When the philosophy behind Vipassanā meditation started to resonate for me, I went through a phase of hoovering up as much as of the dhamma as I could get my paws on. Not content with my meditation center’s weekly dhamma talk, I subscribed to podcasts from teachers like Gil Fronsdal and Ajahn Brahm and drank deeply from the resulting firehose of ( Read more... )

Ten months ago, I went out to the Insight Meditation Society for their 9-day New Years retreat. It was my first time doing a retreat of that length, and I found it vastly more dramatic and emotionally challenging than any retreat I’d ever experienced.

When I came home, I hoped to share my experiences in two separate blog posts: one public, the ( Read more... )

It took me eight years to do it, but I’ve finally sat my first silent residential meditation retreat out at the Insight Meditation Society in rural Barre, Mass. Here’s a report from the front lines…

My first hard-won insights actually came before the retreat, when all my prospective rides bagged on me, and my postings on ( Read more... )