.

It will do me more to go back to Vipassana than any single thing I can do for myself. It puts you at the center and you just follow along, being true.

As far as long-term effects, I came out of the experience glowing. Heat didn't bother me. I saw clearly. The afterglow lasted for about three months. Slowly, I became a little bit agitated by things that didn't bother me during the period of afterglow. If I had continued to meditate regularly, I would have been fine. Centered. Since I didn't...Because I made excuses for myself...I'm in a not so great state these days. And yet, if I found myself again in the state after Vipassana, if I took care of myself and meditated, I would be in a much better mental state.

It does great things, but it's not a cure-all. It changed my life more than anything else has and is immensely powerful. It introduced me to myself. For that I will always be grateful. And I hope I respect myself enough to go back soon.

I loved the clarity of thought that experience gave me. It is interesting how we both went thorough the same phases. The immense calm, the slow agitation and then excuses.

I even went back for a short 4 day course but the 10 day one was the best.

I hope you can go back once more and then continue the practice afterwards.

I meditated today. Gosh was that nice. Thank you for your kind wishes and your shared experiences.

If it was benefecial, why didn't you do more of it..

Surely as rational people that is the course to take?

I see the same with my Yoga practice... touchwood, I am mostly healthy and I should do more Yoga but somedays I am looking for reasons not to do my usual tiny practice..

Is it cause we don't make the outward connection between the practice and our wellbeing?

PS : thinking aloud and trying to see if I am alone in this...

You are certainly not alone. I both meditate (sometimes) and practice yoga (intermittently), and while both make me feel great and have noticeable effects on my productivity, they're both so much damned work. Once I miss a few consecutive days, its easy to miss a few more.

Brb going to meditate, even though its past my bedtime and I've got a couple glasses of wine in me.

I've reached the point with my yoga practice (usually at least twice a week for almost 2 years, now) where I feel like crap if I don't get on the mat.

That's a pretty compelling motivator to keep up with it.

Had a few moments of such afterglow. And then the anguish. And then the thought that, is that not ok too? That the point is not to live in an eternal state of bliss, but to be more forgiving and compassionate when we do slip. And not let it cause any anguish. Though we might be talking about different things here haha.

I had also taken a 10-day course about two years ago. It definitely has had a lasting impact on the way I think about things, in similar ways as mentioned above. I developed a deeper ability to see all of the conveniences of modern life as, well, conveniences. I think more than anything, that has stuck with me.

Also, the meditation itself can be used to calm and focus me during stressful times, but like any exercise, it must be practiced. I haven't probably given it the necessary diligence.

I'd like to emphasize more than anything that the teaching truly does its best to be a force above creed and philosophy. I was very skeptical about it going in. Much of the instruction does not expect you to take anything on blind faith, and all its asking is for you to become a more compassionate individual. There's no proselytizing, or expectation of money in any way. All donations which run the facilities are done in private, and it was maybe mentioned once.

Consider the class as teaching you how to exercise. Nothing comes easy, any gain you have comes from the effort you put in.

I tried Vipassana on my own while I was a student (it was much easier to get stretches of peaceful time). I read the instructions from a book and managed to get into a different state of mind in about 45 minutes or so.

Is there really some point in sitting and trying it all day long? I mean, if you cannot "get" it within an hour, aren't you doing something wrong? Or it takes different length of time for different people?

What was your experience? How long it took you to get into the other "state"? Were you able to get into it much faster afterwards?

It took me about a week. And it totally caught me off-guard. I had no expectations going in.

It definitely takes different people different amounts of time. And if you are suffering, it is that much more difficult because you have pain that is holding you with attachment.

I'm not able to get into that state very quickly at all...I haven't been in that state for years actually.

Do you continue to sit?

Today I did for the first time in awhile. These conversations reinvigorated me to do so. Regularly though...I haven't been.

>Is there really some point in sitting and trying it all day long? I mean, if you cannot "get" it within an hour, aren't you doing something wrong? Or it takes different length of time for different people?

Disclaimer: I am more a follower of Zen Buddhism.

There is no right or wrong. The goal of this, any other forms of Buddhism, is satori. It can take some people a year, some people a lifetime, but at the end, practice and satori are one.

Do I have to learn how to meditate before I go? How can I learn?

Where do I find a place like this?

If I want to do this, what are my first steps?

