My first semester back in school is about to end, and right now I can't think of a better thing to spend my break doing than
going on retreat. The plan is 17 (maybe 19) days, in mid april.
This will be at home, almost all indoors.


This thread seemed like a good place to start. Daniel basically details a bunch of things that are possible on retreat, and I can't see a reason not to give this a shot.


Questions:
(edit: this is better phrased in my first reply to the thread)
1. My first thought is that this will be difficult. All of my retreats (from .5-10+ days, total not much more than 2 months) have had difficult periods. There is always that "retreat hump" to get over, where I struggle with myriad emotions, mostly boredom, restlessness, and thought loops about how I am wasting this precious retreat time. I will alternate between periods of over-the-top effort, despair at noticing my mind is not doing what I want, accepting it, and powering with the effort again until it becomes easier and easier. At some point I notice I've let go of the effort and am consistently doing the thing I wanted to do (noting or whatever) without trying, and will proceed to examine that and see where it goes. This happens without fail at the beginning of every retreat I have been on, and the whole process usually takes at least a day.

I was wondering if anyone could comment on this. I wish to spend less time floundering, and more time doing what I planned to do, but wonder if perhaps this is simply a part of the adjustment period. Noting has served me well in an insight context, as there is literally nothing else to do when you fail. Just note the failure, note note note note note. I'm unsure what to do on a concentration retreat, as I'm supposed to be staying with an object, and there will be non-negligible periods where my mind (and/or body) is simply unable to do that.

I'm thinking of something practical and logistics/planning related; should take more frequent breaks when needed? What to do during those breaks (insight?)?

2. Candles/Kasina, neither of which I have used before. I plan on getting a bunch of small ones at the supermarket and making a rough estimate for my total sit time for the amount. Is there a post anywhere about proper brightness, height, distance from seat, etc? I was just going to sit on the floor, have a stool a little below eye level, and have the candle up on that.

Perhaps some of you on here who have helped run retreats can offer some guidance.

3. Reading:
MCTB recommends "A Path of Serenity and Insight" by Henepola Gunaratana. Reading a comment on the amazon page, this was apparently his doctoral dissertation, and freely available online (here. Is this the same thing or should I pick up the book?
If anyone has read either or both, comments on what to look for would be appreciated.

Also, Ian And's stickied concentration thread seems like a goldmine.

Thanks!
Daniel

Hi Daniel -


Do you have the opportunity to increase the frequency and/or duration and focus-quality (intention) of your sits now?

[indent]"Even the first absorption may be sufficient, in terms of concentrative ability, to enable the breakthrough to full awakening" (page 73, Anālayo, Satipatthāna Sutta)[/indent]

This is what helps me into concentration:
[indent] - simple yoga: four basic stretches (forward bend (uttanasana), backwards bend (such as a nice, strong cobra pose), and two torso twists (one in each direction); I stay in the asanas two or more minutes each, breathing 5 seconds for inhalation, and 5 seconds for exhalation
[indent]- this engages the rest-and-digest parasympathic nervous systems (thus relaxing blood vessels and muscles) as well as
- developing the "in-breathing consciousness" and the "out-breathing consciousness" (page 226, Mogok Sayadaw U Vimala, Modern Buddhist Masters[/indent] - I also place my hands together in my lap or classically in an oval below the belly button. For me, the hands' together has often improved first jhana (something about the boundarylessness of energy that occurs in lightly joined hands early on)
[/indent]

Good luck.

do you have a consistent daily practice already established and how are you paying attention while not sitting? the reason i'm wondering is that it seems like perhaps you are viewing retreat time as somehow a bigger deal than your normal practice/daily life or having certain expectations of what it might be like. i sometimes get the impression when people discuss retreats they have an idea that it's a time for them to really buckle down and be diligent about practice. so if that's the case for you, i would ask, why is your practice not *always* diligent, regardless of being on retreat or not? over time i have found one of the most useful things for practice has simply been consistency. i say this without ever having done a retreat and still making quite stellar progress. (btw.. not suggesting you ditch the retreat idea, if the opportunity is there and you want to do it, go for it).

