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Aggregate
Stranger
Registered: 08/03/20
Posts: 18
Last seen: 1 year, 5 months
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Meditation Retreat
#26897733 - 08/24/20 07:30 PM (3 years, 5 months ago) |
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I’d like to go to a meditation retreat center for a week but every center that I’ve looked into is closed due to Covid. Is something like this possible nowadays? I’d be interested in anything that has some structure and will allow me to be away from the world for a bit.
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saintdextro
Entheogen psychonaut



Registered: 01/03/15
Posts: 584
Last seen: 7 months, 28 days
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Re: Meditation Retreat [Re: Aggregate]
#26897778 - 08/24/20 08:07 PM (3 years, 5 months ago) |
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That sounds nice and I hear of great success's with Buddhist retreats, including people attaining jhanas I believe, but it must be torture for some, meditating for 10 hours a day, one meal a day, noble silence, once I get comfertible mentally and this covid someday clears up, I'm so going!
How practiced in your meditation are you? If you don't mind me asking, to be interested in a retreat you surely found the joy/peace spot I imagine.🤗 A pleasant space indeed, proud and happy to all who get there!
-------------------- "He who finds peace and joy And radiance within himself That man becomes one with God And vanishes into God's bliss." -Bhagavad Gita, 5.24 One 21 - Building Better Bombs One 21 - Pacified One 21 - Two Sides Is Fine "Respectability is a cloak for the hypocrite" - Jiddu Krishnamurti
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TheEschatologist
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Registered: 02/22/18
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Re: Meditation Retreat *DELETED* [Re: saintdextro]
#26899944 - 08/26/20 05:47 AM (3 years, 5 months ago) |
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Post deleted by TheEschatologist
Reason for deletion: .
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi



Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 26,731
Loc: The Primordial Mind
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Might be tough finding one with state regulations being what they are in some places due to the Covid-19 pandemic & reaction/response to it. I recommend trying it though. Best intro for western raised individuals I’d say go with a Rinzai or a Soto Zen Mahāyāna temple , or, Thai / East Asian Forest Tradition styled Theravadan temple. Go during their own tradition’s special calendar “normal” session for your first time tho. Starting by going to a regular evening or morning weekend sat or sun formal meditation is the way to start. You can find out about more later when you know what’s going on after cultivating the foundations of mindfulness and clearing yourself up a bit by following precepts.
Meditation without morality and without pleasure will only take you so far. Without good morality, meditation goes bad bc natural pleasure will not come easy after establishing awareness of the full body of the breath and it will be much harder to gently calm oneself when your psychic life’s karma is always playing out some drama or tragedy or hilarity that interferes and interrupts concentration on the breath and the present moment only. Without that calmness and focused attention andpleasure (joy into rapture) factor u won’t attain absorption. After you concentrate to a higher degree the pleasure will be dropped but not before. It always accompanies the 1st jhana. Contemplation of the meditation experience comes after The mediation experience - for during you are just letting go after establishing the grounds & condition for jhana. Once you see without the use of your eyes a Nimitta , ie - see pure mind only - you can go into its center and be absorbed/absorb it and have abnormal / supra-mundane consciousness. Like really small sliver of reality being seen but from extremely up close and personal and bright, direct, and clear. The body is long gone by then and it’s a pure hallucinogenic experience exactly like with mushrooms but with less delusion.
Those are useful experiences. The insight comes from seeing all of those differing parts of what you believe were necessary for an existing self or world come and go - things you thought were permanent disappear - and thus you learn something deep and beyond the purview of just the intellect & ego. After reflecting on these types of tranquil deep concentration blissful experiences of absorption - deep penetrating insight as to the nature of phenomena is at hand. It’s easy after such an experience bc it’s extremely obvious after being in such a state for oneself.
Anapanasati is the beginning and end of all mediation for the most part. Read of the suttra on it and learn it and practice well and good before going on an intensive retreat though. If you jump into something like osesshin season without prior training and practice you will give up or go crazy or interrupt everyone annoyingly by accident.
Vipassina & Samatha are the same and accomplished by anapanasati - the Buddha’s own words. So learn very well and train in and study the suttra and get it explained where it needs explaining and then incorporatethe practice of the Jhanas and reach them by letting go in practice of anapanasati deeply enough to at least become an accomplished sottopana- stream winner/entrant. That you can do I just this life. In just this year - if you really give it your all / best.
-------------------- Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps
Edited by The Blind Ass (08/26/20 08:39 AM)
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 20 days
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Re: Meditation Retreat [Re: Aggregate]
#26905956 - 08/29/20 12:31 PM (3 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Aggregate said: I’d like to go to a meditation retreat center for a week but every center that I’ve looked into is closed due to Covid. Is something like this possible nowadays? I’d be interested in anything that has some structure and will allow me to be away from the world for a bit.
Make your own retreat. Ram Dass once spoke to the possible use of solitary confinement in prison for this. While he said he'd never subject someone to that as punishment if he was in charge of such things, BUT if that was the existential given, the "thrown-ness" of one's life, then one could transform it by using such punishment positively instead of experiencing it as pure negativity. COVID-19 has kept the intelligent/cautious people prisoner of sorts. Admittedly, this social restriction is particularly difficult for some personality types more so than others.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Shroomboofer
Stranger


Registered: 06/05/20
Posts: 100
Last seen: 6 months, 17 days
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I second the do it yourself at home option if you can. Ajahn Sona did an online virtual retreat you could use to supplement Dhamma talks https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCXN1GlAupG0D2tTYFGurLptbA4pTB4k6
There's also a lot of talks at the Bhavana society's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BhavanasocietyOrg/playlists
Also, this guy blow's me away for pretty much every Dhamma talk: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFuc6xw6Pm1RcUFvLTz0IBQ
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