You don't have to learn anything, but it's a fairly big step to go straight for a long sit. See http://www.dhamma.org for info on intensive Vipassana courses.

For something a bit easier that you can do at home, check out this self guided course: http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguidedMBSR_week1.html

I recommend learning how to meditate before you go. I attempted a 10 day vipasana as a complete beginner and with insufficient research, and assumed it would be some kind of "course". Instead we were instructed on what to meditate on (first day is literally "feel the breath entering your nose"), and then expected to sit still and meditate for 11 hours a day. This vipasana (Kathmandu, late 2011) had no "optional sessions", and no additional instructions. As a complete beginner I was disappointed and frustrated - was I doing it right, is there no technique to be taught, or tips to be given?

The analogy I'd give is if I'd joined a 10 day fitness camp and the only instruction was "do deadlifts", and then you were left alone for 11 hours. What's a deadlift? Is this the right form? After an hour I feel like I've exhausted these muscles, do I really just keep doing it for ten more hours today?

After three days of this, (each day having a slightly more specific focus but still lacking in the kind of direction or confirmation I was looking for), I left. I was a stone's throw from the Himalayas, and I felt that spending my remaining time in the mountains would do more for me than sitting in a dark room feeling confused and frustrated.

I can't answer how to learn to meditate, I haven't followed it up (once burnt, twice shy). But you could try the vipasana way at home - sit in a quiet room and "feel the breath entering your nose" for an hour.

You had an unfortunate experience. Perhaps if you took a course in an English speaking country the instructions would be clearer to you, and you'd be more aware of the availability of those who you can ask for help. And the evening discourses, which go into greater depth of explanation, would be more accessible to you.

I've been meditating off and on for most of my life, and it's probably been the best thing I've done for myself. Reading is a good way to go for some, and the book Mindfulness in Plain English [1] is a place good start. His other books are really good, too. Especially "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness". There are many other good books about meditation, so feel free to look around. Spend some time at a book store and see what strikes you.

When I was starting out I especially liked Shinzen Young's [2] teaching style a lot. He's been meditating for a long time, taught math and comparative religions at a university, and he does an excellent job of presenting Eastern meditation in a way that an educated Westerner can understand.

There are a lot of resources available online, but you might try poking around in the Something's Happening [3] radio archives for KPFK. Tuesday and Thursday night they play talks from Alan Watts, Shinzen Young, and a lot of other people. Some of the talks are extremely hokey, full of New Age gibberish, but some of them are really good and it's a good way to get exposed to a range of teachers. Go to the archive page and search for "Something's Happening" and give it a try. There's also an Alan Watts program that good, too.

[1] http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shinzen+young [3] http://archive.kpfk.org/

I had never mediated before...A few instances of 20 minutes that were guided, but never 'for real'. I went in not really knowing what I would be asked to do or how it worked. For me, that worked wonderfully.

I generally tend to fail magnificently at first and then flourish very quickly after making all the rookie mistakes all at once.

If you have questions, don't be afraid to use the question sessions to speak to your teacher. If it seems like the instructions are too simple, you might be overthinking it. It's all about letting go after all.

Sometimes, you meet a new person and the first thing that you notice is the immense calm on their faces. You get good vibes from them. And even without talking, you can tell they are nice people.

It happened with me recently a few times. As I got to know those people better, I learnt that they've all done Vipassana at some point in their lives. It might sound mumbo jumbo but these are the facts.

I haven't done Vipassana but my girlfriend did, about a few months back. Honestly, I didn't see any noticeable change in her. I mean she loves puppies now as much as she did earlier. She definitely did have trippy, out of body experiences. Perhaps, others who don't see her as often as I do might be able to tell some very visible, external changes.

However, there was one very peculiar effect. She had been complaining of a chronic back pain for almost a year. After she returned, her back pain was 90% gone!

Some of my close friends have also recently returned from it, and they all seem calmer, more mindful people now.

Reads like a scientology ad

>>Reads like a Scientology ad

After just reading the first few lines I started thinking what a bunch of bull. Then I read your message and I laughed because it's so true...:)

What worries me is that it is so easy to be taken in by this stuff. Specially if you are in a vulnerable state.

It is what you make of it; that's also the whole point, so it's funny because it's meta. That's also why I find people who are super-invested in that type of thing and super serious about it hilarious; it's as if they don't get it because they think they get it so hard.

