
100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days - MichaelAO
http://www.highexistence.com/100-hours-meditation-10-days-vipassana/
======
patrickdavey
I did a vipassana retreat. It triggered a manic-psychotic (bipolar)
experience. More at:
[http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com](http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com)

Now, admittedly I had done very little meditation before hand, but _please_
don't just jump into this course like I did. And no, there was no history of
manic depressive behaviour in my family so this came as quite the shock.

10 days of total silence (no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no nothing)
is a really serious stress on your brain. Do not take it lightly.

~~~
kemiller
When I did it, there was a guy in my dorm who left halfway through. I learned
later that he had taken the retreat as an opportunity to quit smoking.
Terrible, terrible idea.

~~~
vdm
I quit (and moved city) a week before the retreat. That was three years ago.

~~~
kemiller
Not saying it can't work out. Some people are tougher than others. But not a
great plan.

------
kenrick95
I'm a Buddhist in Singapore (a member of Nanyang Technological University
Buddhist Society) and have been explained by monks that the chanting purpose
is to remind us about the qualities of the Buddha that is good for practice.
Since the chanting should have it's meaning, those who chant should know the
meaning. Without knowing the meaning, it will just become a meaningless
ritual. Hence, when chanting in my society, usually below the pali text there
is English text which help the chanters to understand the chanting.

------
virtualwhys
I did three Vipasana retreats back in the 90s in the Shelburne Falls, MA.
center.

The OP kind of glosses over what was for me, on my first retreat, the single
most enduring issue: physical pain. Yes, all experience is transient, but that
drill driving into your knee is constantly impermanent, as in, not much
respite (btw, doesn't matter how you sit, cross legged, kneeling, or in a
chair, when the body is made still for @14 hours a day, der pain cometh ;-))

Escape in day dreaming, meals, and sleep is par for the course, as is going to
your room to meditate (forbidden, a monitor would come and bring you back to
the hall), and doing yoga, thai chi or other practice to break the
monotony/limber up the sore joints.

Saying that, if you've got time and are of sound mind (have to sign a waiver
to that affect), go for it, it's a truly unique experience -- things are not
as they seem, the concrete you that you thought you were, doesn't exist, at
least not permanently ;-)

~~~
orasis
Part of the point of intensive retreats is to create suffering. In this way
you can examine it and potentially be free from it.

------
thinkling
> I’m shocked to hear how different some peoples’ experiences were from mine.

Yep. I've done the Goenka course twice and in talking with fellow students
afterwards, the common thread was that it was very hard for almost everyone,
but hard in completely different ways. Sometimes you can tell during the
course that other students are struggling, but by and large everyone else
seems to be doing fine and it's easy to think you're the only one who's barely
managing to hang in there.

------
gyardley
I've never understood why people treat meditation like they're cramming for
finals, trying to fit as much as possible into a brief period. That's not
going to help them incorporate it into their daily lives - if anything, it
trains them to think of meditation as something outside their ordinary
experience.

If you're at all interested in all the mental and physical health benefits of
mindfulness, you do _not_ have to go to this guy's extremes to get them. Try
getting started with a guided meditation like Headspace (www.headspace.com)
instead. Ten to twenty minutes a day is all you need, and it's great stuff.

~~~
orasis
Accessing certain states of mind requires _momentum_ above all else. Thus it
is very valuable to meditate intensely for sustained periods of time.
Otherwise, most people have little chance of breaking through.

~~~
stolio
If all you want is altered states of mind we have drugs for that :)

When asked why Zen Mind Beginner's Mind didn't include much on Satori, Shunryu
Suzuki admitted he'd never reached it[0]. He never broke through, he just sat
on his cushion every day and when he did he was just sitting on a cushion. No
fireworks, nothing special. At the same time he's also one of the most
respected and widely read Buddhist teachers the West has even known.

And, sadly this part is noteworthy, he's one of the few teachers in America
who never had any major scandals.

[0] -
[http://www.cuke.com/bibliography/ZMBM/preface.html](http://www.cuke.com/bibliography/ZMBM/preface.html)

------
rohunati
I've done the course a few times now, and I would say the hardest part is
integrating meditation into daily life. Goenka recommends meditating twice a
day, one hour each sitting. Sometimes this isn't possible, so I just try to
meditate however much I can.

