
Vipassana Trip Report by Rap Genius Founder - iball
http://rapgenius.com/albums/Abominablehoman/Baby-s-first-meditation-retreat
======
billyshih
I did this 10 day retreat and it turned my life around for the better. I
wasn't having any life shattering problems, but was just uncomfortable with my
life, e.g. confused about career and whether I should stay with my girlfriend.

I did not feel that it was cultish or strong-arm-y at all. Yes, they have
rules, but most of them really do help with meditation or they are just
cultural rules, which is fine. If I go to church, even though I don't believe
it, I'm ok with dressing decently, sitting where I'm supposed to and not
yelling in the middle of it. They even tell you that you don't have to chant
if you don't want to (I never did.)

Keep in mind that this is all volunteer run, so your experience will vary
based on who is managing the course as well as the location of the course. So
your experience with a strict course manager/teacher will be different with
someone more chill.

I pointed my feet at the TV all the time and no one ever gave me crap about
it.

At the end of the day you get 10 days of meditation teaching, lodging and food
for free. If you get nothing out of Vipassana, at least you got to learn how
to be away from everything for 10 days.

I got that and much more from the experience.

~~~
hosh
I got a kick out of the Criticisms section. It looks like he's got a lot of
stuff to work out but overall, a great experience.

------
shiven
As always, the HN crowd gravitates towards the negative (strong-arm-y, cultish
etc.) instead of looking at the entire package and focusing on putative
benefits. Just because you don't like the wrapper don't mean the candy ain't
tasty (or nutritious or enjoyable)! Pffft! HN, get a grip. Hack your mind,
don't give in before you even try! I know, skeptic is the new smart, but that
shouldn't be an excuse to summarily discount an idea/concept/practice.

------
rdl
I have always been suspicious of those new age/meditation/etc. resorts.

This really shows off the ability to use the Rap Genius platform to annotate
writing; I wish there were something like Goedel Escher Bach Genius.

~~~
bornhuetter
There is nothing new age about Goenka meditation courses, and it's definitely
not a resort. It's 10 days of hard work, but it's well worth it. It's also
purely donation basis (you donate at the end, and it's optional), which I
think really helps.

------
blueprint
What is the practice of meditation taught there, and what result in a human
life do they have if they practice the meditation?

~~~
vidarh
Vipassana. The "western" name of the meditation practice is generally given as
insight or mindfulness meditation.

In terms of benefits, consider meditation a tool to understand your mind and
to be better able to understand your drives and motivations, and to learn how
to focus your attention on various aspects of yourself. What "result" you get
from that depends very much on you and your motivations and desires, but what
I feel I get from it is a stronger appreciation of the world around me, better
concentration, and better impulse control.

A particular a-ha moment for me was how I feel I started noticing when I
started rationalizing to myself why I should buy comfort food. It was a
distinct feeling of "looking in" and getting to catch my mind in action
concocting excuses for why I should give in and buy that chocolate that
doesn't fit with my diet, early enough to make it easier to stop them. In
other words it feels like it makes it easier to exercise willpower.

Note there's a lot of opinion and feelings here. There is actual scientific
data on vipassana style meditation, but I'm a sceptic, and I know full well
that some or all of the benefits I believe I see from it could be placebo, or
unrelated to the meditation (perhaps it's just because I get more rest), and I
certainly haven't measures them. But frankly, I'm also of the opinion that it
doesn't matter all that much - if it's a placebo, it's a damn good one, that
makes me feel good.

Try it for yourself and see. It is not a big investment in time.

A good and mostly secular introduction free of "woo" is Mindfulness in Plain
English. It is available for free in non-DRM'd digital versions here:
[http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html](http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html)
or you can buy the paper version of Amazon.

It is notable for very popular amongst non-buddhists, including
skeptics/atheists for it's lack of religious content. There are some scattered
references to buddhism, but they are mostly providing context and explanation
of the background of vipassana, and to me at least, as a lifelong hardline
atheist, were not particularly obnoxious.

The Urban Dharma site also have a lot of other introductory resources - I'd
particularly recommend the "Introduction to Meditation" audio series by Gil
Fronsdal.

~~~
happimess
> better concentration, and better impulse control.

I have not done a 10 day sit as described in TFA, but I've had a passably
regular Vipassana-style meditation practice for a few years now, and
concentration and impulse control have been two major benefits in my life.

One thing that comes with impulse control, but I find valuable enough to merit
mentioning on its own, is that I am now much better at letting go of thoughts.
I used to have difficulty with intrusive thoughts--fantasies of violence or
humiliation that would play on loop in my mind. Now, they appear, drift once
through my mind, and are gone. This also applies to getting songs stuck in my
head.

For context, I grew up in the Christian church, identify as atheist, and have
only a mild intellectual interest in the spiritual trappings of the tradition
from which meditation comes to me.

~~~
blueprint
When you say letting go of thoughts, how can you differentiate between getting
rid of attachments, and abandoning yourself by giving up the questions you
have inside?

~~~
vidarh
What is the real you?

To me, getting rid of attachments means to reduce the impulses that controls
my actions "behind my back". It does not mean not caring, but it means
noticing that you care, and noticing how that feels, and noticing what the
impulses tell you, and then making a decision based on that information rather
than just blindly following the impulses.

Often that means acting differently than the impulses tells you because you
recognize that other goals you have are better served by not giving in.