Did you sign up just to bash vipassana? I'm curious as to why you feel so strongly about the issue. If it works for some people, it works for them. Does it cause harm to you if other people give it a try?

Scientology and some Thelemic orgs use Vipassana and other meditative techniques to ensnare their students. The wonky experiences like out-of-body experiences are used to market the system. So it works, yet is still abused to capitalize on the spiritual progress of followers. It works, but so does a parlor trick works when your audience does not pay full attention. Your question: 'Does it cause harm to you if other people give it a try?' is a tricky one. A practice can be harmful to others without being harmful to you. Does it cause harm to you if other people try out heroin? Does that void a strong opinion on drug abuse? To people not, or slightly, familiar with Vipassana, such stories do read like someone smoked their first joint and its the cure for every ailment they can think of. Like born-again people talking about "seeing God and having Him save my life". Glad it helped and you are so enthusiastic, but you are still claiming salvation from an invisible man in the sky, aka: you sound like a Scientology ad. Especially when claiming medical benefits, caution is required.

Edit: I am not comparing meditation to heroin. I am showing that the question 'Does it cause harm to you if other people give it a try?' is a trick question, a debating technique. Answering 'no' does not invalidate the statement 'this reads like a scientology ad'. But even if I did compare meditation to heroin, so what? The article compared meditation to psychedelics.

You're comparing meditation to heroin?

The article compared meditation to psychedelics because the author is misguided. They may produce remotely similar states of mind. That does not mean they are equal.

There is no claim of salvation in meditation. Only claims of personal benefit in terms of calm and compassion, plus an increasing body of scientific evidence of cognitive benefits.

Invisible men in the sky are the antithesis of Vipassana, and anyone who uses it to ensnare anyone are frauds. The only benefits are within yourself, and the teachings make that abundantly clear.

Also, implying that Vipassana and meditation can harm anyone is absolutely ridiculous. It cannot do that anymore than reading a book or eating breakfast can.

Some Vipassana retreats require you to surrender to the Buddha and the master before starting. Invisible men in the sky are the antithesis of Vipassana since Vipassana masters claim that reality is not real anyway. You say invisble men in the sky are foreign to Vipassana. So what is "Nibbana" if not something beyond mind and matter? Why do spirit entities live inside tree-trunks? Why rid yourself of 'mental factors' that are able to "color the mind"?

The cognitive benefits-schtick is also used to justify the religious doctrination: "You have passed and future lives through reincarnation. Buddha existed and we have his teachings. Our goal is to become deathless.". It's scientific right? The cognitive benefits-research focuses on hospital patients and stress/pain relieve. They do not send these patients to a 10-day retreat, where they are not allowed to talk, must surrender to a master, do extreme meditation techniques for hours on end, till they self-operated on their psyche enough it's broken and they now have to repair it.

What salvation is for Christians, is enlightenment for Vipassana.

There are frauds out there who use these techniques to ensnare students, and there are students out there who ensnare themselves through being young, naive and gullible. Since the experiences are so dramatic, you get a host of uncritical people who proselytize Vipassana. Kinda like people who buy expensive Apple products will be lauding Apple, since else their investment was bad, and no one wants to admit to that. The people for who it didn't work remain quiet, especially when the master told them it was their own fault.

Vipassana for prolonged times can do much more than reading a book or eating breakfast. What if the author had gotten a psychotic episode during his tripping balls? Would that be dismissed with another fancy foreign term or garbled psychological babble? Would a master be able to spot deteriorating mental health in their patients? People report disassociation, hallucinations and hearing voices. To a qualified mental health professional that would not be scientific evidence of cognitive benefits, that would be a manifestation of latent schizophrenia. Then there are the documented suicides and self-harm... but then again, people have probably died from eating bad breakfast too.

Meditation-induced psychosis: http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/108125

Panic attacks and depressed episodes: http://zensydney.com/Mental-Health-and-Intensive-Meditation-...

Psychiatric complications of meditation practice: http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-13-81-02-137.pdf

Terrible and Traumatic Experience at Goenka Retreat: http://downthecrookedpath-meditation-gurus.blogspot.de/2012/...

The Potential Downside To Vipassana: http://livingvipassana.blogspot.de/2007/06/potential-downsid...

Unlike Scientology, Vipassana courses are free. They provide food, shelter, and an incredible experience on the donations of others. If you want to give a donation after you've finished the course (and only after you've finished the complete course, they won't accept donations otherwise), then you are welcomed to.

