What no one tells you about Vipassana retreats

Transcript

hello world I thought I would do a video explaining my experience on the go anchor vipassana Retreats those silent Retreats because I've sat a few of them now and I feel like it would be really useful for people who are thinking about sitting one people who are interested to have some experiences because I feel like it's very helpful to have that kind of stuff when you're going into something that's so unknown I mean what else in society do we have that's like a silent Meditation Retreat it's so weird and they are very intense you're waking up at 4am you're meditating pretty much all of the day I don't know if there's any research on this but it's a very common anecdote that when you're concentrated in meditation you don't need much sleep so I was sleeping like three to four hours a night on this previous this Retreat I just got out of and I mean that's unheard of for me I usually sleep eight to nine hours and I was kind of shocked I didn't know about that part of meditation I'm going into it honestly and it was only when I got out and I told the other meditators who were just way more advanced than me and they were like oh yeah that's that's normal don't worry about it I will post the course schedule somewhere in this video I'll just post it as an image because you should see you see the schedule before you go into it obviously you can find it all on the Dharma websites of the goenka Retreats um the whole retreat thing there are culty bits to it you should know that too before you go in it's it's supposed to be non-sectarian but there is a lot of order that's imposed when you go in uh on my first retreat they may have abolished this Rule now because they didn't get told off for it uh recently but on my very first retreat they were very fixated on getting me to wear long pants in the hall they didn't like the fact that I was wearing shorts in the hall and my knees were showing that's not allowed I got told off for walking on this most recent Retreat and uh you need to be completely dead silent all the time which I understand you need this order to make the Retreats run well but you know you should just be aware that it does kind of feel like a cult also there are some strict rules that you have to um adhered to like not leaving they don't want you to leave on these Retreats so they'll try counsel you away from it obviously if they can see you're mentally breaking they'll let you leave and on my first retreat uh I was sitting at the back of the hall because I request a chair and you look at the men over the front of the hall which are on the left side there are women on the right side and over the 10 days 80 of the men just trickled off uh because it is really difficult and you get into these negative thought spirals that you can't escape because there's no distraction like there is in the external world and you start realizing oh my god I've been using distraction to escape negative thought Spirals and negative emotional states for my whole life and I don't have that luxury now you should be aware of how hard it is I mean I've I've cried on yeah I was I was crying on this recent retreat in the hall and uh like sobbing like a baby uh it's it's really really rough and it's very very hard on yourself psychologically it's also hard physically sitting for you know many hours a day it's very difficult and you do strong determination sets where you're just sitting for an hour and you're not allowed to move those are very painful I mean you'd be surprised at how painful it is just to sit uh it doesn't sound hard but it's like an athletic event go into it with a mindset that's anti-fragile that you can always improve that you can always overcome and that whatever happens you're going to be okay like us you know like a psychedelic trip you want that kind of mindset you don't want to be thinking of experiences that you have as bad or toxic or you know like triggering and things like that think of them as difficult think of everything as an obstacle to overcome on this path I think that will help a lot you know you get these stats like a certain number of these people who do meditation retreats have have you know severe mental health problems um initiated from The Retreat not permanent obviously but at least for a few weeks or a few months afterwards you know it's kind of like a psychotic break that you'd have after a psychedelic trip there are all these sayings in the Buddhist communities like no mud no Lotus if it if a tree aspires to Heaven its roots must reach down to Hell all these sayings get at this idea that you have to go through a lot of suffering and pain and processing of difficult emotions to get the benefits of meditation in the first place and yeah there will be casualties I suppose of that just like there is for the benefits of exercise like if you train in the gym you lift weights or you try to become a faster Sprinter you try to get your vertical jump higher there are a certain number of people who get injured from that process even though it's beneficial in aggregate it's kind of dangerous if you look at the outliers uh I don't think you should let that deter you from exercise and I don't think you should let that deter you from meditation it's just part of the process it's like anything in life that's valuable you have to go through pain you know the gym Bros they say no pain no gain that's true no pain no gain uh it sounds cliche but that's