Introduction: Notes from Retreat

Hello!

So, this is an unusual blog, mostly consisting of notes and diary entries from a six-week silent meditation retreat. I've put them up here partly as my own spiriutal practice, and partly to share a bit about what it's like to be on a silent retreat, either in the vipassana tradition (like mine) or others. If you want to read them in order, which I recommend, please go back to November 6, which is the date of the first entry. Although very few people will likely do that, it really will make more sense for you to read the entries that way, so I encourage it. :-)

I have felt a desire to put in a few words of preface. First, about the retreat. It was a six week vipassana retreat at IMS in Massachusetts. My practices, though, were quite unorthodox. Keeping so many notes, which as you'll see have a lot of thinking in them, is something that I have found skillful but which usually is not. And adding in prayer, dzogchen practice, and a lot of other pieces - these are not part of the core practice. I feel a great love and debt, as it were, to the dharma, and don't want to misrepresent it here.

Also, every retreat is different. If you are considering doing a seven-day retreat or something like that, please do it. And please do not think that what I describe will happen to you. It will not. You will have a different experience, and may experience suffering if you compare your experience to mine (favorably or unfavorably).

It's also been important for me to clarify why I am doing this. I wanted to express with my friends and others who happen by here what the retreat was like, what it's about, and some of the insights that arose. In other words, it is about communication and sharing - not teaching or advertising or impressing. I also decided to be anonymous, since a lot of the stuff is laundry that I wouldn't want publicly associated with my name, especially professionally. Otherwise I'd have to self-censor.

Okay, enough preface. Who is reading these words? Who is writing them? Let's unmask the One and commence an act of love.