The arguments made by the poster in your link really resounded with me. It goes against my ethics to recommend these courses to people who are actively seeking to jump-start their meditative practice.
As far as being a rationalist goes, I'm not confident that I can always keep my mind free from unwanted social/religious influence, or allow myself to be influenced in a controlled manner. I'm glad that this one off-hand remark about bubble chambers actually awakened me from a cognitive stupor, but I can't be sure that, under slightly different circumstances, I wouldn't have ignored the doubts and the red lights going off somewhere in the back of my head.
Cognitive blind spots are a real thing, and my guess is that many Eastern religious groups are very sophisticated in how they use these blind spots to appeal to intelligent, but unsuspecting, individuals. Eastern techniques of religious indoctrination greatly differ from the guilt-based Christian approach that most of us are familiar with.
I stand by my position: these retreats are not simply meditation courses. They are a religious ritual held by a well-organized religious group. Moreover, they are deceptively advertised as non-religious, and herein lies my problem with them.
If someone wishes to learn meditation from a religious source, I think it is wise to refer to an organization that is overt in its practice and beliefs.
As far as being a rationalist goes, I'm not confident that I can always keep my mind free from unwanted social/religious influence, or allow myself to be influenced in a controlled manner. I'm glad that this one off-hand remark about bubble chambers actually awakened me from a cognitive stupor, but I can't be sure that, under slightly different circumstances, I wouldn't have ignored the doubts and the red lights going off somewhere in the back of my head.
Cognitive blind spots are a real thing, and my guess is that many Eastern religious groups are very sophisticated in how they use these blind spots to appeal to intelligent, but unsuspecting, individuals. Eastern techniques of religious indoctrination greatly differ from the guilt-based Christian approach that most of us are familiar with.
I stand by my position: these retreats are not simply meditation courses. They are a religious ritual held by a well-organized religious group. Moreover, they are deceptively advertised as non-religious, and herein lies my problem with them.
If someone wishes to learn meditation from a religious source, I think it is wise to refer to an organization that is overt in its practice and beliefs.