***Doing a Vipassana Meditation Retreat

I've done more than twenty Vipassana meditation retreats. My first one was in 1983. I had been meditating for more than twelve years at that point, but I had never taken ten days to do nothing except meditate for fourteen hours a day.

Americans interested in practicing Vipassana are likely to encounter two primary lineages for this kind of meditation. One of them was brought from Burma by Mahasi Sayadaw and is taught at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Califo
ia and at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. You will often hear this referred to mindfulness meditation. Retreats include sitting meditation with an emphasis on noticing whatever comes to your attention and labeling it as something like "sound," "sensation," or "thinking." These retreats usually also include walking meditation with a focus on paying close attention to the way you raise, move and place your steps.

One of my favorite stories about doing an IMS retreat occurred after our teacher, Ruth Denison, had been telling us about doing one activity at a time. When she said this, everyone nodded in agreement, convinced that giving our full attention to only one thing must be the best way to conduct our lives.

Not long afterwards, one of the students noticed Ruth was reading a newspaper while eating her breakfast oatmeal. Visibly annoyed, the student went to the teacher and confronted her.

“Why are you eating oatmeal and reading a newspaper when you have taught us that we should only do one thing at a time?”

Appearing a little confused, Ruth looked up and said, "Yes. Right now I am doing only one thing. I am reading my newspaper while I eat my oatmeal."

The other lineage of Vipassana meditation comes from a Burmese teacher named U Ba Khin. It has been popularized by one of his students, S. N. Goenka, and is taught at Insight Meditation Center in Shelbou
e Falls, Massachusetts and other centers throughout the world. Retreats for Vipassana meditation that originate in the U Ba Khin tradition call for four days of learning to concentrate while observing the feeling of breathing. The remaining six days are spent being aware of other sensations in the body. This lineage does not practice walking meditation, just sitting for hours at a time, either alone in a meditation cell or with the group in the meditation room. Lectures are given by Goenka, unless an assistant teacher is giving the retreat, in which case a video of Goenka may be shown instead.

I did a lot of research before my first meditation retreat and learned about the many possible experiences one might have in such a focused meditation setting. What I can tell you after having done over twenty retreats is that my actual experiences were never even close to what I expected or hoped would happen.

The best advice I can give you if you are thinking of going to a Vipassana meditation retreat is to drop your expectations. Since it’s close to impossible to completely drop expectations, you may just want to know that no matter what you expect, it won't happen. I guarantee that other things will happen instead.

The next piece of advice I would offer is the reminder that the circumstances of a meditation retreat are atypical and do not mirror your real life. Try to keep in mind that when you get back to your television shows, your family, your bills and your job, your experience will no longer resemble the meditation course experience - it will be different, just like after any long vacation. No one expects every day of their life to have the same sense of relaxation and novelty and excitement they experience on vacation, although vacations certainly add to your enjoyment of life. Allow yourself see your meditation course in a similar fashion.

Let me also suggest that if you have some kind of life-changing experience at your first Vipassana meditation retreat, try not to run off and tell everybody how amazing it was and how everybody needs to do a course like you did. In a couple of weeks, that extreme response is very likely to fade somewhat. It may not disappear completely, but it is unlikely to have permanently changed your life direction. More likely it will result in some small shifts or detours. So you want to be careful of being "the boy who cried 'I'm a new person!'" This will save you some embarrassment later when it becomes obvious to your family that your "life-changing retreat" hasn’t prevented you from getting frustrated by your spouse or annoyed with your boss. And if your course really does result in some dramatic life change, the quiet differences people observe in you will say far more than any shouting you might have done.