24 Aug 2022
I attended my second meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society this month. IMS retreats are silent, meaning one doesn’t speak or otherwise communicate for the duration of the retreat. This might seem extreme to modern digital sensibilities, but the idea is that this is the best way to quiet one’s mind for the actual purpose of the retreat.
Which in this case was an introduction to the meditative techniques and practice devised by Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese Buddhist monk who was instrumental in bringing vipassana (insight) meditation to the West. I’ve dabbled in meditation for quite a while but only began meditating daily in early 2020. This retreat was a chance to spend an intense 10 days at it, using the Mahasi method as guidance in deepening my practice. I also did a more general 5-day retreat at IMS last year.
We really don’t speak for the length of the retreat, other than briefly in 3 short meetings with teachers. We’re also expected to not journal or write, not read anything of substance, and in general live as outlined in this FAQ. These “rules” aren’t policed or enforced, it’s just assumed that if you’re there for the stated purpose of the retreat, you’ll follow them, and most people seem to. I did cheat a bit by each night writing a half-page of things I wanted to remember, but I was otherwise compliant. Assuming your family, friends, and employer are on board, this small world is very well-suited to the broad goals of the retreat.
It was rather shocking how well and quickly I adapted to this strange life, both this time and last year, in particular to the phone prohibition. I shut off my phone as I parked my car and turned it on again when I drove away, and I didn’t really think of it as it sat in my suitcase. This is clearly not easy for some, so there is a solemn yet quietly hilarious “cell phone ceremony” where retreatants are encouraged to seal their phone in an envelope and deposit it in a communal box for the duration of the retreat. I would guess that, of the roughly 90 of us, half participated. I can’t say if any of the others were sneaking screen time alone in their rooms at night.
The kitchen at IMS makes three meals a day of tasty if unexceptional vegetarian food, served cafeteria-style. While last year COVID rules meant that we had to take food from the cafeteria to eat alone our rooms, this time (after testing negative twice in the first few days) we were allowed to unmask and eat communally in the dining room or outdoors. There’s an initial shock in sitting down “with” others whom you don’t even acknowledge, but after a few meals it becomes normal. I didn’t mind avoiding small talk, which would have interfered with mindful eating anyway.
Wake-up bells were at 5am, and meditation sessions take up most of each day, beginning with the 5:45am sit and ending at 9:45pm. We alternate between 45-minute sitting and walking meditation periods. Nothing is truly mandatory, but there are some sessions (particularly a few sits that include instruction) that are particularly encouraged and again, what are you going to do if you’re not there to meditate? As for me, I stole a bit of time from walking meditation each day to shower and go for a run (I guess a type of running meditation!) I also did some walking on IMS’ beautiful old-growth wooded trails. Each evening at 7:30pm there is a dharma talk, which is essentially a lecture on some aspect of practice or philosophy. We also used the 4pm sit as an unscheduled metta practice. Metta isn’t technically part of the Mahasi method, but I think our teachers and students felt it was important enough to devote some time to each day. We also had a 45-minute “mindful movement” (think particularly chill yoga) session most days.
It’s quite amazing how tiring this all is, I was asleep in minutes each night.
So that’s how we live on retreat. Perhaps a more interesting topic is the meditation itself. The basics of the Mahasi method are very simple, and easy to outline:
The process of noting phenomena mindfully can be challenging, particularly given the emphasis placed on the high degree of detail available in almost anything, whether experienced physically (via the senses) or mentally (as thought or “mental object”). Whether and how deeply to “dig in” to things that arise really seems to be the thing that separates beginning from experienced meditators. It might be appropriate enough to note the pain in your back with “aching, aching” and then let it go, which upon practice actually relieves a lot of pain, amazingly enough. Yet the feeling of regret that arises at how you treated someone once, bursting unbidden into your thoughts, might actually be more persistent than that back pain. Similarly, and more pleasantly, the sudden glow of love for your partner or child may arise and persist too. This flow of ideas, feelings, and sense data is continual and only expands and deepens as you pay attention to it. As one of my teachers said “if you want to understand your mind, you must observe it.” That’s really what this method teaches you to do: Observe the details of how your mind works in an attempt to understand them better.
You may well be thinking “so, you spent 10 days doing THAT?” and I wouldn’t be surprised. There isn’t a lot of meat in these simple instructions, and no obvious route to the “liberation” suggested in the retreat listing. I don’t allege attaining liberation, or even feeling a strong hint of it. What I will tell you is that a lot went through my mind in my attempts to pursue the method as best I could, from doubt in my commitment to the effort, to doubting my faith in my teachers, to questioning the soundness of the method, to asking myself if I was part of a cult or simply not capable…to a return to the rising and falling, the inevitable mental and physical distractions, and an occasional glimpse of what seemed like sense, or order, or peace. If this sounds boring to you, I assure you it’s not. There is a lot going on in the repetitive effort necessary to bring your concentration to bear, even on such a simple target.
As I bring this method home with me and make it, at least for a time, my daily practice, I’m seeing the real value of the retreat experience. In the past, I have mostly used various guided meditation recordings and apps to help me “know what to do” as I sat, and some of these have been great. Now I’m working to practice without these, relying on my retreat experience and learning, and some reading I’ve done to supplement that. Still, solo meditation in the context of daily life is a very different experience from being in a room with 90 others doing the same thing, without daily distractions, but it’s moving in an interesting direction so far.
Nothing I write here should convince you to sign up for a retreat of any length, and I understand how vague and silly sounding the above might be to the uninitiated or skeptical. I’m only attempting to provide a sense of what I did, why I did it, what it was like for me, and how I feel about it now. Much better writers than I have done better jobs of outlining the whys and hows of meditation in general and the Mahasi method in particular, so I’ll leave you with a few of those here:
So there you have my account of my ten days in Barre this month. I am no Buddhist scholar, or even really a Buddhist, rather just a guy who’s trying to inquire into his mind a bit, begin to understand how it works, and perhaps find some freedom in that. My statements above are likely wrong in many ways, and they certainly don’t convey the depth of my experience fully. Maybe that’s something I can address later.