because it's just it's found found in so many areas of life including meditation now the actual technique is magical I mean it is it is extremely powerful and I know I sound like I'm proselytizing here but I think I think there's so many westerners just have this idea that the only path to the good life is to earn more money to get a job that's prestigious work your way up the hierarchy become popular get a big house and just have a lot of material success and the technique kind of shows you that you you don't have to have a life that's entirely contingent entirely depends upon the story in your head that you're telling yourself like the reason those material things feel so valuable to us is because they improve the story in your head life is much more bearable when you can say you know I'm richer than my neighbor and I'm I've done so well I'm so proud of myself and I'm I'm killing it in life um you know I have all the success that I want when you're running a positive story in your head life is good but the flip side of that is that if you're relying on the story when you have a [ __ ] story in your head you're going to have a [ __ ] life so if you're thinking you know oh why'd that person talk to me in that way were they insulting me or you're thinking oh you know I just got laid off at work I'm not going to be able to pay my bills or or I've got this roof leak and I'm stressed about it I need to fix it immediately you know if you're thinking these negative thoughts about life or stressful thoughts your life will be bad you will you you will experience extreme negative emotion and uh live a shitty life meditation simply allows you another path to leave that story to just witness it see it for what it is arising as just another object of consciousness and find peace despite the story you're running and I know that sounds like some hippie abstract find peace despite the story you're running like that doesn't really make sense once you just witness that story for what it truly is and you see it for a story it's kind of like you've been engrossed in this scary um play like a Shakespearean play that you're in the audience of and and you were just engrossed in the play you were feeling all the negative emotion seeing the characters die and then all of a sudden you see that you're sitting outside the play and it's just this beautiful show out in front of you and that's what it's like um progressing I guess on the on the path that you're given in these retreats see it for what it is and that's what vipassana means it means clear seeing so it doesn't matter if you're thinking that the goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts and that's that's beautiful because you can meditate permanently you could just be meditating continually and I guess that's the goal is to meditate in the shower when you're eating when you're sitting down and like filming this video if I pay attention I can actively meditate and and see the train of thoughts and witness it as it's kind of flopping out my mouth um yeah so so I do find Value in the technique but there are casualties that would sum up my thoughts on meditation extreme value but that doesn't come without risk now should you do a retreat I would just do it if you're interested in the nature of mind if you want to find out about this life that's why I decided to do it ultimately like I'm I'm so interested in this world around me and and experience as it is and there are a lot of delusionary delusional sorry delusional ways of um perceiving the world that you cut through with meditation that's what ultimately drove me to it it was like the pursuit of the truth rather than pursuit of well-being um per se I'll just say this one thing the last day you do a different technique called loving kindness meditation or meta meditation and that is easily one of the most valuable things about the retreat it is such a beautiful day you sit there and you focus on all the whole day you focus on all the beings in the world and you just wish them well you cultivate feelings of um Good Will and well wishing towards them you wish them happiness and peace and you wish that they're free from suffering and you feel this deep in the core of your being and you cultivate this feeling not just for the people you like but for the people you don't like for the people who have wronged you people who have done harm to you and on that day you could just hair sobs and tears just radiating through the hole from you know not just the female side on the male side too and and these are not just you know like narrow shouldered granola boys who are who are crying which you might expect on a Meditation Retreat um these are like you know strong men who who are crying a strong woman who are crying and and pushing past so much resentment animosity that they felt for other people and just dropping that and that's just so freeing when you are able to do that it's such a beautiful thing and I think if you're gonna go like that's worth it that one day is worth it just on its own what a person season somebody else is what's really latent within them so every person is a mirror so yeah would recommend if you go I wish you all the best and let me know how your retreat goes if you end up doing one how old are you I'm 83 83. oh wow how does it feel I don't know how does it feel you've mastered um it feels terrible weird but you've mastered Being Human you're at the peak of wisdom as I said I don't know anything