I have heard from others that serving a ten day course (as opposed to sitting
a course, as the author here did) is more beneficial as you are able to talk
with fellow servers, help prepare food, and can even read a newspaper.
Although you can't go deeper into your mind, you learn to integrate meditation
into daily life better. I have yet to serve a course.

~~~
thinkling
I haven't served either, but my impression is that the servers are supposed to
limit themselves to functionally necessary talk only. So serving a course will
be less isolating, but I don't think you're supposed to discuss meditation, or
your feelings, or the weather.

Agreed that meditation in real life is hard to maintain. I find that I quickly
lose the ability to do the body-scanning technique effectively, and with that
I lose the motivation to put in the 2x 1 hour.

~~~
rohunati
Yup, I have trouble doing the body scanning technique also. I recently came
across Sam Harris' interview with Joseph Goldstein, who I believe himself
began with Vipassana. He has a guided meditation on youtube that I found very
helpful, though different from my Vipassana experiences.

------
s3nnyy
Being a practitioner myself I am happy about the hype about Buddhism. Yet,
people seem to overlook how manifold Buddhism is. Vipassana 10 day retreats
are for folks who can truly "benefit" from strict rules described in the post.
In my opinion, not many people do and luckily Vipassana is not the only way to
do Buddhist meditation.

In Vajrayana you can look in each others eyes, have sex and eat meat every
day. Also, the meditation rules are more up to you. It is for people who can
handle everyday distractions and "use them" to deepen experiences gathered in
meditation. For instance, if my boss is somehow behaving in an angry way, I
try to imagine a golden Buddha over his head which will change my attitude
towards him and as a result my outer reaction. This is how I apply that "all
beings are Buddhas whether they know it or not" \- an important meditation-
object both in Mahayana and Vajrayana. (This is quite strong compared to the
meditation object in Vipassana, which is "just" the breath.)

I do not want to say that Vajrayana is better than Vipassana, but that it is
better for me and better for a different kind of people.

(btw. meditation cushions should cost about 10$; 80$ is really a lot)

------
xtian
I know almost nothing about meditation or Buddhism, but I would think that
holding on to ideas and realizations so you can journal them is not just
cheating "a little bit." It's contrary to the whole purpose of the exercise.

~~~
orasis
Quite to the contrary. Keeping a meditation journal is an invaluable,
underutilized tool that allows students and teachers to see patterns that
arise during meditation sessions, diagnose progress, and recommend next steps.

If you want to see some people making some seriously fast progress, check out
practice logs on these sites:

[http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa...](http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/category/2658626)
[http://awakenetwork.org/forum/kfd-archive-
wetpaint](http://awakenetwork.org/forum/kfd-archive-wetpaint)

~~~
xtian
His feeling that his thoughts were too precious to let go of might be more
important to examine than whatever he wrote down.

~~~
stolio
Or maybe the thing to examine is he didn't trust the leaders of the retreat on
a fairly small thing, yet he did trust them to lead him through a very
dangerous amount of meditation in 10 days.

------
vilhelm_s
Another account of the same kind of retreat, from someone with a less positive
experience:
[http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/14/14292.html](http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/14/14292.html)

~~~
thinkling
My experience, and that of the people I've talked to afterwards, is that the
course is profoundly difficult for many people. It amazes me that in the two
courses I've completed, only a handful of people (~5-6 out of ~150-160 total)
quit early.

~~~
visarga
I've done it 10 times already and I find it easy as long as I am motivated to
surrender to the process and trust it. The more opposition I carry in me, the
more difficult it is. If this kind of motivation/absorption appears, it is
possible to meditate for all these hours without feeling tired or having much
pain.

------
codezero
Is there any selection bias at play for these kinds of retreats? Are there
certain kinds of people who are able to set aside 10 days in a row for
something like this?

I can't remember the last time I had 10 days I could free up.

~~~
orasis
Probably. Most serious yogis have something they're dealing with that they
want to "solve" and that drive to solve the problem is exactly what leads them
to success i.e. awakening.

------
0xCMP
I bought "Mindfulness in Plain English" and I've read it a few times. In the
couple times I've meditated for at most 20 minutes I got some amazing
experiences and insights that, I don't would be an exaggeration to say,
changed my life and how I viewed other people, things, and events in my life.