Personally I don't believe that means I am abandoning myself, but on the
contrary that I am living up to my belief of who I am and who I should be much
better by (slowly) ridding myself of compulsions that made (and makes) me
unhappy by getting me to act in ways inconsistent with how I want to be.

A lot of human pain and frustration is down to the inconsistencies of self -
how we _want_ to do that coding, but end up procrastinating all day and then
afterwards feels guilty about it, for example. Maybe that procrastination was
nice, and good for us. But we (or I am at least) are happier when we actively
make that choice.

I still don't believe I am good at it, but I hope I keep getting better at it.

~~~
blueprint
To be certain, I'm asking happimess how he differentiates between consciously
removing an attachment, and abandoning the problems before solving them.

You said, "etting rid of attachments means to reduce the impulses that
controls my actions "behind my back". It does not mean not caring, but it
means noticing that you care, and noticing how that feels, and noticing what
the impulses tell you, and then making a decision based on that information"

What role does the fact that you care, feel, and have impulses play in your
judgement about whether to perform a given action?

Those facts by themselves do not reveal the matter connected to the cases that
you are judging.

That's why I'm trying to confirm your standard of judgement that you apply.

"But we (or I am at least) are happier when we actively make that choice."

What do you indicate by happiness?

------
peregrine
The last section on cultish teachings seems like a deal breaker for me. I've
read this a couple times and I just want to go to this place, and meditate in
a safe place.

I don't really want to be preached to.

~~~
Alex3917
"The last section on cultish teachings seems like a deal breaker for me."

I've done the same program at the same location, and it's really not cultish
at all. Essentially you're not allowed to do anything that would distract you
(or others) from meditating, and that's it. (E.g. you're not allowed to talk
with others or eat junk food, as with most similar programs.) The teachings
obviously come from a certain sect of buddhism, but that's why you're there.
Yes, Goenka does make some counterintuitive claims about the underlying nature
of the universe, but the basis for those claims are phenomenological
experiences that people have had while meditating; they come from the same set
of experiences that you yourself will have if you stick with it.

There are certainly a few aspects that are less than ideal, e.g. there isn't
really any way to get medical advice if you need it apart from just quitting
the program. But other than that it's hard to complain. It's free, the food is
amazing, the quality of instruction is very high, the people are great, etc.

~~~
benjamincburns
> they come from the same set of experiences that you yourself will have if
> you stick with it

I ask this very non-rhetorically - do you believe that this is a totally
natural convergence of thought, or is it possible that this is the progression
of thought that this particular set of guidance will lead you toward?

~~~
Alex3917
"do you believe that this is a totally natural convergence of thought, or is
it possible that this is the progression of thought that this particular set
of guidance will lead you toward?"

Happy to answer, but I'm not sure I understand the question -- could you
rephrase?

~~~
benjamincburns
Sorry, I should have quoted more.

> Yes, Goenka does make some counterintuitive claims about the underlying
> nature of the universe, but the basis for those claims are phenomenological
> experiences that people have had while meditating; they come from the same
> set of experiences that you yourself will have if you stick with it.

To rephrase the question - do you think that these experiences are convergent,
in that anyone with enough discipline to meditate for long enough will have
them, or do you think that these experiences are the result of Goenka's
guidance?

To further the question, are you saying that the "counterintuitive claims" are
something at which (again given enough practice/discipline) we all would
arrive, or just that we would all share something similar to the experiences
that they were born from?

~~~
Alex3917
"in that anyone with enough discipline to meditate for long enough will have
them, or do you think that these experiences are the result of Goenka's
guidance?"

I think they are specific to the technique, but not the teacher. E.g. someone
doing concentration meditation (as opposed to insight meditation) is going to
have very different experiences.

I don't think the fact that different spiritual techniques yield different
experiences says much about their validity though. After all, you could easily
consider normal everyday life to be a spiritual technique that yields a
certain set of experiences.

"To further the question, are you saying that the 'counterintuitive claims'
are something at which (again given enough practice/discipline) we all would
arrive, or just that we would all share something similar to the experiences
that they were born from?"

I think that for every technique there is a set (in the mathematical sense) of
experiences that can be experienced via that technique. And every time you
practice the technique, you're basically picking out an experience from that
set at random (though certain experiences need certain requisite skill
levels). So if you were skilled enough and had enough practice then your odds
of having a given experience would increase, but they'd probably never be
100%.

You can see that though, for example, with the Johns Hopkins psilocybin
trials, the odds of having some mystical experience over the course of two
high-dose sessions are about 80%. Some people might be floating through the
universe, others might experience the sum total of everything that ever can
and will and has happened from every perspective, others might life a life
review, others might relive their birth, etc. But the more times you do it,
the more of these experiences you will eventually have.

------
igmor
Is there a way to get similar introduction to meditation without spending 10
days on it in a wild and listening to all that chanting? Some kind of good old
western rational approach to it.

~~~
fernly
Find a local Buddhist meditation group. They'll have at least weekly
"sittings", often more frequently. Just recently this searchable list of north
american sanghas went up:

[http://buddhistinsightnetwork.org/sanghas](http://buddhistinsightnetwork.org/sanghas)

If you are in the SF Bay Area, the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City
is the home for Gil Fronsdahl, cited above.

[http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/](http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/)

------
jeena
I did the 10 days too and even though it was a great exercise it didn't really
change anything in my life. I assume it is because I have always been a calm
person.