Katy:
Light physical activity and stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system seems like a really, really good idea I hadn't considered before. I do so much mental work in daily life, I know that on a basic physical level stuff like this helps so much. It makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

Steph:
I see what you're getting at and think you're right in that I'm probably putting 'retreat time' in a bit of a special box.
On consistency, my practice is supposed to be daily, but too often other things cut in, and as I mention in my practice thread (insight) I've been doing a poor job of protecting that time. The last few days and posts like this serve to remind me how important this is. I'll try harder. Thank you for pointing that out. It was sorely needed.

Both: On quality/duration:
Once I get started, stuff typically takes off until I'm pulled away from it, or pain and stiffness start to set in (these days, usually well past 90mins). Both on and off retreat, the first 4 hours (with breaks) in any 24 hour period tend to be handled well, regardless of whatever the meditation brings on. It's after that, when pain is steadily increasing, that I struggle.

I could describe it as a feeling of persistent restlessness (so not necessarily pain, in fact the mental component is much harder to sit with) you get after a long sit, where most people decide to take breaks. Like no matter what you do, the mind just wants to get up(!!!). Have you experienced the same thing during longer sits?

Let's use something simple like knee pain. If this happens to me at around the 2 hour mark, and I'm taking breaks every hour, I'll find that on subsequent sits, the pain comes back sooner, as it should. A 5-15 minute break is not enough to 'reset' things, so after 4+ hours, I'll just have to face the restlessness or pain or whatever. It's the same way with the mental side of it.

I've heard restricting movement is a form of torture, so it occurred to me that the mind/body simply does this when forced to be still for a time. But it's nothing strong concentration or a couple hours of diligent noting can't take care of (they're tough hours though). I know of course that if I stick to the schedule, tomorrow it will be slightly better (perhaps if only because my joints have had a chance to sleep on 12 hours of sitting), and 3-4 days later it'll be much easier. As this is a fairly consistent, often physical thing, I take this process as part of getting momentum on a retreat, and try to enjoy it.

I hope it's clear what I'm asking about is this dynamic of mental or physical discomfort 'building up' over many hours and multiple breaks, not a general struggle to practice to the best of my ability. I'll admit I did a poor job of phrasing the question in the original post. Physical activity sounds like it'll help though.

Steph, what was/is your daily practice like, for how long, and what kind of progress did you make?
Was there anything about your daily life or the way your arranged your meditation time around other obligations you felt were conducive to consistent quality practice?

Regarding physical pain: Are you sitting in the same position the whole time? If you're going to do a multiple hour practice in a day... How about sitting for an hour and then walking meditation for an hour? Then going back and sitting again for an hour, but perhaps for that session in a chair instead of the floor, then walking meditation an hour. Repeat or adjust as necessary to figure out what works best. This is not some sort of Olympics where you have to prove to yourself that you can sit in lotus all day and night, eh? In fact, doing so will likely harm your joints and back over time.

Regarding mental restlessness: Pay attention to it and glide right past it. Restlessness is one of those things that can come up repeatedly even if you're practicing really well, so learning to be dispassionate towards this specific tendency as soon as possible will be very beneficial. When you learn more thoroughly what restlessness is made up of, how and why it happens... when it does happen to arise, it's more or less like... There it is, ok moving on...



When I was doing vipassana I did about an hour a day sometimes two, on the weekends longer like four. Pretty early on I also established the habit of paying close attention in daily life. Highly recommended to do this, as the mind will eventually get trained to actively maintain awareness & alertness all the time, everywhere you go, whatever you do. I'm at a point now where attentiveness is so hard-wired that it's automatic. Fun stuff. I didn't re-arrange much about my life, maybe now go out to socialize a bit less, for no real reason other than sometimes I don't find it as compelling as I used to and can equally enjoy chilling out at home. I have found that time spent near the ocean (or any body of water really) and hanging out in quiet areas with lots of trees & plants is wonderfully conducive. I stopped actively practicing vipassana, as in sitting down to meditate, about a year and a half ago. Switched to another method called Actualism because it seemed more closely aligned with stuff I started getting interested in at that point (and remain interested in).