It’s Zen adjacent, so it seems suitable to share (only found the post because it made it’s way to my ‘top’ feed) - https://www.dhamma.org/en/index
My closest centre is about an hour north, and it’s free so how could I not at least try it the first time? I think I went 6 or 7 years in a row after that, only missing last year due to a somewhat prolonged death in the family.
The teachings and practices Goenka ji imparts have change my life and thinking in ways I couldn’t have imagined possible before my first retreat.
Pleased to meet you.
I do shikantaza. Aka dry vipassana. Aka cultivating fluff and volume.
Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam
I ❤️ Vipassana
Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam
The three sweetest words in the Pali language 🤣
If you aimed to sell vipassana what would be your pitch?
Oh easy - “It’s FREE! YES, THAT’S RIGHT, FREE! 10 days of peace and quiet, food and a bed, and you get to learn an amazing, albeit difficult, meditation technique!”
At least for the Goenka retreats - which means someone is already generally inclined toward meditation.
Straight up Vipassana I generally try to sell as ‘mindfulness’, as it is basically what all the trendy secular ‘mindfulness’ practices people are pushing is, and a lot of people not yet inclined toward meditation are often turned off by any hint of ‘spirituality’ or anything remotely religious/Buddhist. I’ve tried to start more than a couple people on a pure ‘mindfulness’ version developed by a doctor who worked at the treatment centre I went to when I stopped drinking. He describes it roughly as -
‘I studied x of the most popular meditation techniques in the world, and boiled them down to their common elements. So if, for example, one said you had to put your left hand over your right, and another said you had to put your right hand over your left, then obviously it was actually immaterial to the results, so I tossed it out.’
What he ended up with, was basically Vipassana lol, though he doesn’t say that, and it’s not exact. I guess it’s really closer to Anapana which you do for the first couple days at the Goenka retreat too. Either way, I take that angle, and if anyone comes back after having done that for some time wanting to go deeper, I know exactly where to send them 😀
I went a similar way, with the experimenting and figuring it out.
I started with concentration. It was my own personal magic power.
Then I found vipassana. Then I did concentration and vipassana together for a while. That was a bit too much.
Now I do just vipassana. It’s great.
Also, as I said elsewhere in this thread, right after free I’d put “it gets you high”. Because everybody likes to get high.
🤔 I’m not much of a sales person. It’s like buddha said though (paraphrasing); there are many paths out of suffering, and here is one of them.
I have done many 10 day sits at a dhamma.org temple and have served there supporting meditators. I count this among the best things I have ever occupied my time with and if i could just spend every day doing dishes and cooking for the folks practicing there i would.
Top four bullet points on my sales pitch.
- it’s free
- it’ll get you high
- it’ll make you smarter
- it’ll get you laid
That’ll do it