That said, even though I've always wanted to give my self a time and place
where I could really "break the barrier" to meditating more often, I'm not so
sure I'd do some thing like that after this...

------
mmanfrin
If I click anywhere on that page, the article disappears. Is this happening to
anyone else?

~~~
anilgulecha
Yes, and very annoying. I'm not even sure why this was added.

------
swatow
I'm not one to throw around the c-b word, but I really thought this article
would be about a prison in a Buddhist country that used meditation as a form
of rehabilitation. I was disappointed with the actual article.

~~~
stolio
I was like c-b...c-b....oh, c-b!

Here's a documentary maybe closer to what you were hoping for:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_DVac9kkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_DVac9kkI)

------
codezero
This is slightly off topic, but I am really amazed at how many in the HN
community have attended these retreats. How did you justify a 10 day split
from the world, or rather, how did you actually make it happen? This seems
really intense, and must have taken a lot of preparation, you must have been
really driven, I'm really interested in hearing more about what drives people
to sign up for such an extreme experience.

Also, I see a lot of these ask for donations and have no fixed price, how much
did HNers pay or donate for these retreats?

~~~
stolio
> I'm really interested in hearing more about what drives people to sign up
> for such an extreme experience.

Since nobody else is biting...people arrive to the Buddhist scene (and in
particular retreats and such) for any number of reasons. Most have some type
of thorn in their side they're trying to take care of. Some people who attend
are people in their twenties who are traveling and trying out new experiences,
some have an unexpected amount of free time after losing a job, getting
divorced, or just "life happening." Maybe the kids left for college. Maybe
they're deep into recovering from addiction and trying to understand
themselves and why the addiction happened in the first place. Some people have
a daily practice and they use their vacation time to go on retreat and become
better people. Some are there as a rite of passage, or for social status back
home where "doing a Vipassana" may be a badge of pride. Some people are
essentially homeless and move from one Dharma center to the next without any
real sense of direction.

At the places where you're allowed to talk to the other people you find it's
quite an eclectic mix, everything from overworked executives to homeless
musicians.

------
logfromblammo
A selection of meditation resources for hackers:

OpenEEG
([http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/](http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/))

OpenSensors
([http://sourceforge.net/p/opensensors/home/Home/](http://sourceforge.net/p/opensensors/home/Home/))

Brain Refactoring ([http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-
Const...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-
Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z))

~~~
cmnzs
I have a feeling that third link is not supposed to be code complete?

~~~
logfromblammo
No, I selected that title as one of the most common and popular self-
improvement resources available for software professionals. The implication is
that reading it would do more to improve your thinking than a week-long
meditation retreat.

------
somlor
I would highly recommend anyone interested in doing a 10-day vipassana
retreat, particularly their first, to look into Insight Meditation Society[0]
(outside Boston, MA) or Spirit Rock[1] (near Marin, CA). They're not free, but
you get access to extraordinary teachers and impeccable guidance.

    
    
      [0] http://www.dharma.org/meditation-retreats/retreat-center    
      [1] https://www.spiritrock.org/retreats

------
afro88
While I haven't done a meditation retreat or anything, I always thought
meditation was about mindfulness and essentially the absence of internal
thought/chatter. Where you use a chant or a focal point (candle, breath,
nostril sensations, sounds) to clear your mind and just "be". This guy's
experience sounds quite different to what I would have expected.

~~~
vpeters25
I think there are infinite ways to "meditate". Even coding "in the zone" could
qualify as a form of meditation helping you to reach what they call
enlightenment.

Focusing on something (chants, breath, nostrils, etc) seems to be a proven way
for them to help you into reaching a meditative state of mind. You can either
master these techniques or figure out others that work better for you.

I'm not an expert or anything so I could be totally wrong here. I'm just a
dude who took the Silva Method courses about 10 years ago.

------
pingec
I am highly intrigued by the reports of people who try mediation. My question
is, how does one give it a try?

Are these Vipassana retreats suitable for someone who has very little
knowledge about meditation and zero experience?

