Greetings

Hello all, 

I'm happy to have found this forum. I've been meditating since 1991, mostly using the Soto Zen method, though I've tried a number of other forms, including Vipassana. I did a 10-day Vipassana retreat some years ago and I'm finding myself preferring Vipassana meditation recently. I have signed up for an online Vipassana course starting next month, and I hope to do another 10-day retreat, this one online, early next year. 

I am looking for more sangha connection and support online. The last couple years have made in-person sangha meetings challenging, and if I had my druthers, I would find a Vipassana teacher and/or community I could connect with regularly via video conferencing. 

Greetings earthling!  

Welcome.  

There are a few people here that could probably help you with practice questions and connecting with an online group. 

Which groups are running the retreats you are doing?  

Welcome to AN and best wishes with your practice Serene. 

The 10-day intro course is based in Thailand and is found at the website, vipassanaathome.com. The 10-day online retreat, which I registered for and begins within a week or so, but then realized I cannot do at this time, is found at vipassanaonline.com. I don't think I'm ready for a 10-day retreat at home. The course commitment requires two hours of meditation each day, which for me would be a lot. The retreat would be more like 10-12 hours a day of meditation. 

Can you tell us more about how you practiced Soto Zen? What was the exact meditation style, practically speaking? Did you have a continuous daily practice? How long were your daily sits and how many times a day would you usually sit? 
Did your daily sitting routine continue uninterrupted for several months or even a year or longer? 
Did you experience difficult times in your meditation practice? 
 
I know I’m asking many questions. Only answer if you feel
like it of course. No pressure.  

Best wishes to you! 

Hello, and thank you for your interest. The exact meditation involved mindfulness of breathing, usually subvocal breath counting. I began by sitting in a chair for 15 minutes each morning. Gradually I sat for longer periods until 30 or 40 minutes was a more typical length. At some point I introduced subvocal thought labeling, e.g., "thinking..." or "remembering..." or "imagining..."Later discovered Vipassana and adopted the body scan.

I later got a zafu cushion and sat on that, until that became too hard on my knees after some years. I certainly can't say I've meditated every day since then. But it became a daily practice then, and despite interruptions to the dailyness of it, I kept returning to it as a daily practice.

At times of greater enthusiasm, I would sit in the evening as well, but most of the time it has only been once a day. As far as constancy, I would say my daily sitting continued uninterrupted for several months at a time, or I might sit every day for 90 days but with a handful of days where I did not sit. That's probably a more typical pattern. In the first several years, there were times when I was so depressed, I found it very hard to meditate. That might lead to a suspension of the practice for a period of days, but then I would return to it. It didn't interrupt the practice for weeks or months at a time.

Hello Tom, and thank you for your welcome and for the practice journal. No, I would not want a public journal. By the way, I see that I somehow just double posted in the Meditation thread. Didn't see a quick way to delete one of them.