I have never done a Vipassana retreat, but I've played around with that style of meditation with good results. To me this is one of the most admirable aspects of it - so many of these so called "spiritual" (a misguided umbrella term) retreats/courses functions more as a way for the founder to get rich than to do something good. See the founder of Bikram yoga.

And yet again, it's not rocket science.

There are simple psychological reasons for having pains. If a person has a very tense lifestyle, no wonder he/she will get pains due to induced muscle stiffness.

In such cases, even a cup of tea a day (just to say) can "miraculously" cure a back pain, if the latter is caused by induced stiffness, and the first causes a daily relaxation.

I was not wearing my glasses and I read that first sentence as "There are simple psychological reasons for having pants". But I suppose this statement is also true :)

Except it doesn't. Vipassana courses are barely advertised, people come of their own volition, and participate for free. People are asked to try their method for ten days, not to change their lives without wanting to.

If they did advertise, they'd have scientific evidence that there are benefits from their methods. However, they don't use that, because meditation is not about proven benefits to them. It's about living a more compassionate and harmonious life.

Hardly a scam of any kind. I don't know why anyone would attempt to discredit it.

I'm still looking back to my vipassana experience a few years ago. It's something I don't want to miss and it helped me focus again. Mindfulness is something beautiful.

Also something that I think is not quite clear from the article is that vipassana is not some kind of crazy cult. It's basically "just" a technique.

Yeah, that part of the article I feel is off. I've never been on a retreat but I do sit. It's definitely an experience that I think people should try, but it doesn't really bear any resemblance to a trip (at least for me). It's more like turning a magnifying glass on how I make thoughts.

From the article: "About half a year ago I started taking psychedelic drugs fairly regularly. Partially because they were fun, but also because I could see how they benefited me therapeutically. When I heard that meditation could produce similar effects, I found a ten day intense silent meditation course I could join in Italy."

Huey Lewis & the News:

    "I want a new drug
    One that won't make me sick
    One that won't make me crash my car
    Or make me feel three feet thick

    I want a new drug
    One that won't hurt my head
    One that won't make my mouth too dry
    Or make my eyes too red"

I'm inclined to go with Feynman on this. He was once convinced in the 1960s by Dr. John Lilly to try LSD, being told it would improve his thinking. Feynman then thought, the next day, that he had solved a hard problem he'd been working on. While going to a meeting where he was doing to discuss his solution, he realized that he hadn't solved the problem, he had hallucinated that he had solved the problem. Feynman was furious. He wrote "I like to think, and I don't want to break the machine."

That guy would probably get equally good results by taking 10 days off to go surfing.

good results by taking 10 days off to go surfing

Or just 10 days of doing anything you don't normally do.

10 days of doing anything intensively would make a drastic results: - learn a new programming language - learn a new skill (cooking, painting, carpentry) - 10 straight days of helping someone less fortunate than yourself

There's scientific evidence that meditation improves memory, cognition, grey matter, concentration, and so on.

The same is not true for surfing or generally relaxing. Just because people feel like there are similarities between experiences on psychedelics and meditation does not mean that they have equal outcomes.

This is such a dismissive attitude. What Feynman is talking about is putting something artificial in your body with potentially adverse side effects. This has very little to do with sitting still in a room and watching your breathing. This is something people have done for thousands of years, and it consists "only" of sitting.

Going on a surf vacation for 10 days isn't going to have nearly as big of an impact as something like this in this dimension. You may a get a lot better at surfing really quickly, and meet some friends. Which is great!

If you don't think meditation is for your, fine, don't do it. But don't downplay people's experience by imposing your own limited world view on it.

EDIT: My intention is not be dismissive of surfing as an activity. I would be surprised though if OP went on a 10 day surfing retreat and wrote a similar article to the one we are reading now.

Meditation is commonly practiced by all kinds of people, many of whom don't do it in the tradition you may associate with 'Meditation'. I wouldn't be so dismissive of surfing. Activities that force you to clear your mind (so you don't die or seriously hurt yourself) are other candidates for similar outcomes.

I wanted to add that there are several forms/types of Vipassana and several different types of centers that conduct retreats. Many people get confused and think that there is only one type of Vipassana.

The Insight Meditation Society (IMS) is located near Boston and is the most extensive center in the US.