Are there other options? I would prefer to be guided by a person than read a
book, that option will just slip out of my schedule.

~~~
stolio
> Are these Vipassana retreats suitable for someone who has very little
> knowledge about meditation and zero experience?

If you're young, in great health and looking for a huge challenge: maybe. It's
a very extreme intro to meditation. Vipassana retreats break people.

> Are there other options? I would prefer to be guided by a person than read a
> book, that option will just slip out of my schedule.

Check for groups in your area, meetup.com is a good resource. So is google.
Look up the lineage, the teacher, etc. For school X look up "X controversy"
and there will almost always be something there, that's OK but there are some
weird traditions out there that you'll do well to avoid. Trust your intuition.

A lot of Buddhist meet-up groups will have a little note that says something
like "if you're a beginner, second Tuesday of every month is beginner's night
so show up a half an hour early and we'll square you away." Some have a "young
people's night". There's a lot of luck involved.

A usual evening should be a bit boring and might include one or two 20-minute
sitting meditation sessions, maybe some walking meditation, maybe
refreshments, some sort of a talk, some social time, and hopefully an
opportunity to ask questions.

------
erlkonig
The singing he mentions is strongly reminiscent of Invocations of Gompo, a
track from The Pillow Book (a film), which shockingly is trivially found on
YouTube at:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5oHTkH6hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5oHTkH6hw)

------
alexivanovs
It's very obvious that you needed this in life, and it's also very obvious
that you need to do it once more to really understand what the experience is
about. You tried to shame these fellows a little too much at your own expense,
and remember - it's a retreat, not a prison.

------
orasis
The problem with Goenka retreats is that they don't tell you about the Dark
Night stages. If you have a map for what you're facing, its much easier. -
[http://alohadharma.com/the-map/](http://alohadharma.com/the-map/)

------
clamprecht
The "no eye contact" part seems extremely hard - it's so automatic to look at
people's face and eyes (I know this isn't true of all cultures though).

------
webwanderings
As much as I liked reading this account, but still, am I the only one who
thinks that he made the visit, wrote this...only to advertise his website?

------
begriffs
Oh man...this retreat. I tried it, and it was somehow way more traumatizing
than it sounds. I prepared for the retreat with a month of hour-a-day practice
and felt really prepared. In reality nothing could have prepared me for this
claustrophobic silencefest.

Went to the center in rural Illinois around Thanksgiving. The air was cold
with a jagged wind. An occasional crow croaked ominously in the damp brown
grounds. Surrounded by old decommissioned farm machinery and a jet-black
manmade pond, I entered with unexpected foreboding, crossing the opening of a
rickety wrought-iron fence.

I signed some forms in what felt the relinquishing of my human rights, and the
leaders demanded to take away my car keys and cell phone. It was an odd
request since I was earnest about doing a good job at the retreat and going
deep into it. I felt immediately like they didn't trust me and wanted to
control me. I handed the phone over, and prepared for the gong which marks the
boundary into silence.

Silence. Sounds relaxing, doesn't it? Finally at peace accepting our inner
thoughts and rhythms. Wrong, this was no natural silence. it was an enforced
interpersonal death, with not so much as a meaningful glance allowed between
participants. Although we were all merely obeying orders I felt like the lack
of eye contact or human sympathy as an omnipresent hostility. I realized that
everyone who cared for me was miles away and could not possibly contact me,
nor me them. These cult leaders could do anything to us really...

Time to start the first evening meditation. The well-worn paths between
meditation hall, dorms, and cafeteria had become bare dirt and were at this
point a boggy muddy slough. We wore clogs in between buildings. They gave us
beat up metal water bottles. As a last sound of the human voice they softly
called us one by one to join the meditation hall.

We found a place on the mats and got quiet. Then the tape-recorded chanting
began. In this expectant calm the halting burbling throatwreck of a song was
unstoppably funny. I tried with all my might not to laugh. "Ohmmmm...
...Hngghgh!" Far from being a sacred experience it sounded, well, mentally
challenged.

Then back through the misty darkness, holding my bobbing flashlight and
watching its feeble beam dance over the impenetrable horror of the black pond.
I fumble removing the muddy clogs in the dorm entrance then off to my divided
cell. My contented roommate falls asleep nearly immediately and rips into my
ears with full chested snores. How am I going to sleep? What if this place
makes me actually go insane from the weird treatment and sleep deprivation?
They will be waking us soon, at 4am. I toss on the narrow cot.

Next day it's back to the main hall. Time is going impossibly slowly, I get
out of a two hour session and go back to my dorm. There is no living thing
outside. All plants are dead, there is no sound but the unrelenting wind. Once
I catch sight of a squirrel far away but it scurries leaving me alone.

In the distance, but entirely surrounding the retreat center, I hear actual
gunfire. Am I hallucinating in here? No, it's hunting season. There's no way I
can escape. They'll mistake me for a deer and shoot me if I step outside the
iron fence. All these paths just loop back, inward inward. At the ends of the
paths are signs telling you to turn back. Back to the chanting, back to the
hall. No talking, no looking, no feeling. They'll shoot you if you leave, you
know.

What am I thinking? These thoughts aren't right, but I feel brave, I have to
stand up to this. Who can I talk to? How much time is passing. (Steal a look
at the watch I smuggled in.) It's been only three minutes since I entered my
dorm? Ten days has become inconceivable, like a dark mountainous wave cresting
over my flimsy dinghy. And nobody knows how oppressive it is here. No one will
come help me.

I lined up a one-on-one talk with one of the teachers. You can't just go talk
to them, you have to write your case on a clipboard and await a Kafka-esque
review process which takes roughly one hundred years in dilated retreat time.
They accept my plea later that day and I enter the teacher's chamber.

She is literally dressed in a robe and seated on a raised platform. Am I
supposed to kneel before it? Is this really happening? I sit down and explain
that I'm getting unusually paranoid and that the way their rules are
formulated makes me uncomfortable. Is there a room where I can get a night's
sleep and can I have my belongings back -- just for peace of mind? She looks
at me beatifically and assures me that my mind simply doesn't want to
relinquish its sense of self. She explained that my question about getting my
stuff back is simply nonsense. (Notice she didn't refuse, she just brought out
the mind-games and discounted my feelings.)

I agreed to give the retreat more time. Maybe this panic is normal like the
teacher said. They said they would look into finding me another room. Fast
forward to that night. The roommate change is a no-go. Fuck it, I'm going to
break the rules and just talk to one of the volunteers running the course. I'm
not petitioning on that weird form. The volunteer was really evasive.

Darkness was falling. The mud, the pond, my little flashlight. Nobody can look
at me. Surrounded by guns. Where did the squirrel go? "No," I resolved, "I
have to get out of here, this is not right." I snuck into a staff area to find
a phone. Someone saw me and started questioning me. I lied and calmly told
them the teacher wanted me to make a call. Then I swiftly took the cordless
phone into the bathroom and locked myself in. Overjoyed I listened to the
sweet note of a dial tone. It was an audible electric road to freedom. I
dialed my family. Nobody answered the phone. Tried all the numbers I could
remember. Then it occurred to me that it was Thanksgiving night. They were all
away from the phone, living lives out there in "regular time," time that
actually passes. I left messages and went sadly back out to the cold dark
paths which only fold back onto themselves.

Word must have spread to the higher-ups that a student was cracking because
they did come talk to me. I told them I simply had to go. After some
deliberation they brought me my keys and went out with me to the parking lot.
Then things got really weird.

They pointed to a car that wasn't mine and told me to open it with my key. In
some disbelief I explained that my actual car was on the other side of the
lot. They insisted I was wrong! It was like a dream where I sought to weigh my
words and appease my captors with the subtle nuances of dreamthought.

"OK," I said affably, "I'll give this car a try. But just humor me and let me
give that other one across the lot a try too. If it's not my car then the key
won't open it, right? So there's really nothing to lose." Inwardly I was
contemplating the likelihood of violence and keeping a watch on their
movements in the deep gloom. A faraway crooked street lamp they had installed
on the property glinted off the windshield.

The impostor car did not open. They started explaining it away, but I was
already off to my actual car. Opened it right up, threw my blankets and stuff
inside. It was actually my friend's car (we went to the retreat together) so I
couldn't just drive away with it. Another camp volunteer joined us and offered
to drive me to the city.

On the fairly long drive I had a mixture of emotions. At some level I knew I
wasn't right in the head. I was grateful to this lady for rescuing me and
embarrassed that I couldn't "handle it" like the other students. But most of
all I was grateful to leave and never -- ever -- come back. I can't explain
the overwhelming panic of this retreat, but somehow I knew I just wanted to be
living a joyful life with human speech and companions and time and freedom.

