Boot camp has some things in common, because it is quite the indoctrination, but they feed you well, and focus more on breaking down the ego and forming a group identity and esprit de corps. Cults focus on breaking people mentally and creating dependence. Interrogation tends to focus on disorientation and a need to bond with the interrogator. Meditation retreats focus on breaking existing habits and perspectives and instilling new ones.
Similar tracks, different intentions and outcomes. Another difference is that in the military you’re screened for prexisting psychological issues, and they have a vested interest in that screening process. You also have trained observers at all stages who know to look for signs of deterioration. In a retreat you have no screening, no such resources, and no training in recognizing early signs of psychosis.
None of these:
>>awake and breakfast at ~6AM, dinner at 4pm, lights out at 9PM (and no meal until breakfast the next day.)
..fit your criteria.
Lights out at 9PM and waking up at 6AM gives up to 9 hours of sleep. That's plenty.
Similarly, going from 4:30-5PM until 6AM without food is not a huge deal, especially since you spend most of that time sleeping (in fact, not eating immediately before sleep can be very beneficial for sleep quality).
Before you adjust, having a meal at the wrong time and sleep at the wrong time can be somewhat equivalent to skipping both of them. If you ask me to fall asleep at 9PM without any previous setup, it will not happen, and I will not be rested at 6AM.
In a Vipassana retreat it's actually no food after noon, so that would be 12PM to 7AM iirc (haven't done a 10-day retreat in many years).
And it isn't a huge deal as you'll likely have other things on your "plate", such as a heaping portion of pain in the X (where X is your knees, back, buttocks, etc.) to keep you full :)
TFA references Megan Vogt, not sure if anyone has posted this yet:
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/06/york_county_suicide_me...
e: in light of what jason_slack said - your experience may vary, of course. Just saying that personally I did not find the sleeping/eating situation to be too difficult after a couple of days. My biggest struggle was actually sitting on the ground for so many hours per day. My hips and legs have become so tight from chronically sitting in an office chair that maintaining good posture on the floor was very painful for me (I've actually since started stretching regularly to work on this).
The participants of the group (meditation retreat, army boot camp, etc) are all 'reset' into this new mode simultaneously and together, increasing group coherence.
The point is not to be comfortable, the point is to spend all one's time and mental energy doing the new thing, whatever that may be. I suspect most folks are extremely shaken for the first two to four days and then settle into the new routine.
Is there no lunch maybe?
The time of day is nothing more than a number, so saying that "I can't sleep before 11pm" is pretty nonsense. We swap the clocks back / forward by an hour twice every year and it only takes a couple of days to get used to the change. Spain is an hour ahead of the UK, despite being on the same longitude. If you ever fly between time zones, again it only takes a few days for your body to adjust.
I am still looking for someone to give me a decent counterargument and that "night owls" is a real thing that couldn't be solved with some discipline about sleep and waking times. Night Owls always seem to focus on a specific time, ignoring that fact that it is all relative.
Actual Buddhist practice is, by and large, considerably less bizarre. Not eating after noon is the sixth of the eight precepts accepted by laypeople during retreats or special days in the Buddhist calendar. The purpose of these precepts is to focus the mind on spiritual matters rather than worldly pleasures; they aren't all that different to the restrictions of Lent, Ramadan or Ta'anit. The overwhelming majority of religious and spiritual traditions make use of some kind of temporary asceticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_precepts
The eight precepts aren't terribly difficult to follow, but they can be a shock to the system, especially if you go from dabbling in meditation to an intensive retreat. More significantly, meditation is much more physically and mentally taxing than you might expect, so an intensive schedule of meditation can be utterly exhausting if you haven't built up a baseline of endurance. It'd be like going straight from jogging in your local park to a desert ultramarathon.
No reputable Buddhist sangha would invite someone who is pretty much a total novice to a ten-day retreat. I'm a fairly experienced meditator and I'm comfortable with sustained and lengthy meditation sessions, but there's absolutely no way I'd go on a retreat of this level of intensity. Novice monks in my tradition wouldn't be expected to follow this kind of schedule, let alone people who had just walked in off the street.
I think there's a problem on both the supply and demand side; dodgy organisations are offering recklessly intensive retreats, but there's also a broader culture of extremism and quick-fixes that drives people to seek Enlightenment In A Week™. A huge amount of diet advice is dangerously unhealthy, because sensible eating is much less appealing than "The Miracle Diet - Get Your Perfect Body In 21 Days". CrossFit practitioners joke about rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal symptom of extreme overexertion. I regularly see submissions to HN that brag about extreme "productivity hacks" that involve chronic sleep deprivation or eating pseudo-food substitutes.
Ironically, this all runs directly contrary to one of the core tenets of Buddhist practice - the Middle Way.
Respectfully, did you read the article? Because both Vipassana and Mr. Goenka are mentioned.
In my experience nothing in Vipassana is particularly bizarre. Eating two meals a day with a snack in the evening isn't an ascetic practice, and neither is the sleep schedule which allows for 6.5 hours a night. The sleep I will admit is an adjustment, but it's a challenge, not an impossibility. And not a health risk. It's a great deal of meditation, but that's the idea.
I think main point the parent explained (very well) is that a great deal of meditation is a bad idea for the untrained.
As a sort of "negative control," I wonder if psychosis is as frequently triggered by other taxing programs; for instance, army basic training? There too people are forced to sleep on an artificial schedule, meals are regimented and at potentially unfamiliar times, and most of the day is spent in unfamiliar, effortful activity (but all of which is probably diametrically opposite to meditation.)