Longest period of Meditation!
CedarTree
Private Island Explorer
Many of us know about places of intensive meditation and practice.
On the Zen side places like Antai-ji in Japan & Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery in America come to mind.
For Theravada, Panditãrãma or Pa Auk Forest Monastery.
I am curious what are the longest stretches of intense meditation you have heard and also completed yourself!
It can be a folk story or true.
I am having a hard time finding the information now but one of the longest periods of meditation I have heard of is the 100 day Sesshin! I guess it all depends on the time-table of each day but if it is a standard Sesshin that would be beyond intense.
For myself I had a period a few years back while watching a property. I would do some simple chores and then walk over to a close park and sit. I probably was sitting around 7-10 hours a day and I think the period was about a month and a half or two.
I had a point were I had an incredible absorption/mystical experience. Almost like a powerful psychedelic experience although it was totally clear and there was no background feelings.
In it I experienced what felt like the massiveness of Samsara and were I was and had developed so far. Also seemed I had taken Bodhisattva vows in the past as I was experienced as a Bodhisattva. The interesting thing is at this time I was practicing very intensely on the Theravada perspective and so hadn't thought about Bodhisattvas in a long time to my knowledge lol
It was a very powerful experience.
Comments
@CedarTree
All day and everyday, on and off the cushion ...In my living space, out on the deck, outside, on the street....It's all meditation, watching the mind at work rest and play...
"The most essential method which includes all other methods is to behold the Mind
The Mind is the root from which all things grow...If you can understand the Mind
Everything else is included"
~Bodhidharma~
Everyday is a magical mystical mind trip...
....it not as if one can go anywhere or do anything "without" the mind being "present"....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4479240.stm
For myself, I get more benefit from doing focused meditation for shorter periods more often. Also, having a husband 3 kids, a bunch of pets and work, it's rare I get extended periods to allow longer meditations. I do take a couple meditation retreats by myself each year out in the woods.
It's standard hours just like any other. Longest one I have done is 30 days. I wish I had time to do a 100 day!
that's cool cedartree you took the bodhisatva vow. this life i took the bodisatva vow.on another note ,longest meditation , maybe 2-3 hours of coffee and smokes in the morning. very unconventional,i suggest don't do what i do.
As an assistant during one Zen meditation retreat, I suggested to the teacher that instead of having longer sitting periods, there should be an announced sitting of only four or five minutes. He scoffed at the idea, although later in the day he announced before a sitting period that it would be short. He lied ... the period was the standard 40 minutes ... but the announcement had an interesting effect.
Try to go short now and then. Perhaps very, very short.
You poor thing.
Ahh so you know which one I was talking about, do you remember the whole story of that one?> @paulyso said:
haha yah not much of a smoker or a coffee drinker, I guess I got off lucky
and yes the experience was quite interesting. Now that I have typed it out I have been thinking a lot about it in some ways.> @lobster said:
Lol lobster you are like the cow that can only say "Muuuuuuuuuuuuu!"
Not any one in particular. It's just that in zen, 100 day retreats have a long historical tradition.
Although, in my tradition, the 100 day is usually a solo retreat. 
hi cedartree.i think about it too. what does it means to be a bodhisatva?sometimes i rest in the parodox to save and not save.but i do what i can to give advice to my brother sibling.my little sphere of influence and activity.got to begin somewhere.and i try to develop the paramitas.
This is the ideal.
To be mindful in meditation and meditating in ones daily being. A constant centering, where we come off the cushion in awareness and sit without effort or doing something that can be attributed qualities such as euphoric, powerful, meaningful, good, bad, agitated etc ...
Who changes their mind when they meditate? What are they up to the rest of the time? Unknowing unawareness? Perhaps ... time for dzogchen ...
@lobster - we dwell in the Four Foundations of Awareness
Better still....
that is cool lao in the house--as the young people would say.but interesting coincident.i was thinking about contentment.personally ,i think its in right direction. gratitude practice helps.
Exactly
I've found it very difficult to maintain a consistent practice over the years. I suppose I started to meditate over ten years ago now, but it's always been on and off, and so the longest I've meditated in one sitting is about 90 minutes, although that is rare. I have a problem in my right shoulder area - a long standing trapped nerve, I think - that becomes very painful after a while, and I haven't managed yet to just allow it and sit with it... it bugs me too much. However, none of this disappoints me. I'm 35 and have managed a fair degree of spiritual development (although, it feels more like having picked up the baton from prior lives than any strong effort in this one) and it excites me that I still have meditation practice in my back pocket, because, I know that when the time comes when I get a consistent meditation practice, my development will really accelerate. Sitting meditation is obviously hugely beneficial, but with enough awareness, there is so much 'growth' to be achieved just through consciously living your life with right thinking, right action, right speech etc. I am fortunate that I am mostly able to utilise any waking moment to further my development, with or without meditation to help.