“IMS offers Buddhist meditation retreats at two facilities – the Retreat Center and The Forest Refuge – in rural central Massachusetts. The Retreat Center is one of the two IMS centers in the United States. However, all Buddhist centers teach vipassana/vispashyana. It offers a full yearly schedule of more than 25 meditation courses, ranging in duration from a weekend to three months. Most retreats run for 7–9 days.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight_Meditation_Society

Insight Meditation Society (IMS) uses a sliding scale to charge for its retreats and I have found them to be my favorite center for going on a retreat.

I came here to second this. The author clearly has experience only with Goenka and has absorbed their atypical use of the Pali word "vipassana". It's not usually used as a noun to describe a retreat. Nor was it "lost" for centuries. Most serious Theravadan retreat centers have been doing plenty of vipassana.

IMS is a wonderful facility. On the west coast, its sister center is Spirit Rock, though they're not quite as well set up for long retreats.

Pain is only temporary, pleasure is only temporary and you only bring yourself misery if you go chasing after either is the basic deal. And while those things sound simple as a rule of thumb, that doesn't make them easy to follow.

That conclusion is worth something, whichever way you arrive at it. I guess it's one of the basic truths about our way of existence.

I've been a software engineer for 15 years, have meditated with varying degrees of consistency for 10 years, and have taught meditation to peers, friends and the public for the last 3 years.

The conclusions reached in this article about the temporary nature of all states and experiences, as well as connecting with the wisdom of the body, resonate strongly with me. I'd add that the ability I have developed to monitor and redirect my thoughts, as well as enhanced concentration, are other direct benefits.

I believe you can see some benefits from meditation without embracing the full retreat experience. But a retreat is definitely a step-up and solidifies a lot of the lessons. I've done 8-day insight retreats which are a little less austere than Vipassana but seem to bring about similar states and changes.

I wrote the story of how I ended up teaching meditation (I teach 8-week courses with similar content to MBSR). You can read it here if you are interested: http://www.geekmindfitness.com/mindfulness/why-this-software...

There's another write-up I did of how some of this affected my journey through anxiety, specifically impostor syndrome: http://www.geekmindfitness.com/mindfulness/how-mindfulness-m...

Sounds amazing. I can't figure out if this would be great for my ADHD or similar to CIA torture.

It would be great for ADHD stuff. As I mentioned in a comment above, it gave me amazing clarity of thought and stillness.

It would be both. 10 days of doing anything intensively is a LONG time!

The author did say that several people couldn't last. I'm sure you would either crack or have a breakthrough...

> Remember that letting go is not forcing something to go away. Instead, letting go is an invitation. We generously allow the recipient to choose whether or not to accept the invitation, and we are happy either way. When we let go of something that distracts our meditation, we are gently inviting it to stop distracting us, but we generously allow it to decide whether or not it wants to stay. If it decides to leave, that is fine. If it decides to stay, that is fine too. We treat it with kindness and generosity during its entire presence. This is the practice of letting go.

> Finally, if you do not remember a single thing you read in this chapter so far (maybe because you do not care about this book but your wife made you sit down and read it), happily, Jon Kabat-Zinn has a one-phrase summary of this entire chapter:

> __Breathing as if your life depends on it.__

> If you can only remember a single phrase in this chapter, remember this, and you will understand mindfulness meditation.

From Chade-Meng Tan's Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace), warmly recommended: http://www.siybook.com/

I have been trying to do 5 minutes a day of "ignorant meditation" (just sitting on the floor, clearing up my head, and focusing on breathing), but have seriously slacking off these past weeks.

Are there any worthwhile youtube videos on mindfulness meditation?

And is Vipassana meditation "better" than the other types?

I found the iOS "Yoga Nidra" app to be a good starting point. There is a trial version that gives you a 10-minute walkthrough.

Masturbation was not prohibited in the course, although they ask not to perform any spiritual practices (stretching doesn't count) as it'd disturb others and might produce mixed results.

Serenity now...

This sounds like more feel-good pseudoscientific hogwash.

Is there any evidence that "not talking" can actually lead to an improved life, or is this yet another fad that makes people feel good about themselves?

Yes, there is evidence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation

The report concluded, "Scientific research on meditation practices does not appear to have a common theoretical perspective and is characterized by poor methodological quality. Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence. Future research on meditation practices must be more rigorous in the design and execution of studies and in the analysis and reporting of results." (p. 6) It noted that there is no theoretical explanation of health effects from meditation common to all meditation techniques.

