Retreat

written by YeShey on Thursday, October 29th, 2009

As wonderful as it is to meditate every day, you will find that it is very helpful to do meditation retreats now and again. They help you to strengthen and deepen your practice by being completely immersed in meditation and only meditation all day long.

There are all sorts of mediation retreats for the general practitioner ranging from 1-90 days and everything between.

I just completed a 12 day vipassana retreat in Washington State.  It is pretty full on with an 11 hour per day meditation schedule beginning at 4:30 am.  There are no meals after 12 noon, no talking, no books, no writing, no reading, no yoga and only 3 breaks throughout the day.

Just you and your mind.

I affectionately call it Buddha Bootcamp.

I have done quite a few retreats in the last 10 years and I still find each one to be very challenging but worth every second of it.  Every time is a different experience and every time I am able to learn something new about myself and feel like I have made some progress on the path of becoming more peaceful, more balanced and more happy.

There is no need to compare with others, we all start from a different place, have all had different experiences and see the world in a different way. But the truth is the same for all.  We all have these in-exhaustible qualities of love and compassion that we can better access if we are quiet long enough to let them rise to the surface.

Normally we tend to run away from things that we thing will make us suffer and toward things that we think will make us happy.  But if we look closely and with a quiet and non-judgmental mind, we can see that most of these things we do only hurt us.

True and lasting Happiness comes from inside.

The more I meditate, the more I experience happiness and equanimity.  We can read about it and we can analyze it all we like, but until we actually experience it, we are only playing an intellectual game.

I wish you all success on your journey.  Mediation takes work but I can tell you that it is worth it.  May all be happy.

YeShey