Longer Meditation Retreats

[Note: the following is from an email sent by Jackie Miller, the Budokan's breathwork facilitator, to participants in her sessions who have inquired about longer meditation retreats. If you are interested in such an experience, both Jackie and the instructors of Huron Valley Aikikai can offer guidance and resources in various traditions, and you can always join us for meditation to get yourself prepared!]

Will you be on vacation?

LOL, meditation retreats are actually hard work! But the fruits are worth it. I will get a few days of vacation with friends before [my next] retreat, though.

Sitting around doing nothing doesn't sound like work. What's so hard about it?

Like in the deep one-on-one style of breathwork I facilitate, prolonged periods of meditation tend to make space for things to come to the surface for healing--whether in emotions, the psyche, or the body. In that sense, meditation retreats serve both healing and spiritual cultivation. Even the spiritual cultivation can be hard work, since Buddhist practice is about uprooting craving, aversion, and delusion. Along the way, it can feel like all those things become more acute. Seeing them more clearly enables us to recognize the suffering in them, and gain more freedom. But sometimes it can be really tough going along the way.

Do you need to be Buddhist to benefit from Buddhist meditation retreats?

No, Buddhist retreats and most Buddhist practices in general do not require you to be Buddhist. Sometimes there is a formal taking refuge in the Buddha, his teachings, and his awakened disciples at the start of a retreat, but you can usually opt out, or reinterpret it for yourself as simply taking refuge in wisdom and truth in general. However, you do need to abide by retreat guidelines which include observing the basic Buddhist precepts: no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or intoxicants. These precepts are protective of both other participants and your own practice. Some retreats have prerequisites such as prior meditation or retreat experience, and/or currently stable mental health.

Are meditation retreats expensive?

Long retreats can be expensive. That's partly why I didn't end up learning meditation or Buddhist teachings until my early 30s, when a friend tipped me off to the retreats in the S.N. Goenka tradition. These retreats are offered freely, on a donation basis. You only need to get yourself there. I'm deeply grateful to the Goenka tradition for opening that door for me. Goenka retreats are 9 to 10 days of silent "boot camp" style meditation, so they're not for everyone, but it worked for me. The Triple Crane Center in Chelsea is now hosting some Goenka retreats.

Most people prefer to begin with shorter retreats (one day, weekend, etc.) and work up to longer ones. Local Buddhist groups offer mini-retreats of that length.

Why go on silent meditation retreats?

Paired with a regular spiritual practice, meditation retreats can be valuable for a number of reasons. The retreat space is often called a "container" because the meditators' attention, focus, and actions are contained to that space and time. There are few distractions and few opportunities to break the Buddhist precepts, which supports a wholesome mind state.

That said, the first thing that happens for many of us is a kind of mental detox. It's the GIGO principle: garbage in, garbage out. Many of us are subjected to a fire hose of stimulation, information, and entertainment, especially as our ears and eyes have become a commodity in late-stage capitalism. When we have some space without massive stimulation coming in, the mind often regurgitates a barrage of images and thoughts--garbage out. It's like eating junk food non-stop for an hour, then pausing--and the body takes the opportunity to purge. After that purge in the first day or two, the mind can really settle down.

The silence and focus of retreats are conducive to all five of the "spiritual faculties" we aim to develop in Buddhist practice: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. The quiet and calm, with long stretches of time to meditate, supports concentration, or collectedness of mind, as opposed to a scattered mind state. The lack of obligations means we can spend our mental and physical energy on practice. Even between periods of sitting and walking meditation, we can strive to practice mindfulness as continuously as possible. Mindfulness is remembering to notice what's really going on for us moment to moment.

All those together optimize opportunities for flashes of wisdom and faith to arise. These are insights on a level different from ordinary knowledge that comes to us through our senses or through reasoning. Faith and wisdom arise spontaneously, under conditions supportive of waking ourselves up out of delusion. What is delusion? It's the illusion that we each have a separate and eternal self-hood. This illusion keeps us from seeing the deeper nature of reality, and keeps us in a cycle of disappointment, loss, and suffering. Waking up out of that delusion brings profound freedom, release, and relief.

Isn't sitting in peaceful meditation kind of selfish?

In this time with so much turmoil locally and globally, it could be argued that secluding oneself and doing nothing but meditating is a selfish and unhelpful activity. I definitely hear that argument, and have been there myself. When I first moved to a monastery, I was leaving behind the community organizing I was doing at the time, and felt conflicted.

There are a few counters to that perspective, though, depending on your worldview. If you believe that our emotional health influences those around us, then making the effort to improve our emotional and psychological health is beneficial to others.This is also one of the reasons we do breathwork! And if you believe that our subtle energy is connected with the energy of all beings globally, then the Buddhist meditation practices of emanating love and compassion to all beings has a directly positive effect. There's even some research supporting this view. Finally, if you believe that many of the ills in the world arise from greed, hatred, and delusion in the first place, then learning to pull out those roots benefits not only ourselves, but also others. In my own life, I strive to make time and effort for all three domains: emotional healing, social and political engagement, and spiritual cultivation. It's a challenge, and one that has brought me so many gifts. I wish these gifts for each of you.