Dharma Treasure Community

Okay, maybe I can say something more useful about retreat practice. Forget about knocking off a given number of stages at any given retreat, as your expectations and goal setting would be your ruination.

My suggestion for anyone is to do a solid month of twice a day sits before going to your first retreat. If you are unable to do that, then you need to seriously question your level of motivation, before you commit your time and money. Use that practice time to locate your INTEREST in meditation, to find and embrace what about the experience makes you want to do it. Get the taste before you go for the whole meal. Don’t go and be a “can’t hack it”. No more fooling around. You need to hit the ground running, as it helps others to be more patient with you. Going to a meditation retreat is to encounter an earnest bunch of people as rarely happens any other time in your life. Friendly and helpful to a fault, but always earnest. And all of them know a non-hacker when they see one.

The reaction of most first time retreatants is that ‘it is the hardest thing they have ever done’. Most first timers never go to another retreat (although most say they will), for a huge variety of reasons. You need to develop a reason and motivation to hang in there. Solid footing at Stage 3 would be a great place to begin a retreat, and the TMI manual is absolutely the best way to start.

I think the optimum retreat length is 10 days to 2 weeks, especially for your first few retreats. Really long retreat commitments risk freaking over unexpected obstacles or loss of interest, even for experienced meditators, and you can end up fighting yourself over wanting to quit the long retreat early. You will not be accepted for a long retreat until you have done several shorter ones. Less than 10 days retreat is a waste.

Hope you find this constructive. I stopped doing retreats 15 years ago, and became a retired hermit. I did 20 retreats, most at 10 days, longest was six weeks. Good Luck.

I’ve been to quite a few retreats with Culadasa at this point. My experience is that real progress occurs between retreats, but retreats really help to give glimpses past where I’ve gotten so far, and they also help me to _see_ the progress I have made since the last retreat. Your mind is never more clear than in the middle of a retreat, so you can see a lot of cause and effect relationships that weren’t obvious when they were happening. I generally leave a retreat with an idea of what to do on the way to the next retreat, and a feeling of excitement about doing it.

I have heard other students say that they went up a stage or two during a retreat, and I am certainly not saying that’s not possible, but ultimately you can do what you can do, and whether you are in retreat or out, doing a steady practice is effective. If you want to put some oomph behind your progress, one thing you can do once you’re not suffering from mind wandering, forgetting and gross dullness all the time is to do long sits, more than 45 minutes. Andrea and I have been doing those recently, and it’s been pretty interesting.

Hello Jevan,
Basically that you should be careful during your daily life not to mess up your hard earned results on the Mat…if you watch a lot of tv,violent movies..or more generally lead a stressful life…you will lose part of your meditation training…and of course the more you train the more you lose…like a big leaky bucket..(size of the bucket equals importance of training).it’s on Page 4-5 of the book.

I’m not sur I’m following you here Ivan.What do you mean by throwing the bucket ? As I see it this is one of the major issue facing all meditators..finding a way to live in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma cultivated in Meditation Practice (and in daily life of course). Culadasa gives us a strong warning at the end of the book…even for a practitioner having reached Samatha (Stage 10), this is still a “conditioned state” meaning Life issues can still negatively affect him and the quality of his practice.Unless of course he had reached Awakening….