~~~
codezero
Sorry you had to go through that. I wonder if anyone here can help me
understand why the evasion and control is a necessary part of this process for
meditation? Why does it have to feel so weird to be effective? Is it even
effective? It seems like a cult like setting is a terrible platform through
which to bring people calm and peace of mind.

~~~
orasis
A totally normal part of insight meditation is to cycle through states of mind
that have _increased_ suffering. They're so common, that experienced
meditators can pinpoint when they are entering into "Fear", "Misery",
"Disgust", "Dissolution", "Desire for Deliverence", etc.

It is these states of mind, where, if you can hold strong to the meditation
instructions and objectify everything in the field of experience, the
possibility for liberation from suffering arises. When you realize that these
experiences are just experiences arising and vanishing on their own, not
things happening to 'I', there is an immediate relief from the suffering of
those experiences.

From [http://alohadharma.com/2011/06/12/the-dark-
night/](http://alohadharma.com/2011/06/12/the-dark-night/)

"As the meditator moves along the path and has already experienced their
attention syncing up with the arising of phenomena, then the peak of
phenomena, it then moves to the passing away of phenomena. I call the next
section of the path the “Dark Night” and in the commentaries it is also called
“the knowledge of suffering.”

As you can gather from the name, this is a pretty difficult part of the path.
It is so difficult in fact, this is where most meditators get into trouble,
and can become stuck. The sheer discomfort and negativity of this part of the
path may lead the meditator to conclude that they are no longer “doing it
right,” and they may decide to just quit meditating. After all, why keep at it
when it pretty much hurts to meditate? In the Zen tradition, this part of the
path is called the “rolling up of the mat” for just that reason – the
meditator just wants to throw in the towel and stop.

This actually makes a lot of sense if you do not know the map. The memory of
the rapturous A&P is still fresh in the mind of a meditator who initially
steps into the Dark Night. Compared to the joy and wonder that was only just
experienced, the Dark Night is a horrible let down. But it is important to
know that the difficulty being experienced is a sign of progress – it means
that you are doing the meditation correctly."

So, the reason for the aloofness of the staff is partially because these
phases are totally expected and normal, and unless you are having a true
psychotic episode, the whole point is to push through.