Scientific research has shown that modification of behaviour and perceptions can be achieved without surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. This goes by the name of psychotherapy. In particular, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) has been shown to work in randomized controlled trials [1].

As such therapies involve only guiding and helping people to think differently, it demonstrates that such guidance has have scientifically measurable effects on the mind and body.

It follows from the above that the likelihood that practices such as meditation could have non-zero effects is high. Whether Vipassana itself does so could therefore be tested in the same manner as CBT was, and perhaps that is what should be done...

[1]https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=randomized+contro...

You're citing from one meta study out of plenty. Also, it's ten years old. Many things have happened since then, especially things to address those weaknesses – MBSR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness-based_stress_reduct...) has been developed further, and is a method of meditation that is in part designed so that you can do science on it.

Looking at a 2013 report (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23796855), results are quite different. Or this interview (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/...) showing potential physical changes in the brain.

Furthermore, meditation isn't about objective health gains to many people. It's about living in a different way, in a different state.

From what I recall, meditation has proven physiological effects on the body, so there's that. I would not be surprised if 10 days of the lifestyle described in the article would change the way you think about things, at least for a little while. Whether or not this is related to an improved life, who knows, I imagine your mileage will vary.

It's more than not talking, though. It's extreme meditation. If you didn't have to worry about anything in your life for ten days, where to sleep, what to eat next, the next project, proposal, email, significant or insignificant others, where would your mind wander?

I don't think it's feel-good anything, and not claiming to be scientific. I think it's stressing the mind in a way that it's typically never stressed, resulting in outcomes that others have never experienced. And because of that, they want to share it -- as is human nature.

I know a number of people who've done Vipassana retreats, and there do appear to be material changes in their lives after. How long those benefits last seems to correlate pretty strongly with whether they continue to meditate upon returning home.

So, yes. Anecdotally, anyway. Leaving entirely aside, you know, all the research on the benefits of meditation, ever.

People have been meditating for at least 3,500 years, I wouldn't call it a fad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_meditation

People have been practicing tribal medicine for just as long. Not a fad either.

And, it turns out, some of those things even work. I know, right?

I guess with enough trial and error, you can find solutions to many problems, no matter how flawed your understanding of the problem is.

It's always a good thing to question. Unless of course you belong to the camp who choose to be wilfully ignorant and closed in light of overwhelming evidence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679537

Umm, it is pseudoscience inasmuch no real study has been conducted (it isn't 'exciting' enough ...yet). So, yeah this is anecdotal but that doesn't make it false. A number of people I know have been through the vipasanna course and express the same sentiment. I wonder why it is popular now to expect ^someone^ to do the research and present ^evidence^ before they can even begin to become curious about something.

Does scientific curiosity these days hinge on someone else having done the tests ?

Does it automatically qualify as hogwash because there isn't and evidence yet ? or because we have a tendency to doubt things not deeply rooted in numbers and double blind tests, /even if/ the reason for that is a simple -- nobody has bothered to do this yet.

Blame the homeopaths and chiropractors.

I think this is in a different class though, it's subjective, so the tests aren't necessarily necessary.

Meditation is not rocket science.

The western lifestyle, simply put, is messy, and you get pulled in many directions, with the most important side effect of losing attention to yourself.

Meditation simply restores (quite forcefully, in this case) at least part of that attention.

If you find hard to grasp the concept, you can imagine it as being the analogue of being "in the zone" when programming (or anything else).

I don't think it would actually be too far-fetched to think "the zone" as a form of meditation.

The "not talking" part is basically just there to help you stick to the code of discipline [1] which is:

1. to abstain from killing any being; 2. to abstain from stealing; 3. to abstain from all sexual activity; 4. to abstain from telling lies; 5. to abstain from all intoxicants.

With "not talking" you automatically follow number 4 :)

[1] https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code

What exactly do you mean by pseudoscientific? The article was not really presenting a scientific claim. What we saw was a story about a person who did thing X, experienced thing Y, and is now describing his experience while thinking about what it might mean for someone else. Where does science come into the picture?

You sound like one of those annoying fellows who would dismiss the works of Dostoyevsky as pseudoscientific, or the music of Beethoven as hogwash. Get out of your limited perspective every once in a while and see that there exists a whole world out that that does not require classification in mathematical models to appreciate.

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