My First Experience of a Meditation Retreat

Over the last few months everything I have read seems to have been guiding me towards the practice of meditation as a way of calming the kind, and developing a happiness from the inside regardless of what is happening externally. I have tried to meditate a few times but I have met nothing but frustration - my mind races like a crazy thing, I fidget, I get an itchy nose, I’m anything but calm! So I figured that I needed to get some expert tuition so I decided to go on a meditation retreat.

Finding a Retreat Centre

I specifically wanted a retreat rather than just a day-course because I wanted to be able to immerse myself in the experience, and take some time out from daily living and that included my laptop! I was looking not only for the meditation tuition but also the chance to just get quiet and be by myself with my thoughts for a little while. I didn’t really know where to start so I just Googled around ‘meditation retreat’ and that started to bring up results fairly local to me.

Many of the retreats I found initially seemed a little more ‘hardcore’ than I was looking for - silent retreats providing only dormitory accommodation. I wanted to have my own room so I could be alone but I also didn’t want a silent retreat either. You may recall that I did an experiment in silence a couple of weeks ago - my results were pretty pathetic and I was quite amazed at just how much I chatter away to myself even when I’m alone :-) My experiment was cut short after only a few days due to a tummy bug but it was long enough to discover that silence does not come easily for me!

I finally found a weekend-long retreat a couple of hours away from me in the coastal resort of Brighton in the UK. It was run by the Bodhisattva Centre which is a Buddhist centre and part of the New Kadampa Tradition of Buddhism. Although I knew next to nothing about Buddhism I knew that their basic philosophy was one of kindness and compassion so that appealed to me. I have since discovered that this Kadampa tradition is an effort to bring Buddhism to the west and the centres are open and accessible to westerners hence the relaxed rules about silence and so on!

Initial Impressions

When I first walked in through the door I was immediately greeted by a mouthful of cherry and chocolate chip icecream - seriously! This isn’t a standard way of welcoming newcomers, there just happened to be a woman there eating icecream and she simply offered me some! I was quite overwhelmed by that simple act - I was a complete stranger off the street and yet she offered me a huge mouthful of her rather small pot of icecream. I later found out that this woman is recovering from breast cancer.

I had expected everybody there to be ordained monks but they weren’t. The icecream lady, Leslie lives at the centre but is not a nun. Similarly, the man who conducted the actual meditation sessions was also what they call a ‘lay Buddhist’ - somebody who considers themselves Buddhist but who is not ordained and therefore is free to live an ordinary life. This really helped me feel at home. I was also mildy amused to see the monks and nuns with mobile phones! I didn’t think monks were allowed things like that :-)

The atmosphere at the centre was immediately welcoming. I was shown to my room, which was basic but comfortable. I dropped off my coat and my bag and made my way down to the lounge. I am quite a shy person in new surroundings with unfamiliar people and I started to feel nervous but this didn’t last. Leslie was in the lounge and started chatting to me straight away and made me feel at ease. A few other visitors arriving for the weekend retreat turned up over the next hour or so and before long I was in deep conversation with a whole bunch of strangers which was quite odd for me!

The Welcome Talk

The retreat officially starts on the Friday night with an introductory talk but the main meditation sessions are held four times on the Saturday and then twice on Sunday morning. The introductory talk made me feel at ease straight away. The fact that it was not a monk who was conducting it helped and he talked about the everyday little annoyances that cause us frustration. He was actually very funny and had us all in stitches many times which I wasn’t expecting.

The whole atmosphere of the centre was welcoming and cheerful - I had expected a somewhat sombre experience but it wasn’t like that at all so I think I found the right retreat for me.

The Meditation Sessions

There were six sessions in all, lasting around 60-90 minutes and each one started with a talk about a certain topic such as happiness, anger and so on and then we did a guided meditation. These only lasted around 15 minutes which was just right for beginners I think. I found that as before, when we started my mind immediately began to race despite the calm atmosphere but this subsided and by the end of the 15 minutes I was feeling a deep relaxation and my mind had quieted down immensely.

I had a strange problem in a couple of the sessions though - I kept falling asleep! In one of them I nodded off 8 times, I just couldn’t stop myself. I spoke to somebody else about it and they suggested that it might have been a posture problem - leaning too far forward instead of keeping upright and sure enough I was able to stay awake for the next session thankfully. I don’t think anybody noticed me nod off, my head would tilt forward and then I would wake and make a little jump but everybody else had their eyes closed :-) Took me back to my uni days of falling asleep in lectures hehe.

Final Thoughts

Although this retreat was held at a Buddhist centre, at no time was buddhism pushed on us. The talks did introduce some of the concepts such as the destructive power of anger, the benefits of virtues such as patience and compassion, karma etc but these were discussed in relation to the goal we all share - to find happiness. If you are looking to start meditation and need some help I can highly recommend the NKT and they have centres all over the world.

It is my understanding that they are a non-profit organisation so the retreats are very cheap. I paid £95 which is less than $200 for the whole weekend including the medidation sessions, and full board accommodation - all meals were included. Normally you’d be hard pressed to find just a Bed & Breakfast room at these prices never mind food and tuition as well!

I loved the weekend, and not just for the meditation but also for the friends I made. I met around 15 people on the weekend and very much enjoyed their company. Many of them I will never meet again as this centre was not local to me but I did find out that there is one about an hour from me that holds evening meditation sessions so I’m going to try those out. I plan to go back on a regular basis to renew my knowledge of meditation and just for the sheer enjoyment of the weekend.

Returning to Normality

I came back from the retreat on Sunday evening and when I switched my computer on I had almost 100 emails waiting for me! I had made the decision that after this weekend I would meditate every day and so far I have kept to that but I have found it more difficult to do at home. The inputs that we have in our day - the work we do, the TV we watch, the conversations we have, all of these sink into our minds and cause incessant noise which makes it very difficult to meditate but it does get easier.

On Monday I found myself fidgeting, I couldn’t get comfortable and I was starting to think that I was never going to be able to get it right but after a few minutes the noise began to quieten and when I opened my eyes I realised I’d been meditating for 15 minutes. My experience yesterday was similar so this is now a new daily habit for me. In future posts I might talk more about the meditation itself when I am a little more familiar and experienced with it.

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