~~~
stolio
Intentionally causing yourself suffering is an inherently violent activity and
shouldn't be taken lightly (if it should ever be done at all.) Even without
going through a psychotic episode you could still be doing internal damage.

It's like lifting weights, with time you learn the difference between the pain
that comes with growth and the pain that comes with injury. If you haven't
lifted for long enough to know the difference then you shouldn't be "maxing
out" because the risk of injury is so high.

By the same token if you haven't been meditating long enough to know the
difference between when you're being a cry-baby and when you really need to go
take care of yourself you might not want to go to an extreme meditation
retreat.

------
cognivore
Uh, what? Why in the heck is this on Hacker News?

Maybe if there was some angle on how this could make you a better developer,
but no, I don't see that.

~~~
nether
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than
> hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer
> might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

There was at least one Googler at my last retreat.

------
fchollet
I'm noticing that whenever something similar comes up, it turns out invariably
that it revolves around a lionized "founder" figure whose teachings are the
one path to follow.

I would also assume (pure speculation here) that this retreat is a for-profit
operation.

This is not cynicism on my part, it is the mere observation of a pattern.

~~~
curo
No. In fact, it's 100% free. They never ask you for a donation. And you're not
even allowed to donate unless you stay the full ten days. It's run completely
by volunteers and old students, who walk away from their jobs for a week and
half in order to cook you free meals.

I'm also weary of personality cults. Goenka did everything (he passed a year
ago) to make sure you don't worship him. He claims throughout his lectures
that he is not a sage, but instead a mere "householder." He doesn't say he's
enlightened. He tells his story of having migraines, learning from another
Vipassana leader the technique, and then dedicating his life to teaching
others.

tldr; don't knock it till you try it.

But I do agree with the author that there all elements of "faith," whereas he
claims you don't need faith. There are concepts in his lectures that imply
belief in reincarnation for instance. That being said, 95% of the course is
just about developing concentration by focusing on your breathe, and awareness
& equanimity by focusing on sensations of the body.

~~~
visarga
> But I do agree with the author that there all elements of "faith," whereas
> he claims you don't need faith.

Maybe not as much faith as in resurrection, angels and miracles. Reincarnation
is not necessary as a concept to do